Olive Morris

“Today increasingly the British working class is faced with a choice either to defend the ‘national interest’ or throw their lot in with the oppressed people of the Third World. The most immediate way in which this can be done is for them to support the struggle of the Third World people in this country,”

Olive Elaine Morris (1952 – 1979) was a Jamaican-born community leader, writer and British feminist, black rights, and squatter’s rights activist in the 1970s. She was a key organiser in the Black Women's Movement in the UK, co-founding the Brixton Black Women's Group, the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent in London and the Black Women’s Mutual Aid and Manchester Black Women’s Co-operative in Manchester.

Olive was born in Jamaica but came to the UK with her parents as part of the Windrush Generation when she was 9. She grew up in South London, leaving school without any qualifications.

In the early 1970s Morris became a member of the youth section of the British Black Panther Movement (later the Black Workers movement).  In 1974, she co-founded the Brixton Black Women’s group, which rallied to critically explore women’s experiences within the Black Panther Party. Their overall objective was to raise awareness so the women could share their daily realities and place these within a political framework.  The group eventually split into several more specific groups focussed on raising awareness of the struggles of the black community.

Morris’ other political endeavours included squatting in buildings in order to establish self-help community spaces. Most famously, she squatted at 121 Railton Road, Brixton, in 1973 with her friend Liz Obi. Their squat became a hub of political activism and hosted black community groups. It also became the site of one of the first black community bookshops, which Morris helped establish. The site subsequently became an anarchist project known as the 121 Centre until it was finally evicted in 1999.

Not a single problem associated with racialism, unemployment, police violence and homelessness can be settled by ‘rocking’ against the fascists, the police or the army,” she said.

“The fight against racism and fascism is completely bound up with the fight to overthrow capitalism, the system that breeds both.”

Olive was a socialist who believed that all of society’s problems – including racism and fascism – could be traced back to capitalism. She held strong Marxist views and much of her campaigning focussed on advocating a communist way of life which would help to ease the issues so campaigned against.

On 15 November 1969, a Nigerian diplomat Clement Gomwalk was attacked by police officers in Brixton – refusing to believe he was a diplomatic. A crowd gathered to watch as the police interrogated and assaulted Gomwalk. Journalists wrote that the then 17-year-old Olive Morris "broke through the crowd to the scuffle" and "tried to physically stop the police from beating the Nigerian", earning herself blows from the police in return. However, Morris's account was that she did not arrive till after the diplomat had been taken away by the police.

The situation escalated when the crowd confronted the police in defence of Gomwalk. Morris was dressed in masculine clothes and had short hair, and was forced to strip by officers to prove she was a girl. Morris further described her treatment in custody where she was thretaned with rape: "They all made me take off my jumper and my bra in front of them to show I was a girl. A male cop holding a billy club said, ‘Now prove you're a real woman.’" Referencing his baton, he stated: "Look it's the right colour and the right size for you. Black Cunt!"

Morris’s injuries left her unrecognisable even to her family. She was fined £10 and given a suspended sentence, charged with assault on police, threatening behaviour, and possession of a dangerous weapon.

The incident spurred Morris on to fight against police brutality and racism, campaigning against stop and search (SUS) laws which disproportionately targeted Black people and writing and campaigning against institutionalised racism within the forces.

 

“Even then she had that streak in her…a fearlessness about challenging injustice at whatever level. …she was so obviously a fighter. I saw her once confronting a policeman…She went at him like a whirlwind and cussed him to heaven. And this policeman looked really taken aback, he didn’t know how to deal with someone who had no fear of him. He was meant to represent the big arm of the law. But because she was angry and she knew he was in the wrong, she didn’t hesitate.’ – a friend of Olive’s.

 

Olive criticised the anti-racist’s strategy of focusing on fighting fascism, while largely ignoring the impact of what might be called institutionalised racism on the lives of Black people: the role of the police, educational system, etc.

She travelled extensively in Europe, Africa, and Asia and was an ardent anti-colonialist. From 1975-1978, Morris studied social sciences at Manchester University during which time she co-founded the Manchester Black Women's Co-operative and the Black Women's Mutual Aid Group. She also established a supplementary school alongside local black parents campaigning for better education for their children. Back in London, she was a founding member of the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent.  

In 1978 she became ill during a trip to Spain and was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma on return to the UK. Morris became ill during a trip to Spain in 1978. Tragically, she died in July 1979, aged just 27. Today, would have been her 68^th birthday (as commemorated by today’s google doodle).

The image of a 17-year-old black girl standing up against a gang of armed officers beating up a defenceless black man is so powerful and all too resonant in wake of recent events in the States. Shamefully, I had never heard of Olive until her saw google doodle today, but I think it’s so important to share stories like hers to show that institutionalised racism and police brutality is NOT just America’s problem. Her work on social housing also seems pertinent in the wake of Grenfell Tower. She demonstrated an acute awareness of the way that capitalist powers manipulate the working classes into blaming immigrants for their problems instead of the rich white men who get rich from their poverty. The sexual assault she suffered at the hands of the officers speaks of the unique double prejudice of racism and sexism that black women have to face. I can’t help but wonder what other amazing things Olive could have gone onto achieve had her life not been so tragically cut short.