David Pitt, Baron Pitt of Hampstead

Born in Grenada, in the Caribbean, he was the second peer of African descent to sit in the House of Lords, being granted a life peerage in 1975, and was the longest serving Black Parliamentarian.

Nicholas Rea, in the British Medical Journal, said of Pitt: "it was in the slums of Edinburgh as much as in the Caribbean that he became convinced of the links between poverty, disadvantage, and ill health".

Under Pitt, the party demanded self-government for Trinidad and Tobago, constitutional reform and the nationalisation of commodities industries such as oil and sugar.

He was not successful but he continued his activism and in 1947 led a group of WINP members to Britain to lobby the Attlee government for Commonwealth status for a Federation of the West Indies.

After delivering a speech at the 1957 Labour Party Conference, he was asked by Roy Shaw, the then treasurer of Tribune, if he would stand for Parliament.

Racism was a factor in this election defeat as well, with an anonymous leaflet circulated during the campaign featuring the slogan: "If you desire a coloured for your neighbour vote Labour.

"[18]Pitt was a leader in the movement against apartheid in South Africa, with protest meetings being organised from the basement of his surgery in North Gower Street, London.

[21] In 1943, Pitt married Dorothy Elaine Alleyne, whom he met in Trinidad, and they had three children: a son, Bruce, and two daughters, Phyllis and Amanda.

In 2009, the annual "Lord David Pitt Memorial Lecture" at City Hall in London was initiated by Jennette Arnold in collaboration with the British Caribbean Association.

[22][23] A plaque at 200 North Gower Street in Camden, London, commemorates the building where Pitt worked as a doctor from 1950 to 1984.