Boycott Four young West Indian men, Roy Hackett, Owen Henry, Audley Evans and Prince Brown, formed an action group, later to be called the West Indian Development Council. They were unhappy with the lack of progress in fighting discrimination by the West Indian Association. Owen Henry had met Paul Stephenson, whose father was from West Africa, and who had been to college. The group decided that the articulate Stephenson would be their spokesman. Stephenson set up a test case to prove the colour bar existed by arranging an interview with the bus company for Guy Bailey, a young warehouseman and
Boys' Brigade officer. When Stephenson told the company that Bailey was West Indian, the interview was cancelled. Inspired by the refusal of
Rosa Parks to give up her seat on a bus in
Alabama and the ensuing
Montgomery bus boycott in the
United States in 1955, the activists decided on a bus boycott in Bristol. Their action was announced at a press conference on 29 April 1963. The following day, they claimed that none of the city's West Indians were using the buses and that many white people supported them. In an editorial, the
Bristol Evening Post pointed out that the TGWU opposed the
apartheid system in South Africa and asked what trade union leaders were doing to counteract racism in their own ranks. When reporters questioned the bus company about the boycott, the general manager, Ian Patey, said The advent of coloured crews would mean a gradual falling off of white staff. It is true that London Transport employ a large coloured staff. They even have recruiting offices in Jamaica and they subsidise the fares to Britain of their new coloured employees. 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.
Support students march in support of the boycott. Students from
Bristol University held a protest march to the bus station and the local headquarters of the TGWU on 1 May, which attracted heckling from bus crews as they passed through the city centre, according to the local press. Local
MP Tony Benn (Labour) contacted then
Labour Opposition leader Harold Wilson, who spoke out against the colour bar at an
Anti-Apartheid Movement rally in London. On 2 May, local
Labour Party Alderman Henry Hennessey spoke of the apparent collusion between bus company management and the TGWU over the colour bar. On 3 May, the ruling Labour Group on the
city council threatened him with expulsion, despite his honourable service of over forty years. Tony Benn,
Fenner Brockway and former cricketer
Learie Constantine also condemned the bus company. Constantine was then serving as
High Commissioner for
Trinidad and Tobago. Constantine wrote letters to the bus company and Stephenson and spoke out against the colour bar to reporters when he attended the cricket match between the
West Indies and
Gloucestershire at the
County Ground, which took place from 4 to 7 May. The West Indies team refused to publicly support the boycott, saying that sport and politics did not mix. During the game, local members of the
Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (CARD) distributed leaflets urging spectators to support the action. The Bristol Council of Churches launched a mediation attempt, saying We seriously regret that what may prove an extended racial conflict arising from this issue has apparently been deliberately created by a small group of West Indians professing to be representative. We also deplore the apparent fact that social and economic fears on the part of some white people should have placed the Bristol Bus Company in a position where it is most difficult to fulfil the Christian ideal of race relations. This in turn was criticised by Robert Davison, an official at the Jamaican High Commission, who stated that it was "nonsense to describe a group of West Indians as unrepresentative when no representative West Indian body existed". At a
May Day rally, held on Sunday 6 May in
Eastville,
Bristol Trades Council members publicly criticised the TGWU. On the same day Paul Stephenson had organised a demonstration march to
St Mary Redcliffe church but there was a poor turnout. Some local West Indians said they should not ripple the water and according to Roy Hackett, they may have feared victimisation. The dispute led to what has been described as one of the largest mailbags that the
Bristol Evening Post had ever received, with contributors writing in support of both sides of the issue.
Resolution The union, the city with his support for the campaign, meeting with the
Lord Mayor of Bristol and
Frank Cousins, leader of the Transport and General Workers Union. He went to the Bristol Omnibus Company's parent, the Transport Holding Company and persuaded them to send officials to talk with the union. The company chairman told Constantine that racial discrimination was not company policy. Negotiations between the bus company and the union continued for several months until a mass meeting of 500 bus workers agreed on 27 August to end the colour bar. On 28 August 1963, Ian Patey announced that there would be no more discrimination in employing bus crews. It was on the same day that
Martin Luther King made his famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the March in Washington. On 17 September, Raghbir Singh, a
Sikh, became Bristol's first non-White bus conductor. A few days later two Jamaican, one being Norman Samuels, and two Pakistani men joined him. ==Aftermath==