Poet, essayist, publisher and political activist John La Rose was all of these and more in a life dedicated to cultural and political change.Having been involved in workers’ rights movements in his native Trinidad in the 1940s and 1950s, he settled in London where he became a leading voice in the black community.Eager to demonstrate the integral link between art and politics, he was a founder member of the groundbreaking Caribbean Artists Movement, which attempted to define a black cultural aesthetic.But he was also a man of the streets and headed a number of now historic campaign groups in the 1960s and 1970s, including the Black Parents Movement.

When he died in 2006 aged 78, his most visible legacy was New Beacon Books in Stroud Green Road, Islington, the first black publishing house and bookshop in the UK, which reflected his love of learning and the need to spread the word.In his own words, he “dreamed to change the world”, the inspiration behind the title of a just-opened exhibition into his life and legacy [at Islington Museum]. Based on photos, leaflets, artwork and letters, it covers La Rose’s arrival in London in 1961 and the numerous organisations he became involved in.

As such it is as much an important record of early black political struggles and creative and intellectual awakenings as it is of La Rose’s own extraordinary journey. Debate and discussion were central to his activism and there is a reconstruction of the famous table in the kitchen of his home in Albert Road, Finsbury Park, around which many important ideas were born over cups of tea.The house was the early home of New Beacon Books, where books were stacked in the front room for distribution to events and meetings. One photo shows Sarah White, La Rose’s partner, delivering a load of them on her scooter.

It was part of the “blueprint for collective action”, La Rose’s son, Michael, said at the exhibition’s launch last week. “Start where you are. Start small, build slowly and consolidate.”And so it proved. From being at the forefront of the Black People’s Day of Action in 1981, in which 20,000 people marched through central London in protest at the muted official response to a fire in which 13 black youngsters died, La Rose helped found the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books

• Keywords
  EXHIBITIONS, BLACK PEOPLE, PUBLISHING
• Geographical keyword
  STROUD GREEN ROAD
• Persons keyword
  John La Rose, Caribbean Artists Movement, Black Parents Movement, Islington (London Borough). Islington Library and Heritage Service. Islington Museum