How the Bristol Bus Boycott changed the laws in Britain

This week marks the anniversary of two events that happened on the same day 62 years ago and 5,737 miles apart. In Washington DC, Martin Luther King gave his famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech to a quarter of a million civil rights activists. In Bristol, the first battle in Britain’s own civil rights movement was being won.

As Dr King was outlining his vision for a United States in which people were treated equally no matter the colour of their skin, in Bristol, a man called Ian Patey was also making an announcement. He was the general manager of the Bristol Omnibus Company which, up until that point, had refused to employ any workers from Bristol’s small but growing Caribbean and Asian communities.

Mr Patey didn’t make a speech as suc

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