My Childhood in the Care System, with Baroness Lola Young
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Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. Our guest today is Baroness Lola Young. Lola Young is a member of the House of Lords, as well as an actress, an academic, an activist and campaigner for social justice. Lola's new memoir is called Eight Weeks, which tells her remarkable life story from a childhood in foster care to becoming one of the first black women in the House of Lords.

In eight weeks, through her care records, fragments of memory and her imagination where parts of her story are missing, Lola assembles the pieces of her past into a portrait of a childhood in the care system. Joining Lola to discuss her memoir is Habiba Kachar, a journalist who specializes in writing about race, gender, beauty and internet culture. Now let's join Habiba in conversation with Lola Young.

Hello, welcome to Intelligence Squared. I am a journalist. My name is Habiba Kaccha. Our guest today is Baroness Lola Young. Lola Young is a member of the House of Lords as well as an actress, an academic, an activist and a campaigner for social justice. Today we'll be discussing Lola's new memoir, Eight Weeks, which tells her remarkable life story from a childhood in foster care to becoming one of the first black women in the House of Lords.

From the age of eight weeks to 18 years, she was moved between foster care placements and children's homes in North London. In eight weeks, through her care records, fragments of memory and her imagination where parts of her stories are missing, Lola assembles the pieces of her past into a portrait of childhood in the care system. Welcome to Intelligence Squared, Lola. Thank you for inviting me on. Lovely to meet you. Lovely to meet you too. The book was...

so interesting and there were so many different parts where I was just like I can't believe that this was your life and I can't believe that you didn't let your childhood and the things that happened in your childhood deter you but my first question would be what made you want to write this book?

Well, the short answer to that is that originally I didn't want to write this book, but various friends and people said, look, this is a really interesting story. If you don't write it, maybe somebody else will and it'll not be in your own words.

So I thought about it and I started on it quite some time ago, several years ago, but realized that it kind of wasn't going anywhere. It was kind of a neat story, if you like, you know, from foster care to House of Lords and all of that. But it didn't kind of move me in a funny sort of way. And then I discovered this whole thing about the care records and that was fantastic.

That was a pivotal moment because it then added in this new ingredient. And although it was quite fraught, the process of finding them and reading them, in the end, I think it was worthwhile. Yeah, it definitely was worthwhile. And how would you describe kind of the writing process of writing your book? How did you feel when you were writing it?

Well, it's interesting because I have written a book before, but it was a very different kind of a book. It was an academic book and that's more or less straightforward. You've just got to plow through it and read all your sources and everything. But when you're drawing on yourself, not only in terms of factual information, but in terms of that emotional landscape and trying to think back

through the decades to what it felt like then. Inevitably, you're imposing a kind of current framework on it, but you're trying also to capture, to evoke a different period and a different way of thinking, a different kind of cultural outlook to what we have today. So that part of the process I found fascinating. And I did several kind of writers' retreats with the Alvon Foundation and

try to sort of work through it in a logical, systematic way. But when you're writing your life, just like life itself, it doesn't quite work out that way. So there was lots of kind of to-ing and fro-ing in terms of myself, let alone when it got to the point of editors looking at it. So the process was tough but necessary and ultimately satisfying. Yeah.

Yeah, because obviously this is a book that touches on really difficult themes. So I can imagine that it was hard to go back to it.

But was there also part of it that felt kind of therapeutic in a way when you were writing it? Yeah, that is an interesting question because, you know, we bandy about terms quite sort of in a footloose kind of way. You know, when you think about people about being traumatised or having cathartic experiences and everything. So I don't want to kind of make it, you know, too much sound like I'm some kind of amateur psychiatrist or whatever. But what I would say was...

a relief in many respects, you know, to go through some of that stuff. And particularly when I found in the records some things that corroborated what I'd remembered and what I'd felt and other things that gave me kind of fresh insights into some of the characters, shall we say, that are scattered throughout that narrative. Exactly. So let's get into the book and let's start at the beginning.

So in the first chapter, you speak about how you had both of your mother's passports, a Nigerian passport and a British passport. So how did you feel when you received those passports and you were looking at them? I was stunned, to be honest, because this package came out of the blue.

I hadn't got any warning that this package of stuff would come and it was not that long after my mother died. And if I sound a bit vague about these dates, it's because there's a lot of confusing and sometimes contradictory information and sometimes I was left out of key communications. So I don't even have a clear sort of date in my mind as to when that was. But this little package,

Because as I say in that chapter, I'd never had, I'd never possessed a photograph of my mother. Not in my memory anyway, and if I did, it didn't travel around with me. So these little passport photographs and the accompanying photograph of some kind of social event were the first that I can recall of ever having seen of my mother. And of course, by the time I received them, she died. So yeah, it was...

I sort of, you know how sometimes when things happen, you kind of split yourself in two. There's the part of you that is full of emotion and thinking, my gosh, what is all of this about? How can I get through this? And then there's another part that says, oh, that's interesting.

It's a bit like a scene from a play, you know, sort of you open an envelope and all these items sort of fall out and you're aghast when you see them. So, yeah, I had that kind of sort of split moment of opening that and seeing what was inside.

And in that chapter, you also speak about, because of course you had a relationship with your mother, but that was the first time you had a photograph of your mother, especially as you were older. And I remember in the chapter, you were kind of speaking about how you were looking for yourself in those pictures. So can you kind of just kind of describe like what that was like? Well, I mean, you know, it's interesting you say I had a relationship with my mother, but the nature of that relationship was so...

so stretched as to be almost meaningless. Almost, but not quite, because obviously it can never be totally meaningless.

So, you know, I had, oh God, it's so complicated Habiba, but I had various people say to me who knew my mother or knew my father or knew both of them would say, oh, you look just like your father. And in other words, other people would say, oh, you look just like your mother. And I'm thinking, well, this is what happens with your kids, isn't it? Quite often. But for me, that was a particularly poignant experience.

set of statements to try and conjure with because I'm thinking, well, which is it? Is it either of them? And what does that even mean? Does it have any significance? Because I've never lived with them. I've never lived with either of them. They weren't together. And so the idea that I somehow had their imprint on my face was both intriguing and

I don't know what else it was. It was certainly intriguing, but in a funny sort of way, not quite meaningful enough to say that. So, yeah, it was a quite complicated reaction, as you might imagine. I relate to that because my dad passed away when I was two. Oh, God. And everyone tells me that I look like him and I don't know how to react to that because...

because I don't have a relationship with him. And I remember I actually met one of his friends and he was like, you walk just like your father. And it's just like, like you said, it's quite complex because it's a compliment, but also I don't have a relationship with that person. So it's difficult. It's funny, isn't it? Because you sort of think, well, if I do walk like him in that example you've given, what does that mean? Is that the person sort of putting on you something

their interpretation of how you're walking. Because, you know, or is it that you really, it's so genetically sort of inside you that you can't help but do that? I mean, I do notice that when you see

young men or young women walking with either parent, they do kind of fall into their rhythm. But as you say, you didn't even have that because at the age of two, I guess you could barely walk. So, yeah, that's difficult.

Yeah, exactly. But moving on to your second chapter, you speak about coming into the House of Lords and working on the Children Act. And this is when your friend, your friend, Sal, told you that you were entitled to see the records from your time in care. And you said that you were shocked. Why do you think that information isn't as common as it should be?

Well, I think what it was, was, you know, so I think the conversation with Sal must have been in the around 2010, something like that, or maybe a bit earlier, a bit later. Not so great on dates once I haven't got them in front of me. But the point was, I think that if you were older, if you were in the care system before that law came into force.

then you probably wouldn't know about it. So it came into force in 1989. It was something that adopted children had had the right to look at their records, you know, way before that. But it was only in 1989 that it was decided that children who'd been or people who'd been in the care system would also have that same right. So in a way, it's not surprising. And I could bet you that there are still people

who are my age and maybe even younger, maybe even people in their 50s and 60s, who still don't know that they had that right. And so that's one of the tiny things I hope I can contribute to, that if there are any people out there who sort of think, oh, my gosh, I didn't realize that that was right. Now, the other side of that is because I grew up in the 50s and 60s, obviously for computers and digitization and all that stuff.

the likelihood of those records being intact, I guess, gets slimmer as time goes on because they would have been, most of mine, well, some of mine were handwritten, some of them were typewritten.

and you know, they're photocopies so I don't know what the chances of survival are. You know, you were in care in the 1940s or before that. I don't know what the chances are of retrieving your records intact but it's still worth a go I think if you can take it. Yeah. And when you set out to find your records, did you go into it thinking that you weren't going to find much?

Yeah, I think I did, actually, because of the time, as I say. And Sal had kind of warned me, you know, with this example of one office had lost all the records because a washing machine in the flat above had leaked and everything had gotten flooded. And so, yeah, I was. But again, you know what it is, Habiba, there's this duality, there's this.

"Oh, it'd be so disappointing if I don't find my records." At the same time as, "Oh my gosh, what happens if I find my records and there's stuff that I really can't take?" So, you know, I was in a position of both desperately wanting to have them, but also at the same time, you know, approaching that with some sort of trepidation. - Hmm, yeah.

And let's speak about your childhood and your relationship with Daisy, who you call your mum. How would you describe that relationship? Yeah. I feel like every time you ask me a question, I say that's complicated or that's, you know, because it is. Do you know what I mean? It's like, and also, yeah.

Somebody asked me the other day, did I love my foster mother? And I'd not sort of thought about it in those terms. So I had to try and think what are the components of love and therefore, did I satisfy all those criteria? But what I want to try and convey to people is that

that it's hard to describe what the emotional connection was for me because on the one hand I was, I had that security for the first 14 years of my life. So she died.

but it was security, but not quite secure because I always had this feeling that I might be sent away somewhere because I knew that my parents weren't going to be looking after me. That became abundantly clear when I was quite young. And particularly once they'd left this country to return to Nigeria, that wasn't going to happen. So, and obviously I was aware that my foster mother, I mean, look, she was, she,

she was what in her mid 60s when I went to her as a baby so you know and I could see that she was an old woman you know so I knew she wasn't going to last forever as it were so there was that sort of element of what would happen to me if anything happened to her or if I was naughty would she you know opt to send me away somewhere and so the relationship again was very complicated but I did have enough of a sense of

we weren't rich or anything like that, but we weren't desperately poor either. So she had very little income, but I was aware that she had very little income and not much financial support from my parents. But I was always fed and

kind of clothed um kind of I was clothed but you know it will hand me downs from other people and that was kind of okay but yeah it was it was a complicated relationship but there was this curious thing that she had because as I think I mentioned she um she was one of I think two foster mothers in the area who would actually take black children and um

I don't know whether it was because the black families that she knew were mostly Nigerians. So my parents, Kyan, who was brought up with me, her parents, they were all students. They were postgraduate students. So they were studying law and medicine and pharmacology and subjects like that.

So she said to me on several occasions that she thought that Africans were more intelligent than white people. And although I didn't assimilate that into, oh, right, okay, so we're really clever and that lot are really dim, that wasn't how it kind of panned out. But by the same token, I guess...

in part counteracted some of the you know blatant and also the slightly less blatant racism that was around um sort of sense that um uh I didn't ever think that um uh

my blackness made me intellectually or socially inferior. My problem was that I didn't have parents and I eventually, you know, when I lived in children's homes, I was stigmatized with being in the system in that way. So the racism was there, but it didn't make, it wasn't that that sort of undermined my sense of

I guess that sounds a bit pretentious for a child to be thinking that way. But in some respects, I had to grow up quite quickly. Yeah. Yeah, self-analysis, as it were. Of course.

And you mentioned that your cousin came to stay with Daisy for a while and obviously she was Nigerian. But outside of that, did you meet many Nigerians at school? And if you did, okay, you didn't. No, I mean, no. I mean, so if we think, so when I was at...

primary school. I was in primary school from 1956 to 1962. So shortly after Windrush,

if I can use that as a kind of global term. And of course, Windrush, particularly at that time, referred to people from the Caribbean, mainly from Jamaica. And they were mainly adults, right? So there weren't that many children coming over during that period as I saw it. So in my class, actually, I could name them both. There were two mixed heritage students

children, one boy and one girl, one of whom was adopted actually. And that was it. I think there was one other maybe who preceded me, but there was a teacher, Beryl Gilroy,

Now, I don't know if you, do you know Paul Gilroy? Yes, I do. That was his mum. No way. Yeah, she was a teacher in my primary school. And I did eventually meet her sometime, you know, later. And when I was an academic and she said that she,

Obviously she always noticed me in the class and she said that she felt that she had to do extra specially well because for my benefit. And of course I didn't know that or think about that kind of thing at that time, but it's an amazing and a wonderful kind of thing to treasure really that she felt that. 'Cause she was, I think she was the first,

black head teacher in London. Wow. Yeah, eventually. She wasn't a head teacher when I knew her, but yeah. So, yeah, so she was there. And then...

And of course I wasn't thinking at the time in terms of is this person from the Caribbean or are they from Nigeria or Ghana or whatever. So to me, yes, she was a black teacher, but I didn't have a sense of what her heritage might be. But when I got to secondary school, in spite of it being a large school, over a thousand pupils, I mean...

If I sort of scratch my head, I can think of maybe two or three black students and maybe a few more, a handful more who were of South Asian descent. But by and large, I mean, you know, we were instantly...

recognizable because we stood out so much in that space. Yeah. Yeah, that's really interesting. And let's speak briefly about the relationship with your biological mother because she did visit you but you said earlier that your relationship was distant. So from when you had those visits from your mother, how would you kind of describe them?

Yeah, and again, obviously, this is me looking back and thinking how I thought, trying to think how I thought then. And so, okay, so before I got the records in my memory, I'd seen her, you know, two or three times a year. And then when I got the records, that turned out to be largely true because they kept a note of when she called.

So, you know, and a social worker would say, you know, mother visited da, da, da, da. And, um,

I could tell some of the judgments the social workers were making of her from just little pointers in the records. And they did this with my father too. So I remember there was one instance where it said, father visited... With an exhumation mark. Okay, I get what you're saying there. And they were judgmental. And some of it you can see the underlying...

racism and that if I say it's to be expected that doesn't mean I'm excusing it or saying it's okay but I sort of you know when I look back I think well not only are we talking about

Windrush being in the air as it were. We're also talking about not long since the end of the Second World War, still rationed when I was born. We still had objects and artifacts left over from the war.

It was a period where the empire, you know, people were talking about, oh, okay, the end of empire is, if not imminent, it's not going to be that far away, but not amongst necessarily ordinary people, as it were. But, you know, these kind of conversations politically were going on. So all these things, there was the, you know, huge sort of conflict still going on in various parts of the world and nothing...

was settled around the Middle East. Sounds too familiar, doesn't it? And all of this was the backdrop, plus...

not the beginning, but a kind of groundswell of political talk about immigration and so on, which continues, obviously. So there were all of these things going on in the background, and obviously the social workers were part of that milieu. That was their world. But some of the things they wrote were a bit outrageous. But getting back to your question about relationship with my mother...

As I write, I just remember this thing and I can always see this of me sort of running to keep up with her. She was tall. Actually, from her passport says she was the same height as I am now and I'm quite tall. So I do remember us being tall and running to try and keep up with her. But a lot of them, I don't know how many meetings we had, but it wasn't very frequent. It was maybe two.

once or twice a year, well no, probably two or three times a year up until I was seven. So if you think about that, you know, in the years of my consciousness, let's say from four till seven, I would have seen her maybe five or six times.

That's not conducive to building a relationship. So, yeah, it's difficult. Yeah, it is difficult. And your foster mum, Daisy, passed away when you were 14, which is, of course, is a very tragic event. When you look back at that, when that was happening, do you feel like you were in shock and disbelief or were you instantly thinking about, okay, what's going to happen to me next?

Both at the same time, I think. I think the shock was profound because, as I say, although I knew that she couldn't live forever and she was already quite old and also she'd been ill, you know, it wasn't a surprise in that sort of sense. But...

You know how it is when you're used to people being there and then all of a sudden they're not. And at the same time, you've then got your whole status has changed because you're no longer Daisy's foster child. You're a child in the care system. So that kind of happened more or less straight away.

I had to be, I can't remember what the section of the act is, but I was taken into care straight away. And I moved around quite a little bit before they could find somewhere for me to live. So it was a nerve wracking moment. But I think, I mean, there's a part of me that thinks that I was a bit numb,

You know, for me, that sort of thing of you're sort of, you're doing as you're told, you're preparing for this or you're doing your homework and you're sort of carrying on on one level as though nothing has changed. But sort of inside there's, you're trying to suppress a sort of turmoil within you so that you function. And I'm not even sure that...

that my school friends realised what had happened. I must have said eventually, "Oh, I've moved house." But I'm not sure that they knew. And I would be almost 100% sure that they wouldn't have had an inkling of the significance of it. Why would they? They were all, as far as I know, they were all settled with their parents in sort of conventional households. So, yeah. - Yeah.

And after your foster mum passed away, you briefly moved in with Kayin, your cousin's parents. And you speak about how that was a bit of a shock because you went from being with, I guess, a white liberal family to a strict Nigerian upbringing. So how was that experience and how do you think that affected kind of your identity as a Nigerian British person?

Yeah, that's an interesting one. So if I could take the blocks of that. It's interesting that you say white liberal family because I don't think that would be how you would characterise them if you kind of saw them. And even that kind of... Because there was still this kind of deep seam, as I say, a deep seam of different levels of racism, let's say. So, you know...

Yeah, so obviously I'm not going to go into detail about that. A lot of that is in the book. But in terms of – so I don't think I ever identified as Nigerian, right? Because that –

How would I be even able to do that unless there had been a very determined effort on the part of my foster mother, on the part of Daisy to say, well, look, you know, this is your heritage and blah, blah, blah, blah, and so on and so forth. Again, you know, it's hard for you to picture what this was like, but, you know, the kinds of films and,

jokes and television and newspaper articles we were immersed in during that period. As I say, we were still watching like Sanders of the River, which about, you know, I don't know if you've ever seen some of those movies from the 30s, which are quite horrendous today, or even things like Zulu, you know, the Michael Caine film. These films kind of completely undermine that sense of, you

of equality and equity and inclusion that we like to talk about today. But in terms of a Nigerian identity, even to say that would be

a bit of a generalization because of course there are different cultural groupings within Nigeria that have different kinds of values and traditions and heritage. So the idea that I'd get anything like that kind of, what's the word, induction, if you like, into those cultures was just not on the cards. But what I did find,

was I very strongly identified with the people we now call African-Americans. So to me, you know, at that time, what was really important was what was, yes, what was happening here, but that for me was very much

refracted through the lens of what was happening in South Africa in terms of apartheid and in the USA in terms of the civil rights movement. And so

What I would say about identity, if you like, is that in a curious kind of way, I was into the African diaspora, although I couldn't have articulated it as such then. But to me, there was this very strong common cause between Black Americans and Black South Africans. And I was always quite a precocious reader. So I would read books.

Richard Wright and James Baldwin and others from the civil, about the civil rights movement. And I would watch intently documentary programs and read newspapers that we had in the house about those situations in South Africa in particular. So that was really much more my sort of, if you like, my sort of black identity was linked to that idea

that idea, that notion or that reality about the oppression of black people in different parts of the world. Yeah, that makes sense. Carla only has the best tech. Can't connect to network. But she didn't have the best internet. So she got Cox Multigig speeds to power all her... Now all her tech is... Connected.

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So Lola, what would you say your thoughts are on the care system today and how have they changed compared to when you were in the care system? Well, that's a very good question because lots has changed.

and things have improved in some respects, but then lots of other things feel horrifyingly familiar. And so I've spoken to quite a good number of young people and children, well, young people in the care system today and or care experienced young people who've moved out of the care system and sort of into the big wide world as it were. And some of the emotional aspects

stuff around abandonment, as you might expect, is very kind of similar. There's what is referred to today as the care cliff, which seems to be just as bad in its own way as it was for me. So the care cliff is, you know, like 18 years off you go.

And those of us who can remember, anybody who can remember being 18 years from an older perspective, you know that although you're legally an adult, you're still kind of, you know, trying to make your way through the world, trying to understand what's going on around you. And those people who have some kind of support from adults,

you know, that helps them. But if you don't have that support, then that makes it very difficult. So there are some initiatives which aim to address that issue. But I think my summary would be to say that, yeah,

Yes, we've changed some things for the better and some things we haven't. But I would like to think about how we can talk about the whole issue in a different way. And maybe that's about, yes, we have to acknowledge that you stand a higher chance of going to prison, having mental ill health, sleeping rough, et cetera, all those negative things that can happen to you as a result of having been in the care system. But how can we...

not keep saying that to children and young people in the system and say, ask them, how can we support you? What would you like

to be done that would make your life so much better and easier given that you've got these somewhat difficult circumstances that you've been thrown into how can we make that life as as supportive and productive and positive as possible so I think that is really about giving much more voice to

to those children and young people, not in a patronising sort of pat you on the head and say, "Thank you very much for talking to us, Wayne," but to be actively involved in designing their future. So that in summary is what I'm thinking about at the moment. And one part of the book that I really liked is you said when you lived in Highbury, you forged what you called an unexpected lifelong relationship with Arsenal.

Can you speak a little bit about that? Because actually, I saw somebody on TikTok read Black Arsenal and I saw a snippet of one of your quotes actually. So yeah, what role did Arsenal kind of play in your life as a team? Are you a Duna, dare I ask? You know what? I'm a new football fan, but unfortunately I'm not. I support Manchester United, so.

Okay, well, that's kind of better than the other lot. But anyway, that's another conversation. Yeah, it was interesting because actually we did a gig at the South Bank Centre last night on Black Arsenal. It's amazing. I mean, the book is amazing. So I wasn't that surprised that the book has been selling really well. But the events that I've seen have all sold out within hours, live events.

So there's something really interesting there about black identity. But as I say, that's kind of another conversation because my route into Arsenal was really about geographical location. So at the time I moved into Highbury, when I finally got a space in a home in London, in proper London, as opposed to Hertfordshire, I was quite depressed and feeling very kind of,

um hopeless really I guess I would say I was I was on a really low point things had suddenly hit me maybe it was a delayed grieving I don't know but anyway and I but I felt

Inside, I felt stigmatized by this life that I'd led. You know, it was like, why was it me who was shoved around from home to home? Why was I living in a children's home in Hertfordshire, walking in a dangerous place? You know, what was all of this? And so it played out at school. People were really nice to me. I had loads of friends. I wasn't bullied.

bullied, but it was like, you know, can you come round to my house for tea? Oh, well, I've got to get a note from your parents first that they write to social services and say, and maybe even social services will come round and check your house and blah, blah, blah, blah. So there's this whole stigmatisation of being in care. And then there was the Arsenal Stadium at the end of the street. So like, well, this isn't, so I can be

the black girl who lives close to the Arsenal and who, you know, one of the team or one of the reserve team delivers our green grocery. So, you know, because it was all very local at that stage. And there weren't any black players, God, anywhere virtually, but there certainly weren't at that stage in the Arsenal because we're talking about

Again, you know, mid-1960s. So then I became, instead of being that stigmatized for my own self-identity, and to a large extent I kept the secret, you know, because it's like girls, well, girls and women weren't supposed to be into football in those days. A complete non-starter. As a spectator, as a fan, as a player, you know, it just wasn't going to happen. So I thought, well, now I'm the girl who lives next to that

that wonderful stadium, not just the girl who lives in the, the black girl who lives in the children's home. So that's how it all started. - Yeah. - A lovely long-term relationship. - Yes, yes it is. It absolutely is, as I say, I still kind of, yeah, I still go to matches. Well, still go to matches. I do go to home matches, yeah. As soon as I could afford to go on the season ticket waiting list, I went on it. So yeah. - Yeah, I like that.

And moving on to when you were in sixth form and you're about to study and you want to go to university, but you unfortunately didn't get the grades that you wanted. How did you feel when you didn't achieve those grades? Did you have any clue what you wanted to do after that? I felt a complete failure, to be honest. And I felt I'd let people down because there were people who had an investment in this career.

in this little black girl, well, not so little then, I was about 16, 17, no, 17, 18, you know, an investment in me doing well. I was going to be, you know, that child from care who managed to go to university and all the rest of it, and it all fell flat. So I did feel particularly low, um, uh,

many of my friends got the grades they needed. And so they were scattered, you know, into these universities around the country. But yeah, I sort of felt that I was a failure and that not only an academic failure, but it was a kind of failure of character. You know, I didn't overcome these hurdles after all. And so, you know, yeah, it was a very down period. As for what I wanted to do,

Well, you know, there is that thing that I write about where my social worker says, oh, what do you want to do? And I say, I'd like to go into publishing. And she said, well, that isn't the kind of work for a girl like you or something like that. She said, oh, that's not for you. It's for middle class girls. You know, she just basically said, oh, you can forget that for a start. So that was very dispiriting. But I'd once said...

I'd like to teach PE. And because I was good at sports, I think that they kind of fell on that and said, right. There was a different, again, you know, what do you call it? Higher education was a very different scene. The polytechnics were polytechnics, right?

Colleges, you know, if you wanted to go and study teacher training, that wasn't even a degree course. So you could get into a teacher training college without high grade A levels. And that was kind of what I thought I'd do by default because I really, really wanted to. But in the end, I didn't. I just said, oh, what the heck. Yeah.

see what happens. Yeah and eventually you went on to study drama and you became an actress and you joined a union equity Afro-Asian committee and you said it was there where you realized committees were your strength. How did joining this committee build your confidence?

Well, I guess it was, first of all, you know, it was being with all other black people, right, all other black and brown people. So we didn't have to explain what we would call the microaggressions of racism to each other because we all knew and lived it and experienced it. And so that kind of confirmed that I wasn't going mad or I didn't have a persecution complex or something because everybody...

had these kind of instances they could cite. So there was that. And then there was people, people seem to think I, I was good at doing committee work. And so they asked me to chair it. And I was like, what? You know, so that to me,

amazing because, you know, to be the chair of this committee. So equity was a very, it was very prominent at the time in terms of a lot of turmoil caused over the apartheid South Africa rules about who could go and perform there, what kind of audiences you would be able to perform in front of and everything. So we wanted to take hold of that

because it directly affected us and our brothers and sisters and cousins, literally, but also metaphorically in South Africa. So we wanted to say, well, we'll do it.

We'll join that struggle on our own terms. And we tried to do so through the union and called for boycotts and all the rest of it. But it was quite a tumultuous time within the union and we tried to make out our feelings and experiences felt. But it was a very...

it was one of those instances where you kind of, you know, link arms and stand together in common cause. And that to me, it kind of forced me to articulate some of these experiences in ways that I hadn't done before. Not just in ways, because I hadn't been, I'd been in this kind of, if you like, all white world where you're kind of,

if you were lucky, somebody might ask you to explain something, why you felt upset about something. But most of the time, people either didn't notice or didn't realise or whatever what was going on. So yeah, it was quite tough. Yeah, yeah, I can imagine. And in one of the last chapters, you spoke about when you went to Nigeria for the first time to go to your half-sister Sade's wedding. What was that experience like going to Nigeria for the first time?

Oh gosh, again a huge mixture, you know, because on one level there's this amazing excitement about, you know, the motherland and all of that and going to a country where you didn't stand out, also I thought, you know, you wouldn't stand out because you'd just be one of millions of black people.

But I found it really, really tough. And in fact, because there was some kind of issue around my vaccination status, the immigration people

We're on the verge of telling, well, they told me I'd have to go straight back to London. So what kind of irony is that? For the first time I go to Nigeria, the land of my forefathers, foremothers birth. And then I get told, oh, you got to go back where you came from. But yeah.

You know, as you probably know, everybody knows Nigeria has very profound problems and challenges. And so in the end, this was smoothed over because I said, look, my father is waiting for me. And so can I at least get a message to him? And then they said, well, who's your father?

and then I was allowed out to go and meet my father. So it's like, you know, the other kind of real, how can I put it, tension in all senses of the word was that my relatives were from a completely different class to what I'd been used to.

in in in London you know and especially when I was brought up with with Daisy it I you know it's hard to pinpoint you know class grouping for Daisy and her family because they owned the house in Tuff Park where we live but they weren't well off she was a widow and you know lots of different factors make it quite difficult to pinpoint in class terms but certainly wasn't

the kind of what I would say was upper middle class people that were my relatives apparently in Nigeria. And so, and of course for a wedding,

They're all turning up in their finery. Yeah, so it was quite difficult trying to reconcile those contradictions that I experienced there with that experience of being in with people who had a very different outlook in terms of their lives.

wealth and political attitudes, I guess. Yeah, it's very different. Yeah, I can imagine that being a complete shell shock for you. And yeah. So last question, of course, in the last chapter, you speak about being introduced into the House of Lords. And I wanted to speak about your political career and just how you felt when you were introduced to the House of Lords.

Well, you know, the route I came through was through application. So it wasn't a huge, completely out of the blue shock, except that it was because when I applied, you know, you apply for something, you have your interviews, you do all the business and you think, oh, well, you know, didn't get in or whatever. But eventually I was accepted. And the introduction is thankfully, mercifully, a very short introduction.

ceremonies, but you had to put all the robes on and swear an oath of allegiance and all of that stuff. So it was both

It was very moving in lots of ways because when I looked up to the gallery, all my friends were sitting up there sort of hanging over the edge, you know, listening to my words. And I looked around the House of Lords and there were all these faces that I recognised from the television. Labour was in government then, but Margaret Thatcher and the former Conservative government were kind of lined up there and it was like,

Gosh, you know, I'm in here. How did that happen? So it was a bit of a sort of, well, it was definitely a moment, let's say. It was definitely a moment. And I guess I took advice from various people who were in there already and who said, well, look, you know, you can approach it this way. You can approach it that way. I listened. One person said to me, I sat and listened for a year.

literally before I said anything because I wanted to make sure I got it all right because all eyes will be on you as a black person speaking in this venerable institution you've got to make sure you're all right and everything so yeah it was a very steep learning curve but I say a steep learning curve that's lasted for 20 years so how steep can that be? Yeah and actually no last question is the last one but I would say what would you

the Lola who's a Baroness say to the Lola who was in foster care as a child? What would your advice be to her? I suppose the simplest thing to say would be, you know, hang on. Hang on and whatever happens, try and be open to seeing opportunities where you might not think there are opportunities. So don't close down. Other people will want to close down your options.

So don't close them down for yourself. You can't just sort of think more poorly, I guess. Lola, thank you. That was Baroness Lola Young, author of Eight Weeks, Looking Back, Moving Forward, Defying the Odds, which is available now online or at Bookshop.nu. I've been Hibby Bukacsa. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thank you for joining us.

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