Paul Yaw Boateng (born 14 June 1951) is a British Labour Party politician. He became the UK's first black Cabinet minister in May 2002 when he was appointed as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Brent South from 1987 to 2005, and was the British High Commissioner to South Africa from 2005 to April 2009.
Boateng was born in Hackney, London of mixed Ghanaian and Scottish heritage. He lived in Ghana, where his fath...
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Paul Yaw Boateng (born 14 June 1951) is a British Labour Party politician. He became the UK's first black Cabinet minister in May 2002 when he was appointed as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Brent South from 1987 to 2005, and was the British High Commissioner to South Africa from 2005 to April 2009.
Boateng was born in Hackney, London of mixed Ghanaian and Scottish heritage. He lived in Ghana, where his father, Kwaku Boateng, was a cabinet minister under Kwame Nkrumah, until the 1966 coup that ousted Nkrumah. In Ghana, he attended the prestigious Accra Academy High School (one of the best secondary schools in Ghana) before returning to the UK with his family. They settled in Hemel Hempstead where he attended Apsley Grammar School. After graduating from the University of Bristol, he became a civil rights lawyer, originally as a solicitor, though he later retrained as a barrister. He gained some notoriety through this work in Lambeth in the late...
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