When 27-year-old Basil Lewis left the picturesque parish of Clarendon, Jamaica, famed for its spa, to start a new life in London in 1954, he did not plan to shake up the UK’s centuries-old banking sector.
But the financial discrimination faced by Caribbean migrants in the UK – who were refused loans, charged higher interest rates, or forced to pay larger mortgage deposits than the rest of the population – meant there was a lack of affordable credit for newly settled workers such as Lewis.
