Black bus drivers helped make Britain more inclusive

David Olusoga, The Independent

Our new book, Black History for Every Day of the Year — written and illustrated by myself and my siblings Kemi and Yinka — brings together 366 stories from across time and around the world. Some take us into the life of a person or group of people — others to a place or event.

In each entry we hope that you learn something new, just like we did while writing it. Black history is world history, and alongside tales of oppression and resistance, we tell stories of ingenuity, creativity and community, covering all aspects of human endeavour. Dotted throughout the book are original drawings, created by Kemi, that celebrate inventions, artistry and artefacts encountered in the entries.

Inevitably, space in the book is limited, and we each had to make arguments for who and what to include. As such, we each have different entries that are particularly important to us.

For Yinka, it was important to include educators such as Stuart Hall, Beryl Gilroy and Betty Campbell. For Kemi, remembering our childhood diet of 1970s action movies and films about the Second World War, the entries about the Tuskegee airmen and Alexandre Dumas (author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo) were a must.

For me, the story of the bus boycott in Bristol, my adopted hometown, was always one I wanted to include — it’s a great example of the many entries in the book which acknowledge how Black people have challenged racism and brought about change.

The people behind the boycott — Paul Stephenson, Roy Hackett and Guy Bailey — are legendary figures in the city. Before the bus boycott, it was not against the law for companies to refuse to give jobs to people because of their race. Some companies operated what was called a “colour bar” — an agreement between the company owners, the workers and the unions, that ensured Black and brown people would not be given jobs. One such company was the Bristol Omnibus Bus Company.

To end the colour bar, Black people and their allies refused to use the buses and within five months the bus company accepted their demands. The boycott later inspired laws that made racial discrimination illegal.

We hope you enjoy the below extract, which deals with the boycott. We also hope that, when reading the rest of the book, you find your own favourite entries and share them with the people in your life. Perhaps you’ll also find yourself saying the same thing we found ourselves repeating over and over again while writing it: “Did you know...?”

17 September: the Bristol Bus Boycott: In Bristol, England in 1963, a four-month-long civil rights protest took place against racial discrimination in employment. Despite labour shortages, the government-owned Bristol Omnibus Company operated a colour bar; Black and Asian applicants were refused bus driver and conductor roles, and given less well-paid support roles instead.

In response, Roy Hackett, Owen Henry, Audley Evans and Prince Brown formed the West Indian Development Council. Paul Stephenson, a local youth worker of West African descent, became their spokesman. Inspired by the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, on 29 April they announced a boycott of the company’s buses. West Indian and Asian customers stopped taking the buses, and soon they were joined by many white customers. Two days later, on 1 May, a student protest march was held. The bus company blamed Transport and General Workers’ Union members who had voted for the colour bar, despite the fact that those same members had also passed resolutions opposing apartheid in South Africa.

Local press ran many stories and were inundated with letters from readers. Ex-cricketer Learie Constantine, then high commissioner for Trinidad and Tobago, supported the boycott, and local MP Tony Benn informed the Labour Party leader Harold Wilson, who spoke in support of the boycott at an anti-apartheid rally in London. Eventually, on the day of the March on Washington in America, the company announced the end of the colour bar. On 17 September, Raghbir Singh became Bristol’s first bus conductor of colour, joined two days later by Jamaican-born Norman Samuels and Norris Edwards, and Pakistani-born Mohammed Raschid and Abbas Ali.