Pramila Le Hunte is a Cambridge University alumnus and published playwright, one of her most prominent works being a play about the first Prime Minister of India (Jawaharlal Nehru). The talented author is also currently writing a book about her life.
One of her most notable achievements is that in 1983, she became the first British Asian woman to stand for Parliament as a Tory MP. This was to the disappointment of her daughter, author Bem Le Hunte, who Pramila said was “terribly ashamed to be my daughter” at this time. This was partly because most British South Asians in the early 1980s felt that the Labour Party “stood for the working men”, according to Pramila, as many of them took up difficult jobs in mills, factories and foundries after settling in post-World War II Britain. In Pramila’s words, this was because “who gave them independence? Clement Attlee [Labour Prime Minister]. Who was against us? Winston Churchill… So Labour was deified from day one.”
Pramila, who was born in 1938 to Hindi Punjabi parents, spent her early life in British India, as a part of the only Indian family living among British people in Mosaboni in Bihar. As a child, she was well read, and in 1957 she attended Cambridge University to study English literature, where she met her English husband. After living together in India for a few years with their 4 children, they settled in Richmond, south-west London, a place where not many other South Asians lived and where her children suffered a lot of racism. This was also the time of the anti-mass migration Rivers of Blood speech by Conservative MP Enoch Powell.
Despite these hardships, the Conservative Party supporter became a chairman of a Richmond Council ward and was invited to put her name down for several seats with large British South Asian populations. In 1983, she was selected to stand in Ladywood, Birmingham, a loyal constituency to Labour. Despite not winning, she nearly doubled the conservative vote in that area.
Pramila acknowledged that the sudden interest in the large British South Asian community by the press was seen as tokenism, but she stated that she remembered thinking, “What’s wrong with it? Someone has to start somewhere.”
She also felt a connection to the Sikh community due to her Punjabi heritage, and they said they would vote for her despite supporting Labour. She was told by them that she was the first politician who came to speak to them. However, she would adapt what she wore to fit in with white voters and “make them comfortable” when she was canvassing to them, compared to the Asian clothing she wore to appeal to Asian voters.
After losing the 1983 vote, she did not stand after 1938, instead returning to teaching. Pramila remains a member of the Conservative Party and has said that she recognised that “somebody has to trailblaze, and I had the kind of mentality do that.”
By Charlie Murray
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