ANYONE who knows Lord Patel of Bradford will tell you that few people you meet could be nicer, kinder or more considerate. They will tell you about his humility and humanity. They will gush that he is the one others turn to when they need a sensible head to get to the root of a problem. If 2022 was the year of fixing the racist reputation of Yorkshire County Cricket Club, then 2023 was about moving on and spending more time with his family. The peer will not talk about the re-appointment of, as club chair, Colin Graves, for a second time. Graves, remember, was in charge when the cricketer, Azeem Rafiq, was racially abused. Patel spent 2022 “taking Yorkshire County Cricket Club” on a journey. He described it as challenging and one which has left him “disheartened and disappointed” by a game he loves and a county he adores. When Patel started to scrutinise what had happened to Rafiq and others, he shook-up the entire infrastructure by sacking directors and other club staff, with the blessings of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). A tiny cabal made his life hell, he claimed. “This is not just a Yorkshire problem,” he told the GG2 Power List last year. We had several decades of people who came and complained to me.
So, this wasn’t just about Azeem Rafiq, hundreds of people came to me and said, this has been going on, this happened to my child, or this happen to me when I was a child at Yorkshire. So, Azeem was the only one brave enough to step up and carry on the battle. Others just gave up, and I think had I not been in the position I was, I would have given up because it was just relentless, and you’re fighting the system. But this is across the game of cricket, and this is a big issue, and it needs dealing with. Where you’ve had absolute proof that discrimination had taken place – potentially unlawful discrimination – these people still believe nothing was wrong.” From day one, he told a packed news conference at Headingly, “Racism or any form of discrimination is not banter.” Patel stepped away from the club after the annual general meeting in March last year.
The ECB asked Patel to deliver the seemingly impossible. Turn the trashed reputation of Yorkshire around. We can disclose that the ECB urged him to get rid of people. Patel never badmouths people or organisations. But he revealed to the GG2 Power List that when the going got tough, the ECB did not back him. His friends criticised the ECB for “stabbing him in the back and not supporting him when it mattered”. He explained: “Racism or any form of dis crimination is not banter. Cricket’s played a big part in my life, it’s helped me, make some great friends and connections. The institutions that oversee cricket, whether it’s recreational to the professional level is like any other institution in the United Kingdom. Institutions have real flaws in their systems, and it goes back to who’s on the board, who’s making the decisions, who’s the executive leadership, have we got diversity of thought? “If I look at mental health, you look at three things – how people access a service, how people experience the service once they’re in it, and what’s the outcome? So, if it’s a mental health system, do you access it in good time? Do you experience an environment that’s helping you to get better? And the outcome, will you get better, and will you leave? “Now, we know in many parts of the health service and health and social care service, or the local authorities, access is a big problem, because black and Asian people don’t get ac cess for a variety of reasons.
“In cricket, the south Asian communities are banging on the door, that was the one different thing for me, it wasn’t about trying to encourage south Asian people, like in football to come and play, other sports, maybe, but you had south Asian communities banging on the door. And 35 per cent, probably more, of the recreational player base comes from this small segment of the population. “Now somebody’s banging on your door, surely you want them to come in, and then you want to use that. That’s what hurt me so much, we never took advantage of that, and when we did, we did it wrongly.” He warmed to his theme. “In my head, it’s like having a small mini market, where people walk past and look at the shop, and don’t come in. “Then there’s a chunk of people who come in the shop, walk around and don’t buy any thing, and leave. “The question is, the third who came in, who didn’t buy anything, why didn’t they buy any thing? “Because I’m not selling the right things, or my salespeople are not welcoming them in or not helping them in the right way.
I think crick et has thousands of people looking in the shop window, actually thousands of people want to come into the shop, but we’re missing a trick. It’s sad and it boils down to leadership across the board. “People have to make tough decisions. But those tough decisions will pay off in 10 or 20 years from now. “I can’t get a result in 12 months, and I might not get results in five years, but it will happen. It’s not for personal glory. It’s for making sure it’s a good service from other people in the future.” We should also remember that this humble Yorkshireman – and he is fiercely proud of his county – stepped down as deputy-chair of the ECB and senior independent director of the ECB in August 2020. He has also stepped down as chair of Social Work England (SWE). But he remains one of the vice presidents of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) and president of the Royal Society for Public Health and patron of more charities than “I could possibly remember”, he quips. Oh, he is also an active hands on grandfather. “I will try and take people on the journey.
But on that journey, some people get off the bus quicker than others. Because my belief as a social worker, is that everybody can change, and if given the right support and guidance. But some people can’t when it comes to racism, and discrimination, and not seeing what’s what they can’t [change]. “I think I’d be saying, there’ll be people who, from childhood, have been brought up to believe some of the people are inferior to them, and they will change. Sometimes there’s not enough time and energy and effort to help people travel from a position where they are to another position.” Humility and humour are Patel’s trade mark. His easy-going nature – he does not stand on ceremony – belies a steely re solve. He may remain ‘Kamlesh’, who came to the UK from Nairobi, Kenya, aged one-and-a-half, on a plane ticket which cost just over £9 but he knows when and how to be serious. He saw his parents struggle when they left east Africa soon after Kenya’s independence leader, Jomo Kenyatta, came to power. “The early 60s were a tough, tough time in the UK. My two brothers, my two sisters, my mum, dad and I lived in fairly difficult circumstances.
A one-bedroom back-to-back terrace. No bathroom, a kitchen that was about two-foot-by-two-foot and an outside toilet. “My dad really struggled to find work in those early years. There were lots of discrimination, blatant racism, and that made you look at the world through those, for want of a better word, migrant eyes, and the social inequality they faced.” “My father was previously a maths teacher,” remembers Patel. “He was also a Brahmin priest, and he was quite talented actually. He was a master chef, and he used to cook some phenomenal meals. My mum looked after us when we came here, he could do none of that, and he spent his life cleaning buses. He got us out of poverty by actually using the skills he had as a priest as lots more Asian people came to the country, and he cooked for wedding parties.” Seeing his parents work ethic, it is no sur prise that Patel too began earning money early. “I’ve been working since I was 16. Sweeping floors, working at the bar, a silver service wait er, sold life insurance, second-hand cars, be coming a betting office manager and I even did some accountancy for an employment agency. “I worked hard in all of those jobs, and I wanted to be the best that I could be. I worked in the ambulance service which, like now, was difficult to manage on those salaries at that time.” But it was his passion for social justice which marked Patel out. Eventually, at 27, he went to university and qualified as a social worker. He was a professor at three universities, and he has numerous honorary doctorates from esteemed higher education institutions. Patel set up the Centre for Ethnicity and Health, and the International School for Communities, Rights and Inclusion at the University of Central Lanca shire.
There he brought in more than £30 million in grants and employed 100 staff. It was the peer’s pioneering work in drug use among south Asians, mental health and community engagement which propelled him to where he is today. Patel has been appointed to many government bodies and led a number of reviews. He persuaded the Blair administration to introduce an annual census on mental health patients. The Patel report: Reducing drug-related crime and rehabilitating offenders in 2010 remains influential and cited as best practice in its field. Patel remains in demand. He is a senior independent board director and chair of the advisory board for Cygnet, a health group which specialises in mental health care.
“It’s one of the biggest mental health providers in the United Kingdom,” said the peer. “We have over 200 facilities across the UK, ranging from people with learning disabilities to autism to eating disorders to medium secure units. We’re probably one of the major providers of inpatient mental health care in the United King dom. It’s an independent organisation, but 100 per cent of our patients are from the NHS, we don’t have any other customers. So, nobody could pay to come into our facilities on a private basis – we only have one customer, the NHS.” One thing to remember about Patel is that while he is diplomatic, he is also brutally honest and realistic. And one unpalatable truth is that despite it being 2024, some people still have a problem taking instructions from brown people. “Yeah, I am brown, and I’m Indian, but I’m a Yorkshireman through and through. I love Yorkshire, and that’s why I went to do the job I did.
And the majority of Yorkshire people were with me white, brown, black they were with me and supportive. A small group of the establishment, the hierarchy, who believe they have some special status in life, would they have done that to somebody who wasn’t white? Probably not. Probably not. “I’ve never gone on the race card. It’s not about me. You see me as you get me. I’ll work with things. I’ll try and do things right.
Occasionally I make mistakes, but I’ll rectify them quickly. I do not believe fundamentally, that I did anything wrong at Yorkshire. “I think all the actions I took were absolutely right. And would taking them again? Yes, I’d take them all over again. I’d probably be even stronger in what I did.” Spoken like a true Yorkshire man.
