Trade Unionism

Bernie Grant as a young student

A longstanding trade unionist, Bernie Grant was active in the worker’s movement both prior to and during his career as a Labour Party politician and elected official. As a young man, Grant enrolled at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland to study Engineering. However, he left in 1969 in protest against the university’s discrimination of Black students. Then, for the next nine years, Grant worked as an International Telephonist. During this time he became actively involved in the Union of Post Office Workers, and herein began what would be a long and intense activist career. In 1978, in the same year that he became Councillor for Bruce Grove, he also became a full time Area Officer for the National Union for Public Employees (NUPE), where he was responsible for the local NUPE authority, and health workers. Due to his intimate knowledge of the Trade Union movement, Grant frequently raised the issue of racism within trade unions. He found that often trade unions favoured the issues and perspectives of white workers, and at times discriminated against Black and Asian workers. It was this that led him to, alongside others such as Bill Morris, found the Black Trade Unionists Solidarity Movement (BTUSM), which he worked for between 1981 – 1984. This section presents this work and that of the BTUSM, as well as other trade and worker’s related projects spearheaded by Grant, such as the Global Trade Centre, and the Black International Construction Organisation.