Book Review - We Were There: How Black British Culture, Resistance And Community Shaped Modern Britain By Lancre Bakare

In the public consciousness Black British history is often seen through a very narrow lens focusing on the arrival of the SS Empire Windrush, and it mostly exists within the confines of London. This is not just the view here but seems to be the view around the world too. You just need to look at how Black Scottish people went viral on TikTok this past August. The reaction from Americans in particular, was one of shock at the simple fact that Black Scottish people exist. I saw this reaction online as it played out and more than anything I was surprised at the level of surprise. It really goes to underscore just how closely Black British history and identity has been tied to London specifically when Black British people live in communities all over Britain. We Were There – How Black British Culture, Resistance and Community Shaped Modern Britain by Lanre Bakare is a book that attempts to decentralise London and shift attention to the rest of the UK. It is structured so each chapter focuses on a specific year from 1979 to 1990 and a specific city from all over Britain. As someone from Leicester, a city whose Caribbean Carnival celebrated its 40th anniversary this year, this expanded view was greatly appreciated. While Leicester may not have got its own chapter, this book was still in many ways, a breath of fresh air to me.

Bakare, who grew up in Bradford, uses a mix of thorough research (the last third of the book is a list of all his sources), interviews and oral histories to eschew the idea that Black British history started with Windrush. He shows Black communities have much older, and deeper roots in Britain with his focus on Liverpool. He gives a brief history of Liverpool as a port city that benefited greatly from the slave trade centuries ago with a side effect being an increase in Black people, many enslaved, living there, setting up the beginnings of a Black community that would grow and solidify over time. As Bakare puts it “Black scousers had settled over multiple generations, dating back to the 1700s. They knew no other country to call home, nor did their parents or, in many cases, grandparents.” Sadly, they seem to have been viewed as an anomaly by the government, a problem that needed to be dealt with rather than a thriving community that made up part of the beating heart of Liverpool. Bakare doesn’t stop at Liverpool with his tour of Black communities outside of London and doesn’t just limit himself to English cities either. When I said he looks at specific cities from all over Britain I meant it as he has chapters devoted to Cardiff, and Edinburgh where he focuses on some of the previously ignored (or in the case of the people reacting to TikTok I mentioned above) completely unheard-of Black communities found in Wales and Scotland. By telling some of these communities’ stories Bakare shows that Black British history goes much further back than the 1940’s, and that Black British identity runs deep in local, civic, and cultural histories all over the UK. It’s not just the Windrush generation, and not just London but far older and widespread than that.

  Given the title of the book, it probably won’t come as a surprise for me to say that Bakare also charts how Black British culture developed its own unique identity. He shows how over time Black British people carved out their own safe spaces through music, particularly through the evolution of different music scenes, from Northern Soul clubs, reggae sound systems, and early house music. These weren’t just venues, or genres of music to dance to and blow off some steam. They were vehicles for Black people to claim visibility, agency, and connection in a society that was often openly hostile towards them. Alongside the development of Black British music, he also shows how Black British art grew to become a cultural force for protest and resistance. Importantly Bakare shows how all of this experimentation, and the cultural innovations they produced happened outside of London. For example, in one chapter Bakare casts his spotlight on the first national Black art exhibition which was held in Wolverhampton in the West Midlands in 1982. He notes that one of the main points of discussion among the Black artists who put on the exhibition was the very question of what Black British art was, or what it could be. Bakare does a great job conveying the feeling of being on the ground floor for something big and creating something new through his words when he writes about the group who would become the Blk Art Group. What they created was much more overtly political and challenging than the mainstream fine art community was used to or comfortable with. The Blk Art Group, like the different music scenes at Black night clubs across the country were communities where art represented self-expression and protest. Music and art do not just reflect resistance in Bakare’s writing, they are resistance, intertwined with grassroots organising, local activism, pushing back against stereotypes, and building pride in a shared Black culture. Every dancehall gig, art exhibition, and club night was a statement of presence in a country that often tried to render Black lives invisible or second-class.

  It is hard to write about anything that focuses on life in Britain in the 1980’s without writing about Thatcher. Her shadow looms large over the decade as if she’s the final boss in a video game; her presence always felt even when she’s not there. According to Bakare, Thatcher’s Britain in the 1980’s was one stricken by deindustrialisation, rising unemployment, hostility toward organised labour, shrinking social safety nets, and was devastating for Black communities, particularly outside of London. Across the country industrial decline meant industries that had previously kept cities successful closed down, leaving them in economic ruins. In cities like Bradford, Liverpool, Wolverhampton, Manchester and Cardiff, and many of the other places Bakare features, the economic damage was felt by everyone, but disproportionately by Black people. The smaller Black communities in these cities had fewer buffers against unemployment, precarious housing, and a state less responsive to their needs and whose answer to problems was usually to send in more police. The damage done by Thatcher’s government’s myopic vision for Britain from economic exclusion, community fragmentation, and underinvestment are all still felt today. You can draw a direct line connecting many of the problems that Thatcher’s government worsened, with problems Britain faces today, more than 40 years later. The parallels between present and past seem to grow more and more by the day.

  Thanks to these parallels, and the not so invisible threads connecting right now to back then, while this book is ostensibly focused on the past, its relevance has never been higher than at this current moment. Time and time again Bakare writes about Black British people and other people of colour having to push back against anti-immigration sentiment fuelled in large part by economic pain. Justified anger at the state of things is handily redirected by bad actors turning people of colour into scapegoats. Reading this brought to mind the increasing anti-immigration sentiment in Britain in 2025, especially given the recent (at the time of writing) protest in London that drew 110,000 people. It almost made me feel like Dr Manhattan from Watchmen when the reader sees how he perceives time. It is 1948 and politicians are fomenting anti-immigration sentiment, it is 1979 and politicians are fomenting anti-immigration sentiment, it is 1981 and politicians are fomenting anti-immigration sentiment, it is 2025 and politicians are fomenting anti-immigration sentiment. Seeing how much the same cycles repeat like this really highlights how much still needs to be done. Having said that I don’t want to leave you with the impression that this book is all doom and gloom because it most certainly isn’t. This book also shows the strength of Black communities across Britain, and how they can unite and thrive, even in parts of the country where they are smaller and more fragmented. To end this piece, I will say there is an old Martin Luther King quote that springs to mind “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” That might be the case, but it’s not some naturally occurring force. This book shows it only bends towards justice because the tireless work of organisations, and communities over lifetimes makes it bend that way.

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