Una Marson was a Jamaican-born broadcaster, writer and equalities campaigner known for her wartime programme Calling the West Indies. A plaque at The Mansions, Mill Lane marks the home where she lived when she first began working for the BBC and her address when she became the first black producer and broadcaster at the BBC.

Una Marson was born in rural Jamaica on 6 February 1905. Her father was a Baptist minister, and he and Una’s mother had six children, of whom Una was the youngest, then adopted a further three. She was granted a scholarship to a school where most of the pupils were moneyed white or creole and, as a dark-skinned scholarship girl, was often made to feel unaccepted.

Marson worked for the Salvation Army and the YMCA. Increasingly aware of social inequalities, she became assistant editor of the Jamaica Critic, a socio-political monthly. In 1928 she set up her own monthly magazine, The Cosmopolitan, which covered social issues, often from a feminist angle, and supported local literary and artistic talents at a time when most Jamaican writers looked to London.

Marson was a poet and playwright herself, frequently addressing themes of race, colour, women’s experiences and the social environment. Her play At What a Price was staged in Kingston in 1932 to positive reviews, but she decided that, for greater reach, she would have to travel abroad.

Move to London

Marson travelled to London, arriving in July 1932, where she lodged with the Jamaican-born Dr Harold Moody and his family in Peckham. Moody, suffering discrimination himself, fought the colour bar by creating the League of Coloured Peoples, Britain’s first significant, black-led campaigning organisation.

In autumn 1933 Marson became the League’s unpaid assistant secretary, organising political activities and social events, and maintaining contacts with student bodies and people of colour. She became editor of the League’s new quarterly journal, The Keys, which covered race issues at home and abroad and which, by 1934, had a circulation of over 2,000 worldwide.

Marson began to expand her political and literary activities. When At What a Price was performed in late 1933, it was the first black colonial production in the West End. In 1935 she was the first delegate from Jamaica to speak at the Annual Congress of the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship.

By 1936 she was making speeches about Jamaica, race, politics and the experiences of black women in England and overseas, for many organisations, such as the Women’s Freedom League, the Women’s Peace Crusade, the Women’s International Alliance and the British Commonwealth League.

Overwhelmed by work in London, Marson returned to Jamaica from 1936–38 where she continued to write and work as a journalist. While there, she also set up the Jamaica Save the Children Association (Jamsave) to help feed and educate the children of working mothers.

Wartime London and The Mansions

In 1938 Marson returned to London to raise funds for Jamsave and to report on, and then give evidence to, the Moyne Commission, which would expose poor living conditions for those working in the West Indies.

Marson was interviewed while visiting the Annual Radio Exhibition and was offered freelance production work on the BBC TV programme, Picture Page. When television broadcasting stopped with the outbreak of war, she gave lectures and did some freelance journalism, including talks and scriptwriting for BBC radio. An early broadcast was her ‘Simple Facts: Jamaica’ published in The Listener in July 1939.

By the time she began working freelance for the BBC, Marson was sharing Flat 14 of The Mansions, Mill Lane, with her sister Ethel, a trainee librarian, and two others. The block was built around 1902, with shops on the ground floor and homes above. Marson was very hospitable, getting out of bed at midnight to feed West Indian service friends who dropped in and hosting parties and sing-songs in the large flat.

Marson’s popular radio programmes from this time included her ‘West Indian Party’, a mixture of music and messages home from servicemen, which was broadcast on Boxing Day 1940 and the morale-boosting Calling the West Indies, which featured West Indian servicemen speaking to home, warming music and uplifting tales of dedicated war-work. Guests on the show included cricketer and anti-racism campaigner Learie Constantine and actor Paul Robeson.

Promotion and poetry

In March 1941, Marson was appointed full-time programme assistant on the Empire Service and in April 1942 was promoted to West Indies producer – the first black producer on the BBC’s payroll.

The late-night broadcast, Caribbean Voices, which she instigated in March 1943, provided a showcase for Caribbean authors; it ran until 1958 and developed into an influential home for Caribbean literature and a vital source of patronage for its writers.

Marson had a successful radio career although BBC archives show that she faced some race-related and interpersonal difficulties. Marson herself was also aware of the tension between broadcasting to the West Indies in a manner suggestive of imperial unity against a background of unrest there at London’s policies.

Marson’s literary work flourished too. In 1942 she was invited to contribute to Voice, a BBC poetry programme, edited by Eric Blair (George Orwell) of the Indian Section, which aimed at giving exposure to younger poets. Some of her poetry was also broadcast in Calling West Africa. In June 1945 she published Towards the Stars, a collection of poems with themes of racial discrimination, isolation and war, although it was not then a critical success.

Ill health and Pioneer Press

By 1945 Marson was again suffering with mental ill-health and the BBC sent her to the US and the West Indies, to have a break, to research listeners’ opinions of the current broadcasts and to scout for new programme ideas. She was welcomed in the West Indies like royalty and was in the papers almost daily.

Marson returned to London with lots of new suggestions but was admitted to hospital and was obliged to return to Jamaica in October 1946. This marked the end of her contract with the BBC, although she was asked to contribute further to Caribbean Voices.

It was almost two years until Marson was well enough to work but in January 1949, she started the Pioneer Press to publish affordable editions of books by Jamaican writers. She resuscitated the Readers and Writers Club and helped promising writers to place their work.

She continued to write herself: there were features for the Daily Gleaner and some of her work was included in Langston Hughes’s Poetry of the Negro, bringing it before the American public. In 1952, Marson moved to America, living in Washington for about eight years, continuing with her writing and social work.

Later life

Marson went back to Jamaica in 1961 and returned to social work with Jamsave. She participated in two major international women’s events in 1964 and was celebrated when she passed through London on her travels.

Marson’s last BBC appearance, on Women’s Hour (broadcast in February 1965), was about a community service training centre in Haifa, where she had begun working in January. But she became ill again and returned to Jamaica, dying of a heart attack on 6 May 1965. She was buried in St Andrew’s parish church, Kingston. The funeral cortege stretched for miles.

Further reading

• Lenny Henry, ‘Una Marson’s forgotten legacy’ BBC News

• Leila Kassir, ‘Una Marson: Writer, Activist and the first Black woman broadcaster at the BBC’, London’s Pioneers in Their Own Words, Senate House Library

• Denise deCaires Narain, ‘Marson, Una Maud Victoria (1905–1965)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004) (public library subscription required)

• ‘West Indies Calling’, IWM Collections