Tributes to the Bristol activist, community elder and civil rights pioneer Roy Hackett have been flooding in since his death at the age of 93 was announced late last night.
One of the leaders of the Bristol Bus Boycott of 1963, which was essentially Britain’s civil rights movement that triggered equalities legislation through the 1960s and 1970s, Roy was awarded an MBE for his work in the community in Bristol. Roy went on to be a leader of the community in St Pauls for decades, helping to start the St Pauls Carnival, as well as the Bristol Race Equality Council.
The executive director of the carnival Roy helped to establish, LaToyah McAllister-Jones, led public tributes to the man who was a symbol of Bristol’s place in the ongoing fight against racism and for equality. “You have inspired so many, your service and dedication to your community lives on through us all,” she said in a statement. “Your legacy lives on in all of us. Your example of service and fight for justice will never be forgotten,” she added.
Read more: Bristol civil rights leader Roy Hackett dies aged 93
Prof Shawn Naphtali-Sobers said he was sad to hear of the passing of Roy Hackett, who he described as: “A true pioneer who made Bristol a better place, and a legacy that will always be remembered. The ancestors are accepting you warmly. Condolences to all his family and friends. We salute you, and thank you for all you've done."
Community leader Lynn Mareno, who along with Sandra Gordon established the RISE Awards to celebrate Black achievements in Bristol, said: “You were so much to many of us. The joint vision and intention you had which put the St. Pauls Carnival on the map. You will never die."
Thangam Debonnaire, the Bristol West MP whose constituency includes St Pauls, paid tribute to Roy, and said she will miss his wit. “It was an honour to know Roy Hackett,” she told Bristol Live. “He was a civil rights hero, rightly lauded for his leadership in the Bristol Bus Boycott and the St Paul's Carnival, which both say so much about who we are as Bristol.
“He was an inspiration to so many and taught us all so much about standing up for justice and equality. I will miss his warm smile, quick wit and charm as well as his deep and lasting commitment to the people of Bristol and to ending racism,” she added.
Fellow Labour MP Marsha de Cordova, the sister of Bristol-born football star Bobby Decordova-Reid, described Roy as a ‘giant of the UK civil rights movement’. “The Bristol Bus Boycott was crucial in building solidarity across communities, overturning racist policies and helping to bring about the Race Relations Act 1965 that brought the colour bar to an end,” she told Bristol Live.
As well as his work with the Bristol Bus Boycott, and St Pauls Carnival, Roy was a community leader and mentor to many in Bristol, including John Stokes, who fostered more than 60 children over three decades. “An amazing man that taught me so much about working with troubled teens,” he tweeted. “Always calm in a crisis, Always full of humour and charm, a man loved equally by colleagues and children. A true Bristol legend RIP my friend,” he added.
The Bus Boycott is only now being heralded for what it was - Britain’s own civil rights movement, with growing calls for it to be taught more in schools, and with that time being portrayed more in literature and drama. The book Princess and the Hustler, by Chinonyrem Odimba, features the Bus Boycott and Roy Hackett heavily, and was turned into a play that has toured the country.
Emily Burnett, one of the actresses in the play, joined tributes to Roy: “Such an honour to be in a play that revolves around what this man achieved!” she wrote. “Even more of an honour to meet him.”
The Lord Mayor of Bristol , Cllr Paula O’Rourke, added: “So very sad to hear Bristol civil rights legend Roy Hackett, organiser of the Bristol bus boycott 1963 and founder of St Pauls Carnival has passed away. My thoughts are with Roy's family and friends at this difficult time.”
In recent years, Bristol has begun more outwardly honouring Roy and the early community pioneers of St Pauls in the 1960s, with lifetime achievement awards, receptions and work in schools to teach younger generations of their achievements. The Seven Saints of St Pauls series of murals, which were completed in 2019, honoured the founders of the St Pauls Carnival - including Roy, whose mural is in a prominent position on the end of the terrace facing the St Pauls M32 junction.
Or rather it was - in 2021, the render and part of the wall on the side of the house collapsed and the rest had to be pulled down for safety reasons by the fire brigade - much to the shock of artist Michele Curtis, and the community in St Pauls.
Bristol's first Black female Lord Mayor, Cleo Lake, is leading calls for the mural to be repainted as a tribute to Roy. "The Right Honourable Mr Roy Hackett transitions to become one of our mighty ancestors," said Cleo. "A life well lived with bravery and determination. Thank you, sir, and thank you Michele Curtis, for having the vision to honour Roy whilst he was alive. Lets hope the mural is restored as soon as possible," she tweeted.
His life and work in Bristol in the 1960s is now taught in schools - not as widely as many people think it should be - and his actions are the subject of plays in theatres and films. And the achievements of those who organised the bus boycott are now getting global attention - for example, last year music legend will.i.am met Roy as part of a TV documentary about modern Black history.
'A life lived with bravery'
Roy grew up on 7th Street in Kingston’s Trench Town, the street immortalised by Bob Marley’s song Natty Dread. Roy was 24 when he set sail for Britain in 1952, as an early pioneer of the Windrush Generation who were encouraged to come from British colonies in the Caribbean to the UK for jobs and opportunities.
He later told how the ship he was on was dogged by bad weather and had to make an unscheduled call into port in Newfoundland, Canada, on the way. He joked that he saw a polar bear, but assumed he had arrived in England and started trying to disembark, only to be told this was north east Canada.
Roy first arrived in Liverpool, and spent four years living there and in London and Wolverhampton, struggling to find the opportunities promised to him by the British Government. Eventually, he settled in Bristol in 1956 and found little in the way of opportunity and a lot of discrimination.
Bristol’s boarding houses were full of signs saying ‘no blacks, no Irish, no dogs’, and Roy spent his first night in the city sleeping in a doorway. Eventually, he found a shared room with his cousin in a painfully overcrowded house, and a job - working for Robert McAlpine as a builder in Wales.
He worked hard and got on his feet enough to bring over his partner Ena from Jamaica - they married and he had a daughter to join his daughter from an earlier relationship. Even before the Bristol Bus Boycott of 1963, he was an activist, helping to start the Commonwealth Coordinated Committee, the earliest of the committees and groups with which Bristol’s fledgling Black community began to find its voice.
The committee lobbied Bristol City Council on issues like housing and employment - and knew that these were interlinked. Without the prospect of getting a decent job, people struggled to get better housing. And across Bristol, employers were reluctant to employ Black people. Some were more overt than others - the Bristol Bus Company employed Black people, but only to wash and clean the buses overnight. While London Transport were actively travelling to the Caribbean to recruit bus and train drivers and station staff, Bristol’s corporation buses had a long-standing, well known but unspoken ‘colour bar’.
He and the other activists on the committee - Owen Henry, Audley Evans, Prince Brown and the Essex-born Paul Stephenson - tested the ‘colour bar’ by arranging an interview with the bus company for a young Black man called Guy Bailey, whose English-sounding name secured him what should have been a formality with the bus station boss.
But when Guy arrived for the interview, the vacancies had mysteriously dried up. Roy and the team had proved beyond doubt the existence of the ‘colour bar’, and marshalled the 3,000-strong Caribbean community in Bristol to boycott the buses.
The boycott was inspired by the US Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and early 60s that focussed on public transport, boycotts and marches. The boycott was announced at the end of April 1963, as Bristol and the rest of Britain came out of the longest, coldest and harshest winter in living memory.
Its media-savvy spokesperson was Paul Stephenson, who was thrust forward by the others because of his well-spoken English accent. Roy focussed on the logistics, organising blockades of the Fishponds Road to stop the buses going in or out of the depot, and the marches which quickly gained the backing of the white people in Bristol who supported the cause.
For months, a fierce debate raged. The bus company and the unions defended the colour bar policy and the Bristol Evening Post and Western Daily Press published articles and letters from both sides, but the campaign succeeded in getting national attention and national backing from the likes of Tony Benn - who stood in the road beside them - and Labour leader Harold Wilson: politicians who would gain power in the rest of the decade and pass the kind of legislation which still outlaws racial discrimination in employment to this day.
Finally, on August 28, as Martin Luther King gave his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in Washington, the bus company and the union caved in and the ‘colour bar’ was lifted. For Roy, it was only the start - he worked tirelessly to set up the carnival, and other community organisations that represented Black Bristolians, being awarded the MBE for his efforts.
As news of his passing broke, St Pauls poet and activist Lawrence Hoo, wrote a poem about his friend as a tribute:
The Joy and Mischief
In your eyes
When you reflected
On days gone by
Was inspiring
Uplifting
Empowering
So Divine
