Grassroots power

Dr Wanda Wyporska, new head of the Black Equity Organisation, talks about her life’s journey.

By Lester Holloway

IREMEMBER WHEN I came down to London for the first time and got out at Euston and saw all these Black people, and I was like, ‘Oh my God!’”

Growing up in Chester in a terraced house with an outside toilet in the 1970s was no picnic for the young Wanda.

Her world was very different to the Chester we see on ‘Real Housewives’, mainly of football WAGs.

From this working class upbringing, and following a stellar career in the voluntary sector, Dr Wanda Wyporska, 51, has just been appointed to lead the civil rights group Black Equity Organisation (BEO).

It is a body that carries a lot of hopes, and much expectation that it can make real headway in tackling systemic racism.

But who is Dr Wyporska?

Back in Chester, she was one of very few Black pupils at school and faced regular taunts.

“It was that era where you’d get called chocolate bar, and all of those sorts of things. I got called Brillo pad.”

This racism was one of the factors that drove her to achieve, and she aspired to be a professor.

Raised by her half-Polish mother and Polish grandmother, after her Bajan father divorced her mum at an early age, her identity evolved as a young person.

“I never fitted in wherever I was”, she reveals. From life in her home city, to attending an independent girls school, to gaining her doctorate at Oxford university, her journey of discovery was full of twists and turns.

“Now I count myself quite lucky that I had quite a disparate upbringing.

“I always wanted to be an author. I just wanted my name on the cover of a book” I wasn’t fussy at that age!”, she laughs.

The young Wanda embraced her Polish side, partly a reaction to her father being less present in her life. She bonded with a Polish cousin who was learning English.

She took an evening language class and went on to study Polish language, literature and history at UCL.

She reflects: “I think that’s a story of a lot of people whose parents don’t stay together. It wasn’t until later in my life that I had the emotional confidence to really look at my Blackness and my Black side of the family and start to think, okay, yeah, I need to own this — to the extent where I’m now tracing my family roots in Barbados and doing a lot of genealogies, so I’ve gone completely the other way!

“I think it was a maturity and it was a turning point and a relationship with my father as well.”

She had a rebellious streak from an early age, and a desire to fight injustice, and recalls that at primary school she protested against the playground being dominated by a football pitch which excluded girls, who were not allowed to play.

“So we just sat down on the pitch so that they couldn’t play!”

It worked, and teachers were forced to change the playground arrangements at the primary school.

It’s Dr Wyporska’s first interview as BEO chief executive. It is a post that carries a lot of expectations.

Ambition

Next month sees the first anniversary of the launch of the civil rights body, which burst onto the scene with a polished video announcing “Change is here”.

BEO is backed by a host of prominent figures on their board — such as historian David Olusoga, theatre boss and actor Kwame Kwei-Armah and politician David Lammy — and partnered by several big-name corporations.

The ambition — to make real progress on tackling systemic racism and scaling up the work of other organisations — is a towering one. An ambition that even some longtime activists doubt we will ever see.

The founding vision of BEO is underpinned by the confidence of Black high-achievers in business who have already attracted substantial support from the likes of Sky.

Almost a year on from their launch, and the organisation could be having something of a reset as Dr Wyporska takes the reins.

Top of her in-tray is likely to be the prospect of taking Suella Braverman to court over the Home Secretary’s rejection of three recommendations from the Windrush Scandal report.

Ms Braverman’s immediate predecessors had said they accepted Wendy Williams’ conclusions, but as the current Home Secretary shocked Windrush campaigners by announcing she will not implement two key changes that would have increased independent scrutiny of immigration policies, and a third promise to run reconciliation events with the families of Windrush Scandal victims.

The Voice can exclusively reveal that BEO have sent a ‘preaction’ legal letter to the Home Office, which calls for dialogue on accepting all Williams’ recommendations. If Ms Braverman stonewalls BEO, she may have to answer to a judge.

Dr Wyporska is a familiar fig- ure in the charity sector, having led the Equality Trust think tank for five years, and had a sojourn as boss of the Society of Genealogists.

She carries an air of softlyspoken determination and steely resolve as she discusses her vision for BEO.

“One of the things that is very exciting is that we are working not only on the here and now,

PROTEST: The BEO has sent a legal letter to the Home Office after Suella Braverman shocked Windrush campaigners by announcing she will not implement changes that would have increased scrutiny of immigration policies (photo: Getty Images) but we’re also looking at the long term of how we change systems and how we change structures.

“We’re looking at systems that have been running for hundreds of years, so, I keep saying this, we’re not gonna change this in five years.

“But what I want to see BEO doing is really developing Black communities and their power.

Blueprint

“I want BEO to be the organisation that supports and underpins other organisations. We are setting up that blueprint for real bold change.”

She acknowledged that the civil rights body was “the new kid on the block” but said they were determined to “scale-up” the work other groups were already doing, which — in the current cost of living crisis — was needed now more than ever.”

Reflecting on her time at the Trade Union Congress ‘Union Learn’ programme, she added: “I think that really taught me when we come together we have collective power. It really is about the power of the grassroots.”