uncarved.org blog

(or: Smash the National Front - part two)

A little bit of audio for you after all that book-reviewage last week:

 

 Chant Down The National Front [15:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Here is a short mix of reggae tunes concerned with the National Front. There is a track by track breakdown below, but what I found surprising was how few tunes there were given the NF’s popularity in the seventies when conscious reggae was coming into its own. Indeed one of the defining factors in the explicitly anti-NF Rock Against Racism movement was UK reggae bands sharing stages with punks.

Above is a photo of members of Steel Pulse and The Clash standing outside NF head honcho (and closet homosexual) Martin Webster’s house, for example. (Obviously I wouldn’t bother to mention his sexuality were it not for the fact that he was a key player in a movement which sought the extermination of homosexuals.)

Steel Pulse’s most famous anti-racist tune is “Ku Klux Klan”, released in 1978 on Island. I’ve always been slightly curious about this, as obviously the KKK have had virtually no presence in the UK. A bit of digging around turned up this 1978 NME article on the rather excellent unofficial Steel Pulse site.

Seems that many black West Indian families who settled in Britain during the early ’50s and strived peacefully to integrate themselves into their new surroundings, haven’t - in the present imflammable atmosphere of racial disharmony - taken too kindly towards Steel Pulse making waves by performing songs with titles like Ku Klux Klan and National Front.

So the group actually had a tune named after the NF, but didn’t release it? Reading on, the possible reasons for this become clear:

And, according to Steel Pulse’s main man David Hinds, himself a first generation British born black from Handsworth, they haven’t been reluctant to voice their disapproval. “They feel,” says Hinds, “That we’re being too heavy, too outspoken.” Apparently, after seeing Steel Pulse in a recent Sight & Sound programme attired in Klansmen’s hoods chanting Ku Klux Klan, friends of their families warned them of openly inviting trouble. “They want to avoid any trouble with the white community…want to keep the peace and don’t think Natty Dread helps keep the peace. See, the truth only stirs up trouble!”

If, in Hinds’ opinion, speaking the truth causes a degree of trouble, so be it. Even if it means that despite its chart entry, Ku Klux Klan was, with few exceptions, ignored by practically every radio station in this green and pleasant land. “The radio stations don’t ban records any longer because they realise it only helps to sell them and when such a record makes the charts, they’re embarrassed because they’re not playing it.”

But the National Front do get a mention in “Jah Pickney” on their 1979 Tribute To The Martyrs album:

Rock against Racism, smash it
Rock against Fascism, smash it
Rock against Nazism, me say smash it
I’ve come to the conclusion that
We’re gonna hunt yeh yeh yeh
The National Front - Yes we are,
We’re gonna hunt, yeh yeh yeh
The National Front
Cause they believe in apartheid
For that we gonna whop their hides
For all my people they cheated and lied
I won’t rest till I’m satisfied

Unfortunately I only found that out after I’d done the mix! Steel Pulse are still a bit of a shameful blindspot in my knowledge of UK reggae.

The scene in the film Babylon where Ital Lion’s HQ is turned over and vandalised with fascist grafitti is rumoured to be based on a real incident which happened to Aswad.

However the Rock Against Racism band which came off worst for wear is almost certainly Misty In Roots. Misty grew up together in Southall, West London. They worked collectively, opening a squatted community centre called “People Unite” as a place for people to gather, rehearse, get free food. People Unite was also the name of their record label.

Southall is inextricably linked with the history of the far right in the UK. In the 60s some of the then predominantly white population were so shocked by the influx of asian immigrants that the residents’ association ended up supporting British National Party (NB, this BNP predated the NF and was eventually absorbed into it) candidates in the 1963 local elections, where they polled a respectable 27.5% and 13.5%.

Tensions remained high, it seems. Then in July 1976, 17 year old Gurdip Singh Chaggar was murdered in a racist attack in Southall. His attackers were 3 white men who were apparently inspired by the National Front (although I have not been able to pin this down with a reference). Southall youth took to the streets.

Sir Robert Mark, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner commented “The motive was not necessarily racial.”

The response from NF chairman John Kingsley Reid was “that’s one down, one million to go”. When Reid was tried for inciting racial hatred for this unbelievable outburst, the Judge lined up behind him: “In this England of ours, we are allowed to have our own view still, thank goodness, and long may it last…I wish you well in your project”.

So when the NF called an election meeting at Southall Town Hall on St George’s Day 1979 most people were clear that this was nothing less than a provocation.

The People Unite community centre was used as a base for the protests and the police decided to close it down: “The building was so badly damaged by the police action that afterwards, it had to be destroyed. Officers with batons smashed medical equipment, a sound system, printing and other items.”

And people. Many of Misty in Roots were present. Clarence Baker, Misty’s manager, was beaten into a coma by the cops. Two members of the group were arrested and jailed on trumped up charges. Perhaps they got off lightly - Blair Peach, another anti-fascist protester, was killed later in the day after a blow to the head from a member of the Special Patrol Group.

The day and aftermath is chronicled in more depth here.

There are some comments from Misty’s singer Poko here, but I particularly want to highlight this:

For the people of Southall it was something that could never be forgotten. We had all been involved in an uprising, the police had bloodied us, and they were still there terrorising us long after the protest had finished.

But among the fear there was also a sense of unity. The whole thing raised the consciousness of the young Asians in particular. And there is still a connection to 1979 to this day.

Across Southall there are Asian-run reggae sound systems – a tradition that started not long after the uprising. A lot of Asian kids began to relate to the spirit of resistance that you find in reggae.

It is easy to forget, when reading the above, that fighting the NF wasn’t always big demonstrations like Lewisham 77, or concerts, or marches. It was a two way street with Enoch’s “rivers of blood” in the gutters.

NF supporters were suspected of firebomb attacks on music venues like the Four Aces in Dalston, and Acklam Hall in Ladbroke Grove. Not to mention the petty intimidation and outright racist violence that was part of the everyday landscape in the 1970s.

The “cultural war” of Rock Against Racism has to be seen alongside the groundwork of community organisations, politicos, “squadists”, and even everyday people who just had a chat with their mates when they were spouting bollocks. Compared to all this it seems a bit pathetic to be rummaging through some dusty vinyl once again, but that is what started me off on this whole post which has now spiraled slightly out of control. So here goes:

Chant Down The National Front: tune by tune

The Phantom - Lazy Fascist (Cool Ghoul 7″ 1978)

This is quite a mysterious record, produced by persons unknown.

There are a number of quite suspicious aspects to the track- the vocalist’s accent is faux American rather than (faux) Jamaican, “Cool Ghoul” could be a “ghost face”-esque reference to whiteness? At least one record dealer has speculated about it being a secret project of Tom Robinson, but that may just be to shift records, so I am sceptical. More importantly the lyrical content focusses more on the economic aspects of colonialism: “you call us when you need our labour…” than the more usual slavery and displacement.

The “chase those fascists out” chant is straight off a lefty demo and the line “If this song offends you - you’re a fascist too… fascist!” IS Vivien off the Young Ones.

The less said about the racial stereotyping of “You pad your pants to try and look like a man / And we’ve been pumping iron gonna move like lion” the better - except to point out that the “lion” is the track’s the only nod towards rasta imagery.

One of the people involved was interviewed in Black Music magazine and quoted in Dick Hebdige’s Cut and Mix book:“[The National Front] love to hear the Rastas talking about repatriation ‘cos it makes their jobs a lot easier”

I find this interesting when contrasted with the ambiguous comments made by Jah Shaka on the subject which lead to an extended discussion on the Blood and Fire board.

Blazing Sons - Chant Down The National Front (DiKi 12″ n.d.)

This also originally came as a Cool Ghoul 7″, but was re-released on a Belgian label as a 12″. A marked improvement both lyrically and musically, with some nice steppers business on the version.

Sufferer Sound - National Front (Tempus 12″ 1978)

I can’t put it any better than Bill Dew in his article Dub - The Vinyl Frontier:

A delightfully, distinctively British cut from a label most commonly associated with Dennis Bovell. Indeed, I would hazard a guess that Blackbeard had a hand in this production, a very loose rendering of ‘Norwegian Wood’ positively brimming over with idiosyncratic flourishes. The dub spotlight glances off the melody, extending and accentuating certain key notes by accident and design before imploding, ‘transformer’ style, in an ecstatic liquid rush of stellar phase effects. Can nobody mix dub like this anymore?

Bovell has always been pretty outspoken about the effect that Enoch Powell’s speeches had on black people living in the UK. His band Matumbi played the first ever Rock Against Racism gig at the Royal College of Art in December 1976.

But this is an instrumental…

Linton Kwesi Johnson - Fite Dem Back (From “Reggae Greats” compilation, Island, but originally released on “Forces of Victory”, 1979)

Admirable militancy from the man like LKJ. I could also have included “Reggae Fi Peach” (in tribute to Blair Peach, see above). But this is more fitting for the mix, really. Dennis Bovell produced the track, of course.

“Fight Dem Back” is also the name of an Antipodean anti-racist organisation. I know this because the nice man who runs the Slack Bastard anti-fascist blog steadfastly links to my piece on Nicky Crane every time he comes up in conversation.

Al Campbell - National Front (Soul Vybz 7″ 2006)

Proof positive that the fight against fascism is always with us. I believe this is a French reworking of a tune off Al’s 1985 “Forward Natty” album (but I haven’t heard that - can you help?). So it’s now directed straight at the head of Le Pen and the French NF. I really like this because it avoids preachiness by including great lyrics about how Al is going to:

“Hit them with the bassline
Smash up them waistline
Hit them with the riddim
Stop them ism and schism”

BEYOND THE iMPLODE: 9 THINGS I HATE ABOUT ANTI-NAZI MARCHES IN LONDON

A timely intervention from Martin!

Actually, don’t go out of your way to smash them. They are tiny these days and have been completely eclipsed by the more sophisticated British National Party.

In the mid-70s, though, the NF were a force to be reckoned with, both electorally and on the streets. Which naturally put the wind up a lot of people.

For liberals the NF became a sociological problem which needed to be explained and dealt with. For some others the problems created by popular fascism were more immediate. My focus here is mainly on the former.

Martin Walker - The National Front (Fontana, 1977)

Walker was a Guardian journalist who managed to interview a surprisingly large section of the UK far right in the mid 70s. The book is therefore a pretty good resource for insights into the internal politics and mechanisms of the party. It also includes some great bitchiness about different factions which is always great to read, eh?

I found this especially worthwhile for the detailed look a the NF’s formation out of various strands on the far right - former Blackshirts, “empire loyalists”, community groups opposed to immigration, sections of the Tory “Monday Club” and outright neo-nazis.

Whilst the subject matter is obviously quite grim there are some hilarious asides, my favourite being some disgruntled NF members who were kept waiting for two hours during their first visit to Germany while John Tyndall ponced about in a shoe shop trying for find the most nazi-looking jack boots to buy.

Michael Billig - Fascists: A Social Psychological View of The National Front (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978)

Billig was a lecturer in psychology at Birmingham University when he wrote this interesting book. It is perhaps a little too academic in tone for some, but is actually clearly and insightfully written, especially when compared to some of the convoluted pomo gibberish which passes for academic literature these days.

There are three sections to the book:

The first part looks at various methods which have been used to analyse “the fascist personality”, including Adorno, Reich and especially Fromm’s “F Scale” of authoritarianism/fascism. Whilst there is some merit in this approach, Billig is clear about its limitations. It should be blindly obvious to anyone with a vague interest in extreme politics that people are attracted to ideologies and political organisations for a whole host of reasons including status and the social.

The psychological approach towards analysing poltiical activists can also be used to demonise one’s enemies - it’s a technique used just as much against anarchists and communists by the mainstream media as with the far right. Demonisation may make people feel like they have the moral high ground but that isn’t a useful tool in the fight against fascism. Understanding why people are drawn towards far right groups can be a key factor in preventing this happening or providing an anti-fascist alternative.

The second section examines the ideology of the National Front with particular reference to its publications. I found Billig’s meticulous analysis of John Tyndall’s Spearhead magazine especially useful. He charts the rag’s development from independent pro-Hitlerian organ to an official NF journal which was outwardly racist but not nazi. Billig is adept at uncovering the coding at the heart of the “respectable” facade which allows fascists to retain their virulent anti-semitism by substituting phrases like “rootless cosmopolitan bankers” for “jews”. Of course this is now widely known but I haven’t seen it explained as well anywhere else.

Also included is a cogent overview of the NF’s use of IQ and Race theories to bolster their prejudice. This material also formed the basis for Billig’s Psychology, Racism & Fascism pamphlet which I have previously mentioned here.

The final section of the book concerns interviews with several National Front members, with transcripts.

Searchlight - From Ballots To Bombs: The Inside Story of The National Front’s Political Soldiers (Searchlight, 1989)

Pamphlet covering the weirder ideological developments of the NF in the mid 80s. I.e. toadying up to Gaddaffi, trying to be mates with the Nation of Islam in Hackney, etc. Fascists desperately scurrying around trying to find some new ideas when the electoral route didn’t pan out (their ideas ripped off by the tories, the cultural war lost to the anti-nazi league, and John Tyndall grossly over reaching what the party was capable of in the 1979 elections and nearly bankrupting them in the process). This era saw the front moving increasingly towards elitism and terrorism when it became clear how marginal they were. A salutary lesson in how fascism operates in different ways at different points in history - and that this requires different tactics.

After the introduction, the format used is a bunch of autobiographies of people who became disatisfied with their involvement with far right politics. The “people” are composites though, which opens the door to a whole can of worms about the role of Searchlight’s contacts and infiltrators, the organisation’s pride in its relationship with the police and the secret state, and more basic issues about whether the booklet is propaganda or investigation.

Still worth a read if you’ve been following the furore about Tony Wakeford (and his associates such as Richard Lawson) and their involvement with the NF during this period.

Part Two will follow next week.

Some of the (text) contents of Datacide issue 9 have been placed online, including the crucial:

Howard Slater: LOTTA CONTINUA - Roots Music and the Politics of Production

Also an article critiquing Muslimgauze’s politics, an archival 80s interview with John Balance of Coil, and a whole lot more - check it.

Or buy the print edition direct from the uncarved.org shop.

Datacide issue 10 is imminent, its publication to be accompanied by a Datacide event featuring… well, more of that soon.

Stewart Home has updated his website to include yet more information about the fascist inclinations and associations of neofolk “musician” Tony Wakeford.

Also featured are some rebuttals of the ridiculous criticisms leveled at Home by the pseudo-academic “Industrialised Culture Research Network” blog.

Hackney Solidarity Network

“The Hackney Solidarity Network (HSN) was launched in January 2008 as a space where community activists and campaigners can

• Meet each other
• Let each other know what they are doing
• Share skills and information
• Network and get to know each other socially

The UK is already the western democracy which has the power to detain people for the longest length of time without trial. Apparently that isn’t sufficient, what with all this terrorism we are having.

Parliament has just agreed that detention can be increased from 28 days to 42 (Douglas Adams has a lot to answer for). Predictably the police say they need 42 days and the civil liberties lobby say this is bollocks.

But what, you may ask, has this all got to do with obscure UK fast chat deejays from the 1980s?

You remember the early 80s, right? Or if you don’t you’ve seen enough footage of burning police cars and punks and rastas and “Ghost Town” on TV “list” programmes to have a fair idea about it.

Lord Scarman’s report into the 1981 Brixton riots did away with the “sus laws” and their legitimising of police harassment of black youth, but mistrust between the police and the public remained high in many areas (when is it not?).

Proposals in the 1983 Police Bill included powers to:

hold people for 96 hours without charge
set up random road blocks around an area
conduct forcible intimate body searches of detainees
use force in taking fingerprints (even of minors)
seize confidential information held by doctors, lawyers, journalists

and of course more stop and search powers, because you can’t have too many of them, eh?

It being the 80s, there was huge protest against the proposals (rather than today, when all you get is Shami Chakrabarti launching some balloons outside the Houses of Parliament). The HQ of the National Campaign Against The Police Bill was at 50 Rectory Road, Stoke Newington. Interestingly, the campaign seems to have received funding from Ken Livingstone’s GLC to the tune of £38,000 which lead to questions being asked in parliament.

Some of this money presumably was spent on admin and printing leaflets (some of which can be downloaded as pdfs here).

Thatcher’s right wing government was re-elected for a 2nd term in June 1983, helped in part by the resurgence of patriotism following the Falklands conflict, and flogging off council housing. The 1983 Labour party manifesto had included:

Repeal the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill, because it infringes the rights and freedoms of individuals.

Disband the London Special Patrol Groups and local SPGs, which have increasingly been deployed in aggressive public order roles.

but also a load of brave but unelectable policies such as abolishing the House of Lords, cancelling Trident nuclear missiles, etc.

“Kill The Police Bill” by Ranking Ann was released on Rough Justice Records in either 1984 or 85. It must be their only release (surely?). The 12″ was “produced by GLC Police Committee Support Unit” and published by Mad Professor’s Ariwa Music. I imagine by the sound of it that Mad Prof actually produced the music iin the studio rather than “the committee”, although that does conjur up some amusing images in my head.

So the Conservative government give Red Ken’s GLC a sack of money, which they then spend on a reggae record opposing proposed govt legislation. I bet that went down well.

Ranking Ann was born Ann Swinton in Croydon, but was discovered by Mad Professor via a contact in Wolverhampton whilst she was studying at university. Apparently she had some involvement with the Black Rock soundsystem which was run by her brother. Her first album “A Slice of English Toast” was released on Ariwa in 1982.

The tune itself is classic mid 80s Mad Professor stuff - a version of the Heavenless riddim with police sirens. Ann’s lyrics deal with police oppression in general, and the bill in particular as well as a first person (true or fiction?) account of her arrest.

The back cover includes all the lyrics for the benefit of those who can’t fathom Ann’s (rather light) patois. I imagine the record was well received by student lefties and guardianistas but that may be my own bias. Certainly Dick Hebdige, arch-academic of things sub-cultural, dedicated a whole chapter to the tune in his book Cut ‘n’ Mix (Comedia, 1987).

Furthermore Mad Professor himself makes the point that Ann’s material “was not appreciated until the late 80s, when academics and hippies from Exeter to San Diego demanded to see her.” in his sleevenotes to the excellent Ariwa 81 Sessions compilation.

Having said that, Green Gartside did appreciate her work and got Ann in for some toasting on Scritti Politti’s dubbed out remix of their “The Word Girl” single. Shortly after this burst of activity in the mid 80s, she moved away from reggae and into Gospel.

As Hebdige points out, the record and allied protests did not prevent the bill becoming an Act of Parliament at the end of 1985, following further conflict between the police and residents of Brixton and Tottenham. These riots lead the Metropolitan Police Chief to call for even more powers, including giving his colleagues access to plastic bullets whenever he felt like it.

The Thatcher government closed down the GLC in March 1986.

Reading all this back and thinking of the vast amounts of unrest in the 1980s (riots, the Miners’ strike, a terrorist threat from the IRA, 3 million unemployed, the prospect of the cold war concluding in nuclear annihilation) I am not convinced that there is more disorder now.

And I’d be pretty surprised if Boris Johnson used his mayoral funds to release a tune by a female grime MC tearing into the new Counter Terror Bill.

Make a note in your diary to read this post again in 42 days.

Juan Haro, a speaker from the Movement for Justice in El Barrio will talk in Dalston, about their struggle against displacement by gentrification in Harlem, New York city.

On Saturday the 24th of May @ Passing Clouds, on Richmond Rd, just off Kingsland road in Dalston, 10 mins from Dalston Kingsland Station. Buses: 149, 242, 243, 67.Free or donation entry to talk from 7.00pm.

Followed by Latin bands and DJs hosted by Movimientos at around 9pm “From folkloric to electronic Movimientos is the sound of London’s Latin alternative”. (£5 entry)

Dalston, like many other parts of London is undergoing development that will mean rent rises for tenants already struggling to pay extortionate London rents. When an area becomes appealing for investors and “regeneration” it’s those people with money who end up enjoying the new housing, expensive cafes and shops, and the people with less money who end up having to move further away from the centre of the city or who, if they stay, lose the shops, cafes and resources they rely on. Movement for Justice, the organization of tenants in Harlem, New York that have been struggling against the landlords that want to price them out of their area say;

“This displacement is created by the greed, ambition and violence of a global empire of money that seeks to take total control of all the land, labor and life on earth. Here in El Barrio (East Harlem, New York City), landlords, multi-national corporations and local, state and federal politicians and institutions want to force upon us their culture of money, they want to displace poor families and rent their apartments to rich people, white people with money. They want to change the look of our neighborhood, with the excuse of “developing the community.”

The talk will explore issues around resisting gentrification and the model of organization that Movement for Justice have used to work with each other – an inspiring and educational example from across the Atlantic that we could learn from in London.

“Together, we make our dignity resistance and we fight back against the actions of capitalist landlords and multinational corporations who are displacing poor families from our neighborhood. We fight back locally and across borders. We fight back against local politicians that refuse to govern by obeying the will of the people. We fight back against the government institutions that enforce a global economic, social and political system that seeks to destroy humanity.”

Talk organized by Hackney Solidarity Network, Hackney Independent, Haringey Solidarity Group and London Coalition Against Poverty.

It has been pointed out by one of my correspondents that me calling the neo-nazi November 9th Society “retards” is unfair.

Whilst I’m not someone who is insistent on using the correct terminology in every instance, I have reflected on this and agree that it was an unfortunate term to use - not least because of nazis’ fetishism of “purity” and elimination of those considered to be “impure”, including disabled people.

Calling nazis “retards” is unfair on retards.

I discovered two neo-nazi stickers on lamp-posts the other day whilst walking to work. I found them shocking more for the surprise value than their content. In the 80s (oh no, here he goes again) there used to be quite a lot of this stuff floating about in some areas - you’d even see the odd NF sticker on the tube.

These days it comes across as real fringe nutjob stuff, I think. You know it’s some lonely geezer in a dirty mac furtively going about in the early hours with a pocket full of fading nazi propaganda. Like a dog trying to mark its territory, or a flasher.

These two items were even more pathetic because they publicised two different organisations. “Oh blimey someone from the National Front has been stickering on the same morning as someone from the neo-nazi N*vember 9th S*ciety! What are the chances of that? Wow this area must be a real hotbed of far right activity!”

The pic, by the way, is Rudolf Hess. Apparently he was killed by those horrid rotters ZOG. It’s as good an insight as any into the intellect of the master race that they think:

a) Many people will recognise Hess from his picture

b) Many people will know what ZOG is.

c) Anyone will get worked up by the circumstances of Hess’ death.

My theory is it’s just a wind up, rather than a recruitment aid. “Let them hate us, as long as they fear” and all that. I suppose I do hate them, but mainly it just all seems a bit sad.

I ripped both stickers down easily and had a wander in my lunchtime to see if there were more, but fortunately other people had already removed the bulk of the two other offending items I found.

There used to be all sorts of rumours of fascists putting razor blades under their retarded propaganda but I’ve never met anyone who has actually seen this. Or in fact, many stickers these days - it’s a bit like “I Spy” for cynical lefties.