Bristol Bus Boycott - April 30, 1963

On this day in 1963, West Indians in Bristol, England, boycotted the Bristol Omnibus Company for its refusal to hire people of color as bus crew. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Stay in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hi again, Welcome to this day in History Class,
where history waits for no One. Today is April nineteen.

(00:22):
The day was April nineteen sixty three. The Bristol Omnibus Company,
based in Bristol, England, had been denying Black and Asian
people jobs as bus crew, so on this day, West
Indians in the city began boycotting the company and refusing
to ride buses. After the British Nationality Act was passed

(00:44):
in nineteen the number of people who immigrated from the
Caribbean to the UK increased significantly. Some of those people
had served in the British military during World War Two,
and some helped with post war rebuilding efforts. By nineteen
sixty there were around three thousand West Indian people in Bristol,

(01:05):
a small percentage of the city's population, but unemployment rates
were high within the West Indian community. People who immigrated
from the West Indies and from Asia faced housing and
employment discrimination. Gangs of white men known as teddy boys
physically attacked people of color. Some boarding houses posted signs

(01:26):
that read no Irish, no Blacks, no Dogs. By nineteen
sixty three, there were around seven thousand West Indian people
in Bristol. Increasing along with the West Indian population was
racial tension, but at this point there were no laws
protecting people from racial discrimination in the workplace. In other

(01:48):
English cities like London and Manchester, black people worked on
buses as drivers and conductors, but in Bristol, the British
government owned Bristol Omnibus Company only hired black folks as
aintenance workers, even though there was a shortage of drivers.
Black people were turned away when they sought jobs as
bus crew. The Passenger Group of the Transport in General

(02:10):
Workers Union had even passed a resolution in nineteen fifty
that said black workers should not be employed on the
buses as drivers or conductors. Asian and Black people were
applying for bus crew jobs, but they were never getting
the job, so the Bristol Evening Posts and the Western
Daily Press ran stories on the discrimination, saying that the

(02:32):
Bristol Omnibus Company was purposefully refusing to give non white
workers driving and conducting jobs. Wages were low and hours
were long in bus crew positions, and the people who
did work them relied on overtime to make up for
their poor pay. But there were still a lot of
turnover for bus crew. The company's general manager, Ian Paty,

(02:55):
said that the color bar was only in place for
economic reasons, and the union said that it was the
company's decision as to whether it wanted to enforce the
color bar. By the late nineteen fifties, the West Indian
Association was already looking into the issue of workplace race discrimination.
In nineteen sixty two, Jamaican's Henry Owens, Roy Hackett, Oddley

(03:19):
Evans and Prince Brown split from the Association and formed
the West Indian Development Council. Paul Stevenson became the council's spokesperson.
Stevenson was a university educated Royal Air Force veteran who
moved to Bristol in nineteen sixty two and was the
city's first black social worker. As a test case, Stevenson

(03:41):
arranged a bus company interview for warehouseman and Boy's Brigade
officer Guy Bailey, who was black. When the company found
out he was black, Bailey's interview was canceled. Drawing inspiration
from the American Civil rights movement, the council decided to
stage a bus boycott. They ann the boycott at a
press conference on April nine, nineteen sixty three. The next day,

(04:05):
many West Indians and Bristol refused to ride busses. The
protests were non violent. Protesters began piketing bus depots and
places along bus routes, and they set up blockades that
kept buses from going into the city center. Many West
Indians and Bristol supported the boycott, but did not participate

(04:26):
because they feared losing their jobs or being attacked, or
because they needed to use public transportation. Pati, responding to
the boycott, claimed that if more people of color worked
as bus crew, fewer white people would be employed in
those positions. If he said that in London, where people
of color are employed, white men would not want to

(04:47):
work under a format of color and quote colored men
have become arrogant and rude after they have been employed
for some months. The protests garnered support from the press,
students at Bristol you Know Versity, and many notable people,
including Bristol Southeast Member of Parliament Tony Benn, Labor Opposition
leader Harry Wilson, local Labor Party alderman Henry Hennessy, as

(05:12):
well as former cricketer and High Commissioner for Trinidad and Tobago.
Leary Constantine, the local branch of the Transport and General
Workers Union, refused to meet with the delegation from the
West Indian Development Council, leading to weeks of back and
forth between boycott supporters and opposers. On May six, Stevenson

(05:33):
organized in March to St Mary Radcliffe Church, but the
demonstration did not attract a lot of people, and over
the next several months, the Transport Holding Company, which was
Omnibus's parent company, held negotiations with the union. Finally, on August,
a meeting of five hundred bus workers decided to end

(05:53):
the color bar, four months after the boycott began. On
August paid did there will now be complete integration without
regard to race, color or creed. The only criterion will
be the person's suitability for the job. In mid September,
Rock Beyer Singh, an Indian born sick, became the first

(06:16):
non white bus conductor employed in Bristol to Jamaican and
two Pakistani men were employed as bus crew soon after that.
In nineteen and nineteen sixty eight, Parliament passed the Race
Relations Acts, which made racial discrimination in public places, housing
and employment illegal. Some people believe that the Bristol bus

(06:38):
boycott influenced the acts. I'm Eve Steff Coo and hopefully
you know a little more about history today than you
did yesterday. And here's another note. Anti immigrant sentiments were
popular in the nineteen sixties in the UK, and if
you want to hear a little bit more about that
and the Nationality Act, you can listen to our April

(06:59):
twenty episode on conservative MP Enoch Pal's nineteen sixty eight
Rivers of Blood speech. If you're so inclined, you can
follow us at t d I h C podcast on Instagram,
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you tomorrow. For more podcasts from I Heeart Radio, visit

(07:29):
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