Roy Hackett’s commitment to Bristol can be measured in the length of time he kept turning up. A founding member of St Werburghs Community Association in 1971, he remained a trustee for more than fifty years. The association remembered someone concerned with making its centre accessible to people from different backgrounds and neighbouring districts. His involvement stretched across the ordinary business of keeping a community organisation alive, long after the bus boycott had made him part of national history. 1
Growing up in Jamaica
Born in the Jamaican parish of St Mary in 1928, Hackett spent much of his early childhood with his grandmother, Lily. She taught local children to read and write, and took particular care over his education. When she brought him to school at seven, she insisted that his existing abilities should be recognised by placing him with older pupils. In the stories he later told about his childhood, learning depended both on his own determination and on an adult prepared to argue his case. 2
As a teenager, he resisted his father’s expectation that he should give up school time to work on the family farm. He left home and pursued further learning in Kingston, including bookkeeping. An account based on his own recollections describes the importance he attached to his copy of Advanced Bookkeeping: he brought it to England and kept it for decades. The book stood for the education he had pursued and a claim to opportunities beyond those an employer might assume were appropriate for him. 2
Work and a home in Britain
Hackett arrived in Britain in 1952, beginning in Liverpool. In a later interview he recalled staying in Toxteth, visiting the labour exchange and quickly finding work. He subsequently lived in Wolverhampton and London. Employment with Taylor Woodrow brought him to Somerset to work on the construction of Hinkley Point power station; he also worked for Sir Robert McAlpine in South Wales. His route to Bristol followed the search for paid employment across several industrial centres, rather than a single journey straight from Jamaica to the city. 3
Finding a bed in Bristol exposed the limits of that opportunity. Boarding houses turned him away because he was Black, and he spent his first night sleeping in a doorway. The exclusion was immediate and practical: work did not guarantee somewhere to live. Later reporting of his experiences placed this episode at the beginning of his Bristol life, before the campaigns that made his name familiar. For a new arrival, the city’s colour bar could be encountered at a front door as readily as at an employer’s office. 4
His working life included jobs at St Anne’s Board Mill and the Gas Board. Broadcaster Sherrie Eugene-Hart’s account of his life records that he challenged an employer who said it did not employ Africans, insisting on his British identity. He eventually became a foreman supervising an otherwise white team. Securing a job and securing recognition of his ability were separate struggles; the skills he brought with him did not protect him from assumptions made on the basis of his appearance. 5
Making a collective voice
In 1962, Hackett joined Owen Henry and Clifford Drummond in establishing the Commonwealth Coordinated Committee. Their concerns included the quality of life in St Pauls and the unequal treatment experienced by its residents. Meetings took place at Drummond’s Speedy Bird Cafe and Henry’s home on Grosvenor Road. These were places where people who already knew the difficulties of finding work and accommodation could compare experiences and decide what to do together. The committee gave those concerns an organised public voice. 6
It operated within a growing network. The West Indian Development Committee and the West Indian Dramatic Society were also active, and the organisations would work together during the bus campaign. This local infrastructure mattered: a protest could draw on relationships that existed before the first public announcement. Hackett’s work connected the grievances of individuals with a community able to support them. His own experience of exclusion was shared by neighbours, colleagues and friends who could help turn a complaint into collective pressure. 6
Challenging the bus colour bar
The Bristol Omnibus Company’s refusal to recruit Black and Asian bus crews presented a clear target. This was a barrier to employment as drivers and conductors. The local Transport and General Workers’ Union also supported the exclusion, placing an organisation supposedly representing workers on the side of a policy that kept other workers out. Unite, the successor union, later acknowledged that role when announcing a commemorative plaque in 2024. The campaign therefore had to confront prejudice within organised labour as well as company management. 7
Hackett worked alongside Henry, Audley Evans and Prince Brown, with Paul Stephenson becoming the campaign’s spokesman. A test of the company’s recruitment practices involved Guy Bailey, a young warehouse worker whose arranged interview was denied because he was Black. The refusal made the discrimination explicit. An applicant’s suitability could be brushed aside before his case was even considered. For the organisers, Bailey’s treatment supplied a concrete example around which to mobilise support and challenge the company publicly. 4
The boycott began in spring 1963. Its supporters included Caribbean residents, university students and people outside the Black community. Pickets and sit-down protests accompanied the refusal to travel. Tony Benn and Labour leader Harold Wilson gave public support. Hackett’s account emphasised keeping the campaign non-violent: the intention was to put sustained pressure on the policy and those defending it. 8
Community organiser Roger Griffith later described Hackett organising blockades and sit-down protests in Lawrence Hill, and lying in front of buses himself. His contribution included the direct action that gave the boycott visibility on the streets. Campaigners accepted disruption in their own lives as they challenged the discrimination faced by prospective bus workers. 9
On 28 August, following a vote by union members, the company announced that it would abandon the colour bar. By mid-September, Raghbir Singh, an Indian-born Sikh, was working as a conductor. The result changed who could be considered for work on the buses. Its significance lay in that practical opening, achieved after months in which ordinary journeys had become opportunities to take a public stand. 8
National law changed in stages afterwards. The Race Relations Act 1965 prohibited racial discrimination in public places and established a board to conciliate complaints. It did not provide the general protection against discrimination in employment and housing that the 1968 Act introduced. That distinction matters to the history of Hackett’s campaigning. Winning a particular dispute and establishing wider legal rights were different tasks. Further legislation in 1976 recognised indirect discrimination and allowed individuals to take complaints directly to courts or industrial tribunals. The legal framework continued to develop well beyond the Bristol victory. 10
Creating St Pauls Festival
Hackett also helped create a public celebration of the community that had made its voice heard. St Pauls Festival began in 1968, organised by residents and activists who wanted to share their culture with their neighbours. The area included Caribbean, Irish and Asian communities. The event developed into St Pauls Carnival, with African Caribbean music, dance and creative expression at its centre. Its beginnings connected cultural confidence with the everyday task of living together in a neighbourhood frequently defined by outsiders. 11
The early festival required persistent practical work. Hackett recalled approaching people for small donations, borrowing lorries for floats and obtaining help from local tradespeople. Steel bands came from Bath; paying a driver could make it possible to bring musicians through the streets. His account placed shopkeepers, carpenters and other residents at the heart of the enterprise. They contributed skills and equipment as well as money. The festival depended on people making something together with the resources they could obtain, and Hackett valued the voluntary effort behind it. 3
Building places to belong
In 1971, Hackett was among the local people who helped turn an old school building into St Werburghs Community Centre. The building was also known at different times as the Baptist Mills Centre for Community Activities and the Horley Road Centre. Its history includes Caribbean fiestas in the 1970s and dressmaking and junior bhangra groups in the following decade. Such a programme made room for different kinds of participation: learning a skill, enjoying music or joining other residents in an activity. These uses were the work of many people over time, within an institution Hackett helped establish. 12
His concern for younger people also became part of his paid work. During the 1970s he worked as a social worker with young people and helped organise exchange visits to Jamaica and several European countries. Eugene-Hart records that he retired from Avon Social Services in 1993. The visits offered experiences beyond the immediate neighbourhood, giving a practical form to his interest in expanding opportunities. They also show the breadth of a working life often remembered principally through the events of 1963. 5
Passing experience to another generation
Younger campaigners encountered Hackett through his continuing involvement in Bristol’s public life. Writer and community organiser Roger Griffith remembered him as a regular guest on Ujima Radio, supporting projects including Dubplate to Dubstep and Black & Green. He also spoke to students during a Windrush Generations project at UWE Bristol. Griffith’s tribute describes the encouragement he drew from Hackett and other community elders when undertaking his own work against racism. The connection between generations was made through specific programmes and conversations, with experienced campaigners available to people developing new ones. 9
Hackett contributed directly to the recording of that history. Mary Ingoldby and the Firstborn team interviewed him in 2011 for a Heritage Lottery Fund-supported project about the bus boycott. In 2015 he spoke with pupils at Glenfrome School, whose Year 6 class participated in the production of a recording. These encounters placed a participant in Bristol’s civil-rights history in contact with children learning about the city. They also preserved his voice alongside the newspaper accounts and official records through which the campaign could be studied. 13
Artist Michele Curtis brought this generation of organisers into Bristol’s streets through her Seven Saints of St Pauls murals. Hackett was among the people represented. In its account of Curtis’s work, the University of Bristol emphasised the research behind the portraits and their role in recovering personal histories. The artworks gave residents another way to encounter people whose names might otherwise appear mainly in an anniversary report. Linking portraits to a familiar neighbourhood made the contributions of African Caribbean Bristolians visible within the place they had helped shape. 14
Recognition and remembrance
Hackett received an MBE in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to the community in Bristol. The official entry named him as Lurel Roy Hackett. The award recognised a record of service extending across much of his adult life, within the city he had made his home. 15
He died in August 2022, aged 93. At his funeral that September, the University of Bristol presented an honorary doctorate to his family. Deputy vice-chancellor Professor Judith Squires explained that plans to honour him at a graduation ceremony before his death had been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. The presentation brought formal academic recognition into a gathering of family, friends and the wider community, many of whom knew his contribution through years of working with him. 16
A further tribute returned attention to the place where so much of that work happened. At its annual general meeting on 22 January 2026, St Werburghs Community Association renamed Room 8 the Dr Roy Hackett MBE Room. Participants shared memories of his connection to the building and his advocacy for community use. Giving his name to a room in an active centre joined remembrance to the practical purpose he had supported for fifty years: keeping a place available where local people could meet, learn and organise. 17
Sources
1. St Werburghs Community Centre — Celebrating Roy Hackett.
2. Black South West Network — A Special Blog for Roy Hackett, by Rob Mitchell.
3. Bristol Archive Records — Roy Hackett interview, 2012.
4. ITV News — The story of the Bristol Bus Boycott and the civil rights activists behind it.
5. Ujima Radio — Sherrie Eugene-Hart, Dr Roy Hackett MBE Rest In Everlasting Peace.
6. The Bristol Cable — Michele Curtis, A people’s history of St Pauls.
7. Unite — Plaque to commemorate the Bristol Bus Boycott, 2024.
8. Trades Union Congress — Bristol bus boycott.
9. Bristol24/7 — Roger Griffith’s tribute to Roy Hackett, 16 September 2022.
10. House of Commons Library — An early history of British race relations legislation.
11. St Pauls Carnival — About us and our history.
12. St Werburghs Community Centre — Celebrating our 50th anniversary.
13. Bristol Bus Boycott history project — Roy Hackett interviews and Glenfrome School recording.
14. University of Bristol — Michele Curtis honorary graduation oration, 2023.
15. The Gazette — Lurel Roy Hackett, appointment as MBE, 10 October 2020.
16. Hits Radio Bristol — Roy Hackett awarded honorary doctorate at funeral.
17. St Werburghs Community Centre — Annual General Meeting 2026 and Dr Roy Hackett MBE project.
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