On Loss and Life in Brixton’s Black British Legacies

‘I had set up an opposition between mourning and celebration. But actually they’re completely part of the same thing.’
– Mary Stevens¹

I’m not sure if there’s a word that perfectly summarises the connection between sadness and happiness, loss and life, but I’ve been reaching for it. It’s something I’ve been continuously struck by when exploring the histories of Olive Morris and the Brixton Black Women’s Group (BBWG), who collectively fought for the liberation of marginalised communities in Brixton in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

There’s a moment in which we connect with figures of the past, only to be struck by a grief that they are no longer around, that we didn’t know them sooner, that we have been robbed of a trove of representation. A grief that is perhaps only amplified when considering the social oppression and hardship under which their work emerges. A grief that is continued in our present attempts to make sense of the broader social, political and literal grief imposed upon marginalised and ‘othered’ bodies. It’s a dizzying spiral that invites political inertia. It feels as though society inevitably attempts to suture Blackness to suffering and loss in a way that often doesn’t align with embodied experiences of Blackness. Because as much as hardship has existed, there’s been a consistent, steady inversion of this narrative, throughout legacies of Black history.

"Life almost required a level of political activism from Brixton’s inhabitants for survival"

Across the ‘70s and into the '80s, Brixton became home to a new generation of Black Britons, working class, queer and marginalised communities. They existed within an environment of state-sanctioned neglect, underfunding, over-policing and racial tension, resulting in their stifling and mistreatment. As such, life almost required a level of political activism from Brixton’s inhabitants for survival.

By the ‘70s, Lambeth was ‘one of the most heavily squatted boroughs in the city’² and for many of those active, squatting was undertaken not ‘so much as a revolutionary act, but more as a need’.³ Organisations such as the British Black Panthers and the BBWG congregated in Brixton, and it became an epicentre of political activism and resistance. On Railton Road alone, squatted properties provided the headquarters for the Panthers and meeting space for the BBWG, amongst other notable presences. Nearly a decade later, with the support of the Brixton Housing Co-operative, Rotimi Fani-Kayode set up his home and photography studio on Railton Road. There was a temporal energy of action, motion and change - where space was claimed in an environment that attempted to deny your right to exist.

According to Stella Dadzie, a BBWG member whose oral history can be found at Black Cultural Archives, racism was shaping their lives.² Yet, in many ways, racism did not define them. Political action and collective accountability were woven into their day-to-day existence. For members of the BBWG, campaigning was as simple as witnessing a problem, and starting a group to address it; intervening in the lives of Black women and their intersecting communities, responding to police brutality, housing rights and discrimination in the education system.

This radical political action often took place in homes, dining rooms and via catch-up calls over landline phones - unaware of the enduring social impact it would leave behind. There was a connection between the personal and political, because their persons were highly politicised. And it makes sense to me that on the fringes of traditional society, where your existence is positioned as a challenge to conventional British structures, you inhabit life in a way that creates inherent potential for creativity, action, adaptability and change.

In legacies of Black history, political hardship and loss has been in continuous tandem with a tremendous amount of community action and life - which makes me consider the connection between the two dynamics. Much of the BBWG’s work is recounted through limited archival information, oral histories, and fragmented memories that carry the burden of years of erasure and social ignorance to their stories. Their legacy is frequently told through the narrative of Olive Morris, a founding member of the group who passed away on 12 July 1979 at just 27 years old, after a short battle with cancer. As such, loss and grief have appeared as present parts of Morris' narrative as well as the wider BBWG narrative; it permeates archival material, it feeds the urgency to remember, to make significant.

Yet the oral histories that make up the Olive Morris Collection at Lambeth Archives are vibrant and personal, they form a political legacy told through an intimate narrative of collective mourning. Within these embodiments of Blackness, loss is not just political, but a highly personal endeavour. And perhaps it’s an acknowledgement of this that allows us to claim agency over the hardships we face. The interpersonal grief found in both Olive’s and the BBWG’s history is used as a material that is formative, that is textural, that glues their stories together, that is continually expressed through solidarity and collective recognition.