Olive Morris House

Olive Morris House in Brixton is named in honour of a woman who made a huge contribution to her local community.

Olive moved to South London from Jamaica in the sixties. An inspiring community leader and grassroots political activist, she set up the Brixton Black Women's Group to tackle community issues that at the time were affecting local women and their children. Olive Morris was a pivotal force in the squatters' rights campaigns of the seventies. Often she took direct action to social injustices which led to a number of police arrests.

Olive's activism against social injustice was not restricted to local problems and she was involved with political organisations such as the internationally-renowned Black Panther Movement.

Olive joined a group of Marxist students at Manchester University where she studied for three years and during that time she visited China, and was a founder member of the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD).

Olive Morris died tragically young at the age of 27. In 1986, Lambeth Council named one of its most important buildings "Olive Morris House" to honour the contribution of this courageous and inspiring young woman.

The building is home to the council's Finance and Resources department. In 2007, the ground floor of Olive Morris House became a state-of-the-art customer centre serving 10,000 Lambeth residents on an average weekly basis.

For more information about Olive Morris, see the Remembering Olive Morris web blog.