Dr Paul Stephenson OBE and Journey to Justice
In October 2017 at the Bristol cathedral launch of our civil rights exhibition we were delighted to welcome our patron Paul Stephenson and his wife Joyce. Even though he was already suffering from Parkinson’s disease, Paul’s warm energy, commitment and support for justice shone through. It was a deep honour to have him as our patron and his whole life of activism has inspired us.
Along with Guy Bailey, Owen Henry and Roy Hackett – also at the launch – Paul organised the 1963 Bristol Bus Boycott, now recognised as a key moment in UK antiracist history. He was galvanised in his activism by the US civil rights movement – the main focus of our exhibition – especially the Montgomery bus boycott. The Bristol campaign was won on the very day of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, famous for Dr Martin Luther King’s speech about his ‘dream’ of a USA based on justice. Two years later, invited to the US by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Paul was the first Black person to stay in the John Marshall Hotel in Richmond, Virginia.
Paul was bravely at the centre of civil rights activism all his life. The boycott cost him his job as a supply teacher and he had to fight (and win) a court case against a local union leader who slandered him. In 1964 he refused to leave a racist Bristol pub without being served, experienced vicious harassment from police and press, then won his case, after which Prime Minister Harold Wilson wrote to him promising to change the law. His action was clearly a key contributor to the Race Relations Act a year later. Working as a community relations officer in Coventry to protect Black and Asian residents, he was subjected to bricks through his window from the National Front and a vote of no confidence from the Police Federation. Paul’s anti-apartheid activism led Margaret Thatcher to call him a ‘terrorist sympathiser’.
At JtoJ we stress the importance of the arts in activism for social justice: Paul established the Cleo Laine Schools Music Awards. As a school governor he also successfully persuaded the boxer Muhammad Ali to visit Tulse Hill School in Brixton, then he and Ali together set up the Muhammad Ali Sports Development Association in 1982. Here there are parallels with our other patron sadly lost recently, Herman Ouseley. Both men fought for equality and antiracism in sport – Herman with Kick it Out! and Paul with MASDA. Paul worked in London for the Commission for Racial Equality, while Herman was later its CEO.
After Bristol, our exhibition moved to Newham where we told the story about the successful campaign by schoolchildren in 1996 that stopped the deportation of their classmate. The school was Forest Gate Community School. Nearly half a century earlier, the same school’s first ever Black student had been … Paul Stephenson.
Paul Stephenson was a major figure in the UK civil rights history about which there is largely silence. Now more than ever that history needs to be celebrated.
An excellent biography by Prof Kehinde Andrews (a source for much of the information here):
Our coverage of the Bristol Bus Boycott: https://jtojhumanrights.org.uk/local-stories/local-stories-posts/bristol-bus-boycott/
Paul Stephenson and the Bristol exhibition: https://journeytojustice.org.uk/projects/bristol/journey-to-justice-bristol-phase-2/
The anti-deportation campaign at Forest Gate School: https://jtojhumanrights.org.uk/local-stories/local-stories-posts/the-friends-of-natasha-school-students-stop-their-friend-being-deported/
For linking us with Paul, especial thanks to Dr Madge Dresser, formerly JtoJ trustee, coordinator of the Bristol exhibition, historian of the bus boycott; and to Rob Mitchell, creative media producer and community activist.
Paul Stephenson was a JtoJ patron who played such an active role in anti-racist campaigns for decades, seen here at a Bristol exhibition in 2017.
