Oswald George Powe

Oswald George Powe (11 August 1926 – 9 September 2013), known as George Powe, was a Jamaican-born racial-equality activist in England.

Powe served in the Royal Air Force during World War II, before moving to England. He led a successful campaign forcing the Raleigh Bicycle Company to improve their treatment and recruitment of Black workers. He is the author of the 1956 publication Don’t Blame the Blacks. When he was elected as a Labour Party local councillor, he became one of the first Black Labour councillors nationwide and the first Black Labour councillor in Greater Nottingham.

A blue plaque marks Powe's family home and a bus was named after him in 2022.

Early life Powe was born on 11 August 1926 in Spanish Town, Jamaica. His parents were Richard Pow / Pow Un Chun, a Chinese migrant to Jamaica, and Leonora Sinclair. They were shopkeepers.

Powe's father was Confucianist, his mother, Roman Catholic.

At the age of five, Powe attended the Kingston Chinese school, thereafter joining St Ann's Elementary School in Kingston. Later, he studied electrical engineering at Kingston Technical School, before volunteering to join the Royal Air Force (RAF) in 1944, pretending to be older than his actual 17 years of age.

His birth name was Oswald George Pow, which before he acquired British nationality, he changed by deed poll from Pow to Powe.

Career After enlisting in the RAF, in Kingston, Jamaica, Powe was part of a contingent of 1,935 volunteers who sailed on a troopship that docked at Greenock, Scotland, in November 1944. On November 12, they were taken by train to RAF Hunmanby Moor, near Filey, Yorkshire, for two months initial training. Powe was later relocated to RAF Yatesbury, Wiltshire, for radar training. He was then assigned for one year to RAF Sennen, Penzance, and then posted to RAF West Prawle, South Devon. He retired in 1983.

In 1958, In a 2022 edition and his daughter's account, making him one of the first Black Labour councillors in the UK,

He was a key part of founding the African Caribbean National Artistic Centre, now one of the UK's oldest Black community centres.

Powe was a community elder and a founding member of the African Caribbean National Artistic Centre (ACNA Centre), one of the UK's oldest Black community centres.

In 2011, Powe donated a substantial number of historic documents to the Nottingham Black Archive, as well as being filmed for a documentary about the experiences of black servicemen who came to the UK following WW2.

In 2021, Powe's activism was the focus of the Don't Blame the Blacks exhibition at Nottingham Castle. and Nottingham City Transport named a bus after Powe in August 2022.