Paul Boateng becomes first black in British cabinet

By ANNE McHARDY

"My colour is part of me but I do not want to be defined by my colour," said Paul Boateng, the man appointed last week as the first black member of the British Cabinet.

He may as well not have spoken; the next day all the British newspapers described him unequivocally as the man who broke the colour bar on Cabinet membership.

One of the most right-wing, the Daily Mail - which also carried what was for it an extraordinary hymn of praise both for Boateng and for the appointment of a black to the Cabinet in recognition of Britain's multi-cultural reality - ran a strapline asking, "Will this former firebrand now go on to become the first black premier?"

The strapline was carried over a collage of pictures designed to highlight the complexities of the 50-year-old, sharp-dressing minister's part-British, part-Ghanaian background. The main picture was of the toddler Paul, sweet in a romper suit, his black curls standing on end, in the arms of his white mother, English-born Eleanor, the Quaker daughter of a Scottish trade unionist, Robert McCombie. Eleanor is a lifelong Labour Party member.

Inset was a picture of Boateng, in shirt and braces, serving Christmas pudding to his wife, Janet, a black social worker and Labour councillor in Lambeth, south London, and one of their five children. The story pointed out that Boateng's two sons and three daughters are educated privately - something no other Labour minister would risk in a Government committed to improving state education.

Boateng's father, Kwaku, and his mother met when Kwaku was living in her home town, Hemel Hempstead, north of London, studying for a law degree.

They moved to Hackney, giving Boateng an impeccable birthright as far as black Britain is concerned, since Hackney is now a very black, very poor borough. The family went to Ghana when Paul was 4 and his father had qualified as a solicitor. Kwaku then joined the corrupt Government of Kwame Nkrumah, holding ministerial jobs for nine years.

The family lived luxuriously and the young Paul was educated expensively, being driven to school by chauffeurs. When Nkrumah was deposed. Kwaku, now a Pentecostal minister in Ghana, was imprisoned for five years and Eleanor brought 14-year-old Paul and his sister, Rosemary, back to Hemel Hempstead. Life was a little less flamboyant but not poverty-stricken, as Eleanor returned to teaching in her former school. The young Paul studied law, but at 19 was apparently saying he intended to be a Labour government minister.

His first step was to follow in his Scottish grandfather's footsteps by being elected to the Greater London Council where, ironically, he worked with the man who is now Mayor of London and the bete noir of the Blairite New Labour Party, Ken Livingstone.

Boateng was making a name as a left-wing civil rights lawyer, defending young blacks caught by a notorious stop-and-search law, known and detested as "Sus".

His association with "Red Ken" Livingstone's GLC regime, notorious in Margaret Thatcher's Britain for its politically correct vendettas, hard-left policies and civil rights cases earned him the descriptions "firebrand" and "left winger". But the "firebrand" definition ignored the reality; he was always, essentially a middle-class and ambitious politician of the centre who, because his blackness made him empathise with ethnic minorities, could make common cause with those more radical than himself.

He is very much part of a circle of middle-class professionals, both black and mixed race, many of them living to the southwest of London.

They share common problems of being middle-class blacks in London, not least the problem of schooling. In Lambeth, Hackney or Haringay or Brent in north London, schooling is notoriously difficult for black families. As one mixed-race father of four said, defending the decision to move from Tottenham, a district now attracting many refugees, "It is all right for middle-class whites to send their kids to schools around here. My kids would be seen as black and trouble; middle-class whites are seen by teachers as bright."

Boateng has a number of relatives in tough areas of London whose children do go to state schools.

This isn't to say Boateng didn't revel in some of the headier moments in the Livingstone GLC era; last week's papers were also full of pictures of him in 1985 at a pantomime dressed in a judge's wig and a thong, mocking the judicial system. The outfit caused a stir in 1985, not least because Boateng, a practising Christian, was then Methodist moderator of the World Council of Churches. Boateng, whose other leisure activities include a love of opera, laughed the incident off.

Boateng entered the House of Commons in 1987, standing for Brent South, a north London constituency bordering Livingstone's constituency. In his acceptance speech on polling night he played the race card. Wearing a wreath of white and red flowers he said, "Brent South will never be free until South Africa is free."

But he quickly earned himself a quite different reputation and avoided making common cause with another newly elected black MP, Bernie Grant, MP for Haringay, who has campaigned constantly on race issues.

Boateng earned respect for his hard work and assiduous care for the community - if not for his overwhelming personal warmth.

Early on he supported a campaign to stop the closure of a former mental hospital that had been turned into a successful dementia care centre for the old.

Fellow campaigners remember his work with gratitude - then hesitate and say, "But ... ". One of the buts is: "He doesn't know when to keep quiet and listen." Another spoke admiringly of his "gift for self-publicity, for not missing the photo call ever".

When Tony Blair began his campaign to modernise the Labour Party, Boateng happily shed his firebrand image to re-emerge as a born-again Blairite.

As he moved into junior ministerial office he also continued to emphasise, as Blair himself does, family and Christian values. While he was a junior Home Office minister he stood out against campaigners, his wife included, who were demanding that all coloured children up for adoption, whether mixed-race or black, should be placed only with black families. Boateng described that as nonsense, saying they needed loving homes.

He was also responsible for the dropping of a policy document designed to liberalise views on the family. He stated publicly his belief that marriage was essential to the security and well-being of children.

His next appointment was as a junior Treasury minister and it is within the Treasury, where his hard work has won him friends, that he has now been promoted to Chief Secretary. That means he will spend the northern summer scrutinising the budget demands of other departments of state, never a job that wins friends.

Boateng's joy when he emerged from Downing St with his new title was palpable. His face was split by a grin. Whether that grin will survive to the autumn remains to be seen, but Boateng's track record so far suggests that it might, even if he doesn't manage to fulfil the Daily Mail's prophecy by then and oust Blair from Number 10.