102
Feature
POWERLIST 2010
Trailblazers
Many of those featured on today’s Powerlist will have been inspired
by the pioneers of yesteryear. Joseph Harker takes a trip down
memory lane and pays tribute to some who paved the way
n 1991 the launch edition of Black Briton, a newspaper I edited, General Workers’ Union – a position he held until his retirement in
I
carried a list of the nation’s 50 most infl uential black people. 2003 – became the country’s fi rst black head of a big trade union.
Comparing the names we selected then with today’s Powerlist Community activists such as Stafford Scott of the Broadwater
shows how, for many in our community, there has been Farm Defence Campaign, which was set up after the Tottenham
signifi cant progress in the past two decades. Back then we riots of 1985, spoke out for justice and equality and against
celebrated our three black MPs – none of whom were then close to heavy-handed policing. Darcus Howe, who later became a media
even a junior ministerial position. personality through TV shows such as The Devil’s Advocate,
It took another 11 years before Paul Boateng joined the cabinet fi rst rose to prominence in 1981 when he organised a mass
as chief secretary to the Treasury, and neither of his parliamentary demonstration demanding justice following the deaths of 14 black
colleagues, Bernie Grant and Diane Abbott, were ever appointed youngsters in a suspected arson attack in Deptford, south London.
ministers. In May 2003, a year after Boateng’s appointment, Poet Linton Kwesi Johnson provided a powerful commentary on
Baroness Amos became the fi rst black woman to become a cabinet the inner-city unrest throughout that decade with his iconic work
minister. Patricia Scotland, the current attorney-general, made our such as Inglan Is A Bitch. Boateng himself, was then a campaigning
own paper’s list; but then it was for her achievement in lawyer and represented many victims of police harassment.
becoming Britain’s fi rst black QC. Our highest-ranking businessman Their efforts were underpinned by the leading academics
was Val McCalla, then owner of The Voice newspaper. Though it Stuart Hall – a cultural theorist and professor of sociology at the
was a successful and infl uential publication, his empire was a world Open University – and Paul Gilroy, whose seminal work There Ain’t
away from that of Tidjane Thiam, appointed this year as chief No Black in the Union Jack, published in 1987, explored youth
executive of Prudential. alienation and condemned the ignorance of Britain’s politicians and
We should not, though, assume that today’s high achievers intellectuals on race issues. Herman Ouseley added extra power to
are somehow more gifted than their predecessors. Back then, the the civil rights cause in 1993 when he became the fi rst black head
doors of our most powerful institutions simply weren’t open to of the Commission for Racial Equality.
those perceived as outsiders. People had to fi ght their way in to The black council leaders of the 1980s (Merle Amory and
organisations that had only the barest understanding of equality Dorman Long at Brent, Bernie Grant in Haringey, and Lambeth’s
of opportunity. But by their actions, these pioneers led the way Linda Bellos) helped pave the way for the black MPs’ election
for today’s most powerful fi gures. People such as Bill Morris, who in 1987. Central to the calls for greater representation was the
when elected in 1991 as general secretary of the Transport & Labour Party’s Black Sections, driven by activists such as Ben
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