Ian May

A London hotel refused to let a West Indian cricketer stay in 1943 because American officers were staying there and would object. The manager said: "We will not have niggers in this hotel." He sued them. He won. Twenty-six years later he was made a Lord. Learie Constantine. He was the most famous cricketer in the West Indies and was in Britain working for the Ministry of Labour, looking after West Indian workers who had come to work in the war factories. He booked four nights at the Imperial Hotel in Russell Square with his wife and daughter. On arrival they were told they could stay one night only, because of the Americans. Most people would have gone elsewhere. He had the presence of mind to get witnesses — he had brought a colleague with him — and he sued for breach of contract. In 1944 the High Court found for him. It is one of the earliest successful legal actions against racial discrimination in Britain and it was cited for decades afterwards. He then became a barrister, Trinidad's High Commissioner in London, and in 1969 Baron Constantine of Maraval and Nelson — the first Black peer in the House of Lords. He also worked on what became the Race Relations Act. A hotel manager said a sentence in a lobby in 1943, with witnesses, and the man he said it to went on to help write the law that made it illegal.