Both memoir and call-to-arms, Tribes explores both the benign and malign effects of our need to belong.

'A fascinating and thought-provoking reflective journey across cultures, centuries and continents. This book
will become a classic and an important tool for anyone studying social and political history and the rapidly changing dynamics of tribalism' Floella Benjamin

In 2007, inspired by the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act and looking to explore his own African roots, David Lammy took a DNA test. Ostensibly he was a middle-aged husband and father, MP for Tottenham and a die-hard Spurs fan. But David's nucleic acids revealed something else: that he was 25% Tuareg tribe (Niger), 25% Temne tribe (Sierra Leone), 25% Bantu tribe (South Africa), with 5% traces of Celtic Scotland and a mishmash of other unidentified groups. These DNA results gave him something that he had longed for: something more than a biography, backstory or even a culture.

From Africa to Europe via the Caribbean, Tribes is a fascinating exploration of both the benign and malign effects of our very human need to belong. How this need - genetically programmed and socially acquired - can manifest itself in positive ways, collaboratively achieving great things that individuals alone cannot. And yet how, in recent years, globalisation and digitisation have led to new, more pernicious kinds of tribalism.

Part poignant memoir, part compelling call-to-arms, Tribes is also a highly perceptive analysis of not only the way the world works but also the way we are by one of Parliament's most prominent and successful campaigners for social justice. More importantly, it demonstrates just how we can all move beyond our own tribes...

'Rich, in thought, history, anecdote and experience' Alastair Campbell, The New European


'Absorbing. . . thoughtful, nuanced' Observer