The Great British Faith - Leicester

Hardeep Singh Kholi continues his journey around the UK to examine the role different faith groups have played in building modern Britain. Tonight he lands in Leicester, widely regarded as the best example of how different faith and ethnic groups can live harmoniously together and widely expected to be the first city in the UK where white people will be in the minority. He starts his journey on 'The Golden Mile', Belgrave Road, the 'blingy' commercial centre of Leicester. He first goes to a Leicester institution, Bobby's Restauant, to hear how Ugandan Asians settled en masse in the city after they were expelled by Idi Amin in the 1970s. Leicester's immigrants have not just contributed financially, but politically too. He will meet the Belgrave Bahenos, a group of feisty young Asian women who, in the 1970s, took on the rampant racism from outside their community and the attitudes within it. Hardeep will attend mass at a Polish church and hear the remarkable stories of parishioners who were forced to flee Siberian prison camps during World War Two, settling in India and Africa before eventually finding a permanent home in Leicester. And he will also hear how Leicester's Jews were banned from the city for 700 hundred years by a man who is synonymous with the city, Simon De Montfort.