When Syd Shelton arrived back in London in 1976 after four years working as a photo-journalist in Australia, it was to a city and a country in the thick of change. Margaret Thatcher's regime as UK Prime Minister may have been three years away, but the seeds of her ascension were already being sewn. Mass unemployment was biting away at working class society, and a rising right wing populism had demonised ethnic communities ever since Tory MP Enoch Powell had made his notorious anti immigration 'rivers of blood' speech in 1968. A disaffected youth was already starting to stir with a rising punk culture which was casting aside the old guard of bloated rock stars with a year zero approach that craved something faster, louder and more abrasive. Battle lines were drawn when a drunken Eric Clapton ranted his support for Powell to an audience in multi-racial Birmingham during August 1976. Clapton's guitar playing had been inspired by the blues greats, and he had scored a cha
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.