Lionel Morrison obituary | Media

After moving to London from South Africa, the journalist Lionel Morrison, who has died aged 81, became the Commission for Racial Equalitys head of communications. He also helped start some of Britains pioneering black newspapers, including West Indian World, and was the first black president of the National Union of Journalists. Passionate about housing, he

Media This article is more than 7 years oldObituary

Lionel Morrison obituary

This article is more than 7 years oldAnti-apartheid activist in South Africa who moved to Britain in the 60s and went on to become the first black president of the National Union of Journalists

After moving to London from South Africa, the journalist Lionel Morrison, who has died aged 81, became the Commission for Racial Equality’s head of communications. He also helped start some of Britain’s pioneering black newspapers, including West Indian World, and was the first black president of the National Union of Journalists. Passionate about housing, he was a former chairman of the Notting Hill Housing Trust.

The first time he was arrested in South Africa for anti-apartheid activities, in 1954, he was a 19-year-old Witwatersrand University student. Soon afterwards he served four months in jail for painting slogans on walls in Cape Town. Two years later Lionel was the youngest of the 155 accused, including Nelson Mandela, in the 1956 treason trial, and served another five months awaiting trial.

Lionel was acquitted and resumed both his journalistic career and his political activism, working for publications including the Golden City Post, South Africa’s first black weekly, and Drum, then noted for its reportage of township life under apartheid. His first job was writing an agony aunt column, helped by advice from his mother and sister.

Born in Johannesburg, to Elizabeth (nee Smith), a garment worker, and Peter Morrison, a teacher and social worker, Lionel went to school in Coronationville and then attended Catholic schools in KwaZulu-Natal before going to university.

He was one of the founders in the late 1950s of the non-racial South African National Union of Journalists – the existing journalists’ union, the South African Society of Journalists, was then only for white people.

In 1960 he spent another five months in prison during the state of emergency declared after the Sharpeville massacre. Following his release he heard that he was likely to be rearrested and so came to Britain. Once he had obtained a British passport he travelled widely, and was briefly President Kwame Nkrumah’s press officer in Ghana, lived in China, and helped to found the Afro-Asian Journalists Association before eventually settling in Britain.

One product of his travels was an informed interest in world, and especially Chinese, cookery, and his friends knew him as an accomplished and versatile chef. Dinner with Lionel and his wife, Liz (nee Glover), whom he married in 1970, was always a treat.

Black journalists were a rarity in London at that time, and Lionel struggled to find work, making many unsuccessful applications despite his solid professional record. Ken Morgan, then secretary of the NUJ central London branch and later the union’s general secretary, made it his business to ensure that work was found, and in 1970 Bob Edwards, editor of the Sunday People, was the first Fleet Street editor to commission work from Lionel.

Elected to the NUJ’s national executive in 1971, Lionel became president in 1987 – the first black president in NUJ history. He used his presidential year to establish the black members council. He had also helped to establish the George Viner Memorial Fund in 1986, which gives financial help to black journalism students.

Journalism courses at further education colleges had always interested Lionel because they attracted the least affluent students, who were also often members of ethnic minority communities, and he helped to set up several in London.

In the late 70s he became the CRE’s head of communications, a job he did with distinction into the 90s.

Housing was another of Lionel’s enduring concerns. The housing crisis in London during the 60s and 70s was made worse by the activities of rogue landlords. From 1970 Lionel had helped and advised the Notting Hill Housing Trust, the charity working to provide affordable housing for Londoners, and joined its board in 1976, showing a determination to involve tenants in decision-making. He became chairman in 1994, and supported sheltered housing for the elderly, housing with special care for those with disabilities, and short-stay housing for the homeless. He remained on the board well into his retirement, and in 1999 was appointed OBE for his work in this field.

Lionel was a man of deep convictions, which he wore lightly, being a humorous companion with a store of entertaining anecdotes, even about the darkest parts of his life. Mandela, on his visits to London, made time to meet Lionel, however busy his schedule.

Ten years ago Lionel had a heart operation and was given a less than evens chance of surviving, so, rather typically, he held a party, telling his friends cheerfully that we were invited because we might not see him again.

He is survived by Liz, their two sons, Sipho and Dumisa, their grandson and granddaughter.

Lionel Edmond Morrison, journalist and political activist, born 13 October 1935; died 31 October 2016

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