The antinomies of Sam Morris: a life in the diaspora

Abstract

This article attempts to recover the antinomies and contradictions of the life and work of Grenada-born Samson Uriah Morris (1908−1976), an educationalist, anti-colonialist and Black political activist, whose life was dedicated to both the movement for civil rights in Britain and the broader anti-colonial and Pan-Africanist struggle. His life ranged from the Caribbean to the United Kingdom to Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana and then back to Britain where he eventually became the deputy general secretary of the Community Relations Commission and Assistant High Commissioner for Grenada. Despite his role in the anti-racist struggles of the inter-war period he was seen as a somewhat conservative figure by a new generation of Black radicals in Britain by the late 1960s. The authors chart Morris’s biography, setting it against changing political forces, and suggest that he made an important contribution to the struggle against racism and imperialism and the project of ‘intellectual decolonisation’.

Introduction: footnotes of history

The impetus to reconstruct the life and politics of Samson ‘Sam’ Uriah Morris (1908−1976), educationalist, anti-colonialist and ‘race relations’ activist, began as an investigation into a footnote in a retrospective essay on Harold A. Moody, the Jamaican medical doctor and founder of the League of Coloured Peoples (LCP), written by Roderick J. Macdonald for a 1973 edition of Race (now Race & Class). ¹ Tracing the life of Morris raises important questions about the nature of historical writing and the role of memory and memorialisation in the writing of Black communities’ histories. How did the work of someone who had risen to prominence in early post-war Black community networks and organisations such as the LCP sink to the level of a footnote? This is a particularly poignant question, for Morris himself spent much of his own later life helping ensure that other figures around him like Moody and Learie Constantine, the famous Trinidadian cricketer, remained visible within historical narratives about British civil rights and anti-racist activism. ² That Morris – like Constantine and Moody − neither squarely fits within a tradition of Black radicalism nor narratives of Black conservatism, is perhaps an explanatory factor, as is the fact that all three figures precede those of the ‘Windrush generation’.

Through recovering glimpses of Morris’s life, we also begin to build a picture of a quintessentially complex man of contradictions. On the one hand, Morris was a West Indian nationalist committed not only to racial equality and intellectual and political decolonisation, but also to an ideological form of Pan-Africanism which saw him work on the frontlines of decolonisation with Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana for a period. On the other hand, he demonstrated a willingness to work within the existing structures of British state power and its deeply problematic version of ‘integration’. These contradictions – these ‘antinomies’ to use a philosophical expression – would increasingly in later life put him at odds with the growing militant and radical Black Power movements of the 1960s and 1970s, as his political work involved promoting anti-racism within official, respectable channels through ‘buffer institutions’ such as the Community Relations Commission (CRC). It is not that these contradictions were lived by Morris alone, but rather they became particularly acute due to the post-war period of transition amid decolonisation and mass migration to Britain.

Presenting Morris’s life through fragmentary traces offers in part a methodological question about the limits of piecing together someone’s life that has existed in the footnotes and margins of mainstream history writing. As someone with no formal archive (that we know of), the tracing of Sam Morris’s life has relied heavily on the ephemeral traces that he left behind: his own writing, passing mentions, reflections on other historical figures and glimpses in footnotes. Drawing together these somewhat sporadic appearances has created an uneven political biography, which, presented here, highlights the many gaps and questions raised. However, whilst these traces are sporadic, the availability of these sources speaks to a form of ‘absent presence’ ³ in which the work of the many hands involved in social and political change is made visible, particularly once you start looking. The moments in which Morris is made visible are the moments of change and turbulence and as such are presented in the fragmentary form in which Morris’s life emerges.

Early life

Sam Morris was born in St Andrews parish, Grenada, then a part of the British West Indies, on 14 October 1908. His education included time spent in Barbados, at the prestigious Rawle Training Institute at Codrington College, an Anglican Theological College. He spent his early years working as a teacher, becoming Secretary of the Teachers’ Union of Grenada, a member of the District Board of St David’s (one of the municipal bodies of the colony) and a head teacher on the island. Some of the essential contradictions of his life were then set from this early period. The roots of his radicalism can be seen through Morris’s trade unionism in colonial Grenada, at a time when strikes and labour rebellions were sweeping the anglophone Caribbean. However, Grenada was not part of this wave of rebellions, with Richard Hart speculating that one possible reason was that ‘the popular masses had greater faith in the efficacy of political representations in Grenada than elsewhere . . . a by-product of the immense popularity and reputation of T. Albert Marryshow, Member of the Legislative Council’. ⁴ Morris’s position as a head teacher meant he was not only respected but also ‘respectable’ as well. One member of the Legislative and Executive councils of the island, C. F. P. Renwick, OBE, recalled that Morris ‘was personally interested and active in the several social questions affecting the welfare of his community (St. David’s)’ and described Morris as ‘a man of high character and integrity’. ⁵ This professional training and interest in education would later become a cornerstone of Morris’s political work and activism.

Fighting racism in Britain during the second world war

The inter-war period in Grenada was also marked by extensive outward migration, to the Americas, Cuba and particularly to Trinidad. ⁶ Following these patterns of migration and perhaps buoyed by a sense of loyalty and patriotism, Morris came to Britain in 1939 to serve the ‘mother country’ at the outbreak of the second world war. However, unlike many other volunteers from the Caribbean who enlisted in the Royal Air Force, Morris joined the army, initially based in Essex, where he rose to the rank of corporal. ⁷ However, whilst Morris (and many other volunteers) had come to fight, and die, for Britain, it was clear that his race would prevent him from moving through the ranks. Morris stated that he was prevented from receiving a commission to sergeant due to the colour of his skin, and the sergeant major’s refusal to have a Black man in the officers’ mess. ⁸ Further, coming to the ‘mother country’ as part of the war effort – whether for the purposes of a form of anti-fascism or duty and loyalty to the British Empire (or more likely a mixture of both) − was not enough to protect Morris from the experiences of racism, made worse by the presence of white American troops in Britain. Yet it is also clear that Morris, despite his Christian training and faith, was not one to ‘turn the other cheek’ in the face of it.

It is at this moment of national emergency, and through Morris’s latter reflections, that he becomes visible again, and, as with many others, his visibility at this moment is rendered through racial violence. On 23 March 1942, Corporal Samson Morris of 506 Company, Pioneer Corps, Jellalabad Barracks, Tidworth Camp, Salisbury (in Wiltshire) was accosted by a group of US marines outside a Lyon’s Corner House in Marble Arch in London while he was queuing to get in. According to the police report of the incident, the first marine, Eikel James Roscoe, approached Morris and said, ‘Where are you going . . . You’re not going in there to eat with us.’ Morris responded, ‘I am a British subject from the West Indies and you are not in America where you lynch us people.’ Another marine, Gordon Brooks Hooten, then asked Morris to produce his papers, a request Morris refused. At this point Hooten ‘became abusive and aggressive and said “I will stick a knife in your guts”’. More marines entered the fray until there were six marines abusing Morris, and Hooten grabbed Morris by the collar and made to hit him ‘but was stopped by some men in the queue’. ⁹

Linda Hervieux notes,

A policeman intervened before the situation got out of hand . . . when a police report of the Morris incident was circulated in the top levels of Churchill’s government, there was considerable hand-wringing over what to do . . . reluctant to upset their much needed allies, the Foreign Office opted to present the report to the U.S. chargé d’affaires ‘with an appropriate hint’. That kind of toothless reaction would characterise the government’s response to the many racially charged incidents that were to come. Ordinary people would prove far more dynamic in defending the rights of men of color. ¹⁰

Discussing his wartime experiences for a BBC television series Black Man in Britain, first broadcast in 1974, it is not surprising that Morris appears to have found his time during the second world war mixed, expressing that he experienced both kindness from the local population and racism from his superiors. Morris served in the army for just over two years before being invalided out in 1942.

Building community

However, Morris’s commitment to supporting the wider Black community in Britain becomes clear through his later reflections, mediated through his respectable status (which will be discussed later). According to Morris, following his departure from the army, he took up work as liaison officer to Learie Constantine, who, from October 1941, was a welfare officer for the Ministry of Labour, which had its headquarters in Liverpool. ¹¹ As Morris recalled,

The Colonial Office had set up a special war-time department to deal with the problems of the comparatively few coloured people who were in, or came to Britain at that time. Constantine became a welfare officer in Liverpool . . . Constantine’s main job during the war was to act as a go-between between the local British people and the West Indians and West Africans. He also did a tremendous amount of lecturing, chiefly to the troops. The West Indians worked in the war factories of the north-west and the West Africans were mostly merchant seamen, as were many West Indians as well. I myself was Mr. Constantine’s assistant during that period. ¹²

During this time, Morris also gave lectures for the Ministry of Information and for the Army Educational Committee, and he appeared in several BBC programmes including Calling the West Indies and Caribbean Voices. ¹³ But the main work of Constantine and Morris was on behalf of West Indian factory workers, helping them to adjust to Britain and the ‘colour bar’ of institutional racism that faced them despite their critical role for the war effort. Constantine deployed his characteristic kind nature to spread goodwill in his role acting as an intermediary working for a compromise and peaceful negotiations between the British state and the West Indian workers in the munitions factories, who were often isolated and lacked support from the official trade union movement in Britain. Sometimes this was not enough to pacify either reactionary and racist British officials and managers, on the one hand, or defiantly militant Black workers, on the other. ¹⁴ Morris recalled that Constantine

had already been living in Britain for more than twelve years and was used to certain local customs and ways of doing things. These were often less direct than those practised by the newcomers to Britain. Thus, while the majority of those of his fellow West Indians paid him the greatest respect as an outstanding elder brother figure, some were sceptical, albeit wrongly I know, of his genuineness and dubbed him a ‘Black Englishman’. ¹⁵

Morris, with his experience of trade unionism in Grenada, would sometimes have to ‘step in to try and restore confidence’ among the West Indian workers after it was perceived that Constantine had sided with management over a particular issue. Nonetheless Morris recalled of working under Constantine during the war that ‘the office atmosphere was a happy one . . . we all worked hard, and got on well together’. ¹⁶

Morris also became a supporter of the League of Coloured Peoples, Britain’s main civil rights organisation that had been founded in 1931 by Harold Moody. As Marc Matera notes, ‘the LCP lobbied for equal rights for British subjects of all races while elaborating a vision of black unity that extended beyond the British Empire’. ¹⁷ During the second world war some of the more radical and militant Pan-Africanist organisations of the 1930s in Britain like the International African Service Bureau were in abeyance, and so in this period and with the active support of figures like Constantine, the LCP was now, according to Peter Fryer, at ‘the peak of its influence as a pressure group’. In March 1943, the LCP held its annual general meeting in Liverpool at a time not only of rising racism resulting from the presence of white American troops in Britain but also a growing widespread hostility to the newly arrived Black American soldiers, whipped up by white southerners and a segregationist army command. The Colonial Office, under pressure from the LCP, set up an advisory committee on the welfare of ‘Empire Colonials’, and a number of ‘Colonial Centres’ were opened to help newcomers to Britain settle in. ¹⁸

For new migrants outside of London, Morris appears to have been involved in a similar endeavour. An undated newspaper clipping, ‘Club venture: for coloured and white friends’, in the Constantine Collection in Port of Spain Library announces the opening of one such ‘Liverpool Colonial Club’ at 297 Edge Lane, ‘the first of its kind outside the provinces’, which had Morris as its chair. ‘The club would do important work if it helped to bring about a better understanding, and it would give its coloured administrators an opportunity to show their ability.’ ¹⁹ As noted, the growing hostility towards people of African descent necessitated the development of spaces, such as the LCP and the aforementioned club in Liverpool, where people could come together and create new communities. ²⁰

Testament to Morris’s growing links with the LCP, and the respect he had already won among the leadership of the LCP for his work with Constantine, comes from a letter in late January 1944 from LCP President and founder Harold Moody to Sam Morris at his offices at the Ministry of Labour, 87 Lord Street, Liverpool:

My Dear Morris,

I am glad you appreciate the point of view which for the present prevents you from doing all you would like to do for us, but I am still hoping that circumstances will permit you giving us a good deal of service later on. In the meanwhile I will bear in mind the fact that you will be able to render us some service as and when the opportunity occurs. With my very best wishes, Yours very sincerely, Harold Moody. ²¹

Moody’s premonition was to be correct, for when the barrister John Carter left his post as ‘General and Travelling Secretary’ of the LCP in March 1945, Sam Morris would step into his shoes, tasked with increasing membership and capitalising on the growing Black population in Britain. ²² As the monthly LCP Newsletter noted of Morris in March 1945,

With a good presence, he is 6ft, 1½ inch. Tall, and well proportioned, and has a great keenness for this work, we can very strongly commend Mr. Morris as a worthy successor to our genial and much-loved John Carter. Mr. Morris, who is 37, is a Christian by conviction, and is prepared to help our Churches in the taking of services as and when required. ²³

Morris’s own Christianity would have appealed to Moody, who Morris later recalled had a ‘simple but unshakeable faith in God’, which ‘seemed to have kept him going at all times’. Morris came to work closely with Moody from 1945 until Moody’s passing in 1947, and would later describe Moody as a ‘visionary’, a ‘catalyst and quiet champion’, indeed ‘one of those rare individuals whom it was hard not to respect. One could have disliked him intensely, one could have disagreed with him violently, but one could not fail to respect him.’ ²⁴

From community building to political leadership: LCP general secretary

Morris’s life, as the second world war came to a close, saw him now emerge as an important national political figure among Britain’s Black communities, with a responsible post as LCP general and travelling secretary, based mainly in London at the LCP headquarters at 19 Old Queen Street, Westminster. For much of the period from 1945 to 1953, Morris recalled he was part of the organisation’s ‘inner circle’. The LCP according to Morris was quite heterogeneous, with a ‘social and tea-drinking’ wing, a ‘welfare’ wing, and a ‘militant political’ wing, reflecting the mixed requirements of the growing Black populations. ‘Somehow the League under Dr. Moody managed to combine with a fair amount of success those three apparently divergent outlooks.’ In annual general meetings of the LCP, for example, Morris later recalled how ‘the greatest divergence of views’ were represented.

Two of the Executive founder members, the late Dr. Belfield Clark of Barbados, and the late Sergeant George Roberts of Trinidad, were right-wingers. The late George Padmore, of Trinidad, and Dr. T. R. Makonnen of Ethiopia [and British Guiana], were serious Marxists; myself, from Grenada, the youngest of the group at the time, a committed anti-colonialist, always have been, always will be; the late Desmond Buckle of the Gold Coast, an active Communist; the late Robert Adams of Guyana, actor, barrister, cleric and schoolmaster, a combination of the lot. Some of the executive meetings were rough and hectic, but the respect which everyone accorded Chairman Moody provided solutions in the end. ²⁵

Ras T. Makonnen also recalled some of the tensions between the more militant Pan-Africanists such as himself with the LCP leadership, noting that ‘as far as our relationship with the LCP was concerned, it was one of convenience’.

We recognised it as a powerful organisation amongst the liberals, but it had little effect on us, because we had already mapped out our own independent course. Our only hesitation was that it tended to divert from a more radical line. We would attack them along these lines: ‘You obstructionists, you are using this balm of aid, and garden parties to seduce these young men. So instead of them leaving England after their studies ready to embrace the principles of the age of revolution in which we live, you are giving them rather a mild dose of something – the belief that their good friends in the Colonial Office will ameliorate things all in good time.’ ²⁶

Morris’s remark about his ‘committed anti-colonialism’ is revealing about his own positioning amidst these arguments, and one might even detect an emerging Pan-Africanist politics coming through in Morris’s activism and writings that would be somewhat surprising given his official role as LCP general secretary. For example, under the Secretary’s Notes in the LCP Newsletter, Morris wrote a few short pieces, primarily addressing the issues of racism, growing nationalism and the demobilisation of servicemen and women. It might be worth reproducing a short book review Morris wrote of Eric Williams’s The Negro in the Caribbean (1943), a book that had been published by the Pan-African Service Bureau (based at 58 Oxford Road, Manchester) in August 1945.

This book, written by Dr. Eric Williams, gives a clear picture of the background from which present West Indian conditions emerged. Of all the writers on West Indian affairs, Dr. Williams seems to have given the clearest picture of the Economic Structure, an understanding of which is necessary for the study of those conditions. The book also embraces the non-British islands – Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico – and gives a reader the opportunity of making comparisons between them and the British Islands. In common with many writers on the subject, Dr. Williams rightly tried to make the ‘W.I.’ synonymous with ‘Sugar’. The ‘Mulatto’ question is fully discussed, and perhaps one of the greatest features of this little book was the place it gave to the accounts of famous W.I. Negroes – of whom, alas, so little is generally known. It is a book well worth reading, and can be bought from the office of the Publishers. ²⁷

Working for the LCP brought Morris further into the orbit of the patchwork of African and Caribbean institutions and the growing networks of intellectuals. In late February 1945, just before he took up his official position as LCP general secretary, Morris attended a party hosted by Harold Moody at the Moody family home in Peckham for the World Trade Union Conference delegates from the colonies. Among those present were veteran trade unionists and nationalists such as Hubert M. Critchlow from British Guiana, Ken Hill from Jamaica and Ibrahima Momodou Garba-Jahampa from Gambia, as well as figures like Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti from Nigeria, Una Marson, Ulric Cross and Edric Connor. In his write up of the event, Morris described Critchlow as ‘the Mark Twain of British Guiana’, who ‘gave a very humorous account of how he was taken as a political prisoner in British Guiana’. ²⁸ As secretary of the LCP, Morris would now sign a ‘Manifesto on Africa in the Post-War World for Presentation to the United States Conference, San Francisco, April 1945’ alongside others such as Harold Moody, Kamal Athan Chunchie, Carlos Bertram Clarke, Desmond Buckle, I. T. A. Wallace-Johnson, Peter Blackman and R. W. Beoku-Betts. Ras T. Makonnen signed on behalf of the International African Service Bureau, James E. Taylor and Edwin J. Du Plan for the Negro Welfare Centres, Peter Milliard for the Negro Association, Theodore Dowuona-Hyde for the Anglo-Negro fellowship, Jomo Kenyatta for the Kikuyu Central Association, and Aaron E. Mossell, Jim Nurse, M. Hassan and B. Roderick for the United Committee of Colonial and Coloured Peoples’ Association in Cardiff. ²⁹ This called for an end to racism and imperialist exploitation in Africa and ‘full self-government within a definite time limit’. ³⁰ In May 1945, the LCP Newsletter editorial claimed that:

The Manifesto which we issued last month on Africa in the Post-War World has stirred up a good deal of interest among African Groups in this country and overseas . . . representatives of groups of African people in this country have conferred with us and desire this manifesto to go forth in the name and with the full authority and backing of all groups of African peoples in Britain. Thus we present a United Front on this very vital issue so far as our peoples are concerned. This is excellent and augurs well for the future. ³¹

As Hakim Adi notes, ‘there was now a growing black anti-colonial movement in Britain which could present its own anti-imperialist analysis and demands to the embryonic UN organisation’. ³² This new militant mood was deepened with the Nigerian general strike of June 1945, and in July in Manchester representatives of the LCP met with Padmore’s Pan-African Federation and the West African Students’ Union to agree a ‘Provisional Agenda’ for what was now being called a ‘Pan-African Congress’, which many in the LCP hoped would be a preliminary event to a future congress in Africa itself. By the next month, the date had been set for 15 October in Manchester, six days after a trade union conference in Paris was due to finish. ³³ However, the actual announcement of the conference – according to James R. Hooker – came from Sam Morris ‘who wrote in the [Chicago] Defender of September 8 [1945] that it would convene in London’. ³⁴ In the event, Morris himself was unable to attend the historic Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester in October 1945, because he was on duty as an observer for the LCP in Paris at the International Labour Organisation (ILO) conference at this time. As evidence of his growing Pan-African and anti-colonial focus, Morris found himself irritated by what he heard in Paris from ILO delegates.

It was indeed hard on me to sit by and listen to the expressions of distorted views on the Colonials, their life and work, without being able to educate the ignorant, but my position as an observer did not give me the right to speak. In one or two cases I was able to have my points put forward through the clemency of some of the more sympathetic delegates. The atmosphere throughout was one of the relation of parent to infants – not even of parent to lad or youth – an expression of what Europeans thought Colonials could do, what they thought Colonials needed. This aspect of the Conference stood out rather conspicuously. There was not one delegate of any of the peoples of the so-called dependent territories on any of the Committees. My legal-minded friend would say that this was a court tried ‘in absentia’. Consider: for the whole area of British West Africa, there was only one African, Mr. Esua – and he was only an advisor. He had, however, the privilege of speaking, and here a tribute must be paid to his great efforts in face of overwhelming odds. For the whole area of French Africa there was only one African, and he was not a delegate. East Africa was not even thus represented. The West Indies had no representatives. The South African coloured worker leaders were not granted passports – so I was told. ³⁵

But Morris took the chance to visit Paris, and see the sights:

The days spent in Paris were not all taken up with discussions. The evenings were all free to people who wanted to see the gay City. Some of you might know the city quite well. If so, these facts may bring back recollections which are pleasant I hope! That the city is gay goes without saying – one always has to look at her that way. But Paris is also an ‘Open City’. There is a noticeable lack of insularity among the people. The Gendarmes in my opinion can be favourably compared with the London Bobby, and, in fact, the general population seem always willing and ready to help strangers. Compared with other war cities, there is little if any bomb damage to be cleared up. The only reminders of the recent fray are some bullet holes in buildings along the Champs Élysées, the Place de la Concorde, and a few other spots. Bullet holes of which the Parisiens may very well be proud, since they occurred in their fight for liberation. Yet there are a number of disadvantages attending the citizens at the moment. Most important of all seems to be transport. Buses are few, and taxis are unobtainable except on Priority tickets. Nearly all travel is by underground railway, and that is always very stuffy, uncomfortable, and perhaps unhealthy, due to over-crowding. The fuel situation is not good. For days there was little hot water in my hotel because of this. Electricity is often turned off – sometimes at the most awkward times – to save fuel. I was once in the bath when this happened, and once in a restaurant. I think the outlook for winter is discouraging as far as fuel is concerned. This mention of restaurant brings me to the subject of food. There is not much food, although I must say the little that can be had is good. The restaurants have restricted hours of opening . . . The shops and stores seem depleted . . . materially, Paris seems to be suffering, but everywhere the people are in the highest of spirits. ³⁶

Though unable to attend the Pan-African Congress, Morris on his return to London from Paris was however able to attend a reception for W. E. B. Du Bois and some of the other international figures who had been in Manchester, held at the Colonial Centre, 15-16 Collingham Gardens, Earls Court in London. Here, Morris ‘in apt words expressed the thanks of the gathering to those who had taken part’. ³⁷ However, Morris’s tenure with the LCP would be short-lived. In May 1946 Morris resigned his position. The Newsletter reported that Morris ‘has decided to return home at an early date and has severed his official connection with the L.C.P. as from the date of this issue – May 1^st. Mr. Morris has given us his best during the past year and we thank him warmly for his services and wish him every success in his future career. We trust that he will prove himself active in our interest on his return home.’ ³⁸ In a subsequent issue of the LCP Newsletter, in August 1946, Moody – in a sign of how frustrating he must have found Morris’s resignation just over a year after taking on the post − wrote that ‘the League has suffered much in the past because of the fact that our principal post has been held by persons who, however good they were, always felt that this was not, and could not be, their life’s task. We have always felt the real handicap of not having someone with drive and originality at the helm who had caught the vision of the great task which lies before the League of Coloured Peoples, and was thereby willing to dedicate himself to the task.’ ³⁹ Moody hoped that Morris’s replacement, Malcolm Joseph-Mitchell from British Guiana, would stay the course. ⁴⁰

Morris soon seems to have returned to Britain from Grenada, though, with Moody’s passing on 24 April 1947, the LCP seems to have inevitably suffered accordingly as an organisation. As Morris later recalled, ‘black people then resident in Britain lost a sound, sincere, dedicated but completely unpretentious champion. With the death of Dr. Moody, a long-standing suspicion was proved, namely that a number of League members were paying up, not because they were all that interested in the League, but because they liked and respected Dr. Moody. The membership thus declined, real enthusiasm flagged. . .’ ⁴¹ Sam Morris however remained politically active and on 14 September 1947 we see him listed as a speaker at a mass rally and demonstration of Nigerians from Russell Square to Trafalgar Square ‘in support of the Nigerian Delegation’s demand for a more democratic Constitution and for immediate steps to be taken now towards Self-Government for Nigeria and the British Cameroons’. Other speakers at this rally included Nnamdi Azikiwe, George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, Ras Makonnen and Peter Abrahams. ⁴²

The fact that Morris was now clearly identified with the more militant Pan-Africanist circle around Padmore perhaps not only tells us something about the decline of the LCP after Moody’s passing, but also the rising movement in colonial Africa and the attraction of nationalist leaders like Nkrumah and Azikiwe. By 1948, Morris had now became an ‘associate editor’ of Pan-Africa: Journal of African Life History and Thought, which had offices at 211 Oxford Road, Manchester. Other figures involved with this journal included, according to the 7 December 1948 issue, T. Ras Makonnen (publishing editor), Florence M. Nichol (research secretary), Dr Peter McD. Milliard (British Guiana), Hugh Worrell Springer (Barbados), Dr C. Piliso (South Africa), Frank Blaine (Jamaica), David S. Talbot (Ethiopia), William Esuman-Gwira Seyki (Gold Coast), Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya), Dorothy Livings (England), T. K. Utchay (Nigeria), Magnus O. Williams (Nigeria), Yagoub Osman (Sudan), Prof. St. Clair Drake (USA), George F. McCray (USA), Mohamoud Jama Urdoh (Somaliland) and George F. Daniels (Trinidad). ⁴³ Pan-Africa was the journal of the Pan-African Federation led by Milliard and Makonnen, and with Padmore as ‘International Secretary’. ⁴⁴

Morris later recalled of George Padmore that:

it did not take me long to find out that Padmore and sincerity went together, that Padmore and loyalty went together, that Padmore and reliability went together, that Padmore and candour went together, that Padmore and generosity went together. ‘Silver and Gold have I none, but such as I have, give I unto thee’ could have been applied to George Padmore at all times. Cranleigh House, Cranleigh Street, NW1 was a famous address for thousands of colonials, and their socialist friends, and I recall the many times I visited Cranleigh House, mostly of an evening, just to meet Padmore overworking himself, for the sheer satisfaction of knowing he was making his contribution. During such visits he would be lost in a sea of papers, while Dorothy his wife would be pounding away relentlessly at the typewriter. A person was seldom a lone visitor to Cranleigh House, and most of those who went usually sought and received free advice on some method of approach to the solution of his problems, domestic or political . . . Padmore was the watchdog stationed in London protecting the interests of his brethren in the motherland, Africa. My position in London during these years brought me into close contact with hundreds of new arrivals from Africa, the West Indies and U.S.A., and however great the personality, or however humble, his first question to me, ‘Do you know George Padmore?’ or ‘How can I get in touch with George Padmore?’ This gives an idea of how well known the man was, and how highly esteemed. ⁴⁵

Windrush and post-war settlement

Morris did not sever his ties with the LCP, and we find him returning to the position of general secretary in May 1950 after an AGM of the organisation saw Malcolm Joseph-Mitchell resign (along with W. H. Moore from British Guiana, honorary treasurer of the LCP). The LCP president during this period was Mr Ram Singh Nehra from India, with C. T. Baillie of South Africa and Dr David Pitt from Grenada as vice presidents. Other members of the executive in 1950 included Colin Jones from Barbados, Albert Hyndman from Trinidad, the barrister J. S. Clarke and Miss M. Griffith, who replaced Moore as treasurer. ⁴⁶ On 4 September 1950, we find Morris writing a letter to the editor of The Evening News, complaining about its republication of a letter originally published in a parish magazine by Prebendary H. J. R. Osborne of St. Saviour’s, Walton Street, Chelsea. Osborne had criticised the British government for making the Hans Crescent Hotel habitable for ‘Coloured Students from all parts of the world’. As well as defending the British government and pointing out Osborne’s ‘groping in prejudicial darkness’, Morris’s own Christianity was affronted and he noted,

such a letter is undesirable coming as it does from a parson. He, above others, ought to set an example in kind treatment to strangers. I think the Holy Bible teaches this to those who believe it. The Vicar made reference to military service in the event of another war, giving the false impression that only the English fight in the cause of freedom. He ought to acquaint himself with the part played by ‘Coloured peoples from all parts of the world’ during the last war and indeed during the 1914–1918 war as well. Both the Ministry of Labour and ‘Combined Records’ will help him. ‘I shall say no more except to advise Mr. Osborne to stick not to bickering but to Vicaring and leave the carrying on of His Majesty’s Government to those who are qualified for it. ⁴⁷

Morris seemed to have tried to revive the LCP, and January 1951 saw the launch of the League of Coloured Peoples’ Review, an aim to upgrade the Newsletter and return to the kind of publication that The Keys represented during the 1930s. In its first issue, Morris sent a message of congratulations to Dr Ralph Bunche, who had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Jamaican poet Louise Bennett was also now invited on to the LCP executive, an attempt no doubt to improve the cultural work of the organisation. ⁴⁸ By the early 1950s, as Colin Chambers notes, Sam Morris was ‘part of a circle of Caribbean expatriates who became leaders of their diasporic community in politics and the arts, people such as Winifred Atwell, Learie Constantine, Rudolph Dunbar, Cy Grant, C. L. R. James, Claudia Jones . . . George Padmore . . . David Pitt’ and Edric and Pearl Connor. ⁴⁹

The growth of Caribbean communities in England, particularly in London, also saw the desire to fulfil a greater cultural void and to create cultural works that reflected the Caribbean. Engaging with this growing cultural opportunity, we find Morris taking to the stage, and starring as General Sylla in a production of Derek Walcott’s play about the Haitian Revolution, Henri Christophe, directed by Errol Hill at the British Council student centre at Hans Crescent in London in 1952. Other cast members in this production included Errol Hill himself as Baron de Vastey, Errol John as Henri Christophe, Victor Patterson as Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Frank Pilgrim as General Alexandre Pétion, and John Nunez as Corneille Brelle. Henry Swanzy, the producer of Caribbean Voices, reviewed the production for Public Opinion, noting that ‘Samson Morris from Grenada adorned the old general Sylla with a fine physical presence’. ⁵⁰

Sam Morris was also an active member of the interracial ‘Racial Unity’ organisation, led by Mary Attlee, sister of Labour Party leader Clement Attlee, based in Brixton in the early 1950s, and which included vice-presidents Professor Arthur Lewis, Canon Lewis John Collins, Lord Noel Buxton, Fenner Brockway MP, future British Prime Minister Harold Wilson MP, James Griffiths MP and the Jamaican Pan-Africanist Amy Ashwood Garvey. ⁵¹ Morris also retained his links with Black American papers like The Chicago Defender and Pittsburgh Courier to which he contributed anti-colonialist articles. ⁵² Testament to the way in which Morris would characteristically find himself with a foot in both camps – the respectable and the radical – might be seen from his report on the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, which he contributed to the Baltimore Afro-American on 16 June 1953:

When I think about the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, I think about the diplomacy which lies behind the inviting of 25 journalists, key men, from the colonies. This diplomacy which arranges conducted tours for such men thus preventing them from associating with their own kith and kin in London, and hearing from them what the true situation is. These men not only had to follow a plan arranged for them by the Colonial Office but their dispatches about the coronation had to be sent through the Colonial Office news service and limited to about 500 words . . .

I think of my discussion less than a week ago with an Englishman who stated quite seriously that he was a firm believer in Imperialism. He was convinced that the British are the best people on the face of the earth and that God put them here to govern other people. I think on the fate of recent monarchs in places like Yugoslavia, Portugal, Rumania, Italy, Egypt, and wonder whether in view of Queen Elizabeth’s youth, there will ever be another such ceremony in Britain. I think of the conspicuous absence of Kwame Nkrumah, prime minister of Gold Coast, and ask myself why? . . .

These are some of the thoughts that occupy my mind when the announcement comes that we are to proceed to the Great Hall in the House of Commons for some refreshment . . . the crowd is thick in the hall. Judges and Admirals, Generals and Marshalls mix with the crowd in the search for something to satisfy hunger and quench thirst . . . In this hall I come into close contact with the overseas persons who were separated from me in the Abbey. I see the Jamaican leader William A. Bustamante, Messrs. Bradsaw and Bird, legislators from the Leeward Islands, Messrs. Marryshow and Shillingford of the Windwards, Mr. K. Menon, U.N. representative for his country. There are a number of Africans to whom I could not speak for lack of time. Again, I deplore the fact that many of these people instead of having their usual costume assume European clothes for the occasion. I think that these same men who today are feted and honoured by Englishmen will if they forget their places on their return to their own homes, sooner or later come into contact or even clash with ‘security forces’. . . ⁵³

Kwame Nkrumah’s press officer in Ghana

Morris would later recall how he began to receive many invitations to come and visit and work in various countries in West Africa as they approached independence, but he was torn as to which offer to accept.

In my dilemma I consulted George [Padmore] as usual. He unhesitatingly replied, ‘Go to the Gold Coast. In your line they could make better use of you there.’ Such was his knowledge of this continent, that he could direct people where to go. ⁵⁴

In 1953 Morris resigned as secretary of the LCP, which in his absence he recalled finally ‘petered out around 1954–55’, ironically just as the American civil rights movement was erupting with the Montgomery Bus Boycott around Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. ⁵⁵ Morris now left Britain for West Africa to play his part in the slow but steady process of decolonisation then underway in the Gold Coast, working for Radio Ghana and supporting the work of the Ghana Journalists Association. Cameron Duodu, parliamentary reporter of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation in the late 1950s, recalls working alongside Morris covering debates in parliament. Duodu recalls that after independence in 1957, the two of them ‘did our best to deserve the respect of both sides of the House . . . and the country enjoyed our efforts’. ⁵⁶

By October 1958, Morris had become a ‘press advisor’ to Kwame Nkrumah alongside the likes of George Padmore and Professor Arthur Lewis, part of the West Indian-dominated ‘Brains Trust’ assembled around Ghana’s leader since independence. ⁵⁷ By 1959, Morris was Nkrumah’s private secretary and press officer, posts he held for six years until Nkrumah’s overthrow in a coup in February 1966. ⁵⁸ Morris was apparently with Nkrumah in Peking when the coup took place. ⁵⁹ However, Morris – who had once attended an official goodwill visit to Guyana on behalf of the Nkrumah government − did not depart Ghana immediately after the coup like many of Nkrumah’s supporters. In April 1967 we find one observer noting that Morris was ‘not thought to be a dangerous man by the new Ankrah Government’ and indeed Morris opened up a Chinese restaurant in Accra. ⁶⁰ In his sojourn in Nkrumah’s Ghana, Sam Morris was following many other West Indians based in Britain, including not just Arthur Lewis, but also Amy Ashwood Garvey, Ras T. Makonnen, George Lamming and Jan Carew, though aside from Padmore few West Indians ended up staying to live in Ghana and work for Nkrumah in the devoted manner of Morris. ⁶¹ More research needs to be done on Morris in Ghana, which is possibly, alongside his early life in Grenada, the least known about (outside Ghana itself). These gaps in Morris’s life continue to speak to the over-dominance and unevenness of knowledge formation in the heart of Empire, the focus of historians and the relative ease of access to archival and print material.

‘Race relations’ and the politics of containment

It is with Morris’s return to Britain in 1967, a heady time of politics and growing radicalism, particularly within the Black community, that highlights his antinomies most clearly. Morris returned to Britain where he found a post as development officer for the Midlands with the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants (NCCI), formerly the National Advisory Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants which had been established in 1964. ⁶² The NCCI was by now the most established, official and ‘respectable’ of ‘race relations’ organisations in Britain, with the Archbishop of Canterbury serving as chairman and Nadine Peppard, secretary to the Immigrants Advisory Committee of the London Council of Social Service, as general secretary. ⁶³ Though formally independent, it was, as A. Sivanandan notes, also part of a wider apparatus designed by Harold Wilson’s Labour government ‘to stop black militancy from infecting the body politic’ in Britain. The NCCI was well-funded and it was linked to the Home Office and the official Labour government’s programme of ‘integration’ of Commonwealth immigrants (reinforced by the passing of the 1965 Race Relations Act) into a racist society, while simultaneously tightening immigration controls and so ‘institutionalising racism’. ⁶⁴ Does Morris’s work with organisations like the NCCI and CARD (see below) represent a continuation of a certain kind of integrationist politics that Morris was engaged in with the League of Coloured Peoples? Or was it a new shift in Morris’s politics after working in Nkrumah’s government? Furthermore, how does the post-Windrush growth of Black communities in Britain shape the growing calls for belonging and equality, and the routes to achieving this?

It is also due to Morris’s proximity to power that we are able to piece together more about him, now through official documents such as the minutes of the NCCI and CRC, writing in mainstream newspapers by and more pertinently about Morris and a greater volume of contextual, historical analysis. Reunited with figures like his compatriot David Pitt – a leading figure in London Labour politics and also the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (CARD), the leading ‘civil rights’ organisation in Britain from 1965−67 which had been set up in the aftermath of Martin Luther King’s visit to London, Morris was brought onto the Executive Committee of CARD in December 1967 by Pitt. However, CARD, for all its potential, itself was already in the process of splitting apart over questions of political strategy and tactics, including how to relate to a Labour government that was discussing the tightening of immigration controls by late 1967. ⁶⁵ As Darcus Howe recalled, from the perspective of Black militants, the CARD leadership ‘consisted of white and black middle-class professionals, and the working class, the ordinary people followed’, while ‘there were whites in that organisation who believed that we didn’t have any experience at all, and what experience we may have had was not valid, and that they should dictate the terms and pace of our struggle’. ⁶⁶ Trinidadian Marion Glean who had been a moving spirit in setting up CARD was to comment on the tensions as to how ‘The old West Indians, the Pitts and the Constantines, had given way to a new generation brought up on Eric Williams’s Capitalism and Slavery and C. L. R. James’s Black Jacobins.’ ⁶⁷ Morris clearly was either unable or unwilling to try and change the dominant political orientation of CARD, and CARD soon folded as an organisation amidst the rise of radical ‘Black Power’ groups which clearly saw the British state itself as part of the problem not part of the potential solution. ⁶⁸

By now Morris was re-established in Britain as an important figure within the NCCI, and an Observer report in March 1968 gives us a glimpse into the man he had become as he approached his sixtieth birthday:

Sam Morris [is] a large and genial West Indian who has actually been in the business even longer than Miss [Nadine] Peppard, as he enjoys pointing out. He belonged to Britain’s very first race relations outfit, the League of Coloured Peoples, founded in 1931 and faded out by 1954. Morris was Nkrumah’s press man for six years, and is now Development Officer for the Midlands with the NCCI. It is not hard to see how he could appear altogether too establishment for the tastes of some of the younger, fiercer coloured leaders. ‘Black Power?’ he says scornfully. ‘I said worse things than these people are saying, but nobody thought to call me Black Power’. ⁶⁹

With the passing of the 1968 Race Relations Act, the NCCI was replaced by the Community Relations Commission (CRC), formed to ‘promote harmonious community relations’, disseminate information about matters affecting minority groups, to advise the Home Secretary, complement the Race Relations Board, which implemented the anti-discrimination legislation of the Race Relations Acts, and provide support for and co-ordination of the growing number of voluntary organisations interested in promoting and fostering ‘race relations’. ⁷⁰ In 1971, Morris was appointed deputy general secretary of the CRC, based at Russell Square House in London. ⁷¹ As Sivanandan notes, the CRC was an instrument of ‘mediation’, including between ‘sections of the ruling class’ in Britain, and once again effectively defined ‘integration’ as ‘the absorption and negation of black discontent’. ⁷² Amidst the introduction of further racist immigration controls, what the sociologist Robert Moore called ‘the policies of containment’ of Black politics within official, ‘proper channels’ where respectable black ‘leaders’ could remain in control was paramount. Indeed, as Moore put it,

The whole concept of ‘community relations’ is misleading . . . the ‘problem’ is one of the systematic and deliberate domination and exploitation of a mass of immigrants – who occupy a special position within British society and the British economy. They are not separate communities in this sense. Nor do they need integrating – they are already integrated: into the lowest-paid and worst-unionised jobs, in the service and high-risk sectors of the economy, in menial and unpleasant tasks . . . they are fully integrated at the bottom. ⁷³

Morris was by no means the only one of this West Indian generation to engage with the burgeoning state ‘race relations industry’; there were many others, including David Pitt, Jocelyn Barrow, Ralph Straker, Joe Hunte and Jeff Crawford (the latter two becoming local community relations officers). ⁷⁴ No doubt many such individuals had a commitment to serving their communities, with self-help becoming a very strong force within poor and marginalised communities at the time. ⁷⁵ But clearly the governments of the day, particularly as Black radicalism began to take hold in a younger generation, were interested in finding leader/negotiators from amongst the early Black settlers. Witness how Dr David Pitt was (so inappropriately) chosen to negotiate during the 1975 Spaghetti House Siege ⁷⁶ and ‘the anxieties of the state’ about ‘when the majority of the coloured population will be British born . . . and their reservoirs of resilience, initiative and vigour . . . [possibly] be deflected into negative protest. . .’ in Labour’s 1975 White Paper. ⁷⁷

As CRC deputy general secretary, Morris had been asked to report to the Home Secretary about the police raids on the Mangrove restaurant in Notting Hill and the militant Black resistance in response. Young Black radicals around the Mangrove such as Darcus Howe had little time for reformist mediators like Morris. ⁷⁸ Nonetheless, Morris’s report carefully evidenced the police brutality and harassment. Morris noted how during one raid ‘several van loads’ of police arrived at the Mangrove, cordoned off the area and then stormed the restaurant, laying into the customers, ‘who ducked, dived, jumped through windows and took every step possible in self-protection’. Morris argued the police violence might have been engineered ‘by that small section of the force which appears to specialise in harassing or beating up black people or both, or in preferring bogus charges against them’. As Robin Bunce and Paul Field note, ‘the official response to the report was cold in the extreme. The report was sent to [Reginald] Maudling [Home Secretary] with a covering letter that described it as “a most disappointing document” that “merely sets out one view of the recent incidents”.’ ⁷⁹

Morris’s time at the CRC brought him back once again in close contact with Lord David Pitt, a fellow Grenadian, Deputy Chair of the CRC and Chair of the Fieldwork Committee, which was responsible for deciding on grants and for coordinating the work of the Community Relations Councils and its officers. Morris retired from the CRC in January 1975, although he had stopped attending meetings by the end of 1974 due to ill health. ⁸⁰

Pioneering systematiser of ‘Black Studies’ in Britain

During the early 1970s, Morris’s lifelong keen interest in education came to the fore. Throughout his life, it appears Morris had never lost his interest in, and advocacy for, education for Black children. Following the contours of Morris’s life, it seems as though Morris returned to, or perhaps re-articulated his commitment to, a form of Pan-Africanism that advocated for the recovery of Black history and agency. It is important to place Morris’s work within this context of the rise of supplementary schools and grassroots campaigns that challenged the institutional racism affecting Black children, most notably highlighted through Bernard Coard’s groundbreaking book, How the West Indian Child is Made Educationally Sub-Normal in the British School System. ⁸¹ Morris would have been well aware of the issues facing Black children through his work with the CRC (and his experience as a teacher in Grenada).

Alongside the clear issues facing Black children, organisations like the CRC were increasingly facing criticism from young Black radicals. In Because They’re Black (1971), Gus John and his co-author Derek Humphry had asked of the CRC, ‘despite black representation on all levels of this organisation, how much could it be said to be tackling the real issues as far as the position of black peoples in this society is concerned?’

It is afraid of black militant challenge or participation. It is powerless and virtually ineffective not only because integration – harmonious community relations even when that involves fragmented accidental communities – is at once its starting point and its goal, but also because it fails to highlight the real issues as far as black people are concerned. What black people expect from the community relations commission is not patronage and a referral service or interpretation to the statutory authorities, but a plea on their behalf to local authority and central government, a plea it could only present after careful examination and research. Black people expect the commission to present the sort of data which is garnered (or ought to be) by community relations officers during every day of their jobs, and which, hopefully, would influence policy and legislation by ministries and departments of the central government. The CRC produces reports of conferences on employment of black school leavers, on education of black children, on youth work in a multi-racial society and on similar subjects. One wonders to what use this information is put. As if we needed reminding one senior official of the CRC told us: ‘Community relations officers are not Black power agitators or vanguards of the black cause. Their concern is for the whole community, black and white alike.’ ⁸²

Whilst still active with the CRC, in 1973, perhaps as partial awareness of the validity of this critique, as well as in response to the pressure arising from the substantial grassroots campaign to counter the institutional racism suffered by Black students in British education, Morris published a booklet The Case and the Course: a treatise on Black Studies and formed the Committee on Black Studies (COBS), based at his home in Fulham, in south London. ⁸³ COBS also published a booklet on Black education and used the image of Mary Seacole, the Jamaican-born nurse from the Crimean War, who was virtually unheard of at the time. Morris also wrote an article on ‘Black Studies in Britain’ for New Community, the journal of the CRC. Registering the importance of the Black supplementary school movement and the pioneering efforts undertaken by the Tulse Hill School in Brixton, the William Penn School in South East London and the Hammersmith College of Further Education, Morris defined Black Studies as ‘an investigation in depth by black people (chiefly New World Africans) of themselves, a study of their past, an appreciation of their present and their aspirations for the future’. ⁸⁴ Morris noted that

If Black Studies is to be effective it cannot be restricted to school – or church. It has also to be linked with the arts – painting, music, sculpture, wood carving, drama and the dance. These were more or less lost to New World Africans, those at whom Black Studies are aimed, through the ravages of slavery. They can never be revived in their original form, but, if Black Studies is to be meaningful, attempts must be made to bring about a revival of sorts. Nor must the names of great black people as a source of inspiration be forgotten – Marcus Garvey and Paul Bogle of Jamaica, Alexander Dumas of France, Alexander Pushkin of Russia, W.E.B. Du Bois and Harriet Tubman of the U.S.A., Nkrumah and Lumumba of Africa. Unfortunately the list omits the name of any English born black person because there is no one who qualifies for mention. This fact should speak for itself. ⁸⁵

For Morris,

Black studies curricula would, of course, mean some rewriting of books on a host of subjects, the main one being history. Many past history books were written to serve a certain purpose; sometimes to justify slavery, sometimes to glorify colonialism. For practical purposes, neither of these two traumatic experiences is with us anymore, but unfortunately many of the books remain. They must be replaced; moreover, they must be replaced by books written by black people within the context of experiences by black people. ⁸⁶

Morris included a sample course plan of three parts that could be scaled up to thirty-six lessons or scaled down depending on the time scale available, which ranged from the slave trade and its effects on Africa, to slavery in the Americas and the revolts against it, abolition in general, colonialism in Africa and anti-colonialism, neocolonialism and Pan-Africanism. Another lesson dealt with ‘West Indian migration to the United Kingdom’, asking ‘is “settler” now a more appropriate term than “immigrant”?’ ‘Is Britain a racialist country?’, ‘The CRC and the RRB [Race Relations Board]: have they helped or hindered community relations?’ and exploring ‘police/settler relations’ and ‘the meaning and relevance of Black Power’. ⁸⁷ In 1974, Morris published a short booklet, Black Makers of History with COBS, which made an impact on at least some young Black readers at the time, as the art historian Eddie Chambers testified years later.

I remember, in 1974 or 1975 (my early teens), coming across a small publication called Black Makers of History, written by Sam Morris. It contained brief biographies of historical figures such as Marcus Garvey, Toussaint L’Ouverture, Shaka, Harriet Tubman, Patrice Lumumba, Mary Seacole and Matthew Henson. It was the first time that I learned about such figures, as my schooling made no mention of black history. This booklet had a profound effect on me, and I still have it. ⁸⁸

During the mid-1970s Morris attended a number of conferences discussing the educational system, advocating for Black Studies and the employment of more Black teachers. He also continued to engage with the cultural and social aspects of the Black community, supporting the Black Londoners programme created for the BBC to give a voice to the Black community, which won a grant from the CRC. Equally, no one could doubt that Morris was personally sincerely committed to ensuring that the legacies of those whom he felt had been forgotten were remembered, including supporting the writing of biographies of some of those closest to him, such as Moody and Constantine.

Conclusion

Whilst there are many gaps in the story presented about Morris, testament to the impact he had on those closest to him came when, after Morris’s passing in June 1976 in Fulham, the Sam Uriah Morris Society was established on Lower Clapton Road in Hackney, east London. This lasted until 2013 when its lifelong president, the Barbadian-born activist Ralph Straker, passed away. ⁸⁹ The Sam Morris Centre Nursery, which opened in 1996 in purpose-built premises in Holloway in the London borough of Islington, remains to this day. Though his was a liberal project of ‘integration’ into British society, with all the eventual rewards and recompense such a project could bestow on him, it is worth recalling Morris’s radical anti-colonial streak, and the fact he always felt a strong attachment to Grenada and his ‘New World African’ and Caribbean roots, once noting that ‘no stream can rise higher than its source’. ⁹⁰ He retained strong links with the Grenadian community in Britain in later years, acting as a patron to the Grenada Voluntary Hospital Committee in London and was even appointed Assistant High Commissioner for Grenada. As a fighter for ‘civil rights’ in Britain and a Pan-Africanist who championed the establishment of Black history on the school curriculum, which remains such a critical question over fifty years on, Morris – with all his antinomies – represents a life lived in the pursuit of racial justice.