Phil Frampton
Phillip Roy "Phil" Frampton is a British author, researcher and campaigner for the rights of young people in foster care and adults that have passed through the care system.
Background
Frampton himself was born in care in 1953, and left mainly in orphanages until he was old enough to leave care at 18. His father was a Nigerian engineer studying at the college, which is now known as Aston University. His mother was an English probationary music teacher living in Erdington, Birmingham. According to reports, in 1952, Frampton’s father was ordered out of the country by the government for having an affair with the woman who would become Frampton’s mother. At the same time Frampton’s mother discovered she was pregnant, and fled Birmingham to hide the pregnancy. He was consequently born in a ‘Magdalene laundry’ in St Agnes, Cornwall, and abandoned to the care system. His mother returned to her teaching post in Birmingham.
Frampton never knew his mother or father, and never left care. He was shifted from Cornwall to Devon, then onto Shrewsbury in Shropshire, then to Bolton, north of Manchester. After being moved through five children’s homes and two brief foster placements, at 16, he was to be found living in a bedsit in Southport, Lancashire. He was lodged in an area now known as Death Row, for the number of murders that take place in the street. He was still at school and studying for his Cambridge entrance exam.
He never went to Cambridge, but instead went to the University of Bristol, where he began to be involved in campaigning for social change. In the city, Frampton set up Bristol Gypsy Support Group. The group subsequently won the Travellers’ their first official site in the city. At the university he became NUS Secretary, and Chair of the Socialist Society before joining the Labour Party and becoming a Militant supporter. In 1976, he became National Chair of the People’s National Party of Jamaica’s UK Youth Branch (76-79). Between 1977 and 1978, he represented the Labour Party Young Socialists on trips to Ireland and Jamaica, and at international congresses in Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Havanna. In 1978, now as a full-time worker for the Militant Tendency, he was elected as the first, black National Chair of the Labour Party’s youth organisation.
In 1981, Frampton was sent from London by Militant to run its Manchester organisation. The organisation grew and saw its high point in the huge 1990 non payment levels for the Poll Tax, an achievement he recorded, co-authoring Uncollectable: Story of the Poll Tax Revolt. By then, Frampton was on Militant’s Central Committee, and made trips to Western Europe, Sri Lanka and Australia to assist its international work.
In the early 1990s, Frampton, still working for the Militant, became one of the founder members of Panther (UK), which had a meteoric rise in London, organising the country’s biggest ever black political meeting as 3,000 thronged to hear the co-founder of the America’s Black Panthers, Bobby Seale. Frampton’s Manchester organisation also brought 300 of Moss Side’s gangland youth together to hear speakers from Los Angeles notorious gangs, the Bloods and the Cripps, argue for an end to gangland war.
Frampton left the Militant but continued his involvement in fighting for social change. Between 1993 and 1994 he was chair of Manchester Parents of Black Children, and, in 1993, organised Manchester’s Malcolm X Day. In 1994, he was a guest speaker at the Pakistan Trades Union Congress.
Care Matters
It was only in 1999 that Frampton was able to secure the files which for the first time revealed the circumstances of his birth and abandonment in care. The files and his childhood recollections formed the basis for some searing articles on care and the organisation that brought him up, Barnardo’s. He published such comments as:
“FULL NAME OF CANDIDATE; FRAMPTON, PHILLIP ROY
GENERAL HEALTH: GOOD
EVER HAD FITS, OR IS SUBJECT TO FITS: NO
HAD MEASLES: NO
SCARLET FEVER: NO
WHOOPING COUGH: NO
DIPTHERIA: NO
IMMUNISED: NO
CHICKEN POX: NO
MUMPS: NO
ANY OTHER PHYSICAL DEFECTS OR MALADIES: HALF – CASTE."
Barnardo’s Report, 28th July, 1953
The articles led to major improvements in Barnardo’s treatment of those formerly in its care. They also took Frampton back to his childhood friends from whom he heard terrible tales of the abuse they had suffered as children at the hands of Barnardo’s staff.
Aghast at this and the continuing misery for thousands in the care system and thousands of survivors of the system, in 2000, Frampton set up the Care Leavers Association. He became its first National Chair (2000-2003), and the organisation set AbOUT campaigning against the discrimination, stigmatisation and continuing injustices facing all those who have been or are in the care system across the world. The founding of the Care Leavers Association in Britain also inspired the founding of its sister organisation in Australia, Care Leavers Australia Network, the latter forcing a federal government apology for all those abused in care in the country.
In 2001, Frampton was a member of the Cabinet Office Advisory Group on the Education of Young People in Care. In 2002, he was a Parliamentary Select Committee Witness regarding Police Investigations of Abuse of Children in Care. Between 2002 and 2003, he wrote as a weekly guest contributor for Community Care Magazine on care and other social issues.
Frampton’s care files importantly formed the basis for his childhood detective story-cum-memoir published in 2004, The Golly in the Cupboard. This frank account of his upbringing in the care system is at the same time, while sometimes amusing and often heart-rending, a serious critique of care and considered to be a must-read by all those involved in the care system. In 2005 Frampton won a RIMA award for the BBC radio programme Golly in the Cupboard, which he presented, dealing with his story.
He has written for The Independent, Manchester Evening News, The Guardian, Big Issue and a range of other newspapers and journals, around the world. He is author of three travel books: Hidden Kerala: the Travel Guide, Emilia Romagna: Italy’s Hidden Gem and Hidden Greenwich: the Travel Guide, and co-author of three published research papers, including Blacks & Financial Products in the UK and Fresh Players, New Tactics.
An accomplished public speaker with over 30 years’ experience, Frampton has addressed a wide variety of audiences around the world, including prisoners, children in care, clandestine political meetings, trade unionists, political activists, travel & tour operators, social workers, teachers, law enforcement officers, students, pupils, old age pensioners, ethnic minority associations and cuisinary enthusiasts.