By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 25, 2022 – The fact that Rishi Sunak, the new Prime Minister of Great Britain, is of Indian descent whose parents migrated to Great Britain from Africa Is fundamentally what’s so GREAT about Great Britain, despite the fact that its colonial history includes its inhumane involvement in the African slave trade.
In becoming the first person of colour and the first Hindu to lead Great Britain, Prime Minister Sunak could be compared in some respects to former U.S. President Barack Obama, America’s first Black president, whose mother was white and his father was from Kenya, Africa.
Prime Minister Sunak’s grandparents emigrated from Punjab, in northwestern India, to East Africa, where his mother and father were born in Tanzania and Kenya, respectively, according to published reports.
As a result of his parents’ sacrifices and saving to fund his education, Sunak was able to attend Winchester College, the exclusive private school that has produced no fewer than six chancellors of the Exchequer. In addition to becoming “head boy” at Winchester, Sunak was the editor of the school’s newspaper, and during summer vacations he waited tables at a Southampton Indian restaurant.
Sunak went on to study philosophy, politics, and economics at Lincoln College, Oxford, and he was president of the Oxford Trading & Investment Society, which provided students with opportunities to learn about financial markets and global trading. While at Oxford, he also had an internship at the headquarters of the Conservative Party.
After graduating from Oxford in 2001, Sunak became an analyst for Goldman Sachs, working for the investment banking company until 2004. As a Fulbright scholar, he then pursued an MBA at Stanford University, where he met his future wife, Akshata Murthy, daughter of Narayana Murthy, an Indian billionaire and cofounder of technology giant Infosys.
Returning to the United Kingdom in 2006, Sunak took a job with The Children’s Investment Fund Management (TCI), the hedge fund operated by Sir Chris Hohn, who made him a partner some two years later. In 2009 Sunak left TCI to join another hedge fund, Theleme Partners. That year he married Murthy, and they have two daughters.
By virtue of Sunak’s success in business and his wife’s 0.91 percent stake in Infosys, the couple began to amass a considerable fortune, which was estimated at about £730 million ($877 million) in 2022 by The Sunday Times.
Obviously, Sunak’s ethnicity was not a barrier to him becoming Prime Minister; however, there were some concerns about his wealth when he first made his bid to become Prime Minister. According to reports, “he had to overcome the perception among some Conservatives of his being too wealthy to understand the needs of the average British citizen at a time of devastating inflation.”
Of course, Liz Truss’s tenure as Prime Minister proved to be the shortest in British history at just over six weeks when she announced her resignation on October 20, putting into motion another leadership contest that culminated with Sunak becoming Prime Minister.
The fact Great Britain now has its first person of colour as Prime Minister underscores a conclusion that I reached a long time ago that racism is not as prevalent in Great Britain as it is in the United States. As a former avowed Black Power advocate during the struggle for Majority Rule in The Bahamas in the 1960s, Malcolm X was one of my heroes, and he once described all white people as “blue-eyed devils.”
My outlook in this regard changed drastically during the year I lived in London in the late 1960s. After the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) won the historic January 10, 1967 general election, establishing Black Majority Rule in The Bahamas for the first time, Premier Lynden Pindling arranged for me to go to London on a one-year on-the-job training program in journalism when he met Sir Max Aitkin, Publisher of the Evening Standard and the London Daily Express, on one of his trips to London
On my arrival in London in November of 1968, I was met at the airport my Sir Charles Wintour, Editor of The Evening Standard, and his chauffeur, and I was a house guest of Sir Charles and his family for two weeks before The Standard found an apartment for me at 3 Seagrave Road, S.W. London.
My year’s training at the Evening Standard was a life-changing experience both professionally and personally. I already was an accomplished journalist in The Bahamas, but the training I received at The Standard improved my skills in many areas, including editing and the ability to cover a story remotely, quickly craft a lead and then phone it in to the Editorial Department. I also spent three months covering entertainment and on one assignment met and interview Michael Caine.
During my year in London, my views on racism changed drastically. In addition to Sir Charles and many co-workers at The Standard as well as social functions, I met many white people who were not “blue-eyed devils,” but were genuinely wonderful, non-racist human beings.
I have visited London several times over the years since then and each time I have thoroughly enjoyed myself, although the cost of “a pint of bitter” has skyrocketed and so has just about everything else. I am really looking forward to visiting this great city again in the not-too-distant future and, hopefully, Prime Minister Sunak is successful in curbing out-of-control inflation before then.
