BLACK voters’ rights campaigner Simon Woolley brought trade unionists to their feet yesterday as he recounted how waves of racist backlash to his electoral registration campaign only made it stronger.

Operation Black Vote (OBV) promotes political education, participation and representation in black and ethnic minority communities.

Speaking to the TUC black workers’ conference on its last day, director Mr Woolley said that OBV’s new voter registration campaign aimed to “grab our society by the jugular by reverting the monstrosity that was the minstrels.”

It launched last week with posters featuring actor David Harewood and other black celebrities with their faces painted white.

“It was a metaphor that we don’t register, we don’t vote — our dynamism is not in these institutions, our energy, our humility is not there if we are not there, if we are not registering and participating in democracy,” added Mr Woolley.

But not all reactions to the campaign were positive, with Mr Woolley recounting how campaigners received a “deluge of race hatred and abuse.”

Homeland star Mr Harewood was called “all the names under god’s sun. The n-word, they called him a dog, they called him a racist,” said Mr Woolley.

“He wasn’t used to it. I said: ‘Be strong David, you’re in the black struggle now, brother.’ He said: ‘I’m with you Simon, I’m with you’.”

But campaigners said they would not be discouraged by the negative reaction from “Daily Mail readership with their knickers in a twist.”

Mr Woolley declared: “We’ll return that hatred, not with hatred but with love, that’s what we do.”