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Enrico Stennett was born in 1926 in a village in Jamaica named Maroon Town. Enrico arrived in the UK in 1947, at the age of 19, where within months he became a member of the League of Coloured People an organisation led by Doctor Harold Moody, he also became a member of the Coloured Workers Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, led by the late Mr Robert Victor Mathews.

In 1950, with his British wife Margaret, he founded the Cosmopolitan Social Society, along with his Jewish friend Stanley Freeman. This organisation intended to cater for the social well-being of the Caribbean people who were arriving into the country at the time, and also various Caribbean ex-Army and ex-RAF personnel, who had not returned home as most did at the end of the war and were living in London.

This organisation became defunct in 1952, when Enrico, along with Mr John Longmore from Sierra Leone and Mr Mubutto from Nigeria founded the African League. As Chairman of the African League Enrico worked with all the African leaders in their struggle for freedom in their respective countries.

Enrico founded the first black newspaper in Britain - a monthly called the African Voice, and another called the Somali Voice. He was also chairman of the Somali Movement in the East End of London.

In 1949 with his wife Margaret, he was the creator of the present-day symbol used by the Commission for Racial Equality, the black hand shaking the white hand, symbolising the unity of the black worker and the white worker. He was the co-founder of the Afro-Asian congress and the Afro-West Indian Union. A member of the Labour Party, Enrico was a member of the Amalgamated Society of Woodcutting Machinists and a member of the National Union of Furniture Trade Operatives. He was a Hyde Park speaker from 1948 until 1960, and was an active member of CARD - the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination, the forerunner of the Commission for Racial Equality. Enrico was also instrumental in working with Marcus Lipton, Tom Dryberg, Fenner Brockway and other Labour MPs in the creation of the Movement for Colonial Freedom.

Specialising in the fields of Education, Law and the Criminal Justice System, Enrico fought bitterly against injustices perpetrated on young people who were coming into the country at that time. He worked with many Community Relations Councils before retiring from paid employment in 1988.

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