A longstanding trade unionist, Bernie Grant was active in the worker’s movement both prior to and during his career as a Labour Party politician and elected official. As a young man, Grant enrolled at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland to study Engineering. However, he left in 1969 in protest against the university’s discrimination of Black students. Then, for the next nine years, Grant worked as an International Telephonist. During this time he became actively involved in the Union of Post Office Workers, and herein began what would be a long and intense activist career. In 1978, in the same year that he became Councillor for Bruce Grove, he also became a full time Area Officer for the National Union for Public Employees (NUPE), where he was responsible for the local NUPE authority, and health workers. Due to his intimate knowledge of the Trade Union movement, Grant frequently raised the issue of racism within trade unions. He found that often trade unions favoured the issues and perspectives of white workers, and at times discriminated against Black and Asian workers. It was this that led him to, alongside others such as Bill Morris, found the Black Trade Unionists Solidarity Movement (BTUSM), which he worked for between 1981 – 1984. This section presents this work and that of the BTUSM, as well as other trade and worker’s related projects spearheaded by Grant, such as the Global Trade Centre, and the Black International Construction Organisation. 

Black Trade Union Solidarity Movement

Like many other projects, The BTUSM represented an important attempt to encourage Black self-organisation amidst institutional racism. Having set up the organisation in the 1980s, during a period of nation-wide strikes, civil uprisings and intensifying racism in housing, policing, education and employment, Grant argued that “as Black people, we need to organise ourselves to defend our youth and to fight racism at work, at play and on the streets”. He warned against any tendencies of organisational splits, personality clashes and lack of organisation, which had in the past led to the demise of similar politicising projects. 

This became a key aim of the BTUSM. In 1983, the Black Workers Conference was organised, and prompted debate on significant issues such as the dearth of Black representation in union management level, and a lack of appreciation or acknowledgement of Black history and culture in the Worker’s movement. In this same year, the infamous US invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada took place, causing outrage throughout the African diaspora. The invasion itself was triggered by a crisis within Grenada’s government, when the leader of the nation and People’s Revolutionary Government, Maurice Bishop, was placed under house arrest and executed. The subsequent US military invasion was, for many, an ill-intentioned military intervention by a global power which led only to greater crisis and chaos for the Grenadian people. The BTUSM took this issue up, and released a statement condemning the invasion and the complicity of the Thatcher government, and vowed to contribute financial support as well as raise the issue within Labour Party and Trade Union networks. This statement is a shining example of the internationalist approach of the BTUSM and other British-based Black workers initiatives. 

Black International Construction Organisation

In the mid-1990s, Grant and others set up the Black International Construction Organisation (BICO), to bring together Black professionals active in building and construction, to unite and create agendas for projects for communities both in the UK and internationally. BICO had a crossover with the demise of the Apartheid system in South Africa, and was involved with Grant in fact finding visits to South Africa, to propose building projects for the welfare and development of the country’s Black populations. As well as community support in the UK and abroad, BICO was also invested in promoting the professional development of Black individuals in the built environment sector. However, alike to many other projects that Grant spearheaded, BICO was a voluntary endeavour, and battled against limited resources during its relatively short lifespan.