Lee Jasper

Lee Jasper
Born	4 November 1958 Manchester, England

Lee Jasper (born 4 November 1958) is a British race relations activist, and politician who served as Senior Policy Advisor on Equalities to the former Mayor of LondonKen Livingstone until he resigned on 4 March 2008, and was the Respect Party's candidate for the Croydon North by-election in November 2012.

Jasper was born on 4 November 1958 in Manchester, Lancashire, to a mixed heritage family. His British-born mother being of Irish and Sierra-Leonean descent and his father Jamaican. He was raised in a working class home along with his mother and sisters until the age of eight, when he moved to nearby Oldham, where he remained until he was twenty-one years old. He left school without qualifications and went straight into work, engaging in a string of jobs in factories and warehouses in and around Manchester, also briefly running a market stall selling second-hand clothes. He returned to education as a mature student and gained a degree in social sciences from Manchester Polytechnic. Thereafter, he moved to London in 1985, where he worked at the Mangrove Community Association and became involved in the politics of the Notting Hill Carnival.

Over the next decade, Jasper became a race and human rights activist, sitting on many different committees and groups such as the Inner London Education Authority, the Metropolitan Police, and the Royal Commonwealth Society. Jasper was a witness at the Stephen Lawrence inquiry in his capacity as representative for the 1990 Trust. He was also a campaign group member of the Lawrence Campaign and claims credit for the intervention of Nelson Mandela in support of the Lawrence Campaign. Jasper also provided training for the Metropolitan Police in community issues. This role ceased in 1995 following the Brixton riots as some police officers blamed Jasper for a hardline speech that inflamed the crowd.

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