When she was 12, Mandu Reid spent 18 months at a school in Devon, where she was the only black student. She was spat at, called a “black bitch” and “ostracised and ridiculed”.
“It was horrendous,” said the 39-year-old leader of the Women’s Equality Party (WEP), who in February announced she was running to be the mayor of London. But these school days gave her “more clarity on how it is wonderful to have big ideas, but it’s actually important to understand that you are going to have to fight for them, and you aren’t always going to have a receptive audience”.
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