‘My opponents advised me that medicine and politics do not mix and that, as a doctor, I should keep out of politics. I have therefore decided tonight to address you on the importance of politics to medicine and of medicine to politics.’

These were the jocular, yet uncompromising, opening remarks delivered by David Pitt to friends and colleagues gathered at the 1985 annual representative meeting held in Plymouth, in his first address as newly appointed president of the BMA.

It has often been said that his one-year term as association president was personally regarded by Dr Pitt as the pinnacle and most cherished accomplishment of his long medical career.

This might seem all the more remarkable when viewed in the context of his life story, a story that began on the island of Grenada in 1913.

Dr Pitt first visited the UK as a teenager while attending the third World Scout Jamboree in 1929. Three years later, after securing Grenada’s island scholarship, which sought to provide recipients with the financial means to study overseas, Dr Pitt began a medical degree at the University of Edinburgh.

Following his graduation in 1938, he soon returned to Grenada where he quickly established his first medical practice in 1941.

However, his time in Edinburgh, in particular his experience of the poverty and deprivation that ran rampant in parts of the city during the austerity and desperation of the 1930s, left a powerful and lasting impression upon him.

For Dr Pitt, the responsibility of those with political power to ensure access to health as a right and to tackle the very social issues, such as poverty, homelessness and racial discrimination, which he felt which contributed to disease and health inequalities, was paramount.

It was a belief he would reiterate decades later in front of the ARM when he stated: ‘When I speak about equality of access to health services, I am talking not about an abstract academic principle put forward by a moral philosopher, but a practical working point of view that is designed to benefit people who are sick and benefit the doctors in turn.

‘I reject now, as I have always done in the past, any attempt on economic grounds to deny a human being access to healthcare when treatment for the same condition is offered to others.’

This burgeoning interest in politics led to Dr Pitt co-founding the West Indian National Party, a socialist movement which campaigned for independence and self-governance of Caribbean nations at that time still ruled by the British Empire.

In the immediate post-war years, Dr Pitt returned to the UK, this time to London where he established a general medical practice on North Gower Street, a short distance from BMA House.

Working with his wife Dorothy, Dr Pitt built up a thriving, single-handed medical practice, which at its height was responsible for a patient list totalling 2,000.

While the practice treated patients from all backgrounds, it quickly became a hub of broader support for many of the members of London’s then rapidly growing West Indian community, providing advice and support on issues such employment and housing as well as healthcare.

While medicine remained his first priority, Dr Pitt’s passion for politics continued unabated.

After joining the Labour Party and being invited to address its annual conference, Dr Pitt was selected to stand as the party’s candidate for the constituency of Hampstead in the 1959 general election.

His nomination made history, marking the very first time that a major UK political party had selected a black candidate thus signalling an important turning point in the country’s social and political life.

Unfortunately, Dr Pitt’s ultimately unsuccessful bid for political office was marred by intimidation and violence from the far right, some of which was directed by British Union of Fascists founder and Nazi sympathiser Oswald Mosley.

After receiving abuse and numerous death threats, the racist targeting of Dr Pitt culminated in his practice being firebombed.

Despite the threats to himself and his family, Dr Pitt continued to pursue his political ambitions undeterred and in 1961 was elected to the London County Council representing Stoke Newington and Hackney North.

After being elected to serve as a councillor on the GLC (Greater London Council) in 1964, Dr Pitt would a decade later achieve another political first by becoming the first black chair of the GLC in the council’s history.

Throughout the 1960s, Dr Pitt became increasingly active in the UK civil rights movement. It was following Martin Luther King Jnr’s visit to London in 1964 that Dr Pitt was inspired to found and later lead the CARD (Campaign Against Racial Discrimination).

By bringing together different advocacy groups such as the Federation of Pakistani Organisations, the Indian Workers Association and the West Indian Standing committee, the CARD was able to exert pressure and influence on the national political debate around civil rights.

Through its lobbying, the group is credited with having helped shape and bring about landmark equality legislation in the forms of the Race Relations Acts of 1965 and 1968.

After another unsuccessful bid to become an MP while standing as the Labour candidate for Clapham in the 1970 general election, Dr Pitt’s years of service and political advocacy were finally recognised when in 1975 he was awarded a life-peerage by Labour prime minister Harold Wilson.

As Baron Pitt of Hampstead, Dr Pitt became just the second person of Afro-Caribbean heritage to sit in the Lords, following on from Learie Constantine's ennoblement in 1969.

Although criticised in some quarters for becoming part of a political establishment long seen as an obstacle to progress and social justice, Dr Pitt consistently held to the view that greater change could be achieved working from within an institution than challenging it externally.

Throughout his time in the Lords, he continued to give voice to issues such as health and homelessness as well as to combatting racism and fighting for equality.

‘One of the basic points about prejudice is that it is based upon ignorance,’ Dr Pitt told fellow peers during a debate on the 1976 Race Relations Act.

‘The more people get to know each other, the more they mix and the more they do things together, the less likely they are to be prejudiced.

‘More prejudice is broken down by people working together for a common objective than in any other way.’

Dr Pitt skilfully combined his roles as a politician and physician and was able to bring to bear his experience as a general practitioner to champion the role of doctors and the NHS and importance of governments ensuring both were adequately supported.

‘The GP’s role in preventive medicine is as important – perhaps even more important – as his role in curative medicine,’ expressed Dr Pitt during a Lords debate on public health in 1988.

‘The general practitioner is the only person who sees the individual from birth to death, and often before birth. I often see men and women in the Caribbean and also in this country whom I knew before they were born because I provided antenatal treatment for their mothers.

‘I hope that my contribution will bring into focus the importance of the general practitioner in public health [and] I hope that the Government will recognise the importance of the general practitioner in this field and will make sure that his role is properly monitored.’

Two years before he was appointed president of the BMA, Dr Pitt established the Lord Pitt Foundation, a charitable body which sought to benefit and assist people of West Indian origin or descent living in the UK.

His practice on North Gower Street meanwhile continued to care for patients while also acting as a meeting place and planning location for anti-apartheid campaigners.

Dr Pitt died in 1994 and was survived by his wife, son and two daughters with his final resting place being his home island of Grenada.

Writing in Dr Pitt’s obituary in the BMJ, Ngozi Uduku, who first met Dr Pitt as a medical student after she became a member of the African and Caribbean Medical Society in 1989, fondly recalled the enormous encouragement and support he had given to her and others.

She wrote: ‘As black medical students climbing our way up the undergraduate and postgraduate ladder, it was comforting to have the society urging us on with Lord Pitt at the helm.

‘He had time for us, and he gave us hope.’

Reflecting on Dr Pitt’s legacy, current BMA president John Chisholm said that he remembered well the forward-thinking choice to appoint Dr Pitt as association president, describing him as a popular and influential figure during his tenure.

He said: ‘At the time Lord Pitt became president - a role he described as his most valued honour - it was decidedly unusual for the British Medical Association to choose someone who was a GP, black, an active politician who had campaigned for the Race Relations Act and for civil rights, and an advocate for West Indian independence.  

‘What I particularly remember was his genial and inclusive approach, his sense of humour, his grin and his infectious laugh, but I was also proud that the BMA had chosen such an inspirational president.’

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