WHY are they here? What have they ever done for us? is a cry I hear less often than I did 25 years ago, but it's still there. There were mutterings in this vein from part of the crowd at my last but one open-air meeting in town. Well, as we approach the week leading up to Remembrance Sunday, there is one very good answer (of many) to this question. "They" fought and died for us in very large numbers in both world wars, and I might add, "we" have never given sufficient acknowledgement to "them" in the decades following.

The "they" in this question are, of course, our Asian community in town. Not so many of the younger people of Indian and Pakistani origin may be aware of the extent of the sacrifices for us made by their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, but the figures are astonishing.

Blackburn is twinned with Peronne, a small town in northern France which saw some of the worst fighting of all the killing fields of the First World War. When Sir Bill Taylor, our council leader, was visiting the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in the town not long ago he noticed that a lot of the graves were soldiers with Asian sounding names. The record of the War Graves Commission are impeccable; so I found out from them how many of the British dead were Asian. Well over half - 56 per cent. Of a total of 577 Commonwealth soldiers buried there 320 are of Asian origin.

So there's "AINSWORTH Private Harry 200631st/4th Bn East Lancashire Regiment, 1st June 1917"; "BARNES Private WH 240877 1st/5th Bn East Lancashire Regiment died of wounds, 8th June 1917, age 19, son of James William and Clara Bains of 5 Hinton Street Burnley" - both old familiar East Lancashire names. But, in the same cemetery, falling in battle on the same side - us - are some of the newer East Lancashire names "KHAN Muhammed Khan, Sowar 2610 18th King George's Own Lancers 2nd December 1917"; "SHEIK MUHAMMED, Labourer, 56 3rd Indian Labour Corps, 11th August 1917 and so it goes on. There is even among the Asian dead, a "THOMAS SOREN, Labourer, 42nd (Ranchi) Indian Labour Corp 25th October 1917" - probably, from his name (I've no other details) the product of what was then called a "mixed marriage".

By the end of the First World War, 1,100,000 people from British India - now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh - had served overseas, at a cost of 60,000 dead. 9200 such soldiers won decorations, including 11 V.C.s. In the Second World War, the Indian army had two and a half million men, the largest volunteer army the world has ever seen. 87,000 died for us.

And in both wars they served everywhere - on the Western front, Palestine, Gallipoli, Dunkirk - and provided aircrew for fighters and bombers as well.

All this is statistics, and they can appear rather abstract. But two or three times a year an elderly gentleman will turn up at one of my constituency surgeries. They produce from a pocket a carefully preserved Indian Army Pass Book, tell me about their war service for Britain and observe philosophically, rather than complain, that those in the Indian army did rather less well in terms of pensions fighting for Britain that those in the British army.

Bill Taylor and I have been encouraging members of our Asian community as well as the white community to wear a poppy this year to commemorate all those - of whatever colour or religion - who died fighting for a common cause: a remembrance for their families as well as ours.