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We Were There: How Black Culture, Resistance and Community Shaped Modern Britain
We Were There is about a Black Britain that for too long has been unknown and unexplored – the one that exists beyond London.
**AN OBSERVER, GQ AND INEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR**
'A vital corrective that enhances our understanding of black British history' STEVE MCQUEEN
From the late 1970s to the early 1990s Britain was in rocked by Margaret Thatcher’s radical economic policy, the rise of the National Front, widespread civil unrest. With anti-immigration policies in the political mainstream, Black lives were on the frontline of a racial reckoning. But it was also a time of unrivalled Black cultural creation, organising and resistance. This was the crucible in which modern Britain came into existence.
We Were There brings into the spotlight for the first time extraordinary Black lives in once-rich cities now home to failing the foundries of Birmingham, the docks of Liverpool and Cardiff, the mills of Bradford. We are in Wigan, Wolverhampton, Manchester and the green expanse of the British countryside. We meet feminists and Rastafarians, academics and pan-Africanists, environmental campaigners and rugby-league superstars; witness landmark campaigns against miscarriages of justice; encounter radical groups of artists and pioneering thinkers; tread dancefloors that hosted Northern Soul all-nighters and the birth of Acid House.
Together, these voices and stories rewrite our idea of Black British culture. London was only ever part of the picture – We Were There is about incorporating a vastly broader range of Black Britons into the fabric of our national story.
Alive with energy and purpose, We Were There decisively expands our sense of who we are. Confronting, joyful and thrilling, this is a profoundly important new portrait of modern Britain.
'Genuinely pioneering and transformative histories only come along rarely, but Lanre Bakare's ... is undoubtedly such' DAVID KYNASTON
**AN OBSERVER, GQ AND INEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR**
'A vital corrective that enhances our understanding of black British history' STEVE MCQUEEN
From the late 1970s to the early 1990s Britain was in rocked by Margaret Thatcher’s radical economic policy, the rise of the National Front, widespread civil unrest. With anti-immigration policies in the political mainstream, Black lives were on the frontline of a racial reckoning. But it was also a time of unrivalled Black cultural creation, organising and resistance. This was the crucible in which modern Britain came into existence.
We Were There brings into the spotlight for the first time extraordinary Black lives in once-rich cities now home to failing the foundries of Birmingham, the docks of Liverpool and Cardiff, the mills of Bradford. We are in Wigan, Wolverhampton, Manchester and the green expanse of the British countryside. We meet feminists and Rastafarians, academics and pan-Africanists, environmental campaigners and rugby-league superstars; witness landmark campaigns against miscarriages of justice; encounter radical groups of artists and pioneering thinkers; tread dancefloors that hosted Northern Soul all-nighters and the birth of Acid House.
Together, these voices and stories rewrite our idea of Black British culture. London was only ever part of the picture – We Were There is about incorporating a vastly broader range of Black Britons into the fabric of our national story.
Alive with energy and purpose, We Were There decisively expands our sense of who we are. Confronting, joyful and thrilling, this is a profoundly important new portrait of modern Britain.
'Genuinely pioneering and transformative histories only come along rarely, but Lanre Bakare's ... is undoubtedly such' DAVID KYNASTON
365 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 17, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 18, 2025
Damn ! This book is incredible. One of those books that like crack open your brain and way of looking at place ! I felt so lucky to read this book idk. Feels so important to know these stories !
November 13, 2025
This book tells so many unheard tales of Black British History, which informs so much on why the country is the way it is today. It is essential reading for everyone in Britain. Although I couldn’t put this book down I am still deeply disturbed by how the stories from the 60s/70s still align with stories from today. It has helped me truly understand the meaning of institutional racism and why Black British History is essential and unavoidable when considering the make up and successes of Britain.
October 2, 2025
really well researched and necessary publication. found it a little repetitive and last chapter lacked cohesion for me personally so it threw me off slightly but still enjoyed. loved the chapter that focused on Tiger Bay (Wales).
July 26, 2025
This is an absolutely vital book, in that it felt like it comprehensively filled a notable gap in my existing knowledge: Black Northerners' contributions to culture. Bakare reinstates Black figures like the award-winning dancer Caesar into the history of Northern Soul, while sensitively delineating significant figures as diverse as Claudette Johnson, Julian Agyeman, Ellery Hanley, Martin Offiah and George Evelyn, who I'd only tangentially been aware of at best.
This book also valuably exposes how Scotland was long in self denial about racism, but then eventually managed to pre-empt the serious cultural self-examination of the MacPherson Report south of the border, and made significant strides to a more enlightened path. Bakare ensures we grasp how David Oluwale (1930-1969) and Axmed Abuukar Sheekh (1960-1989) were murdered in Leeds and Edinburgh respectively, in horrifying racist attacks predating Stephen Lawrence's (1974-1993) in London. Bakare necessarily decentres London, revealing a history both of racism and warm spaces of inclusion across Scotland, Wales and the English North and Midlands. Bakare also tellingly recounts the history of Black Liverpool activists tearing down the statue of pro-slavery MP William Huskisson in Toxteth in 1982, predating Colston's timely descension and nautical sojourn in Bristol by 38 years.
The Wolverhampton Art Gallery, the Wigan Casino and the Reno nightclub in Manchester - facilitated by Phil Bagbotiwan, with Persian a key DJ - are among many spaces which Bakare reveals as enabling, contrasted with the exclusionary attitudes of many white people walking in the Lake District. God's copper James Anderton figures as a persistent, Whitehousian villain, while Bakare discerns waves of urban regeneration in Liverpool, Manchester and Cardiff which initially had some progressive benefits, but there is a sense that the Heseltine-Blair era moves simply enabled capitalism to rebrand and move into new areas. Gentrification was the overwhelming human result, which means the sorts of urban radical togetherness of the 1960s-80s now feels a distant prospect.
Bakare pinpoints the Fifth Pan-African Congress occuring in Manchester on 15-21 October 1945 and how the attendees went onto be key figures in postwar African Independence movements. This perhaps left me wanting a bit more exploration of how these movements fared, amid the Cold War and progressive attempts to break the binary like Non-Alignment and the New International Economic Order - and how British Blacks related to this - but then that would require a book on its own to do that justice! There's an expansiveness to the book that discerns pre-1945 eugenic racism finding its street manifestation in rioting in Cardiff and other cities. The Liverpool L8 and Tiger Bay chapters reveal the frightening reality that the best establishment figures were patronising paternalists, though, gradually the richness of multicultural life in these pioneer communities became clearer to more people, though was ill served by political decision makers.
A subterranean thread is how, despite Labour enabling an overdue upsurge in Black MPs in 1987, it would often be more mavericks like Tony Wilson who acted to break down boundaries and support intercultural exchange. Bakare recounts a fascinating press interview with Agyeman by William Deedes, which, alongside Jazzie B's use of Thatcher's Enterprise Allowance Scheme, shows how right-wing people could once engage and enable, if unwittingly in the latter case! Today, Reform fellow travellers openly and regularly demonise Black and Asian people and propound the dismal Great Replacement Conspiracy Theory, imported from rabid US racists.
We Were There is meticulous, responsible and truly enlightening stuff. Bakare uses a mix of careful archival labour and oral history interviews of totally neglected figures whose stories needed capturing, to provide ballast for a sturdy, kaleidoscopic narrative. Bakare sensitively documents how, as in L8 and Tiger Bay, Black people have been here for a long time, while then extolling the vast range of cultural contributions across the whole UK from 1945-1990. This book's story is a righteous and entertaining corrective to so many of our risible, rickety ways of seeing and thinking today.
This book also valuably exposes how Scotland was long in self denial about racism, but then eventually managed to pre-empt the serious cultural self-examination of the MacPherson Report south of the border, and made significant strides to a more enlightened path. Bakare ensures we grasp how David Oluwale (1930-1969) and Axmed Abuukar Sheekh (1960-1989) were murdered in Leeds and Edinburgh respectively, in horrifying racist attacks predating Stephen Lawrence's (1974-1993) in London. Bakare necessarily decentres London, revealing a history both of racism and warm spaces of inclusion across Scotland, Wales and the English North and Midlands. Bakare also tellingly recounts the history of Black Liverpool activists tearing down the statue of pro-slavery MP William Huskisson in Toxteth in 1982, predating Colston's timely descension and nautical sojourn in Bristol by 38 years.
The Wolverhampton Art Gallery, the Wigan Casino and the Reno nightclub in Manchester - facilitated by Phil Bagbotiwan, with Persian a key DJ - are among many spaces which Bakare reveals as enabling, contrasted with the exclusionary attitudes of many white people walking in the Lake District. God's copper James Anderton figures as a persistent, Whitehousian villain, while Bakare discerns waves of urban regeneration in Liverpool, Manchester and Cardiff which initially had some progressive benefits, but there is a sense that the Heseltine-Blair era moves simply enabled capitalism to rebrand and move into new areas. Gentrification was the overwhelming human result, which means the sorts of urban radical togetherness of the 1960s-80s now feels a distant prospect.
Bakare pinpoints the Fifth Pan-African Congress occuring in Manchester on 15-21 October 1945 and how the attendees went onto be key figures in postwar African Independence movements. This perhaps left me wanting a bit more exploration of how these movements fared, amid the Cold War and progressive attempts to break the binary like Non-Alignment and the New International Economic Order - and how British Blacks related to this - but then that would require a book on its own to do that justice! There's an expansiveness to the book that discerns pre-1945 eugenic racism finding its street manifestation in rioting in Cardiff and other cities. The Liverpool L8 and Tiger Bay chapters reveal the frightening reality that the best establishment figures were patronising paternalists, though, gradually the richness of multicultural life in these pioneer communities became clearer to more people, though was ill served by political decision makers.
A subterranean thread is how, despite Labour enabling an overdue upsurge in Black MPs in 1987, it would often be more mavericks like Tony Wilson who acted to break down boundaries and support intercultural exchange. Bakare recounts a fascinating press interview with Agyeman by William Deedes, which, alongside Jazzie B's use of Thatcher's Enterprise Allowance Scheme, shows how right-wing people could once engage and enable, if unwittingly in the latter case! Today, Reform fellow travellers openly and regularly demonise Black and Asian people and propound the dismal Great Replacement Conspiracy Theory, imported from rabid US racists.
We Were There is meticulous, responsible and truly enlightening stuff. Bakare uses a mix of careful archival labour and oral history interviews of totally neglected figures whose stories needed capturing, to provide ballast for a sturdy, kaleidoscopic narrative. Bakare sensitively documents how, as in L8 and Tiger Bay, Black people have been here for a long time, while then extolling the vast range of cultural contributions across the whole UK from 1945-1990. This book's story is a righteous and entertaining corrective to so many of our risible, rickety ways of seeing and thinking today.
October 12, 2025
If I could give this book six stars, I would. It opened up my eyes and perspective on how Black people have existed in, and influenced, the far corners of Britain. Painful truths and experiences sit alongside stories of innovation and resistance. I can imagine this book being handed down for generations to come; it tells the vital yet often forgotten stories of Black people in post-war Britain.
February 5, 2026
Read the book after hearing the author on a podcast. Really enjoyed it, particularly the Edinburgh chapter. It was very readable and painted a vivid picture of the various time period and setting depicted.
Read
June 8, 2025Amazing insight into modern black British history, loved it
Also never read a book which used anathema more than this book did, loved it
Also never read a book which used anathema more than this book did, loved it
June 25, 2025
This is more than a book; it's a breakthrough.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews