News / Paul Stephenson
Friends and campaigners remember Paul Stephenson
Following the death of civil rights hero Paul Stephenson, friends and supporters have united to remember his legacy.
Stephenson died on November 2, at the age of 87, after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease and dementia.
He passed only a week after a commemorative plaque was installed at the Bay Horse pub, a pub which, in 1964, denied Stephenson a pint because of the colour of his skin.
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Stephenson is perhaps best known for his involvement in the 1963 Bristol Bus Boycott, which saw him lead a boycott against the Bristol Omnibus Company for its refusal to hire Black or Asian drivers.
On November October 25, a plaque was unveiled outside the Bay Horse pub to commemorate Stephenson – photo: Seun Matiluko
After four months, the Boycott ended in success and Raghbir Singh became the Company’s first driver of colour.
The Boycott helped inspire the UK’s first race discrimination legislation, the 1965 Race Relations Act.
On Monday Julian ‘Julz’ Davis, the director of racial justice organisation Curiosity UnLtd, brought a group of Stephenson’s friends and supporters together at the M Shed to remember Stephenson’s legacy.
Attendees included Bristol lord-lieutenant Peaches Golding; community filmmaker Clive Smith; civil rights campaigner Barbara Dettering, who played a crucial role in the Bus Boycott and co-founded St Paul’s Carnival; and Joyce Morris-Wisdom, who took part in the Bus Boycott when she was just 14-years-old.
In 2019, Barbara Dettering was commemorated as one of Seven Saints of St Paul’s – photo: Alisha Thompson
The group gathered around the museum’s original Lodekka bus, a type of bus the Bristol Omnibus Company used regularly in the 1960s.
There, they were met by BBC journalist David Garmston who interviewed many of the group for BBC Points West evening news.
Speaking to Bristol24/7, Barbara Dettering, who had known Stephenson since 1962 and last saw him two months ago, said the news of his passing was “very hard. I know we all have to go sometime…I knew it was going to happen. But you can never accept these things.”
Remembering her friend, Dettering said he would never “force his beliefs. You wouldn’t even know if he’s forcing it. Because he would do it in such a subtle, tactful way.”
She added that he was: “Very educated, very progressive, and if he is aiming for something he will be relentless to get that point of view seen by whoever.
“And he would move, as they say, heaven and earth to have that happen.
“The Race Relations Act is a very good example of that.”
Barbara Dettering remembers her friend Paul Stephenson as an “educated”, “progressive” and “tactful” man – photo: Seun Matiluko
Peaches Golding told Bristol24/7 that admirers of Stephenson should not mourn his life but celebrate it.
She said: “We should celebrate his life and all that he achieved.
“It’s not very many of us who actually change history.
“(Who) have an act of Parliament that is because of what we have done.
“So, I think we ought to be celebrating, (he) helped to create the society we have today.
“We certainly saw through him a great passing of an era.
“And that era…was segregation, in a way that we don’t think about now.
“That era changed.
“We are now in an era where people of different faiths, religions, backgrounds, heritages, have a much better chance to be able to achieve their ambitions whether they’re career or otherwise.”
Artwork remembering Stephenson and others involved in the Boycott can currently be seen on bus stops across the city – photo: Seun Matiluko
In 2025, Julz Davis’ Curiosity UnLtd will curate a series of events to mark the passage of the 1965 Race Relations Act.
Efforts are being made to track down the family of Raghbir Singh, the Bristol Omnibus Company’s first driver of colour, in time for the celebrations.
Singh is believed to now be deceased.
Plans are also being developed by community filmmaker, Clive Smith, to produce films about the racism African-Caribbean communities in Bristol continued to face long after the 1963 Boycott.
Paul Stephenson is survived by his children, Fumi and Paul Jr.
Stephenson’s wife Joyce died in 2019.
Main photo: GWR
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