A new archival site featuring radical publications from this corner of North East London.
Items added so far include
A “Hackney Against The Cuts” newsletter from 1991, which is obviously quite topical right now as well.
The first issue of the original “Hackney Heckler” newsletter, also from 1991, which includes an account of a Tory minister getting flour-bombed mid-speech at the town hall. (The all new revamped 21st Century Heckler is available for download here).
An introduction to Hackney Community Defence Association – the police monitoring group I mentioned here previously.
“Up Against The Lawmen” – an account of HCDA’s investigations into corruption and drug dealing by officers at Stoke Newington police station. This includes some disturbing first person accounts of shitty behaviour by the cops, but the calm and resourceful work of HCDA is very inspiring.
I think it’s a site worth keeping an eye on – the material here is useful for politicos but also more generally to Hackney residents who have an interest in the social history of where they live.
Someone hacked my site through the old shop and installed a phishing scam on uncarved.org. Basically a load of faked bank webpages were on there.
I’m not quite sure what to think about that. I’m not keen on people preying on the naive and vulnerable, but it’s not clear to me if the banks end up suffering from these scams or their customers.
(If you ordered anything from the old shop don’t fret, none of your bank details or anything serious were stored on the site).
Basically I agree with Martin on this one – there should be more people robbing banks in the traditional way and less of this computer-based tom-foolery. Same goes for music – in the olden days people had to stuff LPs or CDs into their trenchcoats if they wanted to hear stuff for free. Or at the very least have some decent mates to tape things for them.
Which is a slightly unusual way of introducing a top ten showbiz bank robbers:
1. The Bonnot Gang, 1911-1912
French anarchists who were the first to use cars for their getaways. The book about them is full-on, I can recall a few accounts of bitter sectarian in-fighting, including a rival sect’s printing press being smashed up.
This tradition is allegedly being kept alive by Italian insurrectionist anarchist Alfredo Bonanno who was arrested at the age of 70 in 2009 for robbing a bank in Greece. My recollection is that there was some doubt about whether he actually did the deed.
2. John Dillinger, 1933-1934
Didn’t he rob 23 banks or something? William Burroughs was keen on him: “To John Dilinger in the hope that he is still alive“.
3. Bonnie and Clyde, 1931-1934
Exerted an almost tectonic pull on everyone from Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot to Papa Levi. Inspired that whole Thelma and Louise live fast die young, roadtrip kind of vibe.
5. Red Army Faction / Andres Baader & Ulrike Meinhoff, 1970-1972
Sports cars, flashing their tits to the PLO, bombs aplenty. Punk, and yet so very serious and so very very wrong.
6.The Covenant Sword And The Arm of the Lord, 1980s
Extreme right wing “Christian Identity” cult which robbed 19 banks in 8 US states in one month. They apparently spent all the money on guns, displaying a typically fascist lack of imagination. Included here because Cabaret Voltaire named their 1985 album after them.
7. Patty Hearst, 1974
“Death to the fascist insect that preys on the life of the people!”
Sixties pin up! Rich girl turns insane maoist terrorist! Locked up and then pardoned by philanderer Bill Clinton! Acts in John Waters movies!
8. Chelembra Bank Robbery, 2007
80 million rupees in the back of the van. Our anti-heroes took over the restaurant under the bank. Then drilled a massive hole through to the vault under the guise of renovating it.
If that isn’t mad enough, the whole scheme was inspired by a Bollywood movie. Respect.
9. The Geezer Bandit, NOW
For the name alone, really. This guy is apparently in his SEVENTIES and has been expropriating the expropriators in Southern California. He’s done 13 banks, including one on the 28th of January this year. Apparently has inspired facebook fan pages and also at least one copy cat robber. Also rumoured that he’s a young man in a rubberised Scooby Doo villain mask?!
10. Unknown: Central Bank of Iraq, 2003
The day before the United States began bombing Baghdad, nearly US$1 billion was stolen from the Central Bank of Iraq. This is considered the largest bank heist in history. Opportunism or what?
A double whammy from Dan Hancox on Grime and the recent London protests:
Lethal Bizzle’s Pow! (Forward) was the unofficial song of the recent student protests. Dan Hancox charts how it went from grime-scene scapegoat to righteous rallying cry:
Following the lazy misrecognition of the ‘bunking’ EMA protesters from various quarters of media and government, Dan Hancox sets out to explore the complicated and contradictory soundscape of these urban motley crews:
This is Sir Philip Green, the billionaire boss of Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Miss Selfridge among others.
These UK companies are part of Green’s Arcadia Group which is in turn owned by Taveta Investments Limited, which is registered to an office on the tax-haven island of Jersey. Taveta Investments is owned by Green’s family members living in Monaco, where income tax is 0%. It has been estimated that this set up enabled Green to avoid paying £300million in tax in 2005 alone.
The UK government has said with sinister monotony that tough choices have to be made in the current economic climate and that “we’re all in it together”. The tough choices have resulted in misery for ordinary people as wages have been frozen or reduced whilst Value Added Tax has been increased. Not to mention savage cuts to the welfare state and high levels of job insecurity.
Top Shop's flagship London store closed by protestors
But what’s this got to do with the Sex Pistols, you might ask?
Well, after the protests Sir Philip spent the Christmas period at a £17,000-a-night Barbados resort with his family. Oh and his super rich chums Simon Cowell, Michael Winner and Sylvester Stallone. In fact Green likes his friends so much that he’s immortalised them on a special t-shirt:
Comparing himself to the Sex Pistols is clearly Green’s great new wheeze, because here he is again, this time with himself and his wife as Sid ‘n’ Nancy:
Punk was always a mixed bag of left and right influences, but surely a Billionaire Tory appointee like Green using Jamie Reid’s logo to bolster his own bogus “rebel” status is the ultimate in recuperation?
Or perhaps not – a number of people have pointed out that Green bears a striking resemblance to Sex Pistols guest vocalist and train robber Ronnie Biggs. But whilst Biggs and his accomplices in the great train robbery were convicted of stealing £2.6 million in 1963, Sir Philip’s ambitions are far greater – and completely untroubled by judicial complications.
Who Makes The Nazis is a new blog which is “Keeping an eye on the neo-fascists currently burrowing their way into a subculture near you…” off to a good start with yet more on Tony Wakeford, but also some more general ruminations on the neofolk scene which are very well argued. I especially liked the comments in this entry about artists who harp on about exploring extreme material, but seem unable to come to any conclusions or opinions about their favourite subject matter, even after a quarter of a century.
Datacide magazine have started digitising the archival pieces from their predecessor, Alien Underground, which was a great zine covering techno, noise and politics in the mid 1990s. Pieces so far on the Criminal Justice Act, Digital Hardcore Recordings, Sakho, and a lot more. Even the record reviews from back then are a nice reminder times gone by…
A nice bit of traditional toasting over the Pick Up The Pieces riddim:
Me think about the lion as him rest upon the sand
Me tink about the help that me have from white man
And me want to crying
Becah me listen to the lying
Me know when me talk that me [real break something - not sure?]
Me know that me mix up with real good friend
Good [earth or 'erb ration - not sure?]
It not absurd situation
Because me black and me proud and me Rastafari
Me and yah people we nah see eye to eye
Which then deviates jarringly, and hilariously, from the norm:
There’s a difference in me lifestyle
There’s a difference in me dance style
What a difference in me case file
Because me black and me proud and me Rastafari
And me homosexual
Homosexual
Homosexual
The lyrics then move on to some explicit and jaw-droppingly funny descriptions of gay sex, before concluding with some more philosophical musings:
And me mind goes asunder with the wonder of life
‘Ow people give you pressure for to pick up a wife
And me know it not a sensible
Brrrrr! me know it not a sensible.
Because me like all me brother and me like all me sister
Me like everybody and me not a resister
Me open up me mind guy
Me open up me mind guy
And me love, me love, me know about love
me also think of sex and me know it from above
and me like a man cocky style
East west north and south
I take it up the arse and I take it in me mouth
North south west and east
I play the beauty and me boyfriend play the beast
North south east and west
Sexual freedom – always the best!
Sex Boots Dread – Pentel (Rinka, 1980)
Pentel (aka Pentil) is in a similar vein, covering Mr Boots Dread’s relationship with an a young Indian bloke – their love life taking place in his parent’s cornershop with an increasingly bizarre variety of the merchandise used as props.
I like these tracks – they are very well done with an obvious affection for reggae and a who give a fuck attitude to the prevailing sexual codes of conduct. And they are very funny.
I first heard of Sex Boots Dread on Woebot’s blog. These tunes came out on a 12″ and were rumoured to have been given a great review in the NME because of their pro-gay lyrics – something unheard of then and now for what seemed to be a Jamaican artist.
But there are a few clues, just from listening, that suggest everything is not what it seems. For example “think” is pronounced think and the more patois tink in the first two lines. And the sexually explicit content is very different from the usual “slackness” of the genre.
Sex Boots Dread is rumoured to be the work of comedian and personality Keith Allen.
The actual evidence for this is a bit sketchy, especially as I haven’t read Allen’s autobiography, “Grow Up” (Ebury Press 2007). But I’m more interested in writing about the context the record might have been made in, than who actually made it. So there.
The album also features Keith Allen, and is a product of the eighties Ladbroke Grove scene in West London. The Roughler was a fanzine which was set up to cover news of the Rough Trade cricket team (a concept nearly as incongruous as occult order the Ordo Templi Orientis having a baseball team, but apparently this is also true – I’ve never had much of a grip on sport) which operated out of The Warwick pub.
As fanzine veteran and West London historian Tom Vague puts it:
“Of all the local mags, the Roughler most definitively represents Notting Hill and the area’s contrasting psychogeography. Originally the scoresheet and fixture list programme of the Rough Trade cricket team, the Old Roughians, the satirical mag/fanzine/website etc was founded in the early 80s by the local pub legend Welsh Ray Roughler-Jones.
The Roughler covered the scene at the Rough Trade pub, the Warwick Castle at 225 Portobello Road, and the activities of Keith Allen, the Comic Strip actor who was in the local groups, the Atoms and Tesco Bombers, and arrested in the ’76 Carnival riot. In the mid 80s Allen achieved further local notoriety with his ‘first gay Rasta’ spoof record, Boots Sex Dread’s ‘Tickle Tune’.”
I’ve not found any corroborating evidence for that, but here he is interviewing Lepke of DBC for Channel 4 in 1982:
It seems like Keith had a project called “Breakfast Pirate Radio” which was either a station or released on cassette or both. Either way, that also featured Sex Boot Dread tracks:
The show also includes Gerry Arkwright, the “northern industrial gay” character and a very camp presenter. Allen clearly felt homosexuality was great source material, and it is certainly worth remembering how transgressive this must have felt at the time. There are also a fair few pops at politicians and middle class people which suggest an anarchist influence.
Ian Bone and an early incarnation of Class War used to knock about in Ladbroke Grove too. According to Bone’s autobiography “Bash The Rich”, Keith once played drums in his band “The Living Legends” and filmed several hours’ worth of footage of Class War’s “Bash The Rich” excursion to the 1985 Henley Regatta. Although it’s fair to say Mr Bone was less than impressed with one of Mr Allen’s latest ventures.
Dogging
A piece in the News of the World reveals the source of the record label name:
“Keith becomes uncharacteristically coy when he records a night of lust with one of the biggest stars in British drama. He refuses to name her but teasingly reveals she was later honoured with the title Dame.
He won her over with the bizarre story of how he came by his tattoo of a dog’s head and the word Rinka.
Keith had it done in a fit of anger over Seventies Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe being found not guilty of plotting to murder male model Norman Scott, his alleged gay lover.
In the drama leading up to the case Scott’s dog Rinka had been shot through the head. It was an odd chat-up line to a top actress but Keith reveals: “An hour later we were in her bedroom snorting amyl nitrate—her with a pair of headphones on, listening to opera, and me with my tongue all over her. And no, it wasn’t Judi Dench!”
Rinka Records also released a seven inch by The Atoms in 1979, featuring Keith Allen on vocals and piano. That record has a catalogue number or R23, but it may explain the Rinka2 imprint on the Sex Boots Dread label.
Sex Boots Dread: The Movie
“Tickle Tune” appears in the 2001 Larry Clark movie “Bully”, which I haven’t seen – but apparently it’s playing in a nightclub.
The track credited as follows, but does not appear on the official soundtrack CD:
“Boots Sex Dread”
Performed by Rinka
Written by Rinka and J. Cafritz
Published by Just Send the Money to Us Music (BMI)
“J. Cafritz”?! Well that turns out to be Julia Cafritz, former guitarist of Pussy Galore and now of Free Kitten infamy.
Kim Gordon and Julia Cafritz
Julia confirmed her awesomeness by dropping me an email and asking about the track when she found me discussing it over at the Chatty Mouth reggae board. I was happy to bung her an mp3, and took the opportunity to ask her what the crack was:
“it was a mythical track, in my mind some total concoction of Thurston [Moore, Sonic Youth] and Byron’s [Coley, music critic best known for his writing in Forced Exposure, now writes for The Wire amongst others]…since they had a hand in it getting on the soundtrack.”
That’s the only reason for me to be falsely given writing credit. ‘Just send ALL the money directly to us’ was Free Kitten’s publishing company…they even got that wrong.
The track must be a total joke. Having spent my entire childhood traveling to Jamaica every year, there were definitely some gay rastas on the down low…but none with such a keen sense of humor in such a homophobic culture.”
“Sex Boots Dread” – Rinka – worth $1,000
I have the only copy of this 12” you’re ever going to see outside of Jamaica. It’s from the early 80s and it’s about Rinka coming out of the closet and and getting into heavy toasting about the pleasures of anal sex. Larry Clark used it for a club scene in the movie Bully.
So there you have it, a cracking record with quite a story behind it. I guess all of this might explain why Lily Allen, Keith’s daughter, has so much of a reggae influence in her work…
On Saturday a young man was shot in London Fields, caught in the cross-fire of what can safely be assumed to be a gang related confrontation. The shooting took place during a community festival.
In an uncanny echo of the “Day Today” “Dead Pigeon” sketch, Jules Pipe (the elected New Labour Mayor of Hackney) pointed out: “Despite this very worrying incident, hundreds of people were able to enjoy the event in London Fields safely.”
Like many middle class people, McKeown seems particularly vexed by gentrification and middle class people’s role in it. She is also concerned with the plight of poor people, from a bizarrely tabloid anthropological angle:
Hackney is home to some of the worst housing in the country. Slums. Families squashed into tiny houses, damp riddled, stacked up like criminals in estates full of drugs, intimidation and fear. The women try to keep clean, the fathers try to stay clean and the kids run around like toy soldiers marking their small bits of territory with drugs, guns and violence. They put the edge in Hackney.
As someone who has spent a fair bit of time on the estates around London Fields, I find this “ghetto-glamourising” particularly annoying.
I left a comment on the site, and harangued the Citizen on twitter:
Why have you published this nonsense?
Hi John we hoped the piece would stimulate debate, please post your criticisms of it on the site. many thanks, keith [direct message to johnedenuk]
Would you a publish piece saying all the middle class blokes in new flats nr London Fields were coke heads who beat their wives? For debate? [direct message to HackneyCitizen]
Hi John no we wouldn’t, but the piece doesn’t make inferences about all individuals in a given situatiion. best, keith [direct message to johnedenuk]
It makes that inference about people who live in “slums” in the 3rd para. [direct message to HackneyCitizen]
Hi John we’d be happy to consider publishing a counter argument to the piece. best, keith [direct message to johnedenuk]
As someone who lives on an estate, I have no desire to be associated with you if you publish stuff like that. Putting it politely. [direct message to HackneyCitizen]
Perhaps unsurprisingly no further response was received. I daresay Keith feels very threatened having unwittingly communicated with someone who lives on an estate, who is no doubt typing with one hand and brandishing a crack pipe and firearm in the other.
Meanwhile I am sure that Hackney Citizen is very pleased with the “debate” that McKeown’s piece has generated – 32 outraged and knee jerk comments… and counting.
I’m grateful to my old mucker Merrick for dropping by with his thoughts on the election. We’ve argued the toss about politics for well over 15 years now and I’m pleased that it looks like continuing until we are shouty old men.
I’m sure that Merrick is correct that, nationally. people avoided the Greens and Independents in many areas because they were voting tactically against the Conservatives.
But as Matt Sellwood (Green candidate for Hackney North and Stoke Newington) has pointed out, this doesn’t apply in Labour safe seats. Indeed it looks like large numbers of the electorate here were either not persuaded by the Greens, or irrationally voted for Labour because they wanted to send a strong message to the Tories (who stand ZERO chance of being elected here).
Perhaps the most obvious of these is that the BNP now have 563,000 people prepared to vote for them. And that this support is despite an unprecedented campaign pointing out how horrible and “Nazi” the BNP is. Either these voters are fine with voting for alleged Nazis or they simply don’t believe it.
Merrick is correct to compare the current state of play with the National Front’s vote in the 1979 election. He is also right to say that there is probably a “ceiling” which far right (and far left, but that’s another sorry story) groups can reach in UK elections. Indeed, the main threat that far right parties pose is not seizing power and implementing their policies, but by acting as pressure groups on mainstream political parties.
The BNP now have double the votes the NF achieved and seem to be able to successfully spread out into new areas, which the NF failed to do. With electoral reform right at the top of the political agenda for the first time I can remember, those 563,00 votes may count for a great deal more next time around.
Parliament’s main priority in its next term will be to address the massive debt incurred whilst bailing out the banks. This means savage cuts, job losses and even harsher times for those at the sharp end. There are going to be a lot of pissed off people around looking for alternatives to whatever combination of Lib/Con/Lab ends up in charge. Call me cynical but I’m not sure that they’re all going to flock to the Green Party or the remnants of the left…
Basically turnout was high and Diane Abbott’s vote increased massively. Plus the Greens did much worse than I expected, and I overestimated the prospects for the Indepedents.
There’s has been some consternation about a few hundred people getting locked out of polling stations last night. Whilst that’s unfortunate it’s unlikely to have made much of a difference to the big picture.
My career as a pollster has not got off to a great start, but I couldn’t find any other git who was prepared to put their money where their mouth was and come up with actual numerical predictions. I wasn’t a mile off but I’m glad I’m not a betting man…
Those results in full:
Candidate / Party / Actual Votes / uncarved.org prediction
Diane Abbott (Labour) 25,553 (13,000)
Keith Angus (LIb Dem) 11,092 (8,006)
Darren Caplan (Conservative) 6,759 (4,000)
Matt Sellwood (Green Party) 2,133 (7,846)
Suzanne Moore (Ind) 258 (976)
Maxine Hargreaves (The Christian Party) 299 (777)
Alessandra Williams (Ind) 61 (213)
Knigel Knapp (Monster Raving Loony Party) 182 (236)
Paul Shaer (Ind) 96 (29)
Dr Jack Pope-De-Locksley (Magna Carta Party) 26 (66)
actual percentage / uncarved.org percentage
Diane Abbott 54.9 (37)
Keith Angus 23.9 (22.8)
Darren Caplan 14.6 (11.4)
Matt Sellwood 4.6 (22.3)
Maxine Hargreaves 0.6 (2.2)
Suzanne Moore 0.6 (2.8)
Knigel Knapp 0.4 (0.7)
Paul Shaer 0.2 (0.1)
Alessandra Williams 0.1 (0.6)
Dr Jack Pope-de-Locksley 0.1 (0.2)
In other news, Jack Pope-de-Locksley is in the Hackney Gazette this week strongly disavowing any nazi tendencies. Not that this seems to have had any bearing on his vote.
