books


A life of resistance


The story of Fleet Street’s first black journalist reminds us how corrosive racism is, writes Francis Beckett


SHUTTERSTOCK M


emories are short. A top Reform politician sneers at a Labour politician for having been born in Somalia,


while a Reform council leader tells broadcaster Sangita Myska that she is “English only in your dreams”. Meanwhile Nigel Farage demands people should be deported to countries such as Afghanistan and Eritrea despite the danger. Te late Lionel Morrison, who came


to Britain as a refugee from apartheid South Africa in 1960, would be appalled. He would want to remind us where this leads, and the publication of his autobiography, finished for him after his death by his wife Liz, does just that. Born in 1935, Lionel gives us, in his


marvellously evocative first chapter, the colour and texture of a South African childhood – the fun and the magic, as well as the harsh reality of having a skin colour that made you a second (or third) class citizen. At Witwatersrand University, he finds


that “extracurricular activities, like joining student societies and taking part in sports, were for whites only”. He can see what apartheid does to people. Tere is his Uncle Harry, who fought in North Africa, came home with shell shock, and has none of the benefits white soldiers received. Tere is his girlfriend Selina, who was persuaded by pharmaceutical company advertising to make her skin lighter with experimental cosmetics. Te stuff gave her cancer and she died. In 1955, he becomes a journalist,


working on Te Drum, an important platform for African writers. At the end


22 | theJournalist


of press day, to get a bottle of whisky for himself and his colleagues, he has to pretend to be a white man. Lionel joins the Picasso


Group, which chalked anti- apartheid slogans on walls. He knew where this would lead if he was caught: to the dreaded Fort prison in Johannesburg (pictured), which he describes in one stark sentence, the opening sentence of this book: “Crowded, filthy, lice-ridden cells, continual abuse, extreme violence, and beatings.” He was caught, and they threw him into the Fort. He is arrested and faces a possible


death sentence as the youngest of the famous 1957 treason trialists; the evidence against him included the fact that he possessed a book called Black Beauty – a story about a horse. Eventually, knowing that staying in


South Africa means another spell in the Fort, he escapes by stowing away on a liner and enters Britain illegally. For the next five years, he scratched a


living in Britain, got to know the NUJ well and travelled extensively in Eastern Europe, China and Africa preaching the anti-apartheid gospel He spent some time in prison in Zambia, and got to know some remarkable people, East German leader Walter Ulbricht and President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana among them. He might have settled in Indonesia but he was expelled from the country after the 1965 coup in which his fiancée was killed. He settled in Britain. All this Lionel recounts in simple, luminous matter-of-fact prose but


that is as far as he got, and Liz takes up his story. Te change of voice is immediately apparent, but


the style is still readable and accessible. Lionel became one of the leading voices identifying and confronting racism in Britain, and encountered such prejudice himself, less brutal and more subtle than the racism he was used to, but hurtful nonetheless. Few of us can say we made a


difference. Lionel did. When he came


to Britain, there were no black journalists in Fleet Street. As the Guardian’s Gary Younge writes in his introduction to the book: “Lionel cleared a lot of space. And then, the


gent that he was, he held the door open so others, like me, might walk through it.” In my time on the NUJ national


“


Lionel cleared a lot of space. And then, the gent that he was, he held the door open so others, like me, might walk through it


executive council, we shamefully underestimated Lionel Morrison. He was a man of deep convictions, but also a humorous companion with a store of entertaining anecdotes, even about the darkest parts of his life. Tis book reflects his personality as well as the dark times he knew. It’s a tremendous book – important


but, like Lionel, wearing its importance lightly; and more important now, when we are in danger of forgetting how corrosive racism can be. It deserves far more attention from the media than it has had so far.


Footprints: A Black Journalist’s Fight Against Apartheid in South Africa and in Exile by Lionel and Liz Morrison is published by Haymarket Books


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