We Were There:

The Lists


We Were There: The Lists is an expanded companion to We Were There, gathering the music, films and texts that shaped the histories explored in the book. These lists form a cultural backbone — the sounds, stories and archives that trace how Black culture, resistance and community have shaped modern Britain.

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Reading List

  • Kathleen Paul, Whitewashing Britain, Cornell University Press, 1997

  • Daniel Trilling, Bloody Nasty People: The Rise of Britain’s Far Right, Verso Books, 2012

  • Gavin Watson, Skins, Music Press Books, 2015

  • Leroy Rosenior and Leo Moynihan, It’s only banter: The Autobiography of Leroy Rosenior, Pitch Publishing, 2017

  • David Nowell, Too Darn Soulful, Robson Books, 2001

  • Bernard Coard, How the West Indian Child is Made Educationally Subnormal in the British School System, McDermott Publishing, 1971

  • Lloyd Bradley, Bass Culture, Viking, 2000

  • Sound System Culture, One Love Books, 2013

  • Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, Headline, 22 May 2006

  • Francesco Mellina, Last Night at Wigan Casino, March Design, 2022

  • Ashley Clark, ‘Scenes from a hostile environment: a history of Black British protest film and television’, BFI, Sight & Sound, 7 August 2020

  • The Black Scholar Interviews: David Koff & Msindo Mwinyipembe’, The Black Scholar, 10(8/9), 68– 80 (May 1979)

  • Mark Keighley, Wool City, G Whitaker and Company Ltd, 2007

  • ‘The Atkins Report on the Strategic Future of the Wool Textile Industry’ (University of Southampton, 1969)

  • Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher: The Authorised Biography, Volume One: Not For Turning, Allen Lane, 2013

  • ‘George Lindo Speaks’, Bradford Black, 2(4), 44– 45 (March 1979)

  • Matt Foot, ‘Corrupt Cops’, London Review of Books, 8 February 2024

  • J. Anthony Lukas, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families, Vintage, 1986

  • Richard Vinen, Second City: Birmingham and the Forging of Modern Britain, Allen Lane, 2022

  • Vanley Burke, By The Rivers of Birmingham, Mac Birmingham, 2012

  • Evelyn Waugh, The Coronation of Haile Selassie, Penguin, 2005

  • Benjamin Zephaniah, The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah: The Autobiography, Scribner UK, 2018

  • Kieran Connell, Black Handsworth: Race in 1980s Britain, California University Press, 2019

  • Derek Bishton, Talking Blues: The Black Community Speaks About Its Relationship with the Police, Affor, 1978

  • Norman Adams (Jah Blue), A Historical Report: The Rastafarian Movement in England, GWA Works, 2002

  • Ernest Cashmore, Rastaman: The Rastafarian Movement in England, Allen & Unwin, 1979

  • Paul Gilroy, Black Britain, SAQI, 2011

  • Pardner Money Stories, Deanne Heron, HANSIB, 2011

  • Stuart Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, Polygon

  • Mark Christian, ‘The Fletcher Report 1930: A Historical Case Study of Contested Black Mixed Heritage Britishness’

  • John Belchem, ‘Race relations in the 1950s’, in Before the Windrush: Race Relations in 20th­ Century Liverpool, Liverpool, 2014

  • Anthony Hogan, The Beat Makers: The Unsung Heroes of The Mersey Sound, Amberley Publishing, 2017

  • Dave Clay, A Liverpool Black History, Beaten Track Publishing, 2020

  • Ray Costello, Liverpool Black Pioneers, The Bluecoat Press, 2007.

  • Howard Gayle, 61 Minutes in Munich: The Story of Liverpool FC’s First Black Footballer, De Coubertin Books, 2016

  • Andy Beckett, Promised You a Miracle, Allen Lane, 2013

  • Michael Heseltine, Life in the Jungle, Hodder & Stoughton, 2000

  • Wally Brown, Wally Brown: A Life – Born and Raised in L8, Writing on the Wall, 2023

  • Michael Crick, Militant, Faber, 1984

  • The Place Is Here, edited by Nick Aikens and Elizabeth Robles, Sternberg Press, 2016

  • Hugh Trevor- Roper, The Rise of Christian Europe, History Book Club, reprint, 1967

  • Shirin Hirsch, In The Shadow of Enoch, Manchester University Press, 2018

  • Paul Foot, The Rise of Enoch Powell, Penguin, 1969

  • Frank Bowling, Tate Britain retrospective catalogue

  • ‘Bill Schwarz Ed.,’ West Indian Intellectuals in Britain

  • Anne Walmsley, The Caribbean Artists’ Movement, New Beacon Books, 1992

  • Claudette Johnson, I Came To Dance, Modern Art Oxford, 2019

  • T Ras Makonnen, Pan­ Africanism from Within

  • Marika Sherwood, ‘“Mak”: Ras T Makonnen, the unrecognized hero of the Pan- African Movement’

  • Hakim Adi and Marika Sherwood, The 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress Revisited New Beacon Books

  • Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, Penguin

  • Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A New History of Global Capitalism, Penguin, 2015

  • Laurence Brown and Niall Cunningham, The Inner Geographies of a Migrant Gateway: Mapping the Built Environment and the Dynamics of Caribbean Mobility in Manchester, 1951– 2011, Cambridge University Press, January 2016

  • Roots: Oral History, (pamphlet), published 1992

  • Diana Watt and Adele Jones, Catching Hell and Doing Well, Trentham Books, 2015

  • ‘Rural Heritage and Colonial Nostalgia in the Thatcher Years: V. S. Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival’, Lucienne Loh

  • Eric Jay, ‘Keep Them in Birmingham’, CRE, 1991

  • Howard Spring, Heaven Lies About Us: A Fragment of Infancy, Constable, 1939

  • Alan Llwyd, Black Wales: A History of Black Welsh People, Hughes & Son (Publishers) Ltd, 2005.

  • Jacqueline Jenkins, Black 1919: Riots, Racism and Resistance in Imperial Britain, Liverpool University Press, 2008

  • Kenneth Little, Negroes in Britain, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972

  • Leon Gooberman, ‘The State and Post- Industrial Urban Regeneration: The Reinvention of South

  • Cardiff ’, Urban History, 2018

  • William Rees, Cardiff: A History of the City, 1969

  • ‘Fighting Denial: The Lothian Black Forum and Anti- Racist Protests in Edinburgh, 1989– 1992’

  • Robin Ward, Exploring Edinburgh, Luath Press, 2021

  • Greg Wilson, ‘Electrospective: Hewan Clarke’

  • Matt Anniss, Join The Future (Velocity Press, 2021)

  • Doug Laughton, A Dream Come True, London League Publications Ltd

  • Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, William Collins, 1993

  • Peter Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain, Pluto Press, 2010

  • Simon Kelner, To Jerusalem and Back, Pan Books, 1996

  • Let It Be Told, edited by Lauretta Ngcobo, Pluto Press, 1987

  • Dave Hadfield, Up and Over, Mainstream Sport, 2004

  • Stuart Hall, Essential Essays Vol.1 & 2, Duke University Press, 2019