Bernie Grant

1944–2000

Politician, activist

Bernie Grant was arguably the most important black politician in British history. A passionate advocate for social justice and the rights of minorities, Grant was known for an outspoken style that made some of his staid colleagues in Parliament uncomfortable. While that style made him some enemies over the years, it earned him even more admirers, particularly among Britain's ethnic and immigrant communities, for whom he was a leading voice in the halls of government.

Bernard Alexander Montgomery Grant was born on February 17, 1944, in Georgetown, Guyana (known at the time as British Guiana). His parents, Eric and Lily, were both schoolteachers. They named their son after two British World War II generals whom they admired. Grant attended a series of government-run schools, and then enrolled at St. Stanislaus College, a Jesuit school in his hometown of Georgetown. As a young man, he worked at a desk job with the Demerara Bauxite Company in Guyana.

Quit College in Face of Discrimination

The Grant family moved to Britain in 1963, and Bernie took a job as a clerk with British Railways. From 1965 to 1967 he studied at Tottenham Technical College. From there, he moved on the Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland to study engineering, but he dropped out of the program in protest in 1969 when he learned that the school's work experience program in South Africa was offered only to white students.

Having abandoned his engineering aspirations, Grant went to work as an international telephonist (also called a switchboard operator.) He quickly became involved in the labor movement, working with the Union of Post Office Workers to improve conditions for himself and his coworkers. Labor organizing was soon a consuming passion for Grant. In 1971 he joined the Socialist Labour League (which later became the Workers Revolutionary Party), a far-left political group. Three years later, however, he switched over to the mainstream Labour Party, and rapidly worked his way up the local organizational ranks. His first election to public office came in 1978, when he became a member of Haringey (the London borough that includes the Tottenham area) Council. Within a year he was named Deputy Leader of the Council. In 1978 he also took a full-time position with the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE), the main British labor union representing those who work in the public sector.

From the start of his involvement in the labor movement, Grant was particularly concerned with racial inequities. He was one of the founders of the Black Trades Unionists Solidarity Movement (BTUSM), and from 1981 to 1984 he worked full time for that organization. In 1985 Grant was elected Leader of the Haringey Council, making him the first-ever black leader of a local unit of government in British history. Grant got his first taste of nationwide publicity that year, when he expressed sympathy for young rioters in the Broadwater Farm area of Tottenham who were protesting against perceived police harassment and excessive violence. Media outlets across Britain attrib-uted to Grant the remark: "What the police got was a bloody good hiding." While he claimed that the remark was reported out of context, Grant was widely criticized in the national press for his position. However, he refused to back down, even after the Tories—the common nickname for the Conservative Party, Britain's other major political party—and about 1,000 white Tottenham union members demanded that he resign from Parliament. The local Tottenham police chief came to Grant's defense, pointing to his longstanding role as a peacekeeper in the community, but his reputation nevertheless suffered. The Sun newspaper dubbed him "Barmy Bernie," (Crazy Bernie) according to the BBC News, a nickname that stuck for the rest of his career.

In the wake of the Broadwater Farm incident, Grant became increasingly frustrated by the Labour Party's lukewarm support, and its ongoing failure to field black candidates for Parliament. He was quoted in an October 1985 New York Times article as saying that race is "the one issue that the so-called extreme left and the right wing get together on quite happily…. They both adopt the position that we're all one class, the working class, and there is no race problem here, which of course is arrant nonsense." He called white, liberal Members of Parliament hypocrites for supporting the struggles of black people only up to the point where they started threatening their hold on those Parliamentary seats, which represented largely minority constituencies.

Elected to Formerly All-White Parliament

Grant was elected to Parliament in 1987, becoming one of the first black members of British national government, along with four other blacks elected that year to the institution that had had all white members for the previous 65 years. He secured the nomination for his seat, which represented Tottenham, by toppling incumbent Norman Atkinson, the former treasurer of the Labour Party. Grant attracted a great deal of attention, both positive and negative, when he entered his first ceremonial opening of a parliamentary session clad in traditional African garb. Grant wasted no time positioning himself as the Parliament's most vocal advocate for racial justice. He was a founder of the Parliamentary Black Caucus, inspired by the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus, and he worked to forge ties with black leaders and politicians around the world. He traveled widely, especially to regions with largely black populations, such as Africa and the Caribbean. In 1990 traveled to South Africa, along with American activist Rev. Jesse Jackson, to visit Nelson Mandela on the day he was released from his 27 years in prison. He also spent eight days in Iraq that year as head of a peace mission organized by the Afro-Asian Solidarity Movement. The following year, he toured northern Africa, including a visit to Libya.

In Parliament, Grant was outspoken and at times confrontational in his campaign against such race-based issues as police harassment, fair housing, educational equity, health care access, resources for inner-city neighborhoods, and public policy pertaining to refugees. He explained his 1990 vote against Britain's participation in the Gulf War in terms of race, arguing that the reason the United Nations was considering kicking Iraqis out of Kuwait but not considering kicking Russians out of Lithuania was entirely a matter of skin color. "If we are talking about white people invading a white country, United States and British forces would never be involved as they are in the Gulf today," Grant was quoted as saying in a 1990 Independent article.

At a Glance …

Born Bernard Alexander Montgomery Grant on February 17, 1944 in Georgetown, Guyana; died on April 8, 2000; married Sharon Grant (second marriage); children: three sons (first marriage). Education: attended St. Stanislaus College, Georgetown, Guyana; Tottenham Technical College, London, 1965–67; and Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1967–69.

Career: Demerara Bauxite Company, Guyana, analyst; British Railways, clerk; international telephonist, including work for the Union of Post Office Workers, 1969–1978; National Union of Public Employees, area officer, 1978–81; Black Trades Unionists Solidarity Movement (BTUSM), organizer, 1981–1984; Haringey Council, London, elected councillor 1978, leader 1985; Member of Parliament, 1987–2000

Memberships: Labour Party, 1973–2000.

Awards: Honorary doctorate, Middlesex University, posthumous.

Even within his own Labour Party, Grant often found himself doing battle against the majority. Other black politicians, for whom Grant was a trailblazer, embraced the moderate direction taken by the Party under Prime Minister Tony Blair. Grant, on the other hand, remained true to his populist, labor activist roots. He was dismayed by his party's Centrist policies, and sought to raise consciousness among his peers about issues affecting minorities in Britain. While he was often disenchanted with the workings of the government, he commanded the respect—albeit grudging in many cases—of his peers. He was made chair of the All Party Group on Race and Community, and of the British Caribbean Group. In 1990 Grant founded the Standing Conference on Racism in Europe. In 1997 he was named to the Select Committee on International Development. Grant also served on the Home Secretary's Race Relations Forum in 1998. In addition to these posts, Grant was one of the leading voices for the Africa Reparations Movement in Britain. He took the lead in organizing major conferences among politicians, activists, and scholars to forge a pan-European black agenda.

Played Peacemaker Role Late in Career

While Grant was widely regarded as a firebrand who shot from the hip, he also demonstrated skill as a diplomat who knew how to defuse potentially explosive situations. This skill was on display in 1993, when he intervened in the matter of Joy Gardner, a Jamaican immigrant who died of asphyxiation during a raid by immigration officers. Gardner's death outraged the black immigrant community in Britain, and the event brought tensions between minorities and those hostile to immigrants to a boiling point. Grant, who was widely perceived as being anti-police, was able to step in and convince angry protestors not to escalate the situation. The officers were eventually acquitted of all charges stemming from Gardner's death.

Grant's health began to decline in the late 1990s. In 1998 he suffered through both heart bypass surgery and kidney failure. Nevertheless, he continued to serve in Parliament, remaining as feisty as ever, at least to the degree his health allowed. In his final year of service, he worked to establish a major arts facility in Tottenham, the International Centre for the Performing Arts. Unfortunately, he did not live to see the project's completion. Grant died on April 8, 2000. Some 5,000 colleagues and admirers attended his funeral, including high profile British athletes and musicians.

His views may have mellowed a bit in his final years in Parliament; by then, Grant was renowned more for his integrity and effectiveness than for his anger and outspokenness. Upon Grant's death the entire British establishment was singing the praises of a man who was once viewed as a dangerous and reckless voice of the far left. Prime Minister Tony Blair called Grant "an inspiration to Black British communities everywhere," according to Chronicle World. It is not an exaggeration to say, as was said at the funeral, that Bernie Grant changed the course of British history.

Sources

Periodicals

Ebony, March 1988, pp. 76-84.

Guardian (London), April 10, 2000, p. 20.

Independent (London), April 10, 2000, p. 6.

New Statesman, April 17, 2000, p. 24.

New York Times, October 28, 1985.

Times (London), April 10, 2000, p. 19.

On-line

"Bernie Grant a Controversial Figure," BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/706403.stm (July 10, 2006).

"The First Black Parliamentarians in Our Times," Chronicle World, www.chronicleworld.org (July 10, 2006).

"History: Black Pathfinders in Modern British Politics—The Hon. Bernie Grant and Lord David Pitt," Chronicle World, www.chronicleworld.org (July 10, 2006).

"Labour MP Bernie Grant dies," BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/706394.stm (July 10, 2006).

"Bernie Grant Archives," Archives Hub, www.archive-shub.ac.uk/news/04060901.html (July 10, 2006).