HistoryBlack
pathfinders in modern British politics -
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Labour MP Bernie Grant was one of the most charismatic black political leaders of modern times. His death 8 April 2000 marked almost four decades campaigning for racial justice and minority rights. Though in life he was an outspoken maverick, in death, Bernie Grant was praised from the heights of the Establishment, from Cabinet ministers and Scotland Yard to political associates and black community leaders, and Prime Minister Tony Blair described Grant as "an inspiration to Black British communities everywhere".
From his funeral lectern, draped in the flag of Mr Grant's native Guyana, the tributes flowed. Doreen Lawrence, mother of the murdered black teenager Stephen, spoke of her respect and affection for Grant. Mr Jack Straw, Home Office Minister, praised his role in campaigning for the now famous inquiry into the Lawrence case and said: "Bernie's achievement was huge in making our society more tolerant and decent." Chief Superintendent of Police Steven James said: "Some people think it reasonable to support the view that Bernie Grant and the police were on different sides. Nothing could be further from the truth."
Early years
Born February
17, 1944 in British Guiana, now Guyana, Bernard Alexander Montgomery
Grant was the son of school teachers, Eric and Lily, who named him after
two generals then fighting the Second World War. Bernie came to Britain
in 1963, and worked as a British Railways clerk, a National Union of
Public Employees area officer, and as a partisan of the Black Trade
Unionists Solidarity Movement.
A successful local politician, Grant served for a decade as local councillor in the London Borough of Haringey, of which he was elected Leader in 1985. He was the first black head of a local authority in Britain, and was responsible for the well-being of a quarter of a million people, many of them Black and ethnic minorities. Grant joined the Labour Party in 1975 and was elected as Member of Parliament for Tottenham.
Known as a firebrand and socialist advocate, he was rather conservative in other respects: being a staunch admirer of the Queen, a Euro-sceptic and advocate of old-fashioned schooling. Paul Boateng, a fellow black MP, led tributes from Grant's parliamentary colleagues saying Bernie was an untiring personality "who spoke with great authority and passion on issues that others often disagreed".
Campaigner
Bernie
Grant brought to parliament a long and distinguished campaigning record.
He was a founder member of the Standing Conference of Afro-Caribbean
and Asian Councillors and a member of the Labour Party Black Sections.
He convened major conferences of politicians, activists, researchers
and academics to shape black agendas. Grant also helped tackle racism
on a European wide level, in association with members of the European
Parliament and anti-racist groups.
A keen internationalist and pan-Africanist, Grant served on the National Executive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Britain, and had a longstanding friendship with Nelson Mandela, whom he supported throughout his imprisonment and subsequent release. He maintained a keen interest in Caribbean regional affairs, Central America, Ireland and Cyprus.
Bernie's attributes were acclaimed by his obituarist Narendra Makanji, of the London Borough of Haringey local council, who said: "He united workers in industries and the public services through the Black Trade Unionist Solidarity Movement; pulled together the Labour party black section in pursuing seats in councils and in parliament; and improved the bargaining position of agriculture workers in the Caribbean."
Rebel with a
cause
Grant
inspired the Parliamentary Black Caucus, co-founded with his fellow
"first black parliamentarians" elected in 1987 and Lord Pitt. Inspired
by Congressman Ron Dellums and the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus,
Grant told the PBC inaugural conference in 1989: "For far too long the
black community has had no voice in Britain and we are seeking to redress
that". His epitaph, he hoped would simply state "Bernie Grant - African
Rebel": a fitting tribute to a man who was a powerful link between black
communities in Britain and the Black nations and communities of the
world.
In many ways a firebrand activist at heart, Grant courted controversy all his life and evoked mixed emotions. He once shocked royalists and socialists alike by wearing an African dashiki at the state opening of Parliament. Arguably, a controversial politician not to every ones liking, Grant claimed he was misquoted as saying "the police got a good hiding" in the 1985 Broadwater Farm racial disturbances.
To his credit, Grant's wise counsel and investigations into racism and xenophobia helped influence government actions following the murder of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence. Pace University, New York awarded Grant an honorary doctorate in May 1993 in recognition of his work for justice and equal rights.
As his black parliamentary colleagues rose to the heights of New Labour's centrist government - Paul Boateng to the Home Office, Keith Vaz to the Foreign Office, and Diane Abbott to top-level state committees - Grant alone continued to support old-style trade union, populist democracy and the fight for black political empowerment within the Labour Party. Lee Jasper, a staunch Grant supporter, and chair of the National Black Alliance and the campaign group Operation Black Vote, said: "Bernie will be remembered as a hugely popular man of the people that every black man and woman should aspire to emulate".
Grant continued work as an MP despite undergoing a heart bypass operation and kidney failure in 1998. In the closing year of his life, Grant addressed the House of Commons saying a just conclusion to the Stephen Lawrence case "is the last chance for British society to tackle racism."
Bernie Grant died April 8, 2000, and in what was probably the largest black funeral that Britain has ever seen, his cortege threaded its way past key sites of his life. It stopped at Haringey Civic Centre, where he was once council leader, his Tottenham offices, then paused before hundreds of onlookers for a minute's silence in the once riot-torn Broadwater Farm Estate, where he had chaired the community centre. The cortege then moved on in quiet cadence to the funeral service at Alexandra Palace, a well-known north London landmark.
Six pallbearers bore the silver-metal casket. Lance Sergeant Jason Sumner, of the 1st Battalion Scots Guards, played the lament Flowers of the Forest. Among the hundreds in the congregation were Clive Lloyd, former West Indies cricket captain, and Jazzy B, founder member of the band Soul II Soul.
Mr Grant's English wife Sharon said: "In Bernie, we have lost a great fighter and a champion of justice for oppressed people." Members of his surviving family include his father Eric, brother Leyland, sisters Rosamund, Waveny and Effua, and his three sons by a former marriage, Steven, Alex and Jimmy.
Bernie Grant's
achievements
1977:
Elected to the Haringey borough council, north London.
1985: He became the first black leader of a local authority in Britain; and was prominent in criticising initial police actions in which Mrs. Cynthia Jarrett died.
1987: Elected as member of parliament for Tottenham.
1987: Intervened on behalf of family of Joy Gardner who died in a police immigration raid.
1987-1989: Organised the Parliamentary Black Caucus, a "natural focus for the political, economic and social advancement of Black people in Britain"; and launched the Black Parliamentarian magazine - "bringing parliament to the community".
Mid-1990s: Organised various Afro-centred organisations and movements, including the African Reparations Movement and the Global Trade Centre to link local businesses with partners in Africa and the Caribbean.
1995: Caused controversy by suggesting that a £100,000 option should be given to those wishing to return to Africa and the Caribbean, particularly the elderly who had given their working lives to Britain.
Late-1990s: Successfully fought for the release of Winston Silcott falsely convicted for the murder of a policeman during the Broadwater estate riots of 1985; supported a new centre for the Performing Arts in Tottenham; and campaigned for a statue to the Unknown Slave to be erected on a plinth in Trafalgar Square, central London. He also called for measures to end institutional racism in the police and state agencies exposed by the Stephen Lawrence inquiry report commissioned by the Home Office. He was posthumously awarded an honorary doctorate degree by Middlesex University for services to education and cultural development for young people.
Lord David Pitt, Elder Statesman (1913-1994)
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Lord David Pitt of Hampstead was a gentle, giant of a man, whose record of high political achievement and civil rights leadership was unparalleled in post-war Britain.
Born in Grenada in 1913, Pitt was part of the post-war migration of Afro-Caribbean servicemen, workers, students and professionals who established vibrant black communities in British cities. He came to Britain in 1933 to study medicine at Edinburgh but always combined his medical career with political activity. In the Caribbean, while practising in Trinidad and Tobago, Pitt supported the cause of West Indian self-government by founding and leading the West Indian National Party. Upon his return to Britain in 1947 he brought a potent mixture of care and concern to his work as a London doctor.
Hard times
The focus of his concern was the tense social climate of black-white
encounters. Racial discrimination was rampant and without hesitation
he joined the League of Coloured Peoples founded in 1931 by Dr. Harold
Moody, and supported the cause of anti-colonial sweeping the English-speaking
Caribbean.
Pitt was no stranger to political controversy in his long career. In the 1960s awakening for black political self-organisation, Pitt led one of the more important campaigning groups of middle class blacks and white liberal professionals. Some blacks hailed him as a Martin Luther King figure for leading the American-inspired Campaign Against Racial Discrimination. Under Pitt's leadership CARD lobbied for change through legislation - like that enshrined in the US Civil Rights Act of 1964 - and for alliances with the establishment political parties and institutions..
Pitts moderate approach did not sit well with emergent Black grassroots and working class organisations of the period. Angry black activists led direct action, mass protests and campaigns for justice for black people. But few doubted the sincerity of Pitt's passion for positive change.
Labour stalwart
A tireless political strategist rather than a populist leader, Pitt
was at the helm of the Community Relations Commission from 1968-1977
and helped shape the 1976 legislation outlawing racial discrimination
in housing, jobs, training, education and services. He carried his concerns
about medical ethics and racial justice into the prestigious halls of
the British Medical Association of which he was President from 1985-88.
Throughout his life Pitt was a committed Labour Party campaigner; he believed that party, more so than the Conservatives, represented the best long-term chance for blacks and ethnic minorities to influence the direction of national policy. He is remembered as "one of the first prominent blacks in British political life," by former Labour Chancellor Lord Healey, a tribute shared by the Labour leader and prime minister Tony Blair.
Very early in his political career Pitt recognised that a strong voice for disadvantaged groups was needed. He was prominent in the London County Council and was the first black chairman of London's elected government, the Greater London Council, that replaced the LCC in 1965. Granted a life peerage in 1975 he joined with three of the first black members of Parliament, Diane Abbott, Bernie Grant, and Keith Vaz, to form the lobbying group, the Parliamentary Black Caucus.
His concerns
Pitt placed inner city issues at the top of his agenda when elevated
to the House of Lords. During his peerage he chaired the Shelter National
Campaign for he Homeless; the Race Equality Unit of the Institute of
Social Work, and the Urban Trust, which provided pump-priming finance
for projects in deprived areas.
In his final year, while critically ill, Lord Pitt reiterated his primary views. Racial equality and advancement was his goal. Broad anti-racist alliances with sympathetic groups in British society were necessary to bridge race, class and ideological grounds. In these efforts he was supported by his family and trusted colleagues, among them the trade unionist Bill Morris, head of the Transport and General Workers, and the media expert and BBC governor Dame Jocelyn Barrow. He remained a loyal son of Grenada and was buried there with full honours following his death in London December 18, 1994.
Relevant articles reflecting the careers and achievements of Bernie Grant and David Pitt can be found in The Chronicle http://www.chronicleworld.org
See Features:
Strategy for a Black Agenda, and in the Archive
3.301
Legislators need a dose of inspiration ; 2.303
The arrival of Black Parliamentarians 1987; and 2.304
The first black Parliamentarians in our times
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