Lanre Bakare: We Were There

We Were There is about a Black Britain that for too long has been unknown and unexplored – the one that exists beyond London.

From the late 1970s to the early 1990s Britain was in tumult: 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 industries: 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 rugby-league superstars; witness landmark campaigns and encounter radical artists and thinkers; tread dancefloors that hosted Northern Soul all-nighters and the birth of Acid House. London was only ever part of the picture.

Join Sheffield writer and broadcaster Désirée Reynolds for a conversation with the book's author Lanre Bakare, who will set out a compelling portrait of modern Britain that weaves Black stories far away from the capital into our national narrative.