Poor Pakistan Immigrant Becomes Mayor in England

A Pakistani boy who came with nothing becomes the Mayor in England. The prospects of a new life in Britain were hardly inviting for young Afzal Khan when he arrived, aged 12 and with no grasp of English, to face the limitations of life in a two-up, two-down terrace in rural Lancashire. His parents had settled in Brierfield, a mill village between Burnley and Nelson where the way ahead for most British Pakistani boys was a job at the Smith & Nephew cotton mill. And so it was for Afzal. The pay was poor, although an improvement on Jhelum, a Punjabi trading post built for the dispatch of cargoes between India and England, which his parents had left behind.