Paul Stephenson, campaigner whose 1963 Bristol Bus Boycott paved the way for the Race Relations Acts
Paul Stephenson, who has died aged 87, played a pivotal role in the 1963 Bristol Bus Boycott, an event that helped to pave the way for the Race Relations Acts of 1965 and 1968.
Stephenson – who was born in England and whose father originally came from West Africa – was working as a youth and community worker and supply teacher in the racially mixed Baptist Mills area of Bristol. He recalled the city at the time as "openly racist", a place where landlords put up signs reading "No dogs, No blacks, No Irish" and where "you could walk into a pub... and not know whether you would be served."
Despite labour shortages, from 1955, when the local branch of the Transport and General Workers Union passed a resolution that "coloured workers should not be employed as bus crews", the Bristol Omnibus Company had operated a covert colour bar.
The bar was exposed by the Bristol Evening Post in 1961, and in 1963 Stephenson telephoned the company to secure an interview as a trainee conductor in the name of Guy Bailey, a young black warehouseman and Boys' Brigade officer. Assuming from Stephenson's English accent that he was white, the company agreed. But when Bailey arrived, he was immediately sent packing.
The story made it into the local press and, inspired by the example of Rosa Parks, the black American woman whose refusal in 1955 to move off a "whites only" bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama, led to a boycott of the buses – a key event in the US civil rights movement – Stephenson and a group of local activists got together to organise a Bristol Bus Boycott.
"The bus situation in Bristol was sending out a clear message that discrimination was OK," Stephenson recalled. "So I decided if I was to attack the buses on the grounds of racial discrimination, I could bring the colour bar out into the open for debate and, at the same time, send a powerful message throughout the community."
Speaking on day one of the boycott – April 30 1963 – the bus company's general manager, Ian Patey, told the press that "the advent of coloured crews would mean a gradual falling off of white staff." London Transport, he went on, "have recruiting offices in Jamaica... As a result of this, the amount of white labour dwindles steadily on the London Underground. You won't get a white man in London to admit it, but which of them will join a service where they may find themselves working under a coloured foreman? I understand that in London coloured men have become arrogant and rude after they have been employed for some months."
Stephenson became spokesman for the boycott, which, however, divided opinion. Students from Bristol University were heckled by bus staff when they held a protest march, while trade union leaders were among those who sided with the bus company – as were leaders of Bristol's West Indian Association, concerned that the boycott risked undermining racial harmony, a stance supported by the Bishop of Bristol.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph Claud Cockburn observed that the boycott had stirred up "numerous sinister emotional forces": "From all over the country fanatical individuals and organisations wrote to trade union and other bodies in Bristol expressing the most violent hatred of coloured people and urging Bristol to 'stand firm against the black invasion'. " As the debate raged Stephenson received death threats and was accused of being a communist.
But after 60 days, on August 28 1963 (coincidentally the same day that Martin Luther King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech) the bus company capitulated, and in September Raghbir Singh became Bristol's first non-white bus conductor.
Prominent supporters of the boycott included Tony Benn, then Labour MP for Bristol East, and Harold Wilson, then leader of the Labour opposition, who made legislation to combat racial discrimination a priority when he entered No 10 Downing Street in 1964.
In 2005, writing in The Independent, Robert Verkaik observed: "Few doubt that without Mr Stephenson's efforts it would have been difficult for Harold Wilson's Labour government to bring in Britain's first anti-discrimination laws."
Paul Stephenson was born in Rochford, Essex, on May 6 1937, to a West African father (from whom he was estranged) and an English mixed-race mother, Olive, who was herself estranged from her African father.
During the war, while Olive joined the Women's Reserve Army Corps, Paul, aged three, was evacuated to a children's home in Great Dunmow, Essex, where he remained for seven years and, as he recalled, "was treated [as] more of a novelty than anything else". At Forest Gate Secondary School, by contrast, where he was the only black pupil, he found himself transformed from "a cuddly curiosity to a racial threat".
In 1953 he joined the RAF as a cadet, serving until 1960, for part of the time in West Germany. After gaining a diploma in Youth and Community Work from Westhill College of Education, Birmingham, in 1962 he moved to Bristol.
Encouraged by the success of the bus boycott, Stephenson set out to strike another blow for racial equality by pitching up at a Bristol pub called the Bay Horse, which was refusing to serve black people, and asking for half a pint of bitter. "We don't want you black people in here – you are a nuisance," the bar manager reportedly told him. When Stephenson refused to leave the pub unless he was served, he was arrested and charged with failing to leave a licensed premises.
His case attracted media attention, not all of it positive, the Bristol Evening Post running the story under the headline "West Indian leader made a fool of himself".
At his trial Stephenson was accused of behaving aggressively, but an Irishman who had been in the pub at the time refuted the charge. The case was dismissed and Stephenson was awarded £25 in costs. The bar manager was duly sacked.
In 1968 Stephenson moved to Coventry as a senior community relations officer, then in 1972 he joined the staff of the Commission for Racial Equality in London. In 1975 he was appointed to the Sports Council, where he was prominent in the campaign against sporting contacts with apartheid South Africa. In 1981 he was appointed to the Press Council.
Returning to Bristol in 1992, he was instrumental in setting up the Bristol Black Archives Partnership. In 2012 he released his autobiography, Memoirs of a Black Englishman.
In 2008 Stephenson was the first black person to be granted the Freedom of the City of Bristol, and in 2009 he was appointed OBE for "services to equal opportunities and to community relations in Bristol". In 2017 he was presented with a Pride of Britain award for lifetime achievement by Sir Lenny Henry.
Stephenson was married to Joyce and had a son and a daughter.
Paul Stephenson, born May 6 1937, died November 2 2024
