Before there was Kemi Badenoch there was Lurline Champagnie.
Born in 1930s British Jamaica, Lurline first came to the UK in the 1950s to train as a nurse. In 1985 she made headlines for a speech she gave at a Conservative Party Conference. Another delegate had raised a motion concerning ‘immigration and race relations’ and Lurline was invited to speak.
Marching to stage in a blue polka dot dress, she gave a passionate seven-minute speech in which she sent up Bernie Grant, criticised Black single mothers and expressed her hope that the Britain of the future would be colourblind. The almost-exclusively white audience applauded every line but only rose to their feet, giving her a standing ovation, when she ended declaring: “I am Conservative, I’m Black, I’m British and I’m proud of all three.”