Black politician causes stir in Britain

Press, 19 December 1985, Page 4

Black politician causes stir in Britain

By JANE EYRE NZPA-AAP London The coffee comes from Nicaragua, he insists on it in order to help the Marxist Government, and there isn’t a picture of a pin-up girl within miles of the place. He has called for a ban on Irish joke books through nearby book stores and is considering taking out a High Court injunction to stop the police from enforcing the law on his local streets.

When he chairs meetings they can get so out of hand, colleagues threaten to call the police. After the bloody battles on Tottenham’s streets last October, which left one policeman dead and scores injured, he declared that the “boys in blue” had got what they deserved: “A bloody good hiding.”' The white feminist he publicly left his wife and children to live with has,

with his help, just been appointed to the National Marriage Guidance Council. He was once bound over to keep the peace after admitting that he had assaulted a colleague with a walking stick. The British press openly and often headline him as “Barmy Bernie.” On the above information would you vote for this man?

The Conservative Party would like to think that the answer is a resounding “No.” But after the next election he is likely to be sitting in the House of Commons.

The man in question is Bernie Grant, Britain’s first black local authority leader and the Labour Party’s candidate for one of its safest seats — riot-torn Tottenham.

From outward press cover, anyone could be excused for believing that

they were dealing with some sort of potential urban ghetto Idi Amin. But to London’s black community, he is the most Eowerful leader they have ad.

He is the leader of North London’s Haringey Council.

The bearded Bernie Grant, aged 41, is also a Marxist, and endless grist for the Tory propaganda mill.

The jokes about the importation of Nicaraguan coffee beans for the council mugs and the renaming of Haringey’s streets after jailed African political activists may cause the news-paper-reading public a chuckle, but it cynically denies his power or political acumen in one of the country’s most strife-tom communities.

It is a community squarely under the microscope after the street riots of the past year. The biggest unanswered question still being debated in Government circles is whether that community can be responsible for itseft or remain under the control of police and politicians. Bernie Grant is being limelighted as the alternative.

He rarely answers the “Barmy Bernie” headlines and if he does, the replies never appear in print. His personal life has been held up to the most detailed scrutiny. Soon after the Tottenham riots he left his wife to live with another local activist, Sharon Lawrence.

The tabloid newspapers ran front-page photographs of her under headlines describing her as Bernie Grant’s “blonde, white mistress.”

Since he became the leader of the Haringey Council last April, a battle he won by 44 votes to 17, only one newspaper, the “Observer,” has attempted a serious insight into this Guyanan-born, former British rail clerk who has become the figure most other publications treat as light relief.

After the horrific scenes on the Broadwater Estate last October, when black youths set up flaming barricades and held hundreds of police at bay, Bernie Grant emerged as their main spokesman.

His comments about police provocation and the “bloody good hiding” jibe earned him a severe rebuke from the Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, not to mention public outrage and threats from his own council that they would go on strike unless he showed some compassion and declared sympathy for a dead policeman. He eventually did express regret but the black community, particularly the young, never wavered in its support of him. Seek a comment from London’s inner city black communities and the answer will be “ask Bernie Grant.” But such a bombshell political statement caused enormous embarrassment for the Labour Party and started a rethink in the ranks about the political sense in being first past the post with a black member of Parliament.

It had become glaring!;

obvious that this one wasn't going to toe the line or be dictated to. When they had given him the pre-selection, the kill two birds with one stone philosophy appeared home and hosed — he was already extremely popular in a safe seat and the black community was demanding its first voice in Parliament However, the Labour Club in Haringey now sports a “Bernie Must Go” petition in pride of -place on its notice board ancfmoderate party members are asserting that they couldTose - theseat of Tottenham for the first time in 50 years because of the adverse Grant publicity. Most of London’s Labourcontrolled councils, are-the butt of scathing press attacks and are describedoverall as “the loony Left,” . providing endless tittering material about nuclear-free zones, grants for “gay” groups, ratepayers’ funds being used for fringe theatre or anything designed to upset the sensitivities of a still highly conservative society. Like Bernie Grant, they have remained in power. However, he appears to have been singled out for individual treatment. The “Sun” has run long stories, such as one headlined “Ten things you didn’t know about Bernie Grant.” It then listed actions point by point, such as his banning of nude pin-ups from council walls, his former employment record, when he moved in with his girlfriend and which strikes he had been responsible for in his union days. Bernie Grant has never made a secret of his background. He emigrated to Britain in 1963 and worked for British Rail before furthering his education at Edinburgh University. However, he abandoned his degree course in protest at university scholarships being given to white South Africans. From 1971, he devoted his time to the trade union movement, working fulltime for the Union of Post Office Workers until 1978. He joined the Workers’ Revolutionary Party, which boasted such luminaries as Vanessa Redgrave, but left it to join the Labour Party, working his way up through local government ranks. The analysis of the “Observer” suggests that contrary to the carefully cultivated public opinion, Bernie Grant is not an insensitive, hate-filled, black power maniac but one of the most popular and powerful political activists in the black community. The “Observer” also argued that it probably highlighted the lack of available leadership in Britain’s Afro-Caribbean community. However, Bernie Grant’s radical views are on parade and so far the black community has not objected. He is walking the tightrope between the respectability of conventional politics and the heroworship of a largely leaderless community which is in the throes of activism. Bernie Grant might be ready for Britain but is Britain ready for Bernie Grant?