‘Dr Harold Moody is right up there with Churchill and Queen Victoria’

Dr Harold Moody, a Jamaican doctor and civil rights activist who lived and worked in Camberwell in the 1920s and 1930s, is not remembered much outside Southwark. Here LEILA ZERAI tells Dr Moody’s story and Stephen Bourne, who recently published a book about him, explains why he is so important.

Thousands of people lined the streets when Dr Harold Moody’s funeral was held at his place of worship, Camberwell Green Congregational Church, in Wren Road, in 1947.

He had founded the League of Coloured People, waged a campaign to ensure his son became one of the first black officers in the army in the Second World War, and fought a string of campaigns for his community.

Author Stephen Bourne, who has written a book about him, grew up near Dr Moody’s home.

He said: “As far as I can remember, I’ve always known about him because I grew up in Peckham.”

Dr Moody had a doctor’s surgery, in a home in Queen’s Road, opposite where Mr Bourne’s grandparents once lived.

Dr Moody was greatly loved, in the local community where he worked as a doctor, by ordinary people in Peckham and the Old Kent Road around his doctor’s practice.

But he was also greatly loved in the black community because he was the one that would look after them and represent them if they needed representation.

Dr Harold Moody founded the League of Coloured People in 1931. It was one of the first black-led organisations in this country.

He would work with the Government in what was then known as the Colonial Office and the Ministry of Defence.

Dr Moody wasn’t really a politician – he was a campaigner, a community leader, who had his finger on the pulse.

People respected him and loved him because he was accessible – he wouldn’t turn anyone away.

He had arrived in Britain as a young man, still in his 20s, in 1904.

He wanted to train as a doctor – and the best training that he could get was in London.

Once he had finished his training, he set up his own practice in the Peckham area.

He married an English nurse and had six children. But he had faced difficulties as soon as he arrived in London.

There was discrimination, particularly in finding somewhere to live – but Mr Bourne believed he would never have stayed if it had all been negative.

Dr Harold Moody’s mixed-race son, born in Peckham, had faced discrimination in the armed forces during the Second World War.

He qualified as an officer in the army but the army discriminated against him.

Dr Moody went to the Government and the Colonial Office to fight his son’s case and as a result, his son won his struggle to be commissioned as an army officer.

He was one of the first black army officers in the Second World War.

Through the newsletters of the League of Coloured People, Dr Moody regularly raised issues and fought different causes.

He fought the discrimination against black service men and women.

Mr Bourne was partly instrumental in the creation of a bronze bust of Dr Moody, sculpted by his brother Ronald.

But it went missing in the 1960s, loaned to an exhibition in London, and was never returned.

About 15 years ago his niece, Cynthia, contacted Mr Bourne to reveal it had come up for auction in New Zealand.

Mr Bourne persuaded the Southwark council arts department to bid for it. Their involvement was crucial and the bronze portrait came back to Peckham.

It is now proudly on display at Peckham Library. “I’m proud of that fact,” he said.

There is also a park in Nunhead which is named in his honour – Dr Harold Moody Park – and a street in Peckham.

There’s also an English Heritage blue plaque outside his house in Queen’s Road, Peckham. “Clearly, when he became a GP, the working class people of the Peckham area respected him and that says a lot about his character and the way that he integrated into the Peckham community,” said Mr Bourne.

“But in my humble opinion, he is one of the great figures of British history and has been almost completely overlooked and sidelined.

“What really upset me was that the British school curriculum has always prioritised African Americans over black Britons.

“For decades, young people in Britain have been learning about Dr Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, African American civil rights, which is fantastic.

“But Dr Harold Moody, who was once described as Britain’s Martin Luther King, was completely overlooked.

“He did so much in a short time and it just astounds me that this kind of discrimination still goes on now.

“So that was the idea behind doing a book, aimed at Key Stage 2 primary schoolchildren, aged nine to 12.

“If anyone in Britain’s black community deserves a statue, it’s Harold Moody. He is, in my estimation, up there with Winston Churchill and Queen Victoria.”