Brixton blue plaque for Olive Morris

The iconic Brixton activist Olive Morris was today (30 October) honoured with an official English Heritage blue plaque on Railton Road – scene of many of her renowned exploits.

The anti-racist, feminist and housing rights campaigner is celebrated at the site of the “longest-running squat in Britain”.

Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Lisa Nandy said: “In her short life, Olive Morris achieved so much. She was a fearless campaigner fighting racism and injustice with unwavering determination wherever she saw it to improve the lives of those facing prejudice and homelessness within her community.

“I applaud English Heritage for engaging with local youth and community groups to unveil this blue plaque, so the people who feel the impact of Olive’s legacy have the opportunity to celebrate her public contribution.”

Scenes from the unveiling

English Heritage said Olive Morris dedicated her short life (1952–1979) “to speaking out on behalf of oppressed and exploited people. She died tragically young at the age of 27.

The charity’s London blue plaque was unveiled at 121 Railton Road where Olive Morris hosted Black women’s study groups and lived as a squatter in the 1970s.

As the plaque was unveiled today, an accompanying programme of activity was organised by the English Heritage youth engagement team in collaboration with three Lambeth-based community and youth organisations: South Central Youth, The Advocacy Academy and The Black Curriculum.

“Olive Morris was a remarkable person,” said English Heritage chief executive Nick Merriman. “There are more than 1,000 blue plaques across the capital, but this plaque is a special one, celebrating the life of a young, Black woman who defended the oppressed and the exploited, often in the face of brutality and racism.

“Our plaque remembers an inspiring figure from the past and her fight against injustice not only in Brixton but across London, in Britain and beyond.”

English Heritage youth participation officer Chania Fox said: “We’ve really enjoyed working with young people from Lambeth to create an unveiling event for Olive Morris which is as community-focussed as possible.

“This event is a culmination of several months’ work and it’s been a privilege to support the participants as they’ve explored the life of Olive, the community that supported her, and the lasting impact her activism has had.”

Jamaican-born Morris was a significant figure in the Brixton-based British Black Panther movement, going on to co-found the Brixton Black Women’s Group and the Organization of Women of African and Asian Descent in 1978.

In 1972, she was prosecuted alongside Darcus Howe (whose own blue plaque is at 167 Railton Road) and Abdul Macintosh after a protest outside the Old Bailey.

They demanded and won the right to a fair representation of Black people on the jury, and “the Old Bailey three” were acquitted.

After graduating in social science from Manchester University, Morris worked in Brixton Community Law Centre’s juvenile department, campaigning against the “sus” laws, under which the police could arrest anyone they said they suspected might be about to commit a crime.

Her campaigning also included opposition to the Vietnam war and the support of workers’ movements in the Caribbean.

As a campaigner for housing rights, she helped homeless families and single people with little hope of accessing social housing to put a roof over their heads.

As it does today, Brixton faced a housing crisis in the 1970s when securing a decent home was particularly hard for Black families.

For many, occupying empty houses was a matter of necessity as well as being a political gesture, English Heritage said.

Homeless families would come to Olive Morris for assistance and she and her fellow campaigners would search for vacant properties and move them in.

It was said that Morris turned “squatting into an art form” and, with her friend and fellow activist Liz Turnbull, she squatted at 121 Railton Road during the winter of 1972–3.

The then-empty flat above a launderette was part of the early wave of Brixton squats, and was home to one of a growing number of Black political and counter-cultural organisations in the area.

Morris and Turnbull survived multiple illegal attempts by police to evict them from the property (squatting was not at that time a criminal offence) and it was almost certainly outside the door to the flat at 121 Railton Road that Morris was photographed remonstrating with the police.

A photo of her climbing up the back of a house is also said to have been taken at Railton Road during a roof-top protest and the photo appeared on the cover of the Squatting News Bulletin of 1975 and the Squatters’ Handbook of 1979.

121 Railton Road is widely seen as the first successful squatting of a private property in Lambeth and the three-storey end-of-terrace house has been described as the “longest-running squat” (circa 1972–99) in Britain.

After she and Turnbull moved out in 1973, Olive helped members of the British Black Panthers, the Black United Freedom Party and the Brixton Black Women’s Group to re-squat the property.

She reportedly told police or the council that she would stay on the roof (or jump) until they agreed to let the collective have the building.

The new squatters included some of the women’s study group and those who set up Sabarr, the radical self-help bookshop and community space.

The 121 squat was also the address of the Black Workers’ Movement and Black People Against State Harassment (BASH) and, later, that of Brixton Squatters Aid.

Currently only 4.6% of the plaques in the London blue plaques scheme are dedicated to Black and Asian figures from history.

English Heritage said it is working to encourage more public nominations for people from ethnic minority backgrounds and, since 2016, has commemorated – among others – the footballer Laurie Cunningham; Bob Marley; the eighteenth-century author and anti-slavery campaigner, Ottobah Cugoano; the neurologist James Samuel Risien Russell; and the suffragette Princess Sophia Duleep Singh.

Trinidadian writer and political activist, C L R James, also has an English Heritage blue plaque on Railton Road, at number 165.

The Nubian Jak Community Trust (with Black History Walks) also recently honoured former residents, placing plaques to Darcus Howe, at number 167, and to popular musician Winifred Atwell at 82d, on the building that replaced her Black hair and beauty salon (the first of its kind in the UK).

The Nubian Jak Community Trust (with Lambeth council) has also commemorated Olive Morris with a plaque marks at 2 Talma Road, which was the base for The Brixton Ad-Hoc Committee against Police Repression.

A memorial stone at the Lambeth Archives (the former site of Olive Morris House on Brixton Hill) was unveiled last year.

Olive Morris was born in Harewood, St Catherine’s, Jamaica, on 26 June 1952. In 1961, aged nine, Olive and her brother Basil left their grandmother for England, where they joined their parents and two younger siblings in Lavender Hill.

Olive left home aged 14 or 15 and was, for a time, in foster care.

In 1969, she joined the Youth Section and Sisters’ Collective of the Black British Panthers Movement.

Inspired by but not affiliated to the US Black Panther Party, the BBPM was founded to combat police brutality, and racial, immigrant and class discrimination.

Morris was also a founding member of the Brixton Black Women’s Group (BBWG), which evolved from a women’s study group that was comprised of women in the British Black Panther movement, including Morris, and the Black Liberation Organisation and the Race Today Collective.

In 1974 Morris began her social science degree at Manchester University. There she campaigned against the abolition of fees for overseas students and joined the Manchester Black Women’s Co-operative and the Black Women’s Mutual Aid Group.

With Stella Dadzie and others, she went on to found the Organization of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD) in 1978.

After graduating in social sciences from Manchester in 1978 she worked in Brixton Community Law Centre’s juvenile department, campaigning against the ‘sus’ laws.

Morris was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1978; her treatment was unsuccessful, and she died, aged 27, on 12 July 1979 in St Thomas’s Hospital.