On Thursday, 17 October 2024, we organised a rare opportunity to learn about a ground-breaking chapter in the history of Black British cultural life.

The decade spanning the early 1980s and ’90s was a significant period in the history of the Black experience in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century. Movement from the margins towards the centre of British society began to accelerate in the wake of the Black Peoples Day of Action following the New Cross fire and the uprisings of 1981 and 1985. The International Book Fair of Radical, Black and Third World Books, 1982-1995 not only embodied the spirit of the times but was also an agent of change. Participants in the book fair festivals included literary luminaries like: Amiri Baraka, Ama Ata Aidoo, Kamau Brathwaite, Biyi Bandele, Jean Binta Breeze, Edouard Glissant, Lorna Goodison, CLR James, James Kelman, Earl Lovelace, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Caryl Phillips, Wole Soyinka and many more. This landmark black cultural intervention, initiated by three independent booksellers and publishers – New Beacon, Bogle-L’Ouverture and Race Today Publications – provided a platform for a new explosion of creativity in literature and the arts.

Roxy Harris, chairman of the George Padmore Institute, one of the organizers and participants, revisited the book fair, offering insights into its history, organisation, themes, participants and showing how this golden era in the cultural life of Black Britain helped to transform the literary, cultural and political landscape of the nation. This event was hosted by Linton Kwesi Johnson, himself an organizer of and participant in the book fair.

Attendees also had the opportunity to purchase A Meeting of the Continents: Histories, Memories, Organisation and Programmes, the comprehensive overview of the book fairs which is available to purchase from our online shop here.

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