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The Lord Ouseley | |
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![]() Official portrait, 2018 | |
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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