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Ravers, Rastas and rugby league stars: why the story of Black British culture is about more than just London
Black Britons altered the DNA of music, fashion and sport in this country. But why is it framed as a London story? Bradford-born writer Lanre Bakare explores how it reaches far beyond the capital – and farther back in time
The Rock Against Racism concert in London’s Victoria Park one year later, where 100,000 people turned out to see the Clash, X-Ray Spex and Steel Pulse perform, is held up as the exemplar of when culture was used to counter rising fascism. There are people in my book whose families go back five or six generations in the UK – long before the Empire Windrush arrived; there are artists and authors, legal campaigners, feminists, ravers, rude boys and rugby league superstars. We’ve had an important wave of corrective histories from David Olusoga, Jason Okundaye, Jim Pines, June Givanni, Ferdinand Dennis, Stella Dadzie, Paterson Joseph, Hakim Adi, Marika Sherwood and Stephen Bourne, but clearly we need more.
Or read this on The Guardian