A towering achievement

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Evening Times

By Wendy Miller

FROM the outside it looks like another gloomy tower block.

But on the inside the Kingsway flats in Glasgow’s Scotstoun are anything but.

The vibrant, friendly atmosphere is largely down to the high-rises’ best known residents – Auntie Jean and Auntie Noreen and the hundreds of asylum seekers who have made it their home.

Noreen Reale and Jean Donnachie have spent the last few years nurturing a community with 350 asylum seekers, breaking down boundaries and hosting a massive international carnival with 2000 people.

Since they first met in a lift 16 years ago Noreen and Jean made a pact to turn one of Glasgow’s most notorious tower blocks into a community they could both be proud of.

And when the first asylum seekers arrived seven years ago their efforts intensified.

Organising tenants’ groups, soup kitchens and community parties, they have also befriended the families who have been moved into the area after fleeing their homelands.

To the children of these families they are known simply as “Auntie Noreen” and “Auntie Jean.”

On the morning of the Evening Times’ visit, Kingway residents have something to celebrate.

Jean, 62, and Noreen, 58, both throw their arms around a neighbour who has just received good news from the Home Office.

Fifty-one year old Algerian Hussein Rebika, his wife and four children, have been given leave to stay in Scotland.

He said: “We are so happy. We have been here since 2001. Three times our case has been refused and now finally we get a positive decision. The community in Kingway have made my family and I feel so welcome.

“We would like to stay but we’ll have to see what happens. I’m looking forward to the future because we have options now. I am a plumber. Now I can look for a job.”

The Kingsway is a shining example of how a Glasgow community has welcomed asylum seekers.

On Monday the Evening Times told how city residents were wary and angry at the influx of people seeking refuge from countries like Pakistan, Iran and Iraq in their neighbourhoods.

And we told how now – seven years on – the same families have become integrated into those neighbourhoods bringing cultural change, doing well at school and forging friendships.

People in the city, still the only Scottish local authority to house asylum seekers, have been praised for the way they have welcomed and accepted the families. People like Jean and Noreen.

Jean said: “We have got to know so many of these families and it’s hard because even when we see families getting good news from the Home Office it’s great but at the same time we are reminded of all the friends we’ve lost, all the families who have been sent back.”

The community’s biggest event is their annual carnival which last year attracted more than 2000 people.

Featuring food and music from, among others, Iraq, Sri, Lanka, Albania, Pakistan and Kurdistan, the carnival also boasts around 40 stalls.

Pakistani woman Safia Sultana ,37, is a very active member of the community – and her youngest son Faizan, who is nearly four, is very fond of his two aunties’.

She said: “I run a women’s group here and I’m a committee member of the tenants’ group. We’ve just been given leave to stay and for the first time I will have the chance to work.”

The women have also visited families in Dungavel Detention Centre and met with high-profile politicians such as Alex Salmond.

Noreen is still haunted by the memory of a five-year-old Algerian boy she once visited in Dungavel.

She said: “He looked into my eyes and said to me: “Auntie Noreen: why am I in prison? It was heartbreaking.”

There was a time when Kingway’s asylum seekers were living in constant fear of being dawn raided by the Home Office.

After witnessing one such raid Noreen and Jean decided enough was enough.

They rallied all their neighbours together and organised candelit vigils from 5.30am every morning for months at a time.

Jean said: “We watched a dawn raid from the veranda. We saw them all coming out, a man in handcuffs and the kids coming out in their pyjamas.

“Noreen and I said to each other: We’ll have to do something about this.

“That was about two years ago. So we got everyone together and we were up every morning to protect the families from being taken.

“We would have someone keeping watch from the veranda. When they saw the van coming in we would alert the family and they would hide in another neighbour’s house. It worked really well.”

No dawn raids have taken place in Kingsway since, according to the women.