It has to change: an interview with Martha Osamor

Abstract

Martha Osamor, now 75, is one of the many unsung heroes of Britain’s black community, and has spent almost all her adult life fighting to better the position of people in Tottenham and beyond. She came to Britain in 1963, and has worked in the community, through the unions, in the women’s movement, in the local council and the Labour Party (which, controversially, deselected her from standing for a safe seat in 1989). Undeterred, Martha is still fighting, most recently over the treatment of the family of Mark Duggan, shot dead by police on the street. We met her in a shop-front rented by the African Women’s Welfare Association above Edmonton Green covered market, where she still helps to provide information and advice, to talk over her life and political times.