The man at the centre of Britain’s version of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s has been awarded an honorary doctorate at the University of the West of England, and will be honoured with an evening celebrating his life and work this week.
Guy Bailey was just 17 when, in April 1963, he applied for a job as a bus driver at the council-owned Bristol Omnibus Company and was told to come for an interview. But when he showed up, he was told there were no jobs – thus exposing the informal ‘colour bar’ being operated by the bus company, which only allowed Black and Asian people to work in the depots and not on the buses themselves.
The refusal sparked the Bristol Bus Boycott, which lasted for months until the bus company and trade unions relented – and paved the way for the 1965 Race Relations Act, and a series of subsequent new laws on discrimination and equality.
Community leaders in St Pauls, like Roy Hackett and Paul Stephenson, wanted to show a cast-iron example of the bus company’s colour bar – which had long been unofficially known about but officially denied – so chose the young Guy to apply because his English-sounding name would secure him an appointment to meet the bus company managers. Sure enough, when he arrived in person and they saw he was Black, he was told there were no jobs after all.
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The bus boycott lasted throughout the spring and summer of 1963 and saw sit-ins, marches and protests across Bristol, with thousands of students and ordinary Bristolians supporting the city’s Black community, as well as opposition from many too.
Guy Bailey went on to study social sciences at Bristol Polytechnic – now the University of the West of England – and founded United Housing Association to support Caribbean Elders, the first Black housing association in the south west.
Earlier this year, Guy was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters in recognition of his ‘outstanding contribution to race equality, creating communities and supporting under-served communities’.
Now, UWE is hosting an evening celebrating Dr Bailey MBE. The event will be a conversation about Guy’s life, discussions of activism and academia, poetry and networking. It’s a free event at the Frenchay campus on Wednesday, October 2, from 6pm to 9.30pm, and will be hosted by Dr Roger Griffith MBE.
To book tickets visit UWE’s website here – and the uni is providing free transportation for Caribbean elders. It’ll also be a launch of a fundraiser for Caribbean lunch clubs in Bristol and kick-off UWE’s Black History Month programme.