Des Hennelly

Britain in the 1970s experienced a frightening growth of fascist politics. The post-war boom came to a sudden halt and unemployment and inflation started to rise rapidly. Strikes were common as workers fought to defend living standards.

Britain was also a place that had invited large numbers of immigrants during the post-war boom era. They were encouraged to come from the Caribbean region and parts of Asia with the promise of a better life. Along with Irish immigrants, they built the infrastructure and provided the manufacturing and service labour needed by a fast-growing economy.

The scapegoating begins

However, as economic conditions worsened and trade unions became increasingly militant, the political establishment turned quickly to scapegoating immigrant communities. The Conservative Party was awash with racists. Enoch Powell, while serving as a Conservative Party Government Minister, had already delivered a notorious racist speech in 1968, speaking of ‘rivers of blood’ resulting from immigration, in which he blamed immigrants for the poor housing and poverty faced by the working class and advocated for white nationalism.

The Labour Party also harboured many racists in its own upper echelons. Labour MP and Chief Whip Bob Mellish said “This nation has done all it should have done. Its record is one of great honour and integrity, but I say enough is enough”. A Labour Council in Leicester placed adverts in Ugandan newspapers when Asia refugees were fleeing the country, saying ‘Leicester was already full’.[1]

Beyond the political mainstream, the National Front was a violent fascist organisation that campaigned on explicitly racist policies and slogans. In the early 1970s, it was an increasingly visible and violent presence on British streets, carrying out escalating attacks on minorities and socialists. The arrival of Asian refugees expelled from Uganda in 1972 was seized on by the National Front, and they initiated a campaign with the slogan “Stop the Asian Invasion”.[2] Against the backdrop of a faltering economy, the campaign was effective, and the National Front’s membership and support grew rapidly through the early 1970s. It began to make local electoral gains, including achieving 40 per cent of the votes in local elections in Blackburn in early 1976.[3] The fascist threat was real and growing.

Eric Clapton and the birth of Rock Against Racism

Against this backdrop, on 5th August 1976 in Birmingham, Eric Clapton stunned his concert audience with a long racist tirade:

“Do we have any foreigners in the audience tonight? If so, please put up your hands. So where are you? Well, wherever you are, I think you should all just leave. Not just leave the hall, leave our country. I don’t want you here, in the room or in my country…Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. Get the foreigners out…Get the w*gs out. Get the c**ns out. Keep Britain white.”[4]

He rambled on in the same racist vein for several minutes and ended with an appeal to vote for Enoch Powell.

The outburst sent a shockwave through artists and musicians across Britain. There was outrage at Clapton’s racism, particularly from someone who achieved massive success and wealth from using black musical forms. In London, a small group of horrified leftwing artists and music fans, with Socialist Workers’ Party members featuring prominently, felt they needed to take action in response to Clapton’s speech and the growth of the far-right. In the pre-internet era, this took the form of a humble letter posted to the leading music paper of the day, Melody Maker, as well as other music papers and the leftwing press. The letter condemned Clapton and called for a “rank-and-file movement against the racist poison in rock music”. It ended with an appeal to those interested in being part of an anti-racist response to write to what the activists decided to call Rock Against Racism (RAR). To their amazement, they received hundreds of letters in reply, and a movement was about to be born.[5]

Punk

In 1975 in London, a group of working-class men in their late teens, for want of something else to do, had formed the Sex Pistols. After gaining a rudimentary grasp of their instruments, they began to perform publicly by late 1975. During the spring and summer of 1976, they performed in minor venues across Britain to small groups of people, often mainly their own friends and acquaintances.

Just 40 people saw the Sex Pistols in the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester in June 1976, but the impact on that small audience was astonishing. Many of the attendees at the gig left inspired to start their own band. Audience members went on to form Joy Division, New Order, the Buzzcocks, The Smiths and Simply Red. Legendary music promoter Tony Wilson, played by Steve Coogan in the film 24-Hour Party People, was there. When asked how a gig with such a small audience could have such an impact, he pointed out helpfully that there were only 12 people at the last supper.[6]

The Sex Pistols were a loud, chaotic oddity. But there was something significant going on within and around them. The band continued to build a young following that would soon have important cultural and political implications. On 1 December 1976, they went from obscure underground band to public enemy number one as a result of a notorious interview with a drunken host on early evening TV. But that’s another story.

The creative impulse unleashed by the Sex Pistols in 1976 quickly produced the Clash, the Damned, X-Ray Spex, Siouxsie and the Banshees and many others. The Clash released the first punk album in April 1977, a raw blast of anger and calls for resistance. The album cover featured scenes from anti-police riots at the Notting Hill Carnival in 1976. The first single, ‘White Riot’, was written based on the band members’ first-hand experiences of those riots. It saluted black resistance to oppression and police harassment and called for white working class youth to join with the black community in their fight.

In a music press interview in 1978, Johnny Rotten aka Lydon of the Sex Pistols said of the National Front

“I despise them. No one should have the right to tell anyone they can’t live here because of the colour of their skin or their religion or whatever the size of their nose. How could anyone vote for something so ridiculously inhumane”.[7]

This coming from the most influential figure in punk both reflected and solidified the anti-racist ethos of the cultural movement. Rock Against Racism organisers cite the interview as an important moment in punk's evolution as a powerful anti-racist cultural force among the young white working class.[8]

“Punky Reggae Party”

Reggae music had an important influence on many of the leading punk figures. John Lydon aka Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols was a big fan of reggae, as were members of the Clash and other punk bands. Don Letts, a London-born son of Windrush generation Jamaican parents, was part of the early punk firmament and wrote “The Clash and Johnny Rotten understood and aligned themselves with reggae’s revolutionary stance and relentless hatred of the establishment”.[9]

Bob Marley also recognised and appreciated what was happening, and wrote Punky Reggae Party in 1977, giving a shout-out of respect in the lyrics to the Clash, the Jam and the Damned.

RAR and Punk

The first RAR event was a gig in a pub in East London in November 1976 featuring a single White performer. However, the second gig in December featured both White and Black artists, and this became the standard gig format.[10]

The establishment of RAR came just as punk exploded onto the music scene. Author of There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack, Paul Gilroy, described punk as “an oppositional language through which RAR anti-racism could speak truly populist politics”.[11] Rock Against Racism, with punk bands playing a central musical role and the Socialist Workers’ Party playing a central political role, expanded rapidly across Britain. By 1978 there were RAR clubs in 52 cities and towns.[12] Typically local groups of Socialist Workers’ Party members, anti-racist activists and music fans got a supply of RAR posters, leaflets and badges. Then they got on with organising local gigs. It was a cultural wildfire.

The momentum was was strong enough to embolden the organisers to go for a large outdoor festival event. The date and place were set for 30 April 1978 in Victoria Park, Hackney, in London. The Clash, the Tom Robinson Band, X Ray Spex and the leading reggae band of the time, Steel Pulse, committed to performing. But rather than just have people come to the concert, the organisers started with a political rally in Trafalgar Square, six miles away. From there, a carnival led by reggae band, Misty in Roots, made its way to Victoria Park. Adopting the Notting Hill Carnival as its template, bands were transported along the route on floats.

The organisers hoped for 10,000 to attend. It was a massive leap of faith that took every organisational resource and ingenuity the small group of activist organisers could muster. On the day, every expectation was surpassed. An estimated 10,000 people attended the rally in Trafalgar, and numbers swelled as the carnival made its way to Victoria Park. By the time the Clash performed, there were an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 people in the park.

An 18-year-old Gurinder Chadha, who would go on to be a successful filmmaker, including making Bend it like Beckham, was in the audience that day:

“I saw hundreds and hundreds of people marching side by side, in a display of exuberance, defiance and most importantly victory. I couldn’t believe my eyes, these were White, English people…marching, chanting to help me and my family in my adopted homeland…so the sight of them along with all the other women, black and Asians in that moment made me feel I belonged. I had found my tribe, my kindred clan…from that moment, I became the political filmmaker I am today.” [13]

Spurred on by this overwhelming success, the RAR organisers undertook other hugely successful festivals in 1978 and a Militant Entertainment Tour in 1979. It’s estimated that half a million people attended RAR events in 1978 and 1979.[14] This was a triumph of cultural and political resistance to racism and an important turning point in the battle against the National Front.

After a decade of growth, the National Front entered a steep decline from 1978/79. This was in part because right-wing people gravitated towards the Thatcher-led Conservative government that came to power in 1979. Nevertheless, the success of RAR undoubtedly played an important part in stopping the momentum and driving the decline of the National Front.

“Post Punk - the rise of multi-cultural bands”

Flowing quickly from the cultural impact of punk, in 1978 and 1979, there was a rapid emergence of multi-racial bands such as the Specials, The Beat and Selector. They came from the neighbouring cities of Birmingham and Coventry, two of Britain’s most diverse areas. These bands were inspired by the energy of punk and its DIY ethos, and fused those with ska music, a black musical form that derived from reggae in Jamaica in the early 1960s. Many of their songs were explicitly political in response to their lived experiences of racism, working-class life and the rise of Thatcher and neoliberalism.

Also in Birmingham in 1978, UB40, a multi-racial reggae band, was formed. The band name was based on the unemployment benefit 40 social welfare form they all signed each week while unemployed, and their debut album title, Signing Off, speaks for itself. That album featured many radical political and anti-racism songs, including Burden of Shame which excoriated Britain’s imperial past and violent present, “I’m a British subject, not proud of it while I carry the burden of shame”.

“Anti Nazi League”

Running parallel to RAR, and with a large overlap of activists, particularly from the Socialist Workers’ Party, the Anti Nazi League (ANL) was established in 1977. The ANL was the political arm of the anti-fascist movement, complementing the cultural focus of RAR. It successfully unitedimmigrant community organisations, socialists, leftwing Labour Party representatives and members and trade unions into a United Front formation to oppose the National Front and racism. It focussed on street demonstrations to challenge and confront fascists. It achieved large mobilisations that were successful in forcing the National Front from the streets they had tried to control.

Rock Against Racism in late 1970s Britain was an important cultural response to a rising fascist threat and the desire for working-class unity. It both reflected working-class anti-racist sentiment and consolidated it. Working parallel with ANL, it undoubtedly played an important role in confronting the National Front, halting its rise and hastening its steep decline from 1978 onwards.

Clearly, this speaks to socialists and anti-racists today. As we once again face a growing far-right threat, working-class cultural and artistic forms will play an important part in the fight back against fascism and express, validate and strengthen the desire for class and race unity.

While we’re still too close to the anti-racism Ireland for All march and music event in Dublin on 18th February 2023 to judge its full impact, it’s clear that it has had a demoralising impact on the far right. That’s a great start.

Article originally published in Issue 10 of Rupture Magazine. Subscribe or purchase previous issues here.

Notes

1. Babylon’s Burning, Music, Subcultures and Ant-Fascism in Britain 1958-2020, Rick Blackman, Bookmark Publications, London, 2021

2. Anti-fascism in Britain, Nigel Copsey, Routledge, 2016

3. Sarfraz Manzoor, The year rock found the power to unite, The Guardian, 20 April 2008

4. Babylon’s Burning, Blackman

5. Babylon’s Burning, Blackman, 6. BBC News, Sex Pistols at Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall films sell for £15k, BBC News, 20 September 2021

7. There Ain’t no Black in the Union Jack, Paul Gilroy, Routledge, England, 1992

8. Babylon’s Burning, Music, Subcultures and Ant-Fascism in Britain 1958-2020, Rick Blackman, Bookmark Publications, London, 2021

9. There and Black Again, Don Letts, Omnibus Press, London 2021

10. Babylon’s Burning, Music, Subcultures and Ant-Fascism in Britain 1958-2020, Rick Blackman, Bookmark Publications, London, 2021

11. There Ain’t no Black in the Union Jack, Paul Gilroy, Routledge, England, 1992

12. Babylon’s Burning, Music, Subcultures and Ant-Fascism in Britain 1958-2020, Rick Blackman, Bookmark Publications, London, 2021

13. Babylon’s Burning, Music, Subcultures and Ant-Fascism in Britain 1958-2020, Rick Blackman, Bookmark Publications, London, 2021

14. What the Anti-Nazi-League and Rock against Racism teach us about how to defeat the fascists, David Renton, openDemocracy, 9 December 2018

Rock Against Racism: When working class music drove back fascism