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FORMER ASYLUM SEEKER IS ELECTED MAYOR..SLAMS IMMIGRANTS WHO

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Daanyeer
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FORMER ASYLUM SEEKER IS ELECTED MAYOR..SLAMS IMMIGRANTS WHO

Postby Daanyeer » Mon May 24, 2010 5:41 am

Former asylum seeker is elected mayor... and slams immigrants who refuse to integrate into British society


By Daily Mail Reporter
24th May 2010


A former asylum seeker has been elected mayor of a Cheshire village more than 30 years after fleeing to Britain.
And today Gabor Bartos, 59, condemned immigrants who refused to integrate into British society declaring: 'This country is giving us the opportunity to settle, to live, to work. I for one owe it to this place to put something back.'

Mr Bartos fled his native Hungary in 1978 after the hardline Communist authorities persecuted him as a 'subversive' because he had long hair and loved rock and roll music.
But although he never forgot his East European roots, Mr Bartos won political asylum six years after his arrival in the UK. He learned to speak English, got a job as a piano tuner and with his wages bought himself a flat.
Whilst the Hungarian regime jailed him in his absence back in his homeland for five years for being a dissident, Mr Bartos married and moved to the village of Poynton, near Macclesfield, Cheshire.
There he became a Conservative councillor working voluntarily for locals on a series of issues including litter, housing and consumer matters.
Last week the father-of-two, whose wife Jennifer works a financial director, was honoured by being given the job of mayor for his dedication to the village.

Mr Bartos, whose eldest daughter and grandson still live in Hungary, said: 'I'm absolutely humbled to get this position. I came to this country as an outsider and this job is the very least I can do after the UK made me a citizen.
'It's only right that outsiders should respect the cultures and follow the cultures of the countries they want to live in.

'When I came to England, I had to learn to speak English, and had to drive on the other side of the road from the rest of Europe, and I had to adopt traditions and I'm proud of that because that is what made me a British citizen. That gave me a loyalty to this country.
'I believe that any person who will adopt the culture of a country, will belong to that country. I just wish all other asylum seekers would follow the same trait.
'Some of the people coming to this great country won't integrate, and it really makes me angry.

'They are coming to England and want to live in England yet their people drive on the wrong side of the road and they cannot even speak English.
'This is a country which is giving them a home, and yet some people want to change it and ignore the traditional cultures that have been in existrence for generations.
'It's very sad that the old saying: when it Rome do as the Romans is much maligned and ignored these days.'

Mr Bartos, whose father ran a flower stall, was brought up in the town of Erd, south of Budapest during the communist regime but refused to join the socialist party.
Pop music was banned and Mr Bartos was branded a subversive when he and a friend secretly got hold of the Beatles first album, Please Please Me.
'We had to listen to it behind closed doors because the police were always there,' he said.
'The communist system wasn't nice. It was really killing a lot of people's careers and all their talents were disregarded.
'We wanted to play music and we couldn't. And the reason we couldn't was because we couldn't get instruments, we just wanted to play rock and roll and the Beatles.
'We couldn't do the things that other teenagers were naturally doing on the other side of the iron curtain. We just wanted to have our long hair, I was beaten up many times by the police for having long hair. We were seen to be an enemy of the system.'
In 1978 Mr Bartos flew to the UK to watch his national football team take on England at Wembley and, while members of the secret service police who accompanied the trip turned their heads, he fled to the home office and sought political asylum.
'I didn't tell anybody what I was planning I couldn't even tell my mum,' he said.
'The communist regime was encourage parents to shop their kids, or kids to shop their parents. There was a black van going up and down the street, particularly looking for trouble makers like me who were listening to music.
'So I couldn't risk telling anyone. I packed a little bag because if I had taken a bigger one, the police would have been asking questions in the airport.
'It was a hard decision at the time. I was frightened of the secret service, that they might follow me. They went to parents and demanded all my papers, and everything they had.
'When I managed to stay in England, the tour went back to Hungary and they learned that I stayed behind. They took me to court and sentenced me to five years in prison in my absence for being a dissident.
'I couldn't go back to Hungary because if I crossed the border I'd have gone to prison. I learned that the secret service wanted to repossess everything I had.
'I was worried, my mum was worried, she was crying. It wasn't a pleasant time, I was still living in fear of retribution. When I got British citizenship in 1984 I felt like the proudest man in the world, really, because at last a great country like the UK was giving me the opportunity to be a citizen.
'Although when I went to the Home Office, the lady joked that now I was British, I had to support England at football, I told her I would.'

During his career Mr Bartos has tuned pianos for the BBC and at the Apollo theatre in Manchester where he met a string of stars including Liza Minelli, Tom Jones and Art Garfunkel.
When Communism crumbled in 1989 Mr Bartos returned to Hungary for the first time since he fled, discovered an an old schoolfriend was mayor of Erd and got his old hometown twinned with Poynton.
He added: 'My family understood why I left Hungary, and they were very proud of my achievements. I don't get paid for being a councillor. We do it all in our own time and on our own money. But we do it on behalf of the people of Poynton.
'I have fantastic colleagues, who are just really professional. You have to believe that you have you are putting something back into the community. I believe that any person who will adopt the culture of a country, will belong to that country.'

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