When
8,000 music fans turned up at Craigmillar Park in Edinburgh in August 1978 for
Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League’s Edinburgh Carnival, many were
expecting to see The Clash. The name of Joe Strummer and Mick Jones’ iconic
first wave punk band had been added to posters and flyers for the show, saying they
had been ‘invited’ to play, despite possibly never having been approached.
There
is the story as well about the young Scottish activists who travelled from
Aberdeen to the London Carnival in Victoria Park the same year, and were
charged to guard the stage overnight lest their opponents attempt sabotage
after dark. This wasn’t a fanciful notion, as the activists duly had to see off
a bunch of National Front supporting skinheads intent on burning it down.
While
neither of these stories make it into David Renton’s new book on the era, they
nevertheless go some way to illustrate both the enterprisingly maverick spirit
of the anti-racist movement of the time and its geographical reach. The
publication of Never Again! Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League
1976-1982 comes at a time when the extreme right wing that RAR and the ANL were
set up to oppose are on the march again.
In
this sense, Never Again!, which is launched this weekend at events in Edinburgh
and Glasgow, is an important means of taking stock, and follows barrister and
activist Renton’s 2007 book, When We Touched the Sky: The Anti-Nazi League
1977-1981. While both cover similar ground, a decade on, even Renton seems
surprised by the differences in his new book.
“When
We Touched the Sky was put out by an independent publisher who very sadly went
bust,” he says, “and because it hadn’t had much publicity, I wanted to do
something with it. For a while I thought I was going to be writing a second
edition, but more and more stuff kept coming out, and going through it with my
ten-year-old, it’s not until page fifty that there’s anything from the old book
in the new one.”
Rock
Against Racism was founded in August 1976 following a drunken outburst by Eric
Clapton during a concert in Birmingham, when he declared support for
Conservative MP Enoch Powell, whose ‘rivers of blood’ speech in 1968 had seen
Powell rail against mass immigration. After making several disparaging remarks
about people of colour, Clapton repeatedly shouted the NF slogan of ‘Keep Britain
White’.
In
the audience of the Clapton gig were Red Saunders and other members of radical
theatre troupe CAST (Cartoon Archetypal Slogan Theatre), who wrote a letter to
the then hugely influential music paper, NME. As well as berating Clapton, Saunders
proposed forming Rock Against Racism. After receiving hundreds of letters of
support, numerous RAR groups sprang up. Arriving in the ferment of punk, youth
culture was craving some kind of mass movement, and soon the familiar RAR star
became ubiquitous accessories on the lapels of charity shop jackets and
customised t-shirts. Despite this, Renton is critical of some of the initial
burst of activity.
“There
were two sides to punk,” he says. “On the one hand, there were lovely things
like black and white musicians playing together, but there was also a
depoliticising of things. There were people who said a lot of punks were
fascists, and there was a flirtation with images of fascism that you can’t
ignore, and that helped shape the mood of nihilism and despair of the time.”
An
RAR fanzine, Temporary Hoarding, ran for fifteen issues, and featured era-defining
work by photographer Syd Shelton. In 2017, Street Level Photoworks in Glasgow
hosted an exhibition of Shelton’s evocative images of bands, fans and
activists. This was augmented by enlarged images from the Temporary Hoarding
archive, as well as posters from Scottish RAR events. Some of the latter was
taken from the collection of Paul Robertson, who in 2012 curated an exhibition
of RAR and ANL posters at Summerhall in Edinburgh. This included some from
Robertson’s own collection, including a poster from the Edinburgh Carnival.
Robertson, incidentally, was one of the young activists guarding the Victoria
Park stage overnight back in 1978.
That
year saw RAR become a major force, with the first Carnival attracting more than
100,000 people to a free concert featuring The Clash, Steel Pulse, Tom Robinson
Band, X-Ray Spex, Sham 69 singer Jimmy Pursey and Patrik Fitzgerald. Misty in
Roots played on the back of a truck leading the six-mile march to the park. The
second, in September, took place in Brixton, and featured Aswad, Elvis Costello
and Stiff Little Fingers.
The
Northern Carnival in Manchester was headlined by Buzzcocks, Steel Pulse and The
Fall, while smaller events included a Liverpool open-air concert witnessed by
this writer, and featuring alternative theatre companies Belt and Braces and
The Sadista Sisters alongside local bands Ded Byrds, Kilikuri and 29th
and Dearborn. The Craigmillar Park Edinburgh Carnival might not have had The
Clash, but Aswad and local luminaries Scars, The Freeze, The Valves and The
Deleted did appear.
Renton
was a small child when all this was going on, but became aware of racist
activity from an early age.
“At
primary school, the desks were covered in swastikas,” he says, “and there were
people talking about ‘Jewing each other’, and people being racially abused. I
remember that happening, but then it went away really quickly, and I never
understood why.”
This has
influenced everything Renton has done since, both as a writer and as an activist.
In his day job as a barrister, one of his highest profile cases to date was
representing construction worker Dave Smith, who successfully sued Carillion
Ltd after it was discovered that Smith and hundreds of others had been
illegally blacklisted by a shadowy organisation called the Consulting
Association. This era was documented by artist Lucy Parker in an exhibition and
film seen at Rhubaba gallery in Edinburgh.
Today,
organisations such as Love Music, Hate Racism have picked up the baton of RAR.
While LMHR continues to fly the flag through regular events, the days of massed
carnivals appear to be long gone . Meanwhile, another pocket of resistance has just begun
through AF Trax, a new sub label of iconic Glasgow club night Optimo founded by
Keith McIvor, aka JD Twitch, with the AF standing for Against Facism.
Forthcoming
releases by live artist and DJ Guy Veale, aka Logtoad, Al Jerry and Hot Chip’s
Joe Goddard may sound a lot different from the class of ‘78, but McIvor has credited
RAR as being the inspiration behind the label, and each release will feature a
full manifesto on the sleeve. While such a move is to be welcomed, Renton sees
the main centre of activity moving beyond music.
“We need something with the same energy as
RAR,” he says, “but which isn’t just copying it. But the racist cultural milieu
isn’t music anymore. It’s online.”
Renton
cites a group called Game Workers Unite, who promote anti-racism online.
“They
put out messages against racism,” says Renton, “and work against the racist
cultural milieu in a fantastic way. Just as RAR was really important for the
few years it existed, what they’re doing now is just as vital.”
Never
Again! Rock Against Racism & the Anti-Nazi League 1976-1982 by David Renton
is published by Routledge Books, £16.99, and is launched at Augustine United
Church, Edinburgh, Friday, 7pm; STUC, Glasgow, Saturday, 2.30pm.
The Herald, February 7th 2019
ends
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