Frank Bailey | First Black Firefighter | Guyanese-British Firefighter and Social Worker |

This video is about Guyanese-British firefighter and social worker, Frank Bailey, who is widely considered the first Black firefighter of post-war London. Among his pioneering accomplishments in the name of diversity and inclusion, Bailey, is also credited as one of the first Black social workers, specializing in mental health in London’s Kensington and Chelsea borough.

Frank Arthur Bailey, was born on 26 November, 1925, in British Guiana (now Guyana), South America. He attended local schools and then took a job on a German trade ship, which brought him to New York. There he found work in a hospital where he staged a walkout, in protest of the institution’s separate dining rooms for different types of employees. The subsequent integration of the dining facilities proved just one of Bailey’s many successful challenges to an unequal status quo.

Bailey moved to London in 1953, and caught wind that Black people were not being hired by the city’s fire service. Not one to stand idly by in the face of injustice, Bailey applied to join the West Ham Fire Brigade, and made history when he was accepted into service. A lifelong advocate for workers’ rights, Bailey became a.........

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