The Lord Ouseley | |
---|---|
Born | Herman George Ouseley 24 March 1945 |
Title | Member of the House of Lords |
Term | 2001–2019 |
Herman George Ouseley, Baron Ouseley Kt (born 24 March 1945) is a British parliamentarian, who has run public authorities, including local councils and is an adviser and reviewer of public services organisations. Lord Ouseley has expertise in equality and diversity issues and is the Chairperson of several charitable organisations as well as being a Patron for dozens of organisations. He has been at the forefront of challenging institutional racism in organisations and is an advocate on behalf of individuals from disadvantaged and deprived backgrounds.
He sat in the House of Lords as a crossbencher from 2001 until his retirement in 2019. [1] He was also included in the 2003 list of "100 Great Black Britons". [2]
Lord Ouseley was born in Guyana in 1945, and came to England in 1957, when he was 11. He was educated at William Penn School and at Catford College, where he gained a diploma in municipal administration. [3]
Ouseley was a local government officer between 1963 and 1993. He was appointed as the first principal race relations advisor in local government. From 1981, he served as Principal Race Relations Adviser and head of the Greater London Council's Ethnic Minority Unit. [4] He later became Chief Executive of the London Borough of Lambeth and the former Inner London Education Authority (the first black person to hold such an office), responsible for over 1000 schools and colleges across the capital. [5] Ouseley was chair and chief executive in the Commission for Racial Equality from 1993 to 2000. [6] [7]
Since 1996 he has been a director of Brookmight Security and, from 2000, of Focus Consultancy. He was the Managing Director of Different Realities Partnership between 2000 and 2005 and, since then, has been operating as a self-employed management consultant undertaking reviews of organisations' performance and assignments in pursuit of equality and diversity outcomes. [8]
Ouseley was made a Knight Bachelor in the 1997 New Year Honours for "services to community relations and local government", [9] and was made a life peer as Baron Ouseley, of Peckham Rye in the London Borough of Southwark on 26 June 2001. [10]
Ouseley has 13 honorary degrees: [11] [3] from the Universities of Edinburgh, [12] Sheffield Hallam, [13] Bradford, Leicester, [14] Leeds Met, Warwick, [15] Oxford Brookes, [16] Greenwich, [17] London South Bank, [18] London Metropolitan, North East London, Staffordshire, [19] and Brighton. [20]
In 1993, Ouseley set up the project to tackle racism in football and is the Chairperson of Kick It Out, the internationally acclaimed campaign to make football free from discrimination and abuse and to be more inclusive of people of all backgrounds. [21] [22]
Ouseley did not receive a salary for his work for Kick It Out. [23]
Ouseley chairs The Chandran Foundation (formerly Preset Education Charity) since 1997, providing specialist education provision for young people with learning disadvantages. He is a Council Member for the Institute of Relations, a think tank focused on challenging injustices and inequalities. He is also on the board of directors of the Manchester United Foundation and is a lifelong fan of Manchester United and supports his local team Millwall and Dulwich Hamlet, one of the local teams he played for as a youngster.
Paul Yaw Boateng, Baron Boateng, is a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Brent South from 1987 to 2005, becoming the UK's first Black Cabinet Minister in May 2002, when he was appointed as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Following his departure from the House of Commons, he served as the British High Commissioner to South Africa from March 2005 to May 2009. He was introduced as a member of the House of Lords on 1 July 2010.
Stewart Ross Sutherland, Baron Sutherland of Houndwood, was a Scottish academic, public servant, and one of Britain's most distinguished philosophers of religion. He sat as a crossbencher in the House of Lords.
The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) was a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom which aimed to address racial discrimination and promote racial equality. The commission was established in 1976, and disbanded in 2007 when its functions were taken over by the newly created Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Bhikhu Chotalal Parekh, Baron Parekh, is a British political theorist, academic, and life peer. He is a Labour Party member of the House of Lords. He was Professor of Political Theory at the University of Hull from 1982 to 2001, and Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Westminster from 2001 to 2009. He served as president of the Academy of Social Sciences from 2003 to 2008.
Wilfred Denniston Wood KA is a Barbadian-British Anglican minister who was the Bishop of Croydon from 1985 to 2003, the first black bishop in the Church of England. He came second in the "100 Great Black Britons" list in 2004.
Victor Olufemi Adebowale, Baron Adebowale, is the former Chief Executive of the social care enterprise Turning Point and the current Chair of the NHS Confederation, and was one of the first individuals to become a People's Peer.
David Thomas Pitt, Baron Pitt of Hampstead was a British Labour Party politician, general practitioner and political activist. Born in Grenada, in the Caribbean, he was the second peer of African descent to sit in the House of Lords, being granted a life peerage in 1975, and was the longest serving Black Parliamentarian.
Black British people are a multi-ethnic group of British people of either African or Afro-Caribbean descent. The term Black British developed in the 1950s, referring to the Black British West Indian people from the former Caribbean British colonies in the West Indies sometimes referred to as the Windrush Generation and Black British people descending from Africa.
Dame Jocelyn Anita Barrow was a British educator, community activist and politician, who was the Director for UK Development at Focus Consultancy Ltd. She was the first black woman to be a governor of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and was founder and Deputy Chair of the Broadcasting Standards Council.
Indarjit Singh, Baron Singh of Wimbledon,, sometimes transliterated Inderjit Singh, is a British journalist and broadcaster, a prominent British Indian active in Sikh and interfaith activities, and a member of the House of Lords.
The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) is a think tank based in the United Kingdom. It was formed in 1958 in order to publish research on race relations worldwide, and in 1972 was transformed into an "anti-racist think tank".
Robert Walter Kerslake, Baron Kerslake, was a British senior civil servant. He was the head of the Home Civil Service from 2011 to 2014, succeeding Sir Gus O'Donnell.
Sir Godfrey Henry Oliver Palmer CD, commonly known as Geoff Palmer, is a professor emeritus in the School of Life Sciences at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, and a human rights activist.
Racism has a long history in the United Kingdom and includes structural discrimination and hostile attitudes against various ethnic minorities. The extent and the targets of racism in the United Kingdom have varied over time. It has resulted in cases of discrimination, riots and racially motivated murders.
Augustine John, known as Gus John, is a Grenadian-born writer, education campaigner, consultant, lecturer and researcher, who moved to the UK in 1964. He has worked in the fields of education policy, management and international development. As a social analyst he specialises in social audits, change management, policy formulation and review, and programme evaluation and development. Since the 1960s he has been active in issues of education and schooling in Britain's inner cities such as Manchester, Birmingham and London, and was the first black Director of Education and Leisure Services in Britain.
The Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre is "one of Europe's leading specialist libraries on migration, race and ethnicity" open to members of the public as well as to students and researchers. It increases access to and visibility of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) histories with a growing archive of material relating to the local area. Its sister organisation, the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Education Trust offers advice, training, networking opportunities, project support, exhibitions, publications and events to help community organisations to record and share their heritage. The Centre is part of the University of Manchester and is located in Manchester Central Library, where it is part of the Archives+ partnership. The current head of both the Centre and the Trust is Dr Safina Islam, who was appointed in March 2019.
Patrick Philip Vernon is a British social commentator and political activist of Jamaican heritage, who works in the voluntary and public sector. He is a former Labour councillor in the London Borough of Hackney. His career has been involved with developing and managing health and social care services, including mental health, public health, regeneration and employment projects. Also a film maker and amateur cultural historian, he runs his own social enterprise promoting the history of diverse communities, as founder of Every Generation and the "100 Great Black Britons" campaign. He is also an expert on African and Caribbean genealogy in the UK. He was appointed a Clore Fellow in 2007, an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours for "services to the Reduction of Health Inequalities for Ethnic Minorities", and in 2018 was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Wolverhampton.
Simon Andrew Woolley, Baron Woolley of Woodford, is a British politician and activist. He is the founder and director of Operation Black Vote (OBV) and Trustee of the charity Police Now, and has been Principal of Homerton College, Cambridge, since October 2021.
Aggrey Washington Burke FRCPsych is a British retired psychiatrist and academic, born in Jamaica, who spent the majority of his medical career at St George's Hospital in London, UK, specialising in transcultural psychiatry and writing literature on changing attitudes towards black people and mental health. He has carried out extensive research on racism and mental illness and is the first black consultant psychiatrist appointed by Britain's National Health Service (NHS).
Cleveland Anthony Sewell, Baron Sewell of Sanderstead, is a British educational consultant and founder and chair of the educational charity Generating Genius. In July 2020, Sewell was appointed chair of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities tasked with looking into race disparity in the UK. Sewell sits as a life peer in the House of Lords. He has been described as an admirer of the Black conservative scholar Thomas Sowell.