Gracie Mae Bradley is a human rights campaigner and sometime writer. She is currently Policy and Campaigns Manager at the human rights NGO Liberty, where she works to defend civil liberties across policing, immigration, counter-terror and surveillance.
She previously spent several years working with survivors of torture and organised violence to navigate the UK’s immigration system, and campaigns with Against Borders for Children against government use of pupil data for border control purposes.
She holds degrees from Trinity College, Oxford and the LSE. Her most recent writing includes a chapter in 'After Grenfell: Violence, Resistance and Response', edited by Nadine El-Enany, Daniel Bulley, and Jenny Edkins.
1) Which place, or city or country do you most feel at home in?
Anywhere I can wild swim - pond, lake, sea, river - if it isn't indoors, I will be at home in it.
2) What are your proudest achievements?
My work with fellow troublemakers in the Against Borders for Children campaign to orchestrate a 200 000-person-strong boycott of the school census to stop schools being turned into an outpost of the hostile environment.
3) What inspires you?
People who have a political vision and moral courage that is untempered by the received wisdom of the present. People who, despite all of oppressive and dehumanising structures lined up against them, insist on a flourishing life for themselves and their loved ones.
4) What has been biggest obstacle in your career?
People who insist that "we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."
5) Who has been the biggest influence on your career to date?
A slightly weird mix of philosophers and family: Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Albert Camus, my aunties, my mum, and my grandma. And Helen Bamber.
6) What is the best aspect about your current role?
Being able to work with so many amazing grassroots groups who are organising for justice.
7) And the worst?
Seeing the government and public bodies try to get away with authoritarian, discriminatory practices - whether that's ramping up suspicionless stop and search, rolling out facial recognition technology, or criminalising people for being homeless.
8) What are your long term goals?
Living a life that is politically honest, which to me means acting in solidarity with people who are oppressed towards more freedom for all of us.
9) If you were Prime Minister, what one aspect would you change?
For many reasons, but namely my mistrust of the state, I could never be Prime Minister.
10) If you were marooned on a desert island, which historical figure would you like to spend your time with and why.
Some of my ancestors. My grandparents were from Leicestershire, Philadelphia, Antigua and Ghana, but I didn't get the chance to meet them all.
I recently read Zora Neale Hurston's 'Barracoon', and then spent a long time trying to imagine what our lives were like before slavery, before colonialism, and before capitalism.
