We have a saying, "You've got to be in it to change it."
And that is my word, "In it to change it."
Try and try, never stop trying
because trying is what I did in my life, in my whole life.
I keep trying because everybody thinks I'm a no-good
and I keep trying until I become a too-good.
Great Britain was not great to its Commonwealth people
because we were of different colour.
I came and I walk along the road for about ten doors
and every one I knocked
that didn't have a card on it to say,
"No gypsies, no dogs, no Irish and no coloured."
A lady opened the door and saw me
and she didn't say a word, she just slammed the door.
I said to myself, "I think that's the norm here."
There was no rule about discrimination
and what you shouldn't do.
They thought they could do anything and get away with it.
When I tried to buy my first house
there was a big crowd of white people standing out,
and I thought they'd come to welcome me in their midst. No.
You know what they did? They said they didn't want me there.
I said, "Why did God make two colours
or three colour people?
Why didn't he just make everybody black,
everybody white, everybody pink?
We wouldn't have had this trouble."
I felt extremely degraded
and thought, "But what am I doing here?"
And I think I've just got to put up with it until something comes along.
We decided to fight anything that a black person was involved
to help them out.
Whilst we can obtain white labour in this city
we intend to go on engaging white labour rather than coloured labour.
In a country ruled by Britain, we drive our buses.
We drive aeroplanes, we drive helicopters, we drive trains.
So why is it in England we can't do it?
Well we don't want them on there that's the main reason.
There isn't going to be enough work for the whites, let alone the blacks.
They were not shifting.
We said, "We've got to take it to the other level."
We are going to form ourselves into a group and stop the buses.
We physically sit down in the road.
At the time, Arthur Scargill was having the miners' strike up north
and we were having the strike down here,
and at one stage they said,
"Arthur Scargill, Roy Hackett and Tony Benn
are the three worst persons in England."
In 1965, Harold Wilson stood up in Parliament.
The battle against racialism here in Britain...
And he said, "As from today,
any person discriminating against another
because of politics, religion, colour, creed or disability -
you have committed a crime punishable by five months in prison
or five thousand or both." And I cried.
I said, "Thank heavens for this."
I said, "We won."
They never taught it in school that this happened here
and I said, "Why, are they ashamed of what they've done to us?"
I talk to the primary schools.
I always tell them that we had to do that to bring you up
and never forget your roots.
Trying is a great thing
and if you ever fail one try another time
or try to improve what you fail on, you know, and try again.
Really because young people today, they are tomorrow's people
and we must try our best to make them be a good tomorrow's people.