Dan Hancox has written a great piece on 'Debunking the weird myths about London's 24-hour party people' in which he rightly takes to task some dubious claims made in the Times and elsewhere that London nightlife is in terminal decline. He rightly critiques some very dubious data, such as relying on Google Maps to show venues with late night licenses.
Specifically he skewers a map included in the Times article 'UK’s worst night out? Costly, crime-ridden London' (27 September 2024) which purports to show venues open after 2 am on Saturday nights. Using his local knowledge of Peckham’s Rye Lane he shows that in addition to three venues shown on map (Tola, the Prince of Peckham, and the Bussey Building) there are many other places: 'My raver alarm immediately went off. Just from going out dancing in Peckham, I know that this is rubbish. That list is missing the Carpet Shop (open till 4am), Peckham Audio (4am), Peckham Levels (4am, albeit occasionally) and Four Quarters (3am). There are also at least five pubs I can think of around Rye Lane which open until 1am on a Saturday night, new audiophile bar Jumbi is open until 2am' etc. etc.
As Dan points out this 'London Declinism mingles with the fog of racist myths' that London is a hotbed of random violence overseen by a muslim mayor implementing sharia law! Sometimes these kind of articles are really just snotty refusals to recognise that London actually exists beyond the centre of town - see for instance Bloomsbury resident Will Lloyd's 'Sadiq Khan’s silent city' (New Statesman, 24 March 2024) which begrudgingly admits that he 'could walk north to the Lexington (open until around 3am, but it smells), or south into London’s warm, unwashed armpit'.
There is also a well meaning but in my view wrong-headed left wing version of the argument highlighting that many venues are being squeezed out by property development and other pressures (true) and suggesting that there is no longer any grass roots/'underground' clubbing because its all been taken over by corporate giants (false).
Of course there are peaks and troughs, periods when everybody seems to be out clubbing and times when it is a bit more based around niche subcultures. But we also have to beware observer bias. We all have our peak periods for partying, the worse thing is to imagine that because you are personally not going out as much as you used to do that is not happening any more, or that its not as good or real or whatever as it used to be. People have been out dancing in London for hundreds, probably thousands of years and it is not stopping any time soon (see for instance this great account of London dancing from 1902).
Things do change but not necessarily for the worst. The demise of some of the old school high street nightclubs that hungover from the pre-rave period, some of them with long histories of racist and sexist door policies, is not necessarily a bad thing. Dance music no longer always requires specialist DJs or sound rigs, great as it is to have them. There is a more diffuse nightlife in which a pub can quickly become a dancefloor, or people can summon one up anywhere playing music from their phones through speakers. These nights might never show up on Resident Advisor or be documented anywhere but they are happening all around us in London and anywhere else with a pulse. My South London local for instance - a pub that used to be pretty much empty much of the week - is full most nights, sometimes people are watching sport, sometimes listening to a folk session, and sometimes it erupts into dancing. And of course as Dan points out there are countless actual club nights, gigs and other events of all sizes happening all the time.
Historically in London it is pub and restaurant backrooms, railway arches and other places off the mainstream nightlife map that have spawned new music scenes. Think about the emergence of the new jazz scene in the last ten years where places like Buster Mantis (a Jamaican bar/restaurant) and Matchstick Piehouse (a community arts/music space) hosted the Steam Down nights in Deptford, many of whose alumni are now internationally known. I suspect that such places are not even on the radar of many of those decrying the death of London nightlife.
Earlier in the week it seemed that every other tweet from the twitterers I follow was telling the world to #saveplasticpeople. In quickly disseminating news of the threat to close the London club, this was an exemplary case of new media communication. Naturally a facebook group was also set up for people to immediately express their solidarity.
But then what? There is a sense that all of this virtual politicking often goes nowhere. Breathy accounts of how twitter was going to bring down dictatorships have been replaced by more sobre assessments of the resilience of well organised regimes confronted with slacktivism and what Annabelle Sreberny has termed the 'mousy solidarity' of clicking on petitions. Communication might be an essential part of developing social movements, but communication alone does not constitute a movement. Clouds of tweets and facebook posts can vanish as rapidly as their meteorological counterparts.
So where does that leave us in relation to something like saving a club like Plastic People from closure? If, as Gramsci would have it, the art of politics begins with an analysis of relations of force, a starting point would be to consider in more detail who our opponents are, what are their weaknesses, where the immediate battleground is to be found (e.g. when and where are decisions made). At the same time, we should consider who our allies are and our actual and potential strengths.
But Gramsci also famously distinguished between the 'war of manouevre' and the 'war of position'. The former refers to the immediate fighting on the battleground, the latter to the wider struggle to mobilise across society to achieve political ends. In relation to Plastic People, the quick war of manoeuvre might be appropriate for the urgent task of dealing with the pressing threat from Hackney Council and the local police, but the war of position is necessary to shape the context in which such decisions take place and to confront the wider criminalisation and over-regulation of forms of musicking and dancing. Is it possible to move beyond just complaining about individual club closures and mobilise a movement that can challenge the whole basis on which they happen - including the notions that music and dancing require the advance approval of the state (licensing) and that the 'war against drugs' and crime should be waged on the dancefloor?
This might seem like a fantasy, but in the mid-1990s there was a significant movement in the UK against the anti-rave measures of the Criminal Justice Act. Mass demonstrations might not have stopped the law, but they did strengthen the whole free party scene so that when the law came into effect it was not able to vanquish a highly-motivated and organised culture. More recently in New York there has been a campaign against the clampdown on nightlife that has included open air parties outside the Mayor's house, with people chanting 'dancing is not a crime'. If grime is being driven out of the public sphere in London, can't we bring grime en masse to City Hall? As Reclaim the Streets demonstrated in the 1990s, sound system + truck + crowd = all kinds of possibilities.
All of this would require communication, yes even using twitter and facebook, but also the harder slog of organising, mobilizing and taking action with our bodies as well as our virtual selves. In relation to Plastic People, there do seem to be signs that physical people are prepared to do more than just tweet with, for instance, suggestions of a meeting to set up some kind of 'Friends of Plastic People'.
(sharp eyed situationist-spotters will have noticed that the title of this post is derived from Raoul Vaneigem's The Revolution of Everyday Life: 'from this moment, despair ends and tactics begin').
Metropolis in Motion is fighting to legalize dancing in New York City by repealing its arcane cabaret laws. They say: 'Ever since NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani created the Nightclub Enforcement Task Force in 1997 to enact his "Quality of Life" campaign, the city has been waging a war against nightlife culture and industry. The most lethal weapon in the city's arsenal aimed against nightlife are Prohibition-era laws known as the "Cabaret Laws". As clubs, bars and lounges are fined, padlocked and shut down, citizens lose places that foster social interaction and artists have fewer places to express themselves'
In July 2006, Metropolis in Motion held an open-air dance outside of Mayor Bloomberg's mansion to bring attention to NYC's cabaret laws. Several hundred people danced and chanted 'dancing is not a crime'.
'The NYC cabaret law was created in 1926 in an effort to curtail wild behavior in nightclubs, particularly the interracial mixing that was happening in jazz clubs. The law initially limited licenses to establishments serving food or drink featuring three or more musicians or three or more people “moving in synchronized fashion.” It also stipulated that only musicians “of good character” could be licensed to play. In 1961 the law was amended to restrict cabarets to manufacturing and commercial zones, and in 1967 the “good character” musician requirement was nixed. In the late ’80s, the courts declared the three-musician rule unconstitutional. Although musicians have won the battle, dancers are still fighting to repeal the law. Today, only 244 licensed cabarets exist.' (New York Press)
A good turn out in London's Parliament Square last week (Wednesday 20th October 2021) for the Refugees Welcome rally organised by Solidarity with Refugees and others. The event highlighted opposition to the Government's anti-Refugee 'Nationality and Borders Bill' making its way through Parliament.
As highlighted by Refugee Action: 'Under the bill, only refugees arriving through extraordinarily restricted “official” routes, such as refugee resettlement, will be allowed to claim protection. All others will be deemed “inadmissible” to claim asylum and the Government will seek to deport them. If they cannot be deported, they may be allowed to claim asylum in the UK but if they receive refugee status as a result they will not be given the right to settle. Instead, they will be regularly reassessed for removal, with limited rights to family reunion and benefits'.
'"nikt nie jest nielegalny" ('No one is illegal' in Polish)
'POMOC - Polish Migrants Organise for Change'/'Solidarity knows no borders'
One clause in the anti-refugee bill seems designed to give immunity to Border Force staff who could potentially cause harm or even death in their actions, such as when 'pushing back' migrants in refugees in the Channel. Schedule 4A, part A1, paragraph J1 of the bill states: “A relevant officer is not liable in any criminal or civil proceedings for anything done in the purported performance of functions under this part of this schedule if the court is satisfied that (a) the act was done in good faith, and (b) there were reasonable grounds for doing it.”
'Afghans beyond borders'
'Social workers without borders'
Appeals to human rights and compassion cut very little ice with the Government and its supporters, paradoxically neither do economic arguments about migration and labour shortages seem to matter to the party of business. This is a theatre of cruelty in which being seen to be harsh to migrants (as well as other folk devils such as travellers and climate protestors) is deliberately performed as a means of solidifying its reactionary political base. The continuing arrival of migrants via the Channel has shown that the Brexit fantasy of cutting off island Britain from the world and returning to some imagined 1950s theme park cannot be realised - the anti-refugee bill is an expression of this rage against reality.
Little Amal in London
There have been other positive gatherings in the last week to welcome 'Little Amal', the puppet of a young refugee that has made its way across Europe from the Turkey/Syria border. I went down to Deptford last Friday (22/10/21) where thousands of people, including lots of excited school kids, crowded the streets for Amal's arrival in London (see report at Transpontine).
As described by the projects Artistic Director, Amir Nizar Zuabi: “It is because the attention of the world is elsewhere right now that it is more important than ever to reignite the conversation about the refugee crisis and to change the narrative around it. Yes, refugees need food and blankets, but they also need dignity and a voice. The purpose of The Walk is to highlight the potential of the refugee, not just their dire circumstances. Little Amal is 3.5 metres tall because we want the world to grow big enough to greet her. We want her to inspire us to think big and to act bigger.”
There was a festival atmosphere in Deptford High Street. Music included the South London Samba Band and 'We do Good Disco''s Campomatic giant washing machine - yes, there was dancing to Dead or Alive (by coincidence on the day before the 5th anniversary of the death of the late lamented Pete Burns).
The 'Women, Life, Freedom' revolt in Iran is an inspiration. I can only express my solidarity for those who have taken to the streets following the death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini at the hands of the Guidance Patrol morality police, after she was detained because of how she was dressed (specifically for not 'correctly' covering her head).
In a state which polices music and dancing so heavily it is no surprise that these are being forcibly expressed in the protest movement, most notably in Shervin Hajipour’s “For…” which makes a song out of tweets posted by people about what they are fighting for: ''For dancing in the streets, For the fear we feel when kissing a loved one, For my sister, your sister, our sisters...For women, life, freedom
Echoes too of the 'dancing is not a crime' movement following the 2018 arrest and jailing of Maedeh Hojabri for instagram posts of her dancing. This piece, 'Dancing Tehran: Iran's Women Make A Stand' features women dancing in defiance and solidariy intercut with videos made by Maedeh Hojabri.
Brixton has seen many parties, but none quite like the Reclaim the Streets event on Saturday 6th June 1998 when thousands of people brought traffic to a standstill by partying in the main road without the permission of the police, Council or anybody else.
Reclaim the Streets brought together the politics of the road protest movement with the sounds and energy of the free party scene to stage a series of spectacular actions from the mid-1990s onwards, basically involving a crowd of people turning up, blocking the road and occupying it for a party. It started out in May 1995 with a party in Camden High Street and another north London party in Islington's Upper Street in July 1995 (I remember dancing to a sound system mounted in an armoured car there, which I think belonged to Jimmy Cauty of KLF). The idea soon spread around the country and indeed internationally.
In one of the biggest actions, 6,000 people took over part of the M41 Motorway in West London in July 1996 with sofas and sound systems, and this was followed by a party in Trafalgar Square in April 1997. By this time the focus of RTS had widened out from roads to posing bigger questions about the use of social space and linking up with other movements - the Trafalgar Square action came at the end of a march with sacked Liverpool dockers.
The challenge for 1998 was how to keep one step ahead of the police now that the basic tactic was well known. There was also some dissatisfaction amongst RTS activists about simply continuing with parties that erupted suddenly but disappeared just as quickly leaving little behind except memories and a sense of the possibility of a different way of life.
The agreed way forward was to try and organise two simultaneous parties in different parts of London, and to attempt to root the parties more in what was going on in the areas concerned. Whether the parties succeeded in linking with that elusive notion of 'local communities' is debateable, but they did involve a broader strata of local activists with knowledge of their patch and connections to the kind of resources needed to make the parties happen.
The planning meetings for the South London party were held in a squatted social club in Kennington (now North Lambeth Housing Office, 91 Kennington Lane SE11 -pictured above). Sometimes there was no electricity and we talked by candlelight. At other times we met up on the roof of the building in the open air. We broke up into groups, each responsible for a particular aspect of the party. I was in a group focused on organising activities for children. One sub group was responsible for selecting the location, something that was supposed to be kept secret from everybody else until the day of the party to keep the authorities guessing. In this way too the Wednesday night planning meetings could be open to all comers without worrying about all the details becoming widely known.
'calling all Systems; pedestrians, cyclists, Road Ravers and road ragers, workers and shirkers, dreamers and schemeers, unhappy shoppers, happy shoplifters, kids, crusties, punks and prophets, the young at heart. Let's take back our streets'
The publicity called for people to meet at noon outside the Ritzy cinema in Brixton, and several hundred people were there at the appointed time. Most party goers only knew that the party was to take place somewhere in South London. The expectation was that there would be some chasing around to get to the location – for the M41 Reclaim the Streets party in 1996, people had assembled at Liverpool Street on the other side of town and been directed by tube towards Shepherds Bush.
This time though a game of double bluff was being played. In the road opposite the Town Hall two old cars crashed into each other in a pre-arranged manoeuvre to halt the traffic, a flare was let off and a few people immediately stepped into the road. After a moment’s hesitation, the crowd pushed past the police into the road, with another staged car crash at the other end of the high street blocking traffic in both directions.
'Roadblock- street party brings Brixton to a standstill' (South London Press report, June 2018)
As we had our small children with us, we ducked into a Brixton market cafe for a bit figuring that if there was going to be trouble it would be in this period of getting set up. There was no trouble though, and we now know that the police must have known all along that the party was due to take place in Brixton, as one of the key organisers was an undercover cop, Jim Sutton (real name Jim Boyling). In fact he had been part of the group which had selected the location. I remember he asked if I could drive one of the vehicles for the fake collision - I guess you could call that potential entrapment though I declined as my priority on the day was to keep my kids safe.
Within a short time the party was in full swing. The whole stretch of Brixton Road from the Fridge down to beyond the tube station was full of people instead of cars; Coldharbour Lane was also traffic free down as far as the Atlantic Road junction. Climbers had scaled the lamp posts and hung enormous colourful banners across the street – my favourite read ‘Under the Tarmac Flows the River – Dig Up the Effra’, referring to the lost river now flowing beneath Brixton. Others read ‘Cars my Arse’ and ‘Against Tube Privatisation’ (tube workers were due to strike the following week). There was a huge figure of a woman – the poster and flyer for the event had featured an image from the 50s movie ‘Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman’ showing said woman lifting up cars. Another climber got a big cheer for putting a plastic bag over a CCTV camera. A red, green and black RTS flag flew on top of McDonalds.
dancing on a Brixton bus stop
People danced to a sound system set up in a van at the junction of Acre Lane. Down by the tube station there were two more sound systems, one playing ragga and the other, a cycle-powered effort, spluttering out techno. A live music PA was set up in the road outside Morley’s store. Over the next few hours it featured an all-women punk covers band (a highlight for me was ‘Teenage Kicks’), Steve Prole, Headjam, Painful and various others. On the other side of the road there was a big acoustic jam, with drums etc. There was lots of random activity, including juggling and people playing chess on the road.
A sand pit in the road was the centre of the children’s area. As Past Tense recalls, police officer Jim Sutton/Boyling had pulled the trolley of sandbags to the party from where they had been stored earlier in the week in a local squat. My partner was working as a childminder at the time, so she pulled together lots of arts and crafts materials from the South London Children's Scrap Scheme, a recycling project based in Consort Road SE15 (it closed down later that year, after which it was squatted as the Spike). We had loads of gold shiny card which we made into big conical hats, and some gold fabric which was used for costumes. We hung up children's art work from washing line strung between lamp posts. There was a paddling pool, and children were also playing in the fountains outside the library which were overflowing with bubbles - I remember seeing Jerry Dammers (ex-The Specials) round there.
The flyer had promised to ‘transform our Streets into a place of human interaction, a dance, a playground, a football match, the sharing of food, an exchange of free thoughts’. And that’s pretty much what happened, with up to 5,000 people partying on until about 9 pm.
The police mainly kept themselves at the edge of the party, with only five arrests, one of a fire eater for allegedly breathing flames too near to the police…
'Techno blips and booming bass rocked the van carrying the system while people danced all over the area. Before long a veggie burger stall had been set up opposite a banner proclaiming the South London Clitoral Liberation Front. Traffic lights that had temporarily lost their purpose soon became pretty useful as party podiums, one of which became the throne for a naked reveller wearing only a pair of red pants on his head' (report in DJ magazine, June 21 1998)
Documents
RTS Press release:
'Two streets in London were reclaimed for parties and the people shortly before two o'clock today. By mid-afternoon the crowd near Seven Sisters station had grown to over 5000 people and a similar number partied in Brixton. The parties finished at about 9pm. At the time of writing (10:30 pm) about 300 people remained outside Brixton Town Hall, listening to two groups of drummers in the almost-Mediterranean promenade atmosphere of a warm summer evening. Police continued to appear relaxed, and this time avoided the mistake of sealing off people's exit routes.
In North London, someone set fire to two old cars after the end of the party. RTS would point out that these were our cars, obtained to block the road, and that some of the most "aggressive" acts of which we are aware during the day were the enthusiastic reduction of these same cars to scrap, by a group of five- and six-year-olds.
As the smell of exhaust returned to the streets of Brixton, a participant commented "The whole of Brixton has been here with a real sense of community." Let this be a premonition of a time when the present conditions of our lives will be no more than a memory'.
RTS South London Street Party stickers
Leaflets produced for distribution in the Brixton party - I had a hand in writing and designing both of these, which were printed at the 121 Centre in Railton Road SE24. One leaflet focused on the impact of traffic on children: 'Reclaim the streets for children
The streets used to be a place where children could run around, play and hang out with their friends. Today children are taught that the streets are dangerous and that they should keep off them. More and more children are being brought up like battery chickens - living most of their lives indoors, except when they are being driven around in their parent's car between home, school, the supermarket and short bursts of supervised play.
The biggest problem is that the streets are dominated by cars. In the UK, the number of vehicles on the road has increased from 8 million in 1960 to 24 million and rising today. When a fast moving lump of metal hits a child's body there's no contest. In the last 20 years, 200,000 children have been killed or seriously injured by cars, two-thirds of them while walking or cycling. Instead of removing this danger from our children, we remove our children from the danger - by keeping them at home. Cars are choking children
South London suffers the worst pollution in the UK, and it is having a major impact on children's health. Vehicle pollutants like nitrogen dioxide can trigger asthma attacks and other breathing problems, while others can cause cancer and heart problems. Noise-related stress builds up for the thousands of children living next to busy roads. Driving children everywhere is no protection - pollution levels are often higher inside cars, and of course there is still the risk of a crash.
Faced with this dictatorship of the car, it is not surprising that parents and carers want to keep their children at home. This in turn can create other problems with children's physical, social and emotional development. Many children get less exercise than they need, because they rarely walk or cycle very far. They are also denied the chance to learn to do things for themselves by mixing with other children without being constantly watched over by adults. Curfews for children
As the streets empty of children, and increasingly of adults too, they become seen as an alien and threatening place. Fears of crime and of strangers become exaggerated out of all proportion. Where children do continue to hang out on the streets they are portrayed as a problem. In some places, police have already enforced curfews for children, giving them the power to drive kids off the streets even if they aren't doing anything illegal. New Labour's Crime and Disorder Bill will extend this power to police across the country.
Reclaim the streets
If we want to break this cycle we've got to start reclaiming the streets. Reclaim the Streets parties are about taking a piece of car-infested tarmac and turning it into a free space where we can dance, play and for once live and breathe easily. They show what life could be like if people had control over our streets and over our lives. Come along to the South London party on June 6th 1998 - bring your kids, your friends, your friends' kids... There will be a children's play space as well as sound systems and live music'.
The second piece of RTS South London 'agitprop' was a folded A4 sheet called 'South London Stress South London Street Party Special'. It included a list of contacts of an eclectic mix of groups active locally including the Crystal Palace Ecovillage (a protest camp against plans to build in Crystal Palace park), Critical Mass and South London Anti Fascist Action. The front page text read: 'Reclaim the Streets
Today Reclaim the Streets are planning to turn part of South London into a free festival zone for the day. Most non-residential streets in South London are dominated by bumper to bumper traffic with nothing much to do except shop. RTS parties are about creating our own space where we can dance, play, eat and drink - all without any money changing hands.
Space and time in South London
So much South London space is covered in tarmac, covered in cars. It’s no surprise that we suffer from the worst pollution in the UK. The building of new roads has slowed down, with the plan to destroy Oxleas Wood in south-east London abandoned because of the threat of mass resistance. Now is the time to start taking back some of the space already lost to roads.
But roads aren’t the only problem. Green space is also being enclosed to build supermarkets or, like at Crystal Place, corporate leisure centres. Meanwhile urban space is increasingly controlled, with our every move watched by CCTV cameras.
Out time too is being taken away from us more and more, as people are made to work longer hours and the unemployed are forced to take low paid jobs by New Labour’s New Deal.
Reclaim the World
A party in the road is not going to change all this on its own, but it does give us a glimpse of a different way of life. By linking up with other communities of resistance across the world we can begin to reclaim more of our space and time from a system that sucks life out of human beings and the planet for the financial benefit of a tiny minority.
Since the first RTS party in Camden in 1995 the idea has spread throughout the country and internationally. A few weeks ago (May 19th) simultaneous street parties were held across the world. In Birmingham where world leaders met up for the G8 summit, 10,000 people took over the city centre for an RTS party and protest. Roads were blocked everywhere from Toronto (Canada) to Tel Aviv (Israel), Stockholm (Sweden) to Sydney (Australia). Our time is now'.
The leaflet also included a South London radical history map, with episodes featured included the 1897 protests against the enclosure of One Tree Hill, anti-fascist protests in Bermondsey (1937), Lewisham (1977), Wellling (1993), the Peasants Revolt and the death in 1896 of Bridget Driscoll at Crystal Palace - believed to be the first pedestrian in the world to be killed by a car.
Benefit gig
The week before the party there was an RTS benefit gig at the 121 Centre with Headjam, Headache and Painful.
At the time I was part of the Association of Autonomous Astronauts and at the gig I set up my interactive space music experiment 'Sonic Soup' described below. At the street party I also put up a cardboard rocket labelled 'reclaim space': 'Reclaim the Streets, Reclaim the Stars
Autonomous Astronauts were strongly represented at the South London Reclaim the Streets party on June 6th. Following simultaneous staged car crashes at both ends of Brixton high street hundreds of people poured into the road for a day long free party with sound systems, a sand pit and much more. Disconaut AAA attached a rocket to a lamp post bearing the slogans "Reclaim Space" and "we don't need cars 'cos we've learnt to fly', the latter a line from Stevie Wonder's space utopian song 'Saturn'. One person was arrested for breathing fire too close to the police lines, illustrating the problems autonomous astronauts may face handling rocket fuels in public.
The week before the street party there was a benefit gig for it at the 121 Centre in Brixton at which Disconaut AAA set up 'Sonic Soup'. This involves a Wasp analog synth and a fostex 4-track, with each of the four tracks including a haphazardly assembled sequence of beats, loops and mutated samples from diverse sources. The 4 tracks were assembled independently so that any juxtaposition of sounds from two or more tracks is more or less accidental. The aim of Sonci Soup is to explore some of the range of possibilities offered by music in space, randomly combining sound sources from different parts of the universe, slowed down, speeded up and twisted around by variable gravity fields. In anticipation of the free collective practice made possible in autonomous communities in space, passing voyagers are encouraged to push buttons and turn switches to help mix the ingredients in the soup.
On this occasion the crowd at this mainly punk gig were mostly reluctant to join in, even when the equipment was put on the floor in the middle of them (this contrasted with the more open-minded revellers at the "I didn't do nuthin" party in the same venue last year). Nevertheless some of the less technophobic did step boldly forward, and there were the usual interesting sound clashes. These included Judy Garland singing "Fly me to the moon" over an Alex Empire backing track, a Todd Terry remix of a Yuri Gagarin speech (fading into Hawkwind chanting "space is deep it is so endless") and William Burroughs talking about "future travellers who are ready to leave the whole human context behind" over Deadly Buddha vs Sun Ra "Strange Celestial Road".
Parts of Sonic Soup were also used recently in a AAA radio programme put together by Inner City AAA on London Musicians' Collective temporary radio station' (from Everybody is a Star! no. 3, Summer 1998, newsletter of Disconaut AAA).
See also:
Past Tense post - as well as an earlier version of my text above, this includes more reflections on the role of Jim Sutton
Brixton Buzz post - lots more photos, including this one of the sandpit:
Billy Bragg has fluctuated in my estimation over the years. When he first appeared on the scene, singing solo on electric guitar was more or less unknown and he had some great songs. I mean a double A side single of New England and St Swithins Day in 1984... few can top that. Levi Stubbs Tears can still make me cry.
And yes he was on the right (left) side of the all the big battles like the miners strike. My main criticism of him in those days from my anarcho/ultraleft stance was that he was so close to the Labour Party. Must confess I may even have heckled him from this perspective when he played on a National Union of Students demo though he was great live (sorry Billy)! I've never been entirely convinced by his 'progressive patriotism' line of reclaiming icons of English identity from the far right, though I can see that it can sometimes be effective.
That time I heckled Billy Bragg - the 'Stand up for a New Deal Now' demo and rally in Battersea Park in March 1984 where he performed with Benjamin Zephaniah and Dancing with the Dog (who were they?). That was the first time me and my friends met Ian Bone and Class War who were quite an influence
Still he has stuck to his guns politically when others have gone quiet, not to mention later nameless indie folk singers influenced by him who must be suspected of being shy Tories given their absence of anything to say. He has played countless benefit gigs for various worthy causes.
Musically he has steered an interesting path for someone from a punk background - I actually have a copy of his 1978 punk single with his band Riff Raff, 'I wanna be a cosmonaut', which I sometimes played as part of my Disconaut Autonomous Astronauts set. He has explored Americana through his interpretations of Woody Guthrie lyrics with Wilco, and English folk music with Imagined Village.
I might add that my partner is from Dagenham and no word can be spoken against him in our house.
Billy Bragg singing outside the Festival Hall, June 2007
But recently my social media timelines have been flooded with accusations about Bragg accusing him of misogyny and being anti-women. The reason for this attention is that he has been an outspoken supporter of trans rights, including changing the words of songs to be trans-inclusive. He now sings his old song 'Sexuality' with the lyrics “And just because you're they, I won't turn you away' instead of 'just because you're gay', explaining 'Times changed. Anyone born since the song was released would wonder why it’s a big deal to find common ground with a gay man. The front line now is trans rights'. Bragg has also been critical of those feminists who oppose trans rights along with their far right allies. But if Bragg is a misogynist then so presumably are the Feminist Library, Sisters Uncut, Gal-Dem etc. and many other feminist projects - not to mention most left wing/anarcho/radical folks under the age of 35.
I think Bragg is braver than most because he actually stands to lose some of his livelihood for speaking out. I hate the lazy political stereotyping of generations, but I do feel there is a generational aspect at play here. The trans exclusionary position does seem to be particularly concentrated among British lefties of a certain age. I would estimate that the majority of people I know who were involved in radical politics in the 1980s have this as a default setting. This is precisely the constituency who are Bragg's natural fan base and it would be very easy for him to just serve them up 'what did you do in the strike?' platitudes rather than challenge their current day prejudices.
And I don't feel that prejudice is too strong a word. For me the issue does come down to the simple one of 'Some people are trans, get over it'. We can debate biology, gender and ideology until the cows come home, but it is a fact that some people really do experience gender dysphoria and that their lives can be made better by having their gender identity recognised. It seems needlessly cruel to deny this, or to portray those in this position as some terrible threat. Of course that's a simple version of the argument and there's much more that I could say, but that has to be the starting point.
The vigil in Soho Square on 18 February 2023 for the murdered Brianna Ghey Vigil. A very moving event and I couldn't believe some of the hateful stuff some people were posting about it. You know 'how do they know it was a hate crime' like every racist says about every racist murder ever. Well it sure wasn't a love crime.
There are some comparisons here with what happened when the Gay Liberation Front and similar groups erupted in the 1970s. Then too there were plenty of older (and some younger) leftists who found this threatening and denounced them, didn't they know that homosexuality would disappear under socialism and anyway wasn't all this a diversion from the class struggle? (see for instance this Gay Left article on the experience in the International Socialists). Let's just say that history has not been kind...
I know change and challenges to accepted ideas are uncomfortable. I would just urge people to pause and sit with this discomfort for a while rather than make knee jerk responses to something they mostly don't know much about. Read some books, listen to some trans people. People also need to look around at the company they are keeping. Globally the anti-trans movement is being driven by the far right who are also coming for abortion rights and LGBTQ+ people generally. As someone once said 'If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction' (attributed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer). Wouldn't you rather be heading along the A13 with Billy Bragg?
Part of the big crowd that turned out at the Honor Oak Pub in South London on 25 February 2023 to oppose a far right threat to a drag storytelling event. I know it's not exactly the same issue but quite an overlap and the anti-drag mob were a motley crew of ex-Combat 18 thugs and assorted Tommy Robinson wannabes. As somebody once sang 'which side are you on?'
[sometimes it's a lonely and painful path when you feel so many of your friends have taken a wrong turn. Anyone for a support group for 'Boomers and Gen Xers for trans rights'?]
by Neil Transpontine, written on transgender day of visibility 2023
(had some positive responses to this post including one friend saying 'I think us boomers / gen x for trans rights ARE the majority - it’s just the usual crap about those shouting loudest')
Update 31 March 2024
Nothing much has changed, though I've noticed a few left anti-trans people nervously trying to distance themselves from the openly far right associations of some of the people they previously defended (but see Bonhoeffer quote above). A 'wait, are we the baddies?' moment can't come too soon, but I don't think it's good enough. The most sustained anti-fascist movement in London in the past 12 months was at the Honor Oak pub in South London from February to August 2023 where for six months people turned up to oppose openly far right protestors targeting a drag storytelling event. The anti-fascist effort was led by trans/queer activists - see 'South London Loves Trans People' banner below. Being an anti-fascist today means standing alongside and in solidarity with trans people.
HanifKureishi's novel The Black Album (1995) is, among other things, a great snapshot of late 1980s London. Its main protagonist, Shahid, is torn between the demands of militant Islamists at the time of the Rushdie Affair (1989) and the sexual and chemical possibilities of the secular world embodied in the rave scene.
There are some good descriptions of clubbing at the time with its mixture of love, ecstasy, crime, danger, joy and vacancy. Shahid's first E experience starts with a trip to a club in south London:
'The lip of the bridge was slipping them into the mouth of south London... They turned into a narrow cul-de-sac designed for murders, past workshops, lock-up garages and miserable-looking trees. They took a sharp corner into a lane. The building at the end, subtly vibrating, was the White Room. It was a silver warehouse.
In front of it was a forecourt along the centre of which had been laid a pathway of rolled barbed wire. The whole area was circled by a high fence and was washed in harsh yellow light, making it resemble a prison yard. Three pill-box entrances were manned by sentries mumbling into radios. Crowds surrounded them in the freezing night. Some kids, not admitted, clung shivering to the fence. Others attempted to climb it like refugees, yelling through at the building, before being yanked back to earth and pushed away.
Deedee gave her name and they were admitted. Filmed by security cameras, they swung through the floodlit walkway while being watched enviously. It was like being pop stars at a première. They entered a dark bar area of tables and chairs, where people sat drinking water and juice beneath billowing parachutes. Alcohol was not for sale.
‘This way.’
He followed her through maze-like tunnels of undulating canvas. Eventually they were released into a cavernous room containing at least five hundred people, where shifting coloured slides were projected on to the walls. There was a relentless whirlwind of interplanetary noises. Jets of kaleidoscopic light sprayed the air. Many of the men were bare-chested and wore only thongs; some of the women were topless or in just shorts and net tops. One woman was naked except for high heels and a large plastic penis strapped to her thighs with which she duetted. Others were garbed in rubber, or masks, or were dressed as babies. The dancing was frenzied and individual. People blew whistles, others screamed with pleasure…
With his eyes half closed, he peered into the incandescent ultra-violet haze. He noticed, through the golden mist, that no one appeared to have any great interest in anyone else, though people would fall into staring at one another. Then he was doing it; everyone was looking so beautiful. But before he could think why this might be, or why he was enjoying himself so much, an undertow of satisfaction rippled through him, as if some creature were sighing in his body. He felt he was going to be lifted off his feet. The feeling left him and he felt deserted. He wanted it back. It came and came. In a pounding trance he started writhing joyously, feeling he was part of a waving sea. He could have danced for ever, but not long after she said, ‘We should go.’ Electric waves of light flickered in the air. Fronds of fingers with flames spurting from them waved at the DJs, flown in from New York, sitting in their glass booths.
Afterward they head further south to a party in a squatted mansion:
They arrived at the ominous iron fence of a white mansion, the sort of place an English Gatsby would have chosen, he imagined. Trucks were parked in the driveway. Big men stood in the gloom. They searched Shahid, putting their hands down his trousers; he had to remove his socks and shake them while standing on one foot in the mud.
They went into the marble hall and found themselves staring up at a grand staircase. Then they passed the efficient cloakroom, the bar and the stuffed polar bear on its hind legs with a light in its mouth, traversed the deep white carpet, through doors, wide passageways and a conservatory where trees touched the roof, until they came to a Jacuzzi in which everyone was naked. Beyond was an illuminated indoor swimming pool. On its shadowy surface floated dozens of lemon and lime-coloured balloons. Beyond that the garden stretched away into the distance, lit by gassy blue flames. It was the perfect venue for a house party…
The house had been squatted the previous evening after being claimed by the drummer of the Pennies from Hell, a window cleaner who’d spotted it on his rounds. Tonight it was overrun by hordes of boys and girls from south London. They had pageboy haircuts, skateboard tops, baseball caps, hoods, bright ponchos and twenty-inch denim flares. Deedee said that most had probably never been inside such a house before, unless they were delivering the groceries. Now they were having the time of their lives. By the end of the weekend the house would be ashes. ‘The kids too,’ she added.
Deedee and Shahid started up the stairs, but dozens of people were coming down. Others danced where they stood with their hands in the air, crying, ‘Everybody’s free to feel good, everybody’s freee . . . ‘ Some just sat nodding their heads with their eyes closed. Then Shahid lost Deedee. On the landing a runty little wiry kid had taken up a pitch and was jigging about and shouting, ‘Want anything, want anything . . . Eeeee . . . E for the people! Up the working class!’
…Upstairs in the chillin’ space no one was vertical; kids were lying on the floor not moving — except to kiss or stroke one another — as if they’d been massacred. Shahid needed to join them, and he lay down, slotting into a space between the bodies. The moment he shut his eyes his mind, which in the past he had visualized as ancient and layered like a section through the earth’s crust, became a blazing oblong of light in which coloured shapes were dancing… He was high and accelerating — liquid, as if the furnace in his stomach was simmering his bone and muscle into lava. But what the girl said grated. Somewhere in his mind there lurked desolation: the things he normally liked had been drained off and not only could he not locate them, he couldn’t remember what they were. He needed to find a pen and list the reasons for living. But what on the list could be comparable to the feeling of this drug? He had been let into a dangerous secret; once it had been revealed, much of life, regarded from this high vantage point, could seem quite small.
He and the girl next to him were kissing, drawing on one another’s tongues until they felt their heads would fuse. Someone was lying down beside him and tugging at his shoulder. Shahid ignored them. The room had become one nameless body, one mouth and kiss.
…They clambered into the silence of the taxi and discovered their ears were yearning for music much as one’s stomach complains for food, but there was none available.
The song mentioned is Everybody's Free by Rozalla. I remember dancing to this at a party in Newcastle in 1991 to celebrate the release of a prisoner who had been jailed for refusing to pay the poll tax. On the chorus, everybody sang her name, 'Beccy Palmer's Free'.
Shahid's experiences open up a vision of the city as a giant desiring machine:
'This journey, as he headed home, involved a different disturbance. It had been the best night. Now he wanted to dream it again, luxuriating in what he remembered… he could see that today, although the secrets of desire were veiled, sexual tension was everywhere. He couldn’t doubt its circulating tangibility. Beneath the banality and repetition of this ordinary day there ran, like the warm inhabited tube tunnels under the city, flirtation, passion and the deepest curiosities. People dressed, gestured, moved, to display themselves and attract. They were sizing each other up, fantasizing, wanting to desire and be adored.
Skirts, shoes, haircuts, looks, gestures: enticement and fascination were everywhere, while the world went to work. And such allure wasn’t a preliminary to real sex, it was sex itself. Out there it was not innocent. People yearned for romance, desire, feeling. They wanted to be kissed, stroked, sucked, held and penetrated more than they could say. The platform of Baker Street Station was Arcadia itself. He had had no idea that the extraordinary would be alive and well on the Jubilee Line. Today he could see and feel the lure'.
The novel takes its title from Prince's famous lost album, available only on bootleg after its release was cancelled in 1987 (in the novel Shahid is a big Prince fan).
Heading out to Kew Gardens over Christmas, we drove through Wandsworth. As always on that journey through South West London, my partner and I reminisced incredulously about how we used to drag ourselves for miles across the capital by public transport to visit that part of the city. And we weren't alone - because from 1993 to 1996, Wandsworth was the home of Club UK, attracting people from all over London and beyond to queue in Buckhold Road next to the Arndale Shopping Centre.
Like many new clubs at this time, it was launched in a blaze of publicity about its luxurious decor and facilities. Like most, the reality was that the money was mainly spent on the sound system, and it was in fact a 'utilitarian, cavernous warehouse' (to quote DJ magazine), with 3 different music rooms - the 'techno room', the 'pop art room' and the main room. Promoter was Sean McClusky, who was also involved with the Leisure Lounge in Holborn and previously The Brain in Soho (he had also been drummer in 1980s band JoBoxers).
There were two main nights. On Fridays, it was Final Frontier, a techno/trance night put on by Universe (who promoted the Tribal Gathering festivals with the Mean Fiddler). The flyer below exemplifies the rhetoric of that scene, with its talk of a 'our weekly marriage of spirituality and technology in perfect harmony' and its call for 'No rules, no limits and no sell out'.
Final Frontier flyer, January 1995 (click to enlarge)
What made Club UK special was a crowd of 1400 people for which the term 'up for it' seems completely inadequate. I can still vividly picture walking in there for the first time on a Saturday night - as soon as we stepped through the doors it felt like we were in the middle of an explosion of energy. The track playing was Reach Up (Papa's got a brand new pigbag) by Perfecto Allstarz - the whole place was erupting, there didn't seem to be any sense of a separate dancefloor, everybody in the place was dancing including the bar staff. You would meet all kinds of people there from public school kids (there were press reports of Etonians being suspended for taking drugs there) to squaddies - I remember on that first visit chatting to a couple who had done a bunk from a local children's home to be there.
Club UK was the opposite of cool, in every sense of the word. It was a sweatbox with little or no air conditioning, condensation dripping off the ceilings and sometimes unbearably hot and crowded. One night when we there they had to open the fire exit into the Arndale to let people breathe - so there was an impromtu chill out area on a balcony overlooking the deserted shopping centre (pretty sure this was on their second birthday party, July 1st 1995, with Danny Rampling playing). I remember sucking ice pops to try and cool down. The place was ecstasy fuelled, so many people would go the whole night without buying a drink. Many dubious clubs at that time used to turn off the water in the bathrooms so that people had to buy water from the bar. I don't recall Club UK going to that extreme, but sometimes the cold water taps were reduced to a dribble and they certainly made a small fortune selling their own brand of bottled water. Like in many clubs, there were many random acts of kindness as strangers offered each other sips of water on the dancefloor.
South London Press, 17 October 1995 (click to enlarge)
One hazard was the sporadic police raids. The first one was in December 1994 on a Friday night. Then in October 1995, 150 police raided it on a Saturday. Operation Blade involved dogs, horses, and the Territorial Support Group. 800 clubbers were turned out on to the streets, and many searched. 10 people were arrested. The police raid on Club UK was carried out with TV cameras in attendance, correctly described by the clubowners as a 'media circus'. It seems the raid was deliberately timed to provide a story on which to hang the launch two days later of a new anti-drugs campaign called SNAP (Say no and phone). Ironically the police launched this campaign at Club UK's South London rival, The Ministry of Sound, a place where drug use was just as widespread.
Mixmag, November 1995 (click to enlarge)
With hindsight, there were though some dodgy people around Club UK. As in the United States when prohibition of alcohol led to the Mafia control of drinking clubs, the prohibition of drugs like ecstasy created a huge market for UK gangsters to fill.
In December 1995, three men were found shot dead in a Range Rover in a country lane near Rettendon in Essex: Tony Tucker, Pat Tate and Craig Rolfe. There are different versions of why they were killed, as they had many enemies from their involvement in violence and drug smuggling. But it is well established that Tucker ran security at Club UK. According to Tony Thompson in 'Bloggs 19: the story of the Essex Range Rover Triple Murders' (London: Warner, 2000), 'Controlling the doors of a club instantly means that you control who sells drugs inside. Tucker began to charge dealers 'rent' of around £1000 per week in return for granting them exclusive access to the club... in March 1994, twenty-year old Kevin Jones died at Club UK in south London after taking ecstasy. In a bid to track the source, police put two of the club's suspected dealers under surveillance and discovered they had been paying Tony Tucker, the man responsible for security at the club, £1000 per weekend for the exclusive rights to sell ecstasy and cocaine'. Thompson also suggests that Tucker supplied the ecstasy to a dealer at Raquels nightclub in Basildon, the source of the infamous E that caused the death in November 1995 of Leah Betts at her 18th birthday party.
The Rettendon events are fictionalised in Jake Arnott's novel True Crime, where one of the characters declares: 'It's who runs the doors, Gaz. That's what this thing is going to be all about. It doesn't matter who runs the club, who promotes the event or whatever. It's who's in control of security, that's going to be the thing. That way you decide who can bring in drugs and deal inside the place'.
The fulll story of criminal gangs in the 1990s club explosion remains untold. That gangsters like Tucker controlled the drugs trade in clubs is not surprizing, but as they made more and more money it seems likely that some must have crossed over to investing profits in buying and running clubs. It would be interesting to know where some of the money came from for some of the high profile new clubs that opened in that period. And its a sobering thought that in any counter-culture/alternative scene where drugs are prominent, you are only ever a few degrees of separation away from a thug with a gun.
But still... who can forget those nights in Wandsworth.
The pop art room at Club UK
More memories, flyers and mixes on the Final Frontier and Club UK groups at Facebook. Great to remember all the good nights, but let's not forget those who didn't make it: Andreas Bouzis (18) and Kevin Jones (20) who died after collapsing at the club.
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Club UK was the opposite of cool, in every sense of the word. It was a sweatbox with little or no air conditioning, condensation dripping off the ceilings and sometimes unbearably hot and crowded. One night when we there they had to open the fire exit into the Arndale to let people breathe - so there was an impromtu chill out area on a balcony overlooking the deserted shopping centre (pretty sure this was on their second birthday party, July 1st 1995, with Danny Rampling playing). I remember sucking ice pops to try and cool down. The place was ecstasy fuelled, so many people would go the whole night without buying a drink. Many dubious clubs at that time used to turn off the water in the bathrooms so that people had to buy water from the bar. I don't recall Club UK going to that extreme, but sometimes the cold water taps were reduced to a dribble and they certainly made a small fortune selling their own brand of bottled water. Like in many clubs, there were many random acts of kindness as strangers offered each other sips of water on the dancefloor.
