[1][2] Lionel Morrison, whose grandfather came from the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides,[3] was born in Johannesburg and spent his early life in South Africa, where he set up a multiracial journalists' union in the 1950s in opposition to the apartheid regime.
[1] Having moved to the United Kingdom in 1960, Morrison became a member of the executive council of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) in 1971, and was elected its president in 1973.
[8] In 1955, Morrison served three months at notorious Johannesburg prison the Fort, for painting slogans on walls in Cape Town.
[9] On 6 December 1956, Morrison was arrested for high treason against the state, an offence that carried the death penalty, and he was put on trial along with 155 others (including Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela).
The prosecution claimed the accused had campaigned to draw up the Freedom Charter which envisaged granting equal rights to all and was tantamount to plotting the overthrow the existing state.
[13] In 1955 Morrison worked as a reporter for Golden City Post in Cape Town, South Africa's first black weekly.