Sixty Not Out

The Race Relations Act was introduced on 8 November 1965, part of a wave of liberal social reforms of the 1960s. It was an important first step, though it didn’t provide protection against discrimination in areas such as employment or housing.

It followed the 1963 Bristol bus boycott led by the Black civil rights activist Paul Stephenson. The Bristol Omnibus Company was refusing to hire Black and Asian bus crew. To its shame, the Transport and General Workers’ Union backed the company’s racist stance. The boycott received national and international attention. Prominent Labour MPs, including Tony Benn, spoke in support of the boycott campaign. Demonstrations were held and the protest grew in strength.

Among its outspoken supporters was the former cricketer Sir Learie Constantine, now Trinidad and Tobago’s high commissioner to the UK. His bosses in Trinidad were displeased that their man in London was embroiled in a British domestic political campaign and Constantine’s term as high commissioner came to an end in February 1964.

But this was neither his first nor his last high-profile foray into British civil rights and race relations activism. A member of the West Indies test team in the 1920s and 1930s, he also played for Nelson Cricket Club in the Lancashire League. His success as an all-rounder turned him into one of Britain’s top earning sportsmen during the 1930s. When he retired at the end of the decade, the Ministry of Labour and National Service was keen to recruit him as a welfare officer.

While working for the ministry, Constantine had a run-in with the Imperial Hotel in London. He had booked to stay there with his family while he played a charity match at Lords in the summer of 1943. Hotel staff refused to give them a room because of their colour bar. Constantine and his boss from the Ministry protested. But the hotel manager was unmoved, insisting that ‘the presence of “ni****s” would cause trouble with Americans who frequented the place.’

Constantine and his family spent the night elsewhere. Competitive to the bone, he successfully sued the hotel – not for racial discrimination, but for breach of contract.

The case received significant media attention and questions were raised in the House of Commons. While deploring the actions of the hotel, government ministers said they could play no part in the matter, which would have to be resolved by the courts. It was also an acute embarrassment for Britain, an island of 47 million whose war effort depended on the full support of its empire, which had a combined population of 520 million, overwhelmingly people of colour.

Two years earlier,in the summer of 1941, Sir Hari Sing Gour, the Indian lawyer, educationalist and social reformer, had been refused hotel accommodation while visiting London. The home secretary, Herbert Morrison, when questioned in the House, insisted that this case of racial discrimination was ‘not one in which I have any power to intervene’ – a position the government repeated two years later.

Following the Gour and Constantine cases, civil servants at the Home Office and Colonial Office considered the possibility of introducing anti-discrimination laws. But despite strong public disapproval of such discrimination during the war, the issue did not stir sufficient concern for politicians to act, and the idea was shelved.

After the war, as the newly established United Nations was developing its Universal Declaration on Human Rights, it looked at issues of racial discrimination. Britain needed to demonstrate that its diverse empire was free of racist legislation. The evidence produced by civil servants and colonial administrations to prove Britain’s non-racist credentials was thin.

Across the empire, and at home, racial discrimination was rampant in practice, even if not in law. While lobby groups in the UK pushed for the introduction of laws against racism similar to those in the Soviet Union, France and several US states, the government baulked again. In early 1947, civil servants concluded:

If we are to legislate … it should only be in response to a public demand caused by some incident such as that associated with Sir Hari Sing Gour or Mr Constantine. Such a public demand would be necessary to enable us to overcome the hurdles.

Eighteen years later, the public demand from an increasingly diverse Britain was strong enough to force politicians to respond. Although very limited in its scope and powers, the 1965 Race Relations Act established the principle that anti-discrimination laws had a role in tackling racism. Constantine was appointed a member of the Race Relations Board, created by the act to investigate casess of discrimination. A moderate political figure, he went on to serve at a range of institutions, including as a governor of the BBC. He became Britain’s first Black parliamentarian when he was appointed to the House of Lords as Baron Constantine of Maraval and Nelson in 1969.

At the same time that governments were legislating against racism in Britain, however, they were making it harder for people of colour to come and live here. The Race Relations Act was sandwiched between the Commonwealth Immigrants Acts of 1962 and 1968, which removed the right of entry to the UK from millions of British passport holders.