Martha 0samor
Nigerian-British politician, community activist and civil rights campaigner. Martha was one of the founders of the United Black Women Action Group in Tottenham who later became part of the Organisation of Women of Asian and African Descent(OWAAD).She also campaigned with Tottenham Law Centre during the Scrap SUS campaign in the 1970s.
Martha Osamor:
“The issue that other people will come, our children were younger, the other people who live in bigger estate like Broadwater Farm Estate, we lived in Campsbourne Estate, they’re talking about the arrest of their children and the police, you know. So their children are big and our one are younger. So what is happening to them is going to happen to our children at the next stage, so what we then need to do is to get together, you know, to talk about why is it that our children are being picked up. We didn’t know the name of the word, sus, we just tell the story as it is, that they are being picked up for nothing, just for being around. And then we called it like an enquiry on a Sunday afternoon for people to come and talk about it so we can document what was going on. Because they were saying to us, you’ve got chips on your shoulder, everything you think is happening to you because you are black, you know. And then the other people would say, in this place, if you don’t have no figures, you know, nobody’s going to listen to you. Because if you just say, oh it’s happening to us more, they want you to show, you know, the figures that it’s happening to you more. So we had the enquiry and people were coming and telling us and we were keeping, you know, record to show that mainly our children are being picked up. Then again, it becomes political.”
