On 11 June 1987, four Black MPs entered the House of Commons for the first time in modern British history. Diane Abbott. Bernie Grant. Paul Boateng. Keith Vaz. They came through a door that had been locked for centuries, and they changed what was possible for everyone who followed.

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Thirty-nine years on, the door is still not fully open.

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Black and minority ethnic people remain underrepresented in every institution that holds power in Britain: Parliament, the judiciary, the civil service, the media, local government, the boardroom, the public appointment process. The gap between population share and power is not an accident. It is the product of systems, structures, and assumptions that have resisted change for generations.

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The 1987 Committee exists to close that gap. We do it through independent research, through convening the people who hold power and the communities excluded from it, through training and developing the next generation of leaders, and through a podcast that refuses to let these conversations stay in Westminster.

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Our foundation is rooted in the Labour movement and the political tradition that opened that door in 1987. We are an independent forum — not a government body, not a diversity consultancy named for a moment of history, working for the future it promised.

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The work of 1987 is not finished. It is being written now.