Racial discrimination was entirely legal in Britain right up to the late 1960s. The Bristol Bus Boycott of 1963 was the nation’s first black-led campaign against it. It marked a new chapter in the struggle for racial equality in Bristol and the UK.
Bristol’s bus service in the early 1960s
The Bristol Omnibus Company was privately-owned and its workers belonged to the Transport and General Worker’s Union. The local branch of the union passed a resolution to ban ‘coloured’ people from working as bus conductors and drivers in 1955. The company went along with the resolution and national union officers turned a blind eye to it.
The Bristol Evening Post exposed this racist policy in 1961 but company manager Ian Patey defended it.
What was the Bristol Boycott? Who organized, supported and opposed it?
A campaigning group emerged to oppose this blatant discrimination. It was begun by a core of local Jamaicans: Owen Henry, Roy Hackett, Audley Evans and Prince Brown. This new West Indian Development Council (WIDC) soon joined forces with a young Paul Stephenson.
As spokesman, Stephenson brought the company’s racist policy to public attention. He put forward a well-qualified and well-spoken young man named Guy Bailey for a vacancy as a bus conductor. He was denied an interview once the Company realised Bailey was in fact a Black Jamaican. In response, Stephenson got the WIDC to call for a boycott of Bristol’s buses. This was in April 1963.
The Boycott goes global
The boycott soon attracted national and international attention. An array of big names entered the fray. Prime Minister Harold Wilson, local Labour politician Tony Benn, and famous West Indian cricketer and diplomat Sir Learie Constantine all lent their support to the campaign. With pressure growing on the Bristol Omnibus Company, it was finally forced to end its ‘colour bar’ in August 1963. It was an historic victory.
A month after the company conceded, it hired Sikh graduate Raghbir Singh as Bristol’s first bus conductor of colour. He was soon joined by four other conductors: Norman Samuels and Norris Edwards from Jamaica and Mohammed Raschid and Abbas Ali from Pakistan.
This information was taken from Bristol's Free Museums and Historic Houses website. You can read more there.
In 2014 a plaque was installed at the Bristol bus station to commemorate the campaign.
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