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Oral history recording with Roy Grant from the Back-a-Yard project. Part 1 of 2 (AV 11774/1-2) This project collected stories from older African-Caribbean people who came to live in Newport from the 1940s onwards, including their recollections of the Caribbean and reasons for coming to the UK. The eighteen-month project was run by the South East Wales Racial Equality Council (SEWREC) and supported by the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund. The project ran from October 2014 to March 2016.

Summary covering AV 11774/1-2 and AV 11775/1-2:

A childhood in Jamaica: Two events stand out in Roy Grant’s childhood: the death of his much-loved brother at the age of eleven and the loss of an eye in a tragic accident when Roy was just two. Unable to remember ever having sight in both eyes, the young Roy did not see himself as disabled and couldn’t understand why he was called names One Eye and Ace Blank at school. Fortunately, his disability didn’t stop Roy being an athletic child. He was physically strong and ran well, although he always struggled with ball games. His childhood passion, however, was machinery and he was fascinated how everything worked. He deliberately removed pieces from his mother’s sewing machine so he could offer to ‘repair’ it and constructed ‘bogey’ carts for his friends to run down the hillside.

Fulfilling a childhood dream (engineer): At fifteen, Roy announced to his parents that he wanted to be a mechanical engineer. Though they knew little about his chosen career, they supported him from the outset, determined to do anything they could to help their son to fulfil his ambition. The young Roy excelled on his engineering course in Jamaica; however, in the opinion of his head teacher, the very best training available was on the other side of the Atlantic. Roy was unperturbed at the prospect of travelling to England. Like many young Jamaicans, his dream was to travel and he believed the streets of London were covered in gold. Yet, he was also very aware of the sacrifices his parents had made to pay the £75 for his eleven-day passage. Resuming his apprenticeship in the UK proved more difficult than Roy imagined. Engineering firms in Birmingham seemed unwilling to give the young Jamaican man a chance. Isolated, frustrated and worn down by the blatant racism he experienced, Roy eventually moved to Newport where his luck finally changed. Roy’s perseverance paid off. He achieved his ambition and became a qualified engineer. After eleven years, he was promoted to production manager; the first and youngest black person in Newport to achieve that status. The highlight of his engineering career was leading the team that developed a revolutionary rapid-cutting tool for tufted and non-woollen carpets.

Life as a writer: Roy had overcome many obstacles and challenges in his life, but when a haemorrhage in his good eye left him completely blind, he was finally forced to accept that he was a disabled person. He was almost 50 and struggling to read or put words together. It was time to go back to school. Helped hugely by the positive attitudes of other disabled students and his excellent community education tutors, Roy was encouraged to write about his early experiences in the UK. And that, he claims, was the beginning of his writing career. Once he started putting pen to paper, he found he couldn’t stop writing. Several books followed, recording for future generations not only his own life story but those of other first generation Afro-Caribbean people who came to live in Newport. Roy has also written several plays, the most recent of which was performed at Newport’s Riverfront Theatre on October 31, 2015.

Community spirit: Roy first became involved with community work in Duffryn when he realised many parents were unable to carry out simple repairs to their children’s bikes. His Community Cycle Repair Club was a huge success and Roy was invited to get involved with other community projects. He represented BME people on the BBC’s Governance Unit and is a long-time volunteer at South East Wales Regional Equality Council.