First black cabinet minister shakes off his radical past

Paul Boateng was grinning broadly yesterday morning when he emerged from Number 10. Although he gave nothing away to waiting reporters, he had reason to smile, having just made political history by becoming Britain's first black cabinet minister.

It has been a long political voyage for Mr Boateng to become the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the man trusted to mastermind the Government's spending plans.

When he was first elected to Parliament 15 years ago, Mr Boateng had a reputation as a radical lawyer and stormy orator who was the scourge of police corruption and racism.

As a barrister and left-wing member of the Greater London Council, he opposed publication of the racial origins of muggers, represented families of people who died in police custody and spoke out against the use of stop-and-search powers by the police. He took a liberal view on cannabis before it was trendy to do so, and in 1982 wrote and presented a Radio 4 talk on Rastafarians declaring that their addiction to marijuana was "an aid to meditation and reasoning whereby revelation may be obtained".

But the young lawyer's election night address after he took Brent South, in London, in 1987 did much to confirm a reputation for arrogance. "We can never be free in Brent until South Africa is free too," he declared. "Today Brent South, tomorrow Soweto."

Mr Boateng has been criticised by some for abandoning his left-wing credentials in the interest of his career. As a minister in charge of mental health, Mr Boateng defended hardline policies, including a crackdown on people with severe personality disorders. As a Home Office minister he gained a reputation as a hardliner on crime and aggressive begging that earned him the tag "bang 'em-up Boateng".

But at the Treasury, where he served as Financial Secretary, he was viewed as a safe pair of hands who could handle the cut and thrust of the dispatch box and the minutiae of a complex brief.

At Westminster his promotion was widely interpreted as timely recognition for a loyal New Labour minister. "He has impressed his colleagues in every job he has done in Government whether it's the Lord Chancellor's Department or Prisons minister in the Home Office," the Prime Minister's official spokesman said.

Mr Boateng is a practising Christian from a mixed race, middle-class background. He has six children, some of whom have had a private education or have gone to opted-out schools. His father was a Ghanaian cabinet minister and his mother a Scottish Quaker teacher. In 1966, at the age of 14, he was forced to flee to London with his mother and sister after his father was arrested in a coup.

Black leaders joined in congratulating Mr Boateng yesterday. Simon Woolley, of Operation Black Vote, said the appointment was overdue.

Joel Edwards, a black churchman and head of the Evangelical Alliance, said the appointment was proof "that the cracks are at last appearing in the glass ceiling".

But although his appointment breaks new ground for ethnic minorities in Britain, Mr Boateng himself has always resisted defining himself as a black MP. "My colour is part of me but I don't choose to be defined by my colour," he said yesterday. "I work for a world in which people are judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character."