Dipak Nandy

1956–present

Dipak Nandy was born in Calcutta in 1937 to a middle-class Bengali family. In 1956 he migrated to Britain to obtain a degree and began a PhD in English literature at the University of Leeds in 1960. Whilst at Leeds, he organized an Afro-Asian Society to foster collective action against racism, particularly by challenging colour bars in pubs and clubs. In 1962 Nandy was appointed Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Leicester. Here, he founded the Leicester Campaign for Racial Equality (LCRE). The LCRE gathered evidence of racial discrimination to advocate for local and national political interventions.

In 1964, whilst lecturing at the University of Kent, Nandy became a founding member of the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (CARD) after the Trinidadian author Marion Glean organized a meeting with civil rights activist Dr Martin Luther King Jr. On 4 December 1967 Nandy was among six executive committee members of CARD to walk out of its annual delegate convention to protest the overwhelming presence of middle-class white people within the CARD national council. Those who walked out included the founder of CARD, Anthony Lester. Soon after, Nandy joined a lobbying group called Equal Rights, which advocated for stronger race relations laws. Members of the group included activists, politicians, academics and trade unionists.

In 1968 Nandy became the founding director of the Runnymede Trust. This was possible because of his relationship with the trust’s founders, journalist Jim Rose and barrister Anthony Lester, whom he met whilst working for the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants (NCCI) and CARD. Nandy took on the role of director against the backdrop of increasingly exclusionary immigration policies, such as the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968, and attacks against the Race Relations Act 1968 by political figures such as Enoch Powell. Nandy’s role included producing new research on racism in Britain, engaging with the press to disseminate accurate information about discrimination in immigration, housing, employment, education and policing to the general public. This was a direct challenge to the hostile rhetoric peddled by some right-wing politicians. Nandy remained director of the Trust until 1973. Soon after, he worked at Social and Community Planning Research.

In 1976 Nandy became Director of the Equal Opportunities Commission, which was based in Manchester, and in 1983 became chairman of the BBC’s Immigrant Programme.

In 1972 Nandy married Luise Byers, whose father is Lord Byers. Nandy is father to Lisa Nandy, Labour MP for Wigan.