David Renton MP & Dame Jocelyn Barrow

The social significance of the 1968 Race Relations Act was highlighted by the intense lobbying of outside institutions and pressure groups seeking to influence its final draft. David Renton, Conservative MP for Huntingdon had voted against the bill going to Committee stage earlier that year. However, Renton, a post-war National Liberal, attracted the attentions of the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (C.A.R.D.) led by activists Dr David Pitt and Jocelyn Barrow. She wrote to him to support possible amendments they wished to have drafted. The letter referred to Enoch Powell's ‘Rivers of Blood' speech, though Renton and Powell were aligned to the same party their views were categorically different. C.A.R.D would be a short-lived organisation, but its legacy lived on. Pitt was granted a life peerage by Harold Wilson while Barrow campaigned on several issues including the promotion of multi-culturalism in the school curriculum and was awarded a DBE in 1992.