Lee Jasper (born 4 November 1958) is a British politician and activist. He served as Senior Policy Advisor on Equalities to the then Mayor of London Ken Livingstone until he resigned on 4 March 2008. More recently, Jasper stood as the Respect Party candidate for the Croydon North by-election in November 2012, and is a race relations activist.
Jasper was born on 4 November 1958 in Oldham, Lancashire, where he was brought up by his British-born mother, who is of Irish and Sierra-Leonean descent. His father is Jamaican. He described his surroundings as a child as dominated by "crude racism". He started out running a market stall, selling second-hand clothes. He returned to education as a mature student and gained a degree in social sciences from Manchester Polytechnic.
He moved to London in 1985, where he became closely involved in the Notting Hill Carnival, becoming chair of the Mangrove Community Association. He was elected Secretary of the Notting Hill Carnival in 1987. It was at this time he met Brian Paddick, who described him as a "street hustler" whose group would "sell bits of the pavement they didn't own", ultimately overcoming opposition from the local police chief seeking to enforce the local authority's licenses. Jasper ran to be director of the carnival in 1989, but did not get elected.
Over the next decade, Jasper became a race and human rights activist, sitting on various committees and groups such as the Inner London Education Authority. He was founder of Operation Trident and the Royal Commonwealth Society. He was a witness at the Stephen Lawrence inquiry as a representative of the 1990 Trust. He was also a group member of the Lawrence campaign.
Jasper was once involved in a community policing partnership with Metropolitan Police, providing "£500-a-day police racism awareness courses" on community issues. This role ceased in 1995, following the Brixton riots, during which Jasper has been criticised by some for making "very, very angry speech" prior to the violence. Jasper was one of the main officers of the National Assembly Against Racism and has since been praised for developing the "cautious rapprochement" between communities and the police in London.
Jasper was criticised by Conservative politician Shaun Bailey as "representing the old school of black politics", and was accused of playing the "race card" too often. Operation Black Vote coordinator Simon Woolley, however, described Jasper as "one of the nation's key black figures".
Jasper was the Chief Political Commentator for The Voice newspaper during the 2010 election.
Jasper was selected as Respect's candidate for the Croydon North by-election on 29 November 2012. As he gained only 2.9% of the vote, he lost his deposit. Jasper had at the time been a registered member of the Labour Party and was removed upon running as a Respect candidate. Jasper also later admitted using Twitter bots during his campaign to try and sway the vote.
In November 2016, it emerged that Jasper had rejoined the Labour Party to support the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. He was again suspended from the party in 2018 over allegedly homophobic tweets.
Jasper became a member of the Coalition of Resistance (COR) anti-cuts campaign. He was also a political adviser to the 1990 Trust and a board member of Lambeth Police Consultative Group, but resigned as Chair of Brixton Splash though remained a member of its board.
Along with Zita Holbourne, he co-founded the anti-austerity organisation BARAC (Black Activists Rising Against the Cuts).
In July 2011, Jasper in jest suggested that there were physical similarities between the extremist Anders Behring Breivik and Mayor of London Boris Johnson.
Writing for Inside Croydon in 2015, Jasper called for the black community to take responsibility for the increase in teenage and community violence.
He has been a high-profile campaigner about deaths in police custody, raising the cases of Sarah Reed and Mohamud Hassan, with his activism having been covered by the Financial Times.
He is today Vice Chair of BAME Lawyers 4 Justice campaigned to end the deportation of ex-offenders and UK residents deemed to Jamaican nationals.
He is a Strategic Adviser to the national black men's African and Caribbean network Black Men 4 Change.
Lee Jasper was appointed as Director for Policing and Equalities during Ken Livingstone's 2004–2008 term as Mayor of London. He was responsible for the development, enactment and promotion of equalities policies for the Greater London Authority (GLA) and had corporate responsibility for the development and delivery of anti discriminatory policies aimed at ensuring equality in employment practices and service delivery. He was also directly responsible for advising the Mayor on policing issues. Jasper was one of four senior political advisers whose salary was raised to £111,000 a year in 2004; higher than that of the mayor himself.
Due to his role in the Greater London Authority, he played an important part at the European Social Forum hosted by the GLA in London in 2004. This caused some controversy, as there was disruption at the anti-racist session of the Forum. His strong criticisms of the disruption were in turn condemned by a small number of hard left-wing groups as stifling dissent.