‘No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs’

The Inspiring Story of how John Taylor, the son of Jamaican single mother, went from poverty to become Lord Taylor of Warwick in the British House of Lords.

LOS ANGELES, CA -- It’s hard to believe that Taylor, the son of Jamaican single mother who was born and brought up in the industrial heartland of Birmingham, England, could have risen so high in British society, but he has!

He made history in 1996 when he was admitted to the House of Lords as the youngest and only black Lord amongst 1,700 Dukes, Duchesses, Earls, Viscounts, Bishops, Barons and Law Lords.

John Taylor took the title “The Right Honourable Lord Taylor of Warwick” and he has become one of Britain’s most senior black politicians. As a judge, barrister and university chancellor, but he still has to pinch himself that this has all happened to the boy raised in the Kings Heath area of Birmingham, where I was also raised.

During a recent visit to Los Angeles, California, where he had attended the Eleventh Annual Praise Brunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel on Saturday, September 26, 2009 and then, on the next day, spoke three times at Church on the Way in Van Nuys, Lord Taylor agreed to share with me his extraordinary and inspiring story.

I began by asking Lord Taylor why he has called his autobiography, “No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs,” and he replied, “The title comes from the early experiences of my Jamaican-born mother who was homeless and penniless in 1952 in London. She was looking for somewhere to live and in all the windows it were signs which said, ‘No Blacks, No Irish, No dogs.’”

Lord Taylor explained that his mother had come to Britain to marry a famous West Indian cricketer called Derief Taylor who had joined Warwickshire County Cricket Club in Birmingham, but sadly things didn’t work out.

“My mother came to inherit the dream she had heard about -- that the streets of London were paved with gold but she soon discovered that London is not paved with gold neither was Birmingham, where she then moved,” he said. “Actually Birmingham was very cold, not just in temperature, but cold in terms of being a black immigrant in Britain.

It really wasn't very welcoming to her and so she had to adapt, but still she felt very alone but she had God in her life and she began to pray that her young son, John, would one day become a ‘somebody’ in Britain.

“There was no logic to her prayer, but the whole point of God is you don't focus on the size of your problem, you focus on the size of your God. And God can transcend all the rules on what should be and what shouldn't be.

 “It was a very good school where we were all taught the simple old fashioned values of reading, writing and arithmetic and we were also taught a good Christian tradition,” he said. “There was only one other black pupil at the school and when I eventually became ‘Head Boy,’ I was conscious of God's hand on my life.

“My Mum used to send me to Sunday school. I really had no choice because we lived opposite King's Heath Methodist Church. Every time I woke up and then went to school, there was the church. So it literally took me one minute to get there. In many ways, that early foundation bore fruit later. I was learning the Bible stories, understanding them in my mind, and later making a commitment in the Spirit when I was a student.”