George Lee (British politician)
George Lee (born 22 January 1962) is the Conservative Party prospective Parliamentary candidate for the London constituency Holborn and St Pancras. He is also a former Metropolitan Police Inspector and management consultant.
He was a founder of the Black Police Association, is the first Chinese parliamentary candidate of any major UK political party, and if elected would become the first Chinese Member of Parliament.
Early life (1962-81)
Lee was born to poverty in a converted pig shed in rural Tai Po, in Hong Kong’s New Territories. His parents left Hong Kong when he was one, emigrating to the UK. Lee and his siblings were placed in the care of a neighbour, who put them (Lee from the age of five) to work in a tumbledown shack making plastic flowers and toy soldiers. Lee was nine when one of his sisters wrote to their parents alerting them of their situation. The family was reunited in Portsmouth that year, where the parents had set up a Chinese takeaway.
With only one word of English, "tomorrow", Lee attended St Edmund’s RC School, Portsmouth. He learned to deal with the attention that his relatively rare Chinese ethnicity attracted, saying: “When the Bruce Lee films came out [everybody] thought I was a martial arts expert and wanted to try their luck against me.”
Police career (1981-98)
As a school leaver he worked in industrial relations at the Ministry of Defence in Portsmouth, but in 1981 joined the Metropolitan Police, at a time when few ethnic minorities did. Early in his 17-year police career one of his superior officers, a far–right National Front supporter, told Lee he ‘would be out in six months’, but he persevered. Lee was involved in the miners’ strike, the News International dispute at Wapping, and the Broadwater Farm and Poll Tax riots.
In 1993, the Home Office awarded him the Bramshill police scholarship. Lee studied Chinese and Political Science at Trinity College, Cambridge, completing a four-year course in three years. At Cambridge, he founded ABACUS (Association of British and Chinese University Students) to encourage to greater integration by second-generation Chinese in UK mainstream life.
Lee won Commendations for solving high-profile cases in the Vice, Riot, and [...] Squads, and was Sector Commander at Paddington Green Police Station, a high-security police station that holds prisoners suspected of [...]. Assigned to MI6, he was seconded to the Royal Hong Kong Police Triad Unit. Later he became a Bramshill Staff College Course Director, Hendon Police College Recruit Training Instructor, and Community Race Relations & Equal Opportunities Advisor to the Home Office. He was a founding member of the Black Police Association, and became its External Officer.
Lee resigned in 1998, after 17 years in the force, and having become the first Chinese Inspector, in the midst of charges that racism was still rife in police ranks.
Business career (1998-2009)
He then initially worked for management consultancy firm Gemini Consulting (now Cap Gemini). He was Programme Director for Vodafone Live!, subsequently Executive Vice President at T-Mobile International, and then until May 2009 was a Senior Partner at Mercer Management Consulting (now Oliver Wyman), responsible for Telecom, Media & Technology in UK and the Irish Republic.
Political career (2009-present)
Lee in March 2009 won the Conservative Party's nomination as prospective candidate for the London constituency of Holborn and St Pancras, a seat held by Frank Dobson since 1983. In the 2005 general election, Dobson had won with 43.2% of the vote, as the Conservative candidate came in third with 18.9% of the vote. In May 2009 Lee gave up his business commitments to concentrate full-time on politics.
He was described by The Sunday Times as "David Cameron's secret weapon" He also has the backing of senior Conservatives, including Lord Strathclyde, Nicholas Soames, John Maples, and Bernard Jenkin.
References
1. ^ Sunday Telegraph, 13 August 2009 2. ^ Camden Gazette, 12 August 2009