INTERVIEW
Voice for change
Simon Woolley grew up in foster care on a council estate before climbing the social ladder to receive a peerage and become the first black man to head an Oxbridge college. Here he talks about his ascent – and what it’s like to count Prince Charles as a friend
by KATHRYN KNIGHT
DAVID JOHNSON
Since taking his seat in the House of Lords in 2019, Simon Woolley has been mistaken for a member of staff three times. ‘The first time, a Lord asked me to help with his photocopying – and I got up and did it,’ the 60-year-old recalls. ‘I don’t know whether I was just embarrassed for him or reverted to type. The second time, I showed my badge and said I wasn’t staff. And the third time, I said, “I’ve had enough of this. I’m one of you”.’
Certainly one imagines few other Lords having to clarify their status. And, one would think, even fewer have faced the same obstacles or navigated quite such an extraordinary path as that of Lord Woolley of Woodford – to give him his full title – on his way to the upper chamber.
A foster child raised on a council estate, he can count car mechanic and ticket tout as entries on his CV, before he went on to set up Operation Black Vote, which was credited with encouraging thousands of black men and women to exercise their right at the ballot box.
Today, he is the first black man to head an Oxbridge College, inaugurated last October as principal of Homerton College, Cambridge. He follows in the footsteps of two women, Sonita Alleyne, who was elected head of Jesus College, Cambridge, in 2019, and Baroness Amos, who took on the role at University College, Oxford, in 2020. Meanwhile, his CV is garlanded with gongs, and he counts Prince Charles and the Rev Jesse Jackson among his friends.