Culture is the way people go about everyday life – how they move, talk, dress, eat, socialise, and express themselves creatively – informed by their ancestries and adapted to present situations. In Lewisham, residents shared their respective cultures through ordinary routines and carrying on traditions: children traded music on the bus to schools, friends collectively enjoyed food and music at house parties and Jamaican sound systems. This bred familiarity and rapport amongst neighbours which was later leveraged to organise themselves against injustice. 

For these communities, injustice has had many faces. The British government’s hostility has fluctuated over the decades, yet even when it invited people to settle in the UK (as with the Windrush Generation after World War 2), central government and local authorities harassed and criminalised immigrants, denying them access to quality housing, employment and recreation. Lewisham residents organised to provide themselves what British society would not: childcare (Black Childcare Network – 1984), housing (Nubia Way self-build - 1996), education (Positive Image Education Project - 1992), youth work (Youth AID – 1974), and immigration justice (Lewisham Refugee and Migrant Network – 1992). They also campaigned against injustices like racist policing (Ladywell Action Centre – 1969), and far right terrorism and segregation (Brockley International League of Friendship – 1964). Although these groups were founded by Black Lewisham residents, they included working class neighbours and immigrant groups from beyond the Caribbean and West Africa.

These groups worked out of everyday places: people’s living rooms, houses of worship, small local businesses, community and youth centres, and the open public – streets, parks, and transport. Using these nearby communal infrastructures was partially a matter of convenience, but they were also where working class and immigrant groups could afford entry, or at the very least, not barred entry by prejudiced landlords. Where people gathered, spaces were transformed artistically as creators filled it with music, murals and food to reflect themselves. Conversations helped collectivise memories and make meanings of daily mundanities and significant events. Together these accumulated into a shared understanding of the world, starting with their new environment in Britain.  

This self-empowerment provoked hatred from mainstream British society. Racists, many of whom belonged to far-right political organisations such as the National Front and British National Party, menaced and firebombed important cultural venues like the Albany (1978) and Moonshot Centre (1977). Lewisham residents stood up for themselves and each other. Under the leadership of its founder Sybil Phoenix, the Moonshot Centre was rebuilt. Lewisham People’s Day, an annual celebration of the Borough’s local talent, originated as a protest against the National Front marching through Lewisham in 1977. 

This collectivity was and is cultural as much as it is political. People instilled community and mutual aid where white Britain kept them out. Sound systems, for example, were brought into youth clubs, where teenaged Lewisham residents innovated technical and musical practices. These were taken into dances in people’s homes and sound clashes, where MCs countered popular racist narratives with history lessons and criticisms of the British government. For these reasons, in the 1970s and 1980s, the BBC wouldn’t play reggae on its airwaves, so people made pirate radio stations and distributed records directly to independent businesses. If venue proprietors refused to rent their spaces for dances, people instead used church and community halls, or set up in homes and abandoned buildings. 

This cooperative cultural action has built social networks that persist today thanks to generations of families staying in Lewisham, collaborating creatively, organising politically, running and patronising local businesses, and building communal infrastructure regardless of assistance or hindrance from national or local government. Subsequent generations continue to coexist and strengthen collective action, memories and attachments to places, but the Council’s regeneration strategies of the past two decades jeopardise this continuity and cohesion. 


Written by Christine Hannigan, in collaboration with Kin Structures