Internationalising the Bristol Bus Boycott

By Imogen Clement-Jones, Third Year History

The Montgomery Bus Boycott is, as Moya Maclean argues, ‘etched onto global memory.’[1] The story is iconic, a series of important events retold over and over, tracing the tale from Rosa Parks’ refusal to stand up, to a long campaign and a victorious end. It is internationally remembered as a successful fight against injustice. A similar fight on our own soil is, however, largely forgotten.

This article will challenge the silence, arguing that the Bristol Bus Boycott should be seen as part of a wider struggle by people of colour against racial injustice in Bristol and Britain. I will particularly seek to internationalise the boycott, highlighting that it should be seen within in a specific global context of human and civil rights movements in the post-war period. 

Background

In the post-war period, racialised discrimination and violence was notable in Bristol, where West Indian and South Asian communities, largely settled in the St Pauls region were subject to discrimination in housing and employment. A number of community groups, including the West Indian Association were set up to provide opposition. A key concern for this group was the colour bar enforced by the Bristol Omnibus Company, who, despite a labour shortage, refused Black people employment on their buses. This was supported by the local branch of the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU), who passed a resolution that banned ‘coloured’ workers on buses. 

An action group, the West Indian Development Council, was formed by Roy Hackett, Owen Henry, Audley Evans and Prince Brown to challenge this. Paul Stephenson was recruited to be the group’s spokesperson. They decided to test the colour bar, by arranging an interview for Guy Bailey. When they realised that Bailey was a Black Jamaican, the interview was cancelled, and the boycott began. 

Paul Stephenson OBE, pioneer of the Bristol Bus Boycott

The Boycott

The boycott began on the 29th of April 1963 and mirrored that led by Martin Luther King: none of the city’s West Indian residents were to use the bus. The boycott was supported at both a local and national level. In Bristol, white residents supported the protest, as did many university students, who led a march through the centre of the city. Local MP Tony Benn told the press: ‘I shall stay off the buses, even if I have to find a bike.’[2]At the national level, Leader of the Opposition, Harold Wilson, was in support, speaking out against the colour bar at an event against South African apartheid.[3] The Bristol Evening Post drew a similar parallel, calling out the hypocrisy of the TGWU who opposed apartheid abroad, imploring them to ‘take a look nearer home’.[4] Sir Learie Constantine, a former cricketer who became High Commissioner of Trinidad and Tobago, visited Bristol and used his high profile to support the movement. 

However, not all were so in favour. The TGWU continued to oppose the boycott, refusing to meet with the delegation. Their South West Regional Secretary, Ron Nethercott, tried to mediate, but released a statement calling Stephenson ‘dishonest’ and ‘immoral.’[5] Stephenson would later receive damages and costs after a High Court libel process. Even the Bristol Council of Churches in an attempt to mediate and ‘fulfil the Christian ideal of race relations’ described the West Indians involved as unrepresentative.[6]

Resolution 

After months of negotiations amidst the background of the ongoing boycott, the union and the bus company came to a resolution. A meeting of 500 bus workers on the 27th of August resolved to end the boycott, and on the 28th of August 1963 the colour bar was lifted. That day, across the ocean, Martin Luther King Jr stood on the Lincoln Memorial steps and made the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. On the 17th of September, Rahbir Singh was the first non-white bus conductor on Bristol’s buses. 

Impact

Many, including historian Madge Dresser[7], and Paul Stephenson himself argue that there are links between the boycott and the UK’s 1965 anti-discrimination Race Relations Act. Mike and Trevor Phillips also highlight its impact on the protest and labour movements in Britain, which had previously largely only included white workers. Stephenson concurs, arguing that it laid the seeds for the British Black Power movement.[8]  

Internationalising the boycott 

Throughout the movement, leaders and supporters of the movement make allusions to a wider global context. The South African Apartheid, for example, is referenced to by many, including the then-future prime minister, Harold Wilson. This must be understood in the context of Britain’s changing position in the decolonising and post-colonial world. A Britain seeking to refashion itself as a steward of human rights and ‘motherland’ of the Commonwealth found that a colour bar on its own soil was highly embarrassing – accusations of hypocrisy were therefore well-founded. 

Parallels to the American South were also made, with the Evening Post headline stating ‘We want no Little Rock in Bristol.’[9] Claire Mansour has examined these similarities, arguing that a ‘cross national diffusion’ existed.[10] Bristolian protestors, by virtue of their smaller demographic, could not place Montgomery levels of economic strain on the buses. It therefore becomes clear that the method was deliberately chosen to mirror that of Montgomery due to its widespread influence. By 1963, Mansour argues, Martin Luther King Jr. was an internationally known figure and therefore his methods would lend the protest credibility and favourable media coverage. The Bristol Bus Boycott should therefore be seen within the global human rights discourse, in which non-violent protest is legitimised, particularly through the iconography of the American Civil Rights movement.

Conclusion

In June 2020 the statue of slaver Edward Colston was dramatically toppled from its long-held plinth in the city centre by Black Lives Matter protestors. Though over fifty years have passed since Bristolians opposed a colour bar, and legislation outlawed discrimination, protestors in 2020 opposed the structural racism which remains embedded within the city. A subsequent online petition was signed by over 75,000 people seeking to replace the statue of Colston with one of Paul Stephenson.[11]

Parallels can of course be drawn between the Black Lives Matter protest and the Bus Boycott, as both can be seen as a continuation of a longer tradition of protest against racialised injustice. Members of the African-Caribbean community have consistently opposed racism in the city and have forced Bristol to acknowledge its slave trading past, such as the ‘Operation Truth’ campaign which protested the city’s commemorations at the bicentenary of abolition.[12] ‘Business as usual’ has never been an option, and direct action by ordinary people has consistently challenged social injustice. 

Footnotes / Further Reading

[1] Moya Lothian Maclean, ‘How the forgotten organisers of the Bristol Bus Boycott changed the course of workers rights’, Gal-Dem, 15th May 2020 < https://gal-dem.com/how-the-forgotten-organisers-of-the-bristol-bus-boycott-changed-the-course-of-workers-rights/ > [accessed 25th October 2021]

[2] Bristol Evening Post, 2nd May 1963 from Madge Dresser , Black and White on the Buses (Bristol : Bristol Broadsides, 1986),

[3] Bristol Evening Post, 3 May 1963 from Black and White on the Buses 

[4] Bristol Evening Post, 1st May 1963 from Black and White on the Buses 

[5] Daily Herald, 4th May 1963 from Black and White on the Buses 

[6] Evening Post, 6th May 1963 from Black and White on the Buses

[7] Dresser , Black and White on the Buses (Bristol : Bristol Broadsides, 1986),

[8] Mike and Trevor Phillips, Windrush The Irresistible Rise of Multi-racial Britain, (Harper Collins, 1998)

[9] Evening Post, 1st May 1964, from Black and White on the Buses 

[10] Claire Mansour, ‘The Cross-National Diffusion of the American Civil Rights Movement: The Example of the Bristol Bus Boycott of 1963’, Images on the Move: Circulations and Transfers in film, 10 (2014)

[11]‘Replace the Colston Statue with a Black Individual,’ Change.org, https://www.change.org/p/bristol-city-council-replace-the-colston-statue-with-a-black-individual?recruiter=false&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_message&utm_term=share_petition&recruited_by_id=c64f05f0-a8eb-11ea-b93a-f5d293758827&share_bandit_exp=message-22681080-en-GB , [accessed 20th October 2021]

[12]  Dresser, 'Remembering Slavery and Abolition in Bristol', A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies, 30.2, (2009), 232-8