Paul Boateng
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Paul Yaw Boateng (born June 14, 1951), is a British Labour Party politician. He became the UK's first black Cabinet minister in May 2002 when he was appointed as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. He was MP for Brent South from 1987 to 2005, and is the current British High Commissioner to South Africa.
Background and early life
Boateng was born in Hackney, London of mixed Ghanaian and Scottish heritage. He lived in Ghana, where his father was a cabinet minister under Kwame Nkrumah, until the 1966 coup that ousted Nkrumah. The family moved to Hemel Hempstead where he attended Apsley Grammar School. After graduating from the University of Bristol, he became a civil rights lawyer, originally as a solicitor, though he later retrained as a barrister. He gained some notoriety through this work in Lambeth in the late 1970s, when he was a familiar figure at protests against the kinds of police activity that built up to the 1981 Brixton Riot.Political career
Boateng was elected to the Greater London Council in 1981 as a member of Labour's left wing and a supporter of Ken Livingstone. As chair of the GLC's police committee and vice-chair of its ethnic minorities committee, he continued to be a persistent critic of the police, especially in relation to their dealings with the black and Asian communities.He stood, and lost, as a parliamentary candidate for Hemel Hempstead in the 1983 general election. He had more success in the general election of 1987, when he was elected to the House of Commons for Brent South, in succession to Laurence Pavitt. During his victory speech, he famously declaring "Today Brent South, tomorrow Soweto!"
Like many other members of the left in the 1980s, he became more moderate under the leadership of Neil Kinnock, who made him a junior spokesman in 1989. In 1992, he became shadow minister for the Lord Chancellor's Department, a post he held until the 1997 general election.
With Labour's victory, Boateng became the U.K.'s first black government minister (that is, of African or Afro-Caribbean descent), as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Health (UK) (Baron Sinha, an Indian, was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for India in the House of Lords in 1919). In 1998 Boateng became a minister at the Home Office and subsequently Deputy Home Secretary. At the time a loyal supporter of the New Labour project, he defended the police and criticised his former GLC colleague Ken Livingstone's mayoral campaign.
In 2001, he was made Financial Secretary to the Treasury, and stepped up to become Chief Secretary to the Treasury and so a member of the Cabinet in May 2002. He had been senior to Charles Clarke when both were at the Home Office, though Clarke was appointed Home Secretary when David Blunkett resigned.
In March 2005, he announced that he would not stand for re-election as an MP in the May 2005 general election. Labour having won the election in May 2005, he was named as the next High Commissioner to South Africa, replacing Ann Grant. Dawn Butler was selected by the local Constituency Labour Party to replace him and was elected by a comfortable margin.
Boateng was featured on an episode of current affairs spoof The Day Today, in which Chris Morris complained to him about the explicit content in music by fictional artists such as 'Herman the Tosser'.
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External links
- [BBC story about Boateng stepping down]
- [Paul Boateng] - Aristotle profile from The Guardian
- [Paul Boateng] - profile from TheyWorkForYou.com
- [New High Commissioner to South Africa] - FCO Announcement
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