The Great British Faith

Episodes

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01Cardiff20101213Hardeep Singh Kohli explores the religious and cultural make-up of the UK by visiting three of its most diverse cities.

His first stop is Cardiff, and he starts his journey at Cardiff Bay, now the home of the Welsh Assembly building and rows of gleaming luxury flats. But this was formerly the site of the docks and the gateway for hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world who settled in Cardiff, making it the vibrant, multi-cultural city it is today.

Hardeep travels around the Butetown district, once a melting pot of nationalities and faiths, such as Somalis, Yemenis, Norwegians and he will hear how 60% of Cardiffians can actually trace their lineage back to the Irish labourers shipped in to build the docks in the nineteenth century.

He will hear how these different groups lived, worked and worshipped together in Butetown before the area was flattened in what is still known as 'the deluge'.

He will end his trip by attending a service at a loud, colourful and richly diverse Evangelical Christian church in the city to ask whether this is the future of worship.

Hardeep Singh Kohli explores the rich religious diversity of three British cities.

Hardeep Singh Kohli finds out what faith means to people in Cardiff, Glasgow and Leicester

02Leicester20101214Hardeep Singh Kohli 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 years by a man who is synonymous with the city, Simon De Montfort.

Hardeep Singh Kohli travels to three major cities to explore the Great British Faith.

Hardeep Singh Kohli finds out what faith means to people in Cardiff, Glasgow and Leicester

03Glasgow20101215In the final part of The Great British Faith, Hardeep Singh Kohli goes back to his hometown of Glasgow to explore how much it has changed, culturally and ethnically since he left 20 years ago.

We start this final leg by meeting his brother at the Sikh temple they both went to as boys, to reminisce about their Sundays worshipping there, before being taken to a Bollywood film in the city centre.

After meeting Rev Ian Galloway at Glasgow Cathedral, Hardeep drops in at a community centre in the Gorbals which brings together refugee and asylum-seekers from area-groups who would normally pass each other on the street.

He then meets Eddi Reader, formerly lead singer of Fairground Attraction, who shares her own spirituality and her love of Glasgow, which after 20 years in London she now calls home again.

The final leg of Hardeep's journey is an extremely personal and emotional one, as he goes back to his old Catholic school, St Aloysius. Here, with some of his old teachers, he explores how the school's philosophy of social justice has been a major factor in what he believes today.

The final part of Hardeep Singh Kohli's journey to explore the faith make-up of Britain.

Hardeep Singh Kohli finds out what faith means to people in Cardiff, Glasgow and Leicester

0201Manchester20120403Hardeep Singh Kohli explores the religious and cultural make-up of the UK by visiting three of its most diverse cities.

Hardeep begins this new series of Great British Faith in Manchester, on the face of it not a particular religious city but, with a little digging, he uncovers how the city's radical, commercial, and industrial might has its roots in the religious non-conformism of the 18th century.

He starts his journey outside a modern office building which houses the Unitarian church in the city centre, and learns how the strong beliefs of the influential Unitarians led to the Free Trade movement, parliamentary reform, and the eventual repeal of the hated corn laws.

He travels to one of the few places of worship in the city centre, St Ann's Church, to hear about the role the Mosley family played in Manchester's religious history, before heading south to Moss Side to learn how the Windrush generation reacted to being turned away from churches here in the 1950s.

Hardeep travels finally to North Manchester, where he meets a rapidly growing religious community, that of Orthodox Jews, and he hears how one in four children born in that area are to Jewish families.

Hardeep Singh Kohli explores the rich religious diversity of three British cities.

Hardeep Singh Kohli finds out what faith means to people in Manchester, Belfast and London

0202Belfast20120404Hardeep Singh Kohli explores the religious and cultural make-up of the UK by visiting three of its most diverse cities.

Belfast is the second stop off in this series, and Hardeep begins this leg of his journey in no-man's land, a strip of road between two huge, barbed wired metal gates, which still separate Catholic and Protestant communities in Belfast, fourteen years after the Good Friday agreement was signed.

He hears from Tony Macauley about how more 'peace walls' have been erected since the Agreement than before, and why he feels the walls perpetuate tension, rather than stop it.

He then meets May Blood, a peace campaigner during the darkest days of the troubles, who now sits in the House of Lords; and travels to Clonard Monastery, at the bottom of the Falls Road, to hear the role it played in securing peace.

Hardeep then hears from some Muslims, Belfast's fastest growing community, about how they survived through the troubles, and how racism has become an issue since; before heading down to the new billion pound Titanic Quarter. Here he joins the pastor of a church with no building and no congregation, as the city prepares to celebrate the centenary of the building of The Titanic.

Hardeep Singh Kohli explores the rich religious diversity of three British cities.

Hardeep Singh Kohli finds out what faith means to people in Manchester, Belfast and London

0203London20120405Hardeep Singh Kohli explores the religious and cultural make-up of the UK by visiting three of its most diverse cities.

In this final part of Great British Faith, Hardeep wanders the streets of east London, which has been his home for the past twenty years. He will explore how the area's history is one of replenishment of immigrant groups and faiths who have made the East End the most culturally diverse area in the country.

He will explore the story of the Huguenots who brought the word 'refugee' with them from France when they settled in the area in the 17th century. He will then meet Bernard Kops, a veteran of the Cable Street riots against the fascist Black shirts, who went onto become a prolific playwright and author.

As the call to prayer drifts over east London Hardeep will head to the largest Mosque in Western Europe to look at the role it plays in the community and he joins the worshippers at Kingsway International Church in Walthamstow to find out about the preaching of the 'prosperity gospel' and how every Sunday over half of all church goers in London worship at black churches.

As his three part journey for Radio 2 comes to an end, he will take in the sights, sounds and tastes of Brick Lane, and learn how the Twist was a Jewish invention.

Hardeep Singh Kohli explores the rich religious diversity of three British cities.

Hardeep Singh Kohli finds out what faith means to people in Manchester, Belfast and London