Bernard Alexander Montgomery Grant (17 February 1944 – 8 April 2000) was a British politician who was the Member of Parliament for Tottenham, London, from 1987 to his death in 2000.
Bernie Grant was born in Georgetown, British Guiana, to schoolteacher parents, who in 1963 took up the UK Government's offer to people from the crown colonies to settle in the United Kingdom.
[1] In the UK, Grant attended Tottenham Technical College, and went on to take a degree course in Mining Engineering at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh,[2] but did not graduate.
[4] As council leader during the 1985 Broadwater Farm riot, in which policeman PC Keith Blakelock was murdered, Grant was brought to national attention when he gave a speech outside Tottenham Town Hall, in which he was widely misquoted as saying "The police were to blame for what happened on Sunday night and what they got was a bloody good hiding"[5][1][6] – his actual words were "the youth think they gave the police a bloody good hiding".
[7][8] His comments brought swift denunciation from the Labour Party leadership, and the then Conservative Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, called him "the high priest of conflict"; several British newspapers also dubbed him "Barmy Bernie".
[13] ARM UK, in a "Birmingham Declaration" of 1 January 1994,[14] called upon: all people of Afrikan origin in the Caribbean, Afrika, Europe, the Americas and elsewhere to support the movement for reparations and join forces with a view to forming a strong united front capable of exposing, confronting and overcoming the psychological, economic and cultural harm inflicted upon us by peoples of European origin.Grant's approach to reparations included demands for the return of looted African cultural heritage (such as the Benin Bronzes) and that the British government should financially support those who wanted to return to their country of origin.
"[17] Grant's widow, Sharon, was on the shortlist to succeed him as the official Labour candidate for Tottenham, but was beaten by the 27-year-old David Lammy, who won the by-election in June 2000.
[19] On Sunday, 28 October 2012, a blue plaque, organised by the Nubian Jak Community Trust, was unveiled at Tottenham Old Town Hall in tribute to Grant.