Mavis Best

Mavis Best (11 July, 1939 -14 November, 2022), MBE, was a grassroots social activist who worked for the civil rights of Black people in the UK. She is best known for leading the successful campaign to overturn the so-called SUS law but throughout her life was actively involved in many local church and community projects designed to improve the lives of Black people.

Life and career

Mavis Merlina Stephenson Best (Nee Clarke) was born into a farming family in Clarendon, Jamaica. In 1961, in her early twenties, she went to London to join her three siblings. She was part of the Windrush generation. She settled in Peckham, South London where many unfortunate events in modern Black British life have taken place, for example, the New Cross house fire, the 1981 Brixton riots, and the murder of Stephen Lawrence. Best trained as a community development worker in the mid-1970s at Goldsmiths College, University of London. A visiting South African lecturer at Goldsmiths, Basil Manning, noticed her and thought she would make a good leader of a campaign.

At that time, the police, using a law called the Vagrancy Act of 1824, were disproportionately apprehending and searching Black people as young as 12 and mostly male, suspecting them of the “intent to commit an arrestable offence”. This would even be while the youths were doing something innocent such as looking in a shop window. The young people were often detained for days, without their families knowing where they were. Accused of a crime such as theft, it was often their word against the police and they would often end up in prison . There were very few Black solicitors, magistrates or even police officers in the capital then. Best and other local women in Lewisham would go to the relevant police station and demand that the young people be let home.

Best then lead the campaign against the Sus law, called ‘Scrap the Sus’. She organized and attended demonstrations, produced flyers, ran stalls at local events, scanned the local newspapers and demanded corrections to stories that misrepresented the Black community. Best also organised community attendance at court hearings and found witnesses who could contradict police evidence. Best also contacted Paul Boateng, aged 28, one of the few Black lawyers in London at the time and future home secretary and Labour peer. He became involved in the campaign. At this time, while pressing for change, Best was raising three children on her own and had little money. After three years of the campaign, an all-party home affairs committee was set up and, in August 1981, section 4 of the Vagrancy Act was repealed.

Best continued with her activism and community work for decades more. After the New Cross fire, she was in the group set up by Aggrey Burke to provide counselling to families whose members had lost their lives in the fire. She participated in the Black People’s Day of Action in March 1981 along with Boateng and 20,000 other people who marched to Fleet Street, then known for journalism and newspaper printing. Best worked for the North Lewisham Project setting up a supplementary school for under achieving African-Caribbean children in schools in the Deptford area. She worked as a community development worker for Camden Social Services. She was charged by Neil Kinnock with developing ideas on race and health. Best was the Chair of Maternity Alliance, now superceded by Maternity Action, an organization concerned with issues of childbirth and women's rights. Best was involved in starting the Saturday Achievement Project, was a trustee of the Simba Family Project (now dissolved), was a school governor, worked with the Anti-Racist Alliance and campaigned for justice for those, including Rohit Duggal, Rolan Adams and Stephen Lawrence, who were killed in racist attacks. She was a member of the panel reviewing the implementation of recommendations in the Macpherson Report.

In 1998, Best became a Labour councillor in Greenwich. In the same year, Boateng became a minister at the Home Office. He appointed Best to the national committee overseeing community development trusts. In 2002, Best set up the Greenwich African Caribbean Organisation (GACO) with fellow councillor Ann-Marie Cousins.

Best was awarded an MBE in 2002, when she was youth affairs officer for the West Indian Standing Conference, for services to Equal Opportunities. Best was awarded Alderwoman of the Royal Borough of Greenwich in 2021. In 2014, Best had a stroke and ended her days in a care home close to her family in Charlton.

Legacy

Best is included in the Black Power Women of Brixton Walk. Best was selected as an icon under the Brewers Black Icons project. She was also included in the list of 100 Black Women who have made a mark. Her granddaughter talks about her in Episode 7 of this podcast and describes her grandmother as a 'compassionate warrior'.