SCOTLAND could be set to elect its first-ever African Caribbean MSP at next May’s elections.

The SNP councillor Graham Campbell has thrown his hat in the ring for the Edinburgh Western seat and some say his high media profile could be just what’s needed to unseat the LibDems’ Alex Cole-Hamilton.

“I like a challenge,” laughed the founder of Africans for an Independent Scotland (AFIS) when we caught up with him recently. “I could’ve applied for a seat we currently hold but if we’re going to win big enough to guarantee an independence referendum, we need to win seats like this,” he said.

The seat is currently held by the LibDems at both Holyrood and Westminster MP Christine Jardine increasing her majority slightly at the 2019 General Election.

But Campbell believes this election, above all, will concentrate voters’ minds on the opportunity to get away from the chaos of the last few years.

“I think more and more people are seeing that getting Scotland out of the UK is now an urgent matter.,” he said. “Breaking “the Vow” started the transition for many but Brexit and the complete dismissal of Scotland’s wishes to stay in the EU really concentrated minds.”

He added: “It’s been one thing after another since then and the Tory Government under Boris Johnston has shown the complete contempt that they hold this country in.”

Campbell was appointed by Shona Robison MSP to the SNP’s Social Justice and Fairness Commission where he has been central to key recommendations on a National Care Service.

He is also the party’s first-ever national convener for black, Asian and minority ethnic members. It’s hard to narrow down a description but he describes himself as a socialist, trade unionist, anti-racist, Rastafarian, Scots-Jamaican poet, musician and politician who is trying to “just subtly blend in”. Although he says the last bit with more than a hint of irony, you know he’d rather talk about policy and people than his own emerging “celebrity”.

That said he doesn’t disagree when it’s put to him that the fact that he’s so regularly on TV and radio these days can’t harm his chances. But he’s soon back to talking about policy when he explains that “lockdown was slowdown for so many but because of the Black Lives Matter campaign really taking off in Scotland since George Floyd was murdered, I was suddenly on the go doing radio and TV from dawn to dusk”.

The veteran anti-racism campaigner says it hasn’t slowed down much in subsequent months and he’s happy with that. “I feel it’s my mission to tackle injustice, and racism is one of the greatest and longest-running injustices of all. Scotland’s consciousness has shifted in recent years from a sort of collective denial to a real sense that we all have to work together to tackle it and tackle it now.”

Campbell is brimming with policy ideas, from e-powered aero-engines as an essential part of the green jobs revolution to supporting the formal recognition of unions by private and social landlords to shift the balance of power towards tenants.

He is a member of Living Rent and one of the founders of Scot E3, the trade union environment campaign on energy, environment and employment.

He talks passionately about what “building back better” actually means in terms of revitalising town centres and opening up closed office and retail space to new small businesses and pop-up enterprises in less well-off parts of Edinburgh Western. As an environmentalist he’s naturally passionate about walking, cycling, free public transport to train stations and the further development of publicly owned transport links across Scotland.

But it’s his work on recognising the historical links between Scotland and the Caribbean slave trade that first brought him into the public eye. He had long been a leading voice in the campaign (“I just think honesty and owning up to the truth is healthier for everyone and luckily thousands of Scots agree”) when he was approached by renowned actor, director and documentary maker David Hayman.

The result of that phone call was an acclaimed two-part documentary (Slavery: Scotland’s Hidden Shame) in which Hayman and Campbell spent a week in Jamaica in a fascinating exploration of the impact Jamaica had on Scotland and vice versa.

Since then Campbell (pictured) has been one of the “go-to” voices on race. His partner, the SNP MP Anne McLaughlin says the couple “cannot go anywhere in Scotland without Graham being stopped in the street by people who have seen him on TV”. She talks about how “people who have never met him are very familiar with him and that’s a great thing for a politician” and she describes how she particularly loves it when “elderly, white working-class men and women in Springburn” (where he is currently an SNP councillor) “shout across the road ‘Graham, son, have you got a minute?’”. The Glasgow North East MP confirms, he “always has”.

The Glasgow councillor is respectful of that fact that he will be up against more local candidates. But he makes the point that he is “Jamaican, so if I’m not local enough to stand in Edinburgh, I’m not local enough to stand in Scotland”, something he says he has never heard anybody in the SNP argue.

“Plus,” he says, “look at what I stand for, look at my track record which is all about rolling my sleeves up and fighting for justice relentlessly. It’s what I do wherever I go.”