Leading Women: Baroness Usha Prashar

On September 10, 2019, the day after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had prorogued Parliament, I visited the House of Lords. My appointment was with the Right Honourable the Baroness Prashar of Runnymede, a crossbench member of the House of Lords since 1999. The Palace of Westminster was quiet, with few people around.  

I was met by the Baroness in the vestibule, from where we headed to the cafeteria, a mix of traditional English pub and Gentleman’s club with views across the Thames. The room is dominated by a vast painting of the Battle of Cape Saint Vincent, when a British naval contingent defeated a much larger Spanish fleet on Saint Valentine’s day, 1797, during the French Revolutionary Wars. Due to the prorogation, no food was available, but we were at least able to find a cup of coffee. 

Prashar is an engaging woman: charismatic, approachable and with an encyclopedic knowledge. We immediately struck up a conversation during which she revealed her outstanding capacity to call up facts, dates and people, along with the intelligent virtue of explaining complex ideas in context. She is nothing if not cosmopolitan: born in Kenya of Indian parentage, she has lived most of her life in Britain. She combines the cultures of three continents, their visions and different customs. This syncretism has allowed her to analyze complex issues from different perspectives over the course of her career. 

She remembers her childhood in Nairobi and the rigid racial strata of the British colonial system: “In pre-independence Kenya, there was a real demarcation between the Asians, the Africans and the Europeans. I do remember ours was the only dining table where my father invited his African friends to sit with us. This was unusual, because the deal then was that the British ruled, the Asians were the traders, and Africans basically provided services. I observed discrimination and I saw how my father reacted to it.” 

Her opportunity to move to Britain came about because, as an Asian, she could not study in Kenya: “There were separate schools for Asians, Africans and Europeans. If you wanted to take A levels, there were no facilities. I applied to go to an English school, this was on the cusp of independence. I wasn't admitted because I was not white. Ironically, I got an admission to come and do my A levels in Yorkshire, in the north of England. I was the school’s first overseas student.”

During her time at high school, Prashar remembers that having to answer questions about where she came from to fellow students and her teachers allowed her to develop a narrative about Indian culture and her cross-cultural experiences. At the same time, she would accompany her sister-in-law, a health visitor, to translate for Pakistani immigrants, which gave her a keen understanding of discrimination, creating an interest in social policy.  

She studied sociology at Leeds University. It was her intention to go back to Kenya, but the political situation changed both in Kenya and in the UK with the advent of 1968 Immigration Act. In the circumstances she decided to attend University of Glasgow for post-graduate qualifications.

 “In this country there was a tradition that if you wanted to institute a new policy, you did it in Scotland, as a trial, to see how it worked. And at that time, they had published the Kilbrandon report, which was about how you organize social administration. So, I decided to do social administration at Glasgow University. When I looked at the course it was basically about training one to be a social worker which did not appeal to me. I did not want to be a social worker. I wanted to be an agent of change. I believe in social action”.

Since finishing university, Prashar’s career has been impactful, committed and fascinating. She has been a pioneer in leading fourth-sector organizations, contributing decisively to professionalizing non-governmental bodies. She’s been asked many times over the years if she sees herself more as a thinker or a doer and describes herself as “a thinker who does.” 

Prashar’s first job was as an assistant conciliation officer for the then Race Relations Board, set up in the wake of the Race Relations Act of 1968. Race was being used as an issue by some politicians, notably Enoch Powell, who had delivered his infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech earlier that year, predicting race riots in Britain as a result of immigration and that cost him his political career. 

Her work preparing civil action suits gave Prashar a deeper understanding of the nature of discrimination, the importance of dialogue and listening to the views and fears of others, and of how government works. Her efforts helped toward dismantling the system of bussing children from Pakistani, Indian and Caribbean families in the north of England to schools sometimes up to an hour away from where they lived as part of a quota policy that limited immigrant numbers in schools to 30%. 

She was then headhunted by the Runnymede Trust, the influential race equality think tank, which after a year, in 1977, she then ran for seven years. The organization’s philosophy was to develop evidence-based research that could be used in government policy. 

The Runnymede Trust was responsible for understanding how so-called indirect discrimination works through policies like bussing. It also brought to the public’s attention the issue of institutionalized racism, particularly in the wake of the riots in Brixton, London, in 1981, which were the subject of a report overseen by Lord Scarman, which pointed to the excessive use of force used by the Metropolitan Police against the Afro-Caribbean community resident in the area. 

Scarman was careful not to accuse the police of institutionalized racism in his report, instead pointing to the actions of individuals within the capital’s police force. Prashar responded with an article in the influential Sunday newspaper The Observer criticizing the report for its failings in this regard. 

Prashar also organized several effective initiatives from Runnymede, such as bringing together US and British judges to share their views and experiences on discrimination, along with a report on media coverage of conflicts with African immigrants carried out with Peter Evans of The Times. This approach foreshadowed later studies on the media’s narratives of conflict in society, particularly in relation to immigration, an issue that has become more prescient with the emergence of the social networks.  

Her experiences led Prashar to better understand the many ways in which discrimination works: “It’s like litmus paper, it tells you what’s wrong with your organization as a whole,” which led her to become involved in more mainstream challenges to do with wider issues, as a result of which she joined the Policy Studies Institute, looking at primary health care. 

She then went on to work with the National Council for Voluntary Organizations (NCVO), the body that brings together NGOS, voluntary associations and community service groups. She was the first woman and a minority person to hold this post. This was in 1984.

This transition from race related organisations to ‘a mainstream’ organization sent strong message. I got lot of letters and messages from women and minorities saying: ‘Gosh, if you have done it , we can do it too.’   

She is still Honorary President of Community Foundations. Prashar quotes Lord Beveridge on the importance of the sector: “Voluntary action is the mark of a free society,” adding, “freedom of association has been the lifeblood of the UK voluntary activity.” As if to illustrate this, while I am interviewing Prashar, Danny Sriskandarajah, CEO of OXFAM, who is visiting the House, approaches our table and greets her. She then continues:

“Compared to anywhere in Europe, voluntary activity in the UK has been really up there. This experience brought two things home for me: one, it provided me with an opportunity to not only look at organizational change, but also the importance of social movements to bring about change. 

...Now, turning to management style, the NCVO had been through a little bit of a difficult period. Its director left, they appointed someone who didn’t turn out to be right. So, when I joined, the organization was in a little bit of disarray, it had a deficit, it was rudderless, and it wasn’t acting, in my view, as a proper membership organization. Some of the latter member charities had left because they thought it was not acting as a membership body and instead trying to compete with its members. 

So, I was asking myself, how can I change all this? Apart from dealing with a quarter of a million-pound deficit – you can imagine in 1984, it was a lot of money – I set about re-organizing it to give it a clear direction, looking at two aspects: one was the policy side; the other was local action. And, at that time, rural community councils were part of the NCVO, as was the voluntary action community; they wanted independence, which they were given. I then focused on building a real membership organization and streamlining its processes.” 

Prashar took advantage of the challenge to develop her own approach to tackling the strategic threats to the organization based on her own leadership style, which she had developed over the years. “My style was very consultative: I talked to people, I built alliances. 

“My approach in every organization has been to understand what’s the problem you’re trying to solve, and once you’ve analyzed that, then you’ve got to know where you want to be, and then, how you get there. And, within that, to me there are some essential values: involvement, engaging and working with people.  My philosophy is, if you do things for the right reason you succeed. When you’re the leader, never try to score all your own goals, instead, empower other people to score the goals, this way you motivate other people. At the same time, the challenges facing us in the external world were enormous: it was the era of Mrs. Thatcher, the focus was on curtailing campaigning by voluntary organisations. She saw them purely as delivering services to people. In other words, quietly: “just get on and deliver, do not agitate. NCVO succeeded in protecting the right of voluntary organizations to campaign.”  

 In Prashar’s opinion, there are two types of manager: “coasters, who coast along in a job, and sprinters, who have a challenge, deal with it and then move on.” She sees herself as a sprinter. After transforming the NCVO, she served as a member of the Royal Commission of Criminal Justice, along with the Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Legal Education and Conduct. She also took on the position of non-executive director at Channel 4, later doing the same at ITV. She was also appointed to a range of roles in several international institutions. 

She has fond memories of her next position, as Executive Chairman of the Parole Board of England and Wales, the first woman to hold the post. As with her previous jobs, she set about improving things in an organization that was failing prisoners, as well as society. 

 “When I got there, it was worse than Kafka. I’m not exaggerating, there were piles of files everywhere, mainly of complaints from MPs on behalf of their constituents who were in prison waiting to hear about their parole. It turned out that only 27% of people heard their decisions on time. They were languishing in prison, as a result, they were complaining to their MPs. MPs were writing to the Parole Board, the Parole Board had to investigate why there was a delay? This meant, the staff were spending their time responding to the complaints and the casework didn’t get done.” 

Again, she applied her modus operandi of identifying the problem and then applying the solution. The key link in the system were the parole clerks at prisons, who did not have the status to get the process moving. By highlighting their role and encouraging them to be more involved in finding a solution and engaging all the others who were crucial to the process she managed to get the decision-making process working. By the time she left 94% of the paroles heard their decisions on time. 

Prashar was made a Peer in 1999, joining the House of Lords, since when she has continued to take on a growing number of challenges. Some of these include: First Civil Services Commissioner, inaugural Chairman of the Judicial Appointments Commission, Chairman and then President of the Royal Commonwealth Society, Member of the Iraq Inquiry and Deputy Chair of the British Council, which is when I first met her, as well as the honor of working with her as member of IE Business School’s International Advisory Board. 

When I asked her how she felt being the only woman presiding over or sitting on boards and committees, she replied: 

“In all honesty, I took always took the view that I am not going to be conscious I am a woman or a minority. To me, I’m a person. I am clear about what I have to offer. Self-awareness and confidence are quite important as is self-esteem.  I never approached any job I did being conscious that I am a minority or a woman. That did not inhibit me in any way.  I just did the job and was very focused on what I had to do.”

After my meeting with Prashar at Westminster Palace, I went to Heathrow to catch my flight back to Madrid. A British Airways pilots’ strike had left the airport empty, a strange and unsettling sight. The UK seemed closed that day. But anglophile that I am, I could only hope that the country I consider my second home would emerge from its predicaments as soon as possible. There is certainly a need for more Prashar in this world.