Harold Arundel Moody (8 October 1882 – 24 April 1947) was a physician in London who established the League of black and ethnic Peoples in 1931 with the support of the Quakers. Moody was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1882, the son of pharmacist Charles Ernest Moody and his wife Christina Emmeline Ellis. In 1904, he sailed to the United Kingdom to study medicine at King's College London. Having been refused work because of his colour, he started his own medical practice in Peckham in February 1932.
In March 1931 Harold Moody formed the League of Coloured Peoples, which was concerned with racial equality and civil rights in Britain and elsewhere in the world.
He also campaigned against racial prejudice in the armed forces, and is credited with overturning the Special Restriction Order (or Coloured Seamen's Act) of 1925, a discriminatory measure that sought to provide subsidies to merchant shipping employing only British nationals and required alien seamen (many of whom had served the United Kingdom during the First World War) to register with their local police. Many black and Asian British nationals had no proof of identity and were made redundant.
A permanent sculpture of Dr Harold Moody, a civil rights campaigner
The scultpure was bought by the council in 2007 and was made by Harold’s brother, Ronald Moody, in 1946.
Dr Moody came to London from Jamaica in 1904 and set up a medical practice in Peckham. The prejudice encountered by him and others led him to devote much of his spare time to fighting for equal rights for black men and women, and led him to start the League of Coloured Peoples in London in 1931.
His home in Queen’s Road, Peckham, became its base. Many important black figures visited, including Paul Robeson and Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of independent Ghana.
During the Second World War five of Moody’s children joined the Forces. In 1940 his son, Charles Arundel, became one of the first black officers in the British Army. Dr Moody campaigned against the colour bar which existed in the armed services, resulting in a change of the rules that allowed black servicemen to become officers.
Moody died in 1947 and thousands attended his funeral in Camberwell.
