Politics: Local and Central Government – The Bernie Grant Archive

‘We’ve got to get reorganised’

– Bernie Grant, 1985

Council Career

In 1978, Bernie Grant was elected Councillor for Bruce Grove Ward in the Haringey Borough. His decision to enter electoral politics was inspired by his frustration with what he saw as the limited impact of the far left and trades union movements. He had been active in these movements in a number of ways, including the fight against the National Front during its peak of influence throughout the 1970s. Then the activist landscape changed, as Grant stated: “After that, people felt there was a need for us to change from fighting overt racism to fighting covert racism within local authorities and so on”. Having already achieved a reputation as a committed community activist and trade unionist, Grant quickly became an influential member and trusted by the community in his council role. His approach to this work related to his principle of “service to all the people of Haringey”. His arrival in local government coincided with the arrival of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government and it’s attempt to limit the scope and spending power of local councils. It also coincided with the formative radicalism of the Greater London Council led by Ken Livingstone from 1981. Much of Grant’s early work as a councillor therefore centred on protecting services in the face of cuts to local authority services, for example arguing to maintain a policy of no-rent rises, and steadying the cost of 45p for school meals with improved health quality.

In the early days of his career in local government he chaired various committees, with his efforts being geared towards addressing institutionalised inequalities, and focusing on involving historically excluded communities in decision making – often to the chagrin of long standing Labour councillors. These committees included the Public Works committee, Community Development committee, Further Education Sub-Committee, and the ground breaking Ethnic Minorities Joint Consultative Committee. Alongside committee chairing, Grant also led on, or supported, a number of community projects which set out to empower members of the local community, in particular those marginalised sections such as Black people and ethnic minorities, immigrant groups, young people, members of the LGBTQ+ community, council tenants, and more. One such innovative project was “Roots in Britain: An Exhibition of Black and Asian Citizens from Elizabeth I to Elizabeth II”, held at Haringey Libraries in the Summer of 1981. The timing of this project is important to acknowledge, taking place in the aftermath of the New Cross Massacre, and the ‘81 Brixton riots which was triggered by racist policing toward Black youth. This exhibition, organised by Race Relations Advisor and pioneering activist Dorothy Kuya, with the input of Grant, is the first known public exhibition on Black British history. (Bernie Grant had be influential in appointing the influential Dorothy Kuya in 1979 as the first ever local authority race equality adviser) Alongside the exhibition itself, the project included a series of film screenings, events and talks, including one by Chris Power on ‘The History of the Black Presence in Britain’. Power was key in creating change in the education system and school curriculum, exemplified by his work in setting up a Black History course at Tulse Hill School, in South London.

Council Leader

Grant’s challenges to ingrained unfairness in the council’s systems, put him at odds with the council leaders and Labour Group, he spoke out about the council’s bureaucracy and “institutional racism” at a time when this term was not in widespread use, and suffered attempts at being ousted from various committees by the council leaders. Grant served as Council Deputy Leader from 1979 until 1983, when he resigned in protest at the council’s decision to allow the National Front to use the High Cross School in Tottenham for a meeting, a decision which Grant believed encapsulated the council’s institutional racism as referred to in his resignation letter.

When Thatcher’s government introduced the policy of rate-capping for councils in 1984, Grant led the campaign against it in Haringey, which cemented his reputation as a leading force in the local council. The campaign, which was supported by a majority in the Labour Group, resulted in the resignation of the Council leader and deputy leader, who supported giving in to the rate-cap. As a result , in 1985, Grant was elected leader of the Council, and he made history as the first ever Black leader of a local authority not only in Britain but in the whole of the European continent.

Upon his election as council leader, Grant was asked what his priorities would be, to which he responded: “Issues concerning race, women and youth. Not in any particular order, because they are all important, and, of course, all interrelated – we have thousands of young black women, for example”. This period in Haringey Council’s history reflects the tension between the Conservative government, led by Margaret Thatcher and many inner city local authorities in the 1980. One of the main contentions was the financial restrictions on local councils and legal changes attempting to limit the remit of local authorities. This generated widespread community protest and support for local politicians seeking to resist the cuts in spending implied by these policies. At a time when Haringey Council was seeking to empower communities by involving them in their local services, and supporting a thriving voluntary sector, Thatcher’s government sought to restrict local government. As Grant explained: “We would have local services run by people with decentralised committees in their own neighbourhoods, and borough-wide we would have policy committees organised in the right way to give those local people and committees what they need”.

Bernie Grant saw in local government the means by which both he and those he represented could sit at the table where significant decisions were made. He believed that when marginalised people could influence the exercise of the considerable powers and resources of local council, change would take place. Once in office he therefore focussed intently on ensuring that both the Council’s staff, more accurately reflected the community it served, and that services themselves reflected the diversity of the experience of that community.

As Council Leader, Grant’s standing within the Black community continued to increase, especially in the aftermath of the October 1985 Broadwater Farm disturbances, when Grant came to the defence of young people and aired their grievances with societal injustices. Before this, Grant was not yet the nationally recognised figure that he would become. His popularity as a voice for Black people in Britain also skyrocketed after this. In a December 1985 poll conducted by the Caribbean Times, Grant was voted the most popular politician in the Black community, winning 80% of the votes.

Positive Images

In 1986, Haringey Council launched a Positive Images policy in schools, to challenge the discrimination and homophobia experienced by lesbian and gay people. This initiative included representation of gay and lesbian people who had made significant contributions in British history, combatting homophobic attitudes and promoting equality. A progressive step, Positive Images received a great deal of homophobic backlash, from a wide range of people. A local Reverend announced he was going on Hunger Strike until the Positive Images initiative was repealed, and the Haringey Black Pressure Group on Education even published a press statement in November 1986, claiming the policy was both ‘anti-heterosexist’ and ‘racist’. A letter addressed to Grant and signed by concerned members of the lesbian and gay community, condemned the reactions of local groups such as the Parent’s Action Group and the Black Pressure Group, and demanded that members of the council stand up for the Positive Images initiative by publicising and implementing their own policy. The Parents Action Group, angry at the “promotion of homosexual rights”, even made attempts to field its own candidate to stand against Grant in the 1987 general election, after he was chosen by Labour to stand for the Tottenham constituency.

There existed a great deal of misunderstanding (much of it deliberately provoked by the media) surrounding what the policy would consist of, with some members of the public believing that schools were attempting to indoctrinate children into becoming gay. After a particularly fictitious article was published in The Mirror newspaper, Haringey Council wrote to express its outrage and corrected the article’s fabrications, which included claims that the council had banned references to family life and the word ‘family’ in schools, that 284 of 300 pupils of a local school had stayed home due to a parents’ strike over the initiative, that the council had written to striking parents demanding their children return to school and that teachers were being questioned on whether they were teaching about sex in line with the initiative. In reality, the council had merely set up a Curriculum Working Party which developed guidelines for schools, with input from parents. As a result, The Mirror printed a correction in a later issue.

Grant made attempts to clarify what Positive Images entailed, including during a radio interview in 1987 where he stated that “we will be putting forward Positive Images of gay people so that in history the contributions that gay people have made to society will be spelled out to children. We will also be looking at protecting gay people. They have every right to be protected like every other section of society”. Despite the hysteria surrounding Positive Images, it was an important step in the fight for equality for LGBT+ people, and other marginalised groups.

This policy was launched at a time of rampant homophobia and two years later, Thatcher’s government passed Section 28 of the Local Government’s Bill, a series of laws which banned the promotion of homosexuality by local authorities. It was just the kind of Positive Images initiative by Haringey Council that Section 28 sought to prohibit. During the drafting stage of this legislation in 1987, which coincided with Grant’s first year as an elected MP for Tottenham, he ‘stuck his head above the parapet’ in denouncing the proposals in Committee hearings, stating that it was “merely a device to attack the rights of a minority in society”.

Listen to Bernie Grant’s radio interview on the Robbie Vincent Show, Radio London:

Haringey Council vs the Press

During his time as Council Leader (and indeed afterwards), Grant received the brunt of media abuse by the gutter press and dealt with regular attempts to spread mistruths, misquotes and general misrepresentations of his policies, ideas and character.

Media camped regularly outside his home, and intruded into the personal lives of his wider family on many occasions. Photographers & journalists followed him in cars for many months. His widow and former political assistant, Sharon Grant, reflected on the personal toll this took on them in a 2024 Guardian article that “We lived by our wits, always alert to the next hostile onslaught, externally or internally. It was enduring and exhausting, damaging to both mental and physical health”. In his position as one of the few representatives of the Black community in British politics, and a fervent anti-racist, it was clear that many of these media attacks were racist in nature. Indeed, one article reported that “The Black community say that this is because Bernie Grant is Black and the first Black Council Leader in the United Kingdom”.

For many, even within his own party, media attacks provided a useful tool to undermine him as a progressive Council Leader, and as a Parliamentary candidate after his selection for the Tottenham Parliamentary seat in 1985, which angered Labour traditionalists. There were suspicions that many colleagues felt compelled to generate adverse press stories for their own purposes.

This mistreatment by the press was at its height during the Broadwater Farm Uprising of 1985 and it was in the aftermath of this event that the Sun newspaper labelled him ‘Barmy Bernie’, a nickname that the gutter press clung to for much of his career. Grant lamented that this label “has meant anything I say or do is either twisted to reinforce the level of craziness, and reported, or, if it can’t be so twisted, ignored completely”. This blatantly racist and politically motivated treatment received by Grant was acknowledged by members of the wider public, beyond the local or Black communities. He was even approached by the late Kevin Morris, a social justice activist and lecturer, who in 1987 was conducting a Masters course and approached Grant to form a part of his case study regarding racism and prejudice in the media. It was also suggested that he might include Sharon Grant in the study, who was receiving her own share of press abuse. As Haringey Council represented a socialist approach to local government, Grant was not the only individual to be spotlighted in the press. Other leading councillors including Deputy Council Leader Steve King, Niger Knowles, Andy Love, Phillip Jones, and Sharon Grant (nee Lawrence) who led on the Women’s Committee and gender equality were also to receive attention. To that end, Grant as an individual, Haringey Council as an entity and its leading members, were all labelled as part of the so-called ‘Loony Left’, a term used by the Conservative Party and the media. Local authorities and their leaders were usually the victims of this pejorative term, as they represented a challenge to the centralising policies of the Thatcher government..

With a local election imminent in May 1986, some hoped that negative press coverage might bring Grant, and possibly the local Labour Party, down in the the borough, and adverse coverage intensified. In fact this had the reverse effect, and Grant led the Council to an increased majority as Council Leader in 1986. It appeared that the might of the tabloid press, over many months, had not been sufficient to undermine confidence in his administration!

Nevertheless, as the 1987 General Election approached Grant remained a whipping boy of a right wing press, as did other left leaning trades unionists and leaders of local authorities. Some hoped that Labour would drop him as a candidate. So far as Grant was concerned however, there was a distinct racist innuendo to such coverage, which incited vile unsolicited mail in huge quantities, from newspaper readers clearly incensed with prejudice.

This caused the Council to formally challenge newspaper editors for their erroneous stories and to enlist the support of the National Union of Journalists. An attempt was also made to ban the purchase of offending newspapers by the Council, although this was deemed to be unwise by council officers, on legal advice.

Black Bin Liners, and other lies

There are many examples of false Press statements regarding the work and policies of Grant, Haringey Council, and members of the so-called ‘Loony Left’, as the Bernie Grant Archive collection demonstrates. One of the most infamous such mistruths spread by the media was published by The Mail on Sunday in March 1986, titled ‘The racist bin liner is blacked’. This article claimed that Grant, using his authority as Council Leader, had outlawed the purchasing of black dustbin liners as he perceived them as racist. In a letter to the editor of the newspaper, Grant outlined the negative impact of such stories, not only on him but on the wider Black community who are “not well served by the national press”. For Grant personally, each exaggerated or untrue story triggered a swathe of hate mail. However, the black bin liner story also garnered a humorous outcome. One particularly entrepreneurial sales executive at Orbital Plastics saw the opportunity to offer Grant a solution to the ‘much-publicised decision’ to ban black bin-liners, boasting that his company was ‘one step ahead in the field of racial harmony’ by producing a bin-liner that was black and white. According to Grant, this was one of many such offers for progressive alternatives offered!

Other stories included the allegation that Grant had banned the nursery rhyme “Ba Ba Black sheep” in schools, that he was obliging schools to teach “Creole”, and that he had plans to build an African Village in Tottenham.

When Bernie Grant was finally elected to Parliament in June 1987, his victory was seen by many as triumph for a local community over the malign influence of the local and national press. This no doubt explains the joyous scenes at Tottenham’s Selby Centre where the election count was held – and which were televised nationally.