Standing Firm in Power and Pride: Lessons Learnt and Forgotten 60 years on from the Race Relations Act

Black History Month 2025 marks an especially pertinent landmark in race relations in the UK. This October marks the first opportunity for Black History Month to commemorate the loss of Paul Stephenson, a catalyst for the betterment of the Black community in Britain. Sixty years on from Race Relations Act 1965, the first piece of legislation in England and Wales to recognise and address systemic racism in the country, we are afforded a chance to reflect on how far our legislation has come to address this, and how far it still has left to go.

Windrush, the Bristol Bus Boycott and the Race Relations Act 1965

Between 1948 and 1964, hundreds of thousands of Caribbeans (my own grandparents included) heeded the calls of the British Government to come and aid the post-war labour shortage plaguing Britain. Filled with the excitement, hope and promise of a better future, mothers and fathers with young families made the month-long voyage across the Atlantic on a decommissioned warship to begin their new life in what would turn out to be a hostile, unwelcoming home. Before long, blatant signs are unapologetically hoisted above entrances of public houses, boarding houses, hotels, restaurants (and every other conceivable venue) to deter the entry of unfamiliar, dark-skinned Caribbeans: ‘No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs’.

In 1963, inspired by the traction gained of the civil rights movement in the U.S., a 25-year-old Paul Stephenson, a Black youth worker in Bristol, saw an opportunity to stand against the systemic racism he and his community were subjected to. Growing up in Essex, Stephenson used his distinctly British accent to challenge the ‘colour bar’ of the Bristol Omnibus Company - the policy that precluded prospective Black employees from applying to roles as bus drivers and conductors, instead recruiting HMS Windrush passengers as cleaners only. Unaware that they were speaking on the phone to a Black, West-African man, the company were delighted to hear from Stephenson that he knew of a bus driver in need of work as they had plenty available. When a Jamaican, Guy Reid-Bailey, arrived the following morning on referral from Stephenson, he was told that there were, unfortunately, no vacancies. With that, the Bristol Bus Boycott began.

Despite being entirely dependent on the affordable public transport, for four months the BAME community in Bristol walked to and from work in the hilly city in the peak of summer 1963 to stand against the racist policy that purposefully precluded the social mobility of the Black community. The Bristol Omnibus Company was deprived of roughly 50% of its bus ticket revenue and so on 28 August, the colour bar policy was ended. With support from politicians like Tony Benn and Harold Wilson, campaign groups like the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (CARD), Bristol University Students’ Union and the Bristol Trade Council, Paul Stephenson had been successful.

As Robert Verkaik (2005), Legal Affairs Correspondent for The Independent, writes "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". The boycott paved the way for the Race Relations Act 1965 to be introduced by Parliament. The Act was introduced specifically with the goal of making racial discrimination in public places unlawful, finally banning the racist signs that greeted the Windrush generation upon arrival in the UK. The 1965 Act was subsequently reinforced by a 1968 Act of the same name, which extended the legislation’s remit to employment and housing, eventually culminating in the Equality Act 2010 which, in tandem with the Employment Rights Act 1996, governs the framework of unlawful racial discrimination in the workplace today.

As employment lawyers committed to justice and equality in the workplace, we can find in the struggle of campaigners like Paul Stephenson, the genesis of our drive to rid the employment relationship of discrimination. Nearly a year on from his passing, it is imperative we endeavour to build on his work and stand firm against the threat of any attempt to diminish it.

Lessons still to be learnt

The road to recognising and remedying workplace discrimination and injustice is a long one. Whilst enactments of legislation like the 1965, 1968, 1976 and 2010 Acts go some ways to removing some barriers and ceilings that exist to prevent the progression of Black employees, evidently the work is unfinished.

One example of this persisting injustice can be found in (the Prospective) Section 14 of the Equality Act 2010, a provision which remains unintroduced by Parliament. The stipulations of Section 14, if implemented, would serve to provide protection against discrimination on the basis of a combination of two relevant protected characteristics. Black women, as common victims of intersectional discrimination in the workplace, would stand to benefit immensely from a protective framework that recognises the prevalence of ‘overlapping’ discrimination.  A hurdle that confronts Black women pursuing claims against their employer, however, is that the root cause of their discrimination is not the fact that they are, taken separately, Black or a woman, but a combination of these two protected characteristics. Taken alone, it is entirely conceivable that a Black woman may not be discriminated against on the basis of her sex or her race, which, inexplicably, leaves her with recourse against her employer who is racist or misogynistic, but perhaps not against her racist, misogynistic employer. Opting for a one-size-fits-all approach, the rigidity of the current legislative framework is as illogical as it wholly ignorant to the uniqueness of discrimination experienced by Black employees.

Injustices like this must be legislated for. Black History Month offers the chance to not only celebrate the Black civil rights campaigners like Paul Stephenson but also magnify and examine problems still to be addressed. Employment law must be a virtue and not a vice for the empowerment of the Black community in England. Rooted in the Black community of the Bristol Bus Boycott, employment law is a powerful vehicle that must be used for the betterment of not just the careers but lives of the Black community. Black History Month 2025 is the perfect opportunity to remember this.

— Zack Eugene

 Paralegal, Cole Khan