Art Not Evidence posters in Camberwell, South London, July 2024
'Art Not Evidence is a growing coalition of lawyers, journalists, artists, academics, youth workers, music industry professionals and human rights campaigners working together to fight the criminalisation of rap music in UK courts'. Here's their statement:
'In recent years, courtrooms across the country have gained an alarming new soundtrack. Prosecutors — with increasing frequency — put lyrics, music videos, and audio recordings in front of juries to help secure criminal convictions. In many cases, these creative expressions have no connection to the serious crimes alleged, and are used to paint a misleading and prejudicial picture, conflating art with evidence.
Specifically, police and prosecutors use the act of writing, performing, or even engaging with rap music to suggest motive, intention, or propensity for criminal behaviour. This is particularly prevalent in controversial "joint enterprise" and conspiracy cases, in which music, lyrics, and videos are used to drag multiple people into criminal charges, often under sweeping definitions of “gang” activity. This practice disproportionately affects young Black men and boys from under-resourced, marginalised communities. It is an agent of institutional racism.
Rap music, including the drill sub-genre, is one of the most popular forms of music across the country, and a significant cultural force, producing Glastonbury and Wireless headliners, multiple industry award winners, and enjoying an artistic influence that extends into film, literature, television, and the visual arts.
Yet, despite being known for its storytelling, symbolism, figurative language, and hyperbole, police and prosecutors invite judge and jury to take rap music literally, as direct evidence of criminal intent or behaviour.
Research produced by journalists and university academics have identified over 100 cases in the UK since 2005 in which rap music was used as evidence. The majority of these cases involved multiple defendants, making use of the doctrine of joint enterprise. In the last three years alone, at least 240 people have had their fate in court decided, at least in part, by their taste in music.
This is an urgent issue, and one which demands an urgent response.
The indiscriminate use of creative expression as evidence in court risks miscarriages of justice, perpetuates harmful racist stereotypes, and contributes to a racially discriminatory criminal justice system that stifles creativity and freedom of expression. We applaud law reform campaigns in the USA, including the enactment of legislation in California, and urge judges, lawyers and legislators in the UK to follow suit.
We call for police and prosecutors to stop relying on irrelevant, unreliable, and highly prejudicial evidence in pursuit of convictions; for defence lawyers to challenge prosecutors; and for judges to exclude such evidence.
We propose legal reform to limit the admissibility of creative expression as evidence in the criminal courts.
We seek justice, and your support, in our mission to achieve it'.
The Beat the Blues Festival was a one day event at the Alexandra Palace in north London on 15 June 1980, held to mark the 50th birthday of the Morning Star - the daily paper associated with the Communist Party of Great Britain (technically the Morning Star had only been so named since 1966 but its predecessor, The Daily Worker, was founded in 1930).
I was still at school at Luton Sixth Form and went down to London on a coach which I presume was put on by the local branch of the Young Communist League. I had been to a couple of their meetings and done some fly posting against cruise missiles with them in the underpass near their Crawley Green Road HQ in Luton though I never joined up. They only had a handful of active members in the town but they pulled more of a crowd down to the Ally Pally on account of the fantastic line up.
Looking now I can see that I could have checked out folk acts including Dick Gaughan and Leon Rosselson not to mention jazz from Humphrey Littleton and others, and even 'fire defying motorcycle stuntmen'. But for me at the time it was all about the great post punk line up featuring some of the best acts of that time - The Au Pairs, Raincoats, The Slits, The Pop Group, Essential Logic and John Cooper Clarke. It blew me away, The Slits and The Pop Group in particular had an amazing funky energy- drummer Bruce Smith played with both bands that day, while The Pop Group played with two bassists! I was lucky enough to see the Raincoats, the Au Pairs and The Pop Group again in that period, as well as other great post punk heavyweights including The Gang of Four and Delta 5 but for me this day will always stand out as the pinnacle of that scene and one of the musical highlights of my life. Somebody else who was there recallled: 'I'd just turned 15, Metal Box had just come out and was playing over the PA between bands at this outdoor festival- I guess this was the post-punk Woodstock for me!'. All of this for £2.50. The only thing that could have improved it for me would have been if Scritti Politti had played too, sadly not though I remember standing behind their drummer Tom Morley in the crowd.
A ticket for the day signed by John Cooper Clarke (from ivaninblack)
The politics of it were a little contradictory, the CPGB was generally quite staid and sympathetic to the regimes of Eastern Europe where autonomous music scenes were often the target of state repression. In his NME review of the gig, Graham Lock mentions Czechoslovakia 'where musicians from the bands DG307 and The Plastic People of the Universe have been jailed for playing rock'n'roll without a state licence'. While the cream of innovative English bands played on the stage elsewhere there was an 'International City' - 'about ten tents filled with travel brochures for Eastern Europe'. I think there were also brass bands from that part of the world, and lots of stalls indoors from various left groups.
The Pop Group, with their more independent radical left perspective called these contradictions out on the day, 'dedicating 'Forces of Oppression' to "all the Stalinists in the audience" and "For How Much Longer do we Tolerate Mass Murder' to Leonid Brezhnev' (Lock). In fact I recall a thrilling moment when Mark Stewart smashed up a portrait of then Soviet leader Brezhnev on the stage.
Lock describes the festival, or at least the main stage music as 'the result of a tentative alliance between Rough Trade - freewheeling, anti-biz collectivists [...] and the Morning Star'. Elsewhere Dick O'Dell - who I think managed The Slits and The Pop Group at the time, as well as founding Y records which released their stuff - has said that he organised it with Shirley O’Loughlin, manager of The Raincoats and who worked at Rough Trade setting up their booking agency.
There were many iconic photos taken that day, perhaps most famously David Corio's picture of The Slits' Viv Albertine;
The gig was reviewed in issue number 6 of Vague zine:
'June 15 Morning Star 50th anniversary festival at Alexandra Palace, featuring the Slits, the Pop Group, the Raincoats, Essential Logic, the Au-Pairs and John Cooper-Clarke: Alexandra Palace is full of communist propaganda. The punters are a mixture of Rastas, biker types, punks and old age pensioners. I spent 4 hours walking round the stalls, which was fairly interesting because there were stalls selling souvenirs from Russia, Greece, etc. I won’t go into details though because even the Pop Group aren’t into politics like this. Whether left or right it amounts to the same thing, an authoritarian state that subjugates the weak, poor and minorities...
Anyway most people came to hear the music and this particular music says a lot more than we ever could. The gig was behind the palace and started at 3pm. The Au-pairs came on first and did a very exciting set which got some of the crowd going. The Raincoats came on next and all the crowd were dancing and being friendly with each other. Half way through their set an announcement was made: “Somebody got bottled. So if you want this gig to go on, report anyone who looks as if they might get violent.” Big Brother is watching you. Where have you heard remarks like that before? Even this didn’t do it, after that announcement 2 more people got bottled. John Cooper-Clarke was on next, minus musicians, which I think is much better, because that guy has so much stage presence…
The Pop Group were on next and Mark came on stage with a picture of Brezhnev, shouted “We don’t want communism!” and stamped on the picture. They did all the stuff off the second album which got the crowd shouting and Gareth was doing some brilliant disco-dancing… Apparently the Pop Group stole the show and Iggy didn’t have much (anything?) to say about the Slits, which is a shame, but this is the Pop Group’s piece, feeble as it is. The Pop Group have a highly original style of their own, if you didn’t like them at Ally Pally give them a second chance, they deserve it. They also deserve a better article than this. Their lyrics make Crass seem like failed Cockney Rejects (they are aren’t they?) and their funky dance beat is better than the Crusaders. Sorry we couldn’t do them more justice'.
It was also reviewed in the NME (21 June 1980) by Gavin Lock:
There is some good footage of The Pop Group on the day shot by Don Letts on the stage. If you look carefully you can see a cricket match going on in the background elsewhere in the park.
He also captured The Slits, great clip here of them doing 'Man Next Door' on the day with the young Nenah Cherry on the stage with them (in red beret). I think you can see members of other bands standing around on the edge of stage watching them, including Gina from The Raincoats and maybe Jeannette Lee of Public Image Ltd and later Rough Trade.
The Ally Pally itself was seriously damaged by fire just a month later which broke out during a Capital Radio Jazz Festival there, resulting in it being closed for a number of years.
(I used to have a poster for this event on my teenage bedroom wall, can't find that particular image online, anybody have a copy?)
An advert for Beat the Blues festival from The Leveller magazine, May 1980. At that point looks like only John Cooper Clarke was confirmed of the post-punk acts, the advert highlighting jazz and folk artists as well as mentioning Kent miners brass band and Bulgarian puppet theatre. On the same page of magazine an ad for Gang of Four single and for the great Compendium Bookshop in Camden.
On Sunday June 6th 1982, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament held a huge demonstration to coincide with a visit by US President Ronald Reagan. Up tp 250,000 people marched to London's Hyde Park, where the speakers included Labour MP Tony Benn and miners' leader Arthur Scargill. The recent Falklands war had shown up the weakness of the peace movement, which had failed to significantly mobilise against the war. This account of the demonstration was written in a text '1980 to 1984: anarchy on the CND demo':
"At Hyde Park it was the same as usual and anarchists who tried to heckle the speakers were kept miles away from the front of the stage by police. Some of us gathered behind the official platform setting up our free platform with a megaphone to discuss the Reagan visit, the Falklands war and any issue the people wished to raise. Many took advantage of this situation to air their views, as the official platfor was only open to invited speakers, not to anyone who might have something creative or new to suggest. A proposal was made that we move out of Hyde Park where we were wasting our time and take the issues to the London crowds in Oxford Street. This idea was greeted with enthusiasm. About 300 people gathered at the Speakers Corner end of Hyde Park and by now many of us were in defiant mood. Some began breaking across the road over to Oxford Street, there were no stewards this time. There was a lot of confusion with people trying to keep the group together and deciding what to do next. The group pushed on loudly down Oxford Street with more following behind. Fump! Hooray! Everyone cheered as someone let off fireworks and the traffic was blocked. It was some time before the vans started to arrive on the scene. As the police vans slowly pulled up in force those in the front decided to head down a side street to the american embassy it was too late, the police jumped from the vans and charged into the march. About 20 marchers made it into the side street and were able to escape including one who received a nasty gash on the forehead form a truncheon. However 48 were arrested".
An Oxford Street 48 Defence Campaign was set up to support those arrested, and Scottish punk band Political Asylum recorded a track 'Oxford Street 48':
The events were reported in 'Freedom' as 'Anarchists Attacked':
'Around 300 anarchists with a number of flags and banners marched out of Hyde Park. At first the police didn't seem to be interested. One senior officer was heard to assure a constable that 'its alright, they're only going home'. However, when he realised just what was happening his cool tone changed to panic with a shout of 'NO they're not!' and a grab for his radio.
As we moved into Oxford St with shouts of 'Free all Prisoners', 'Smash the Nuclear State' and 'Free Simon Los' (imprisoned for 3yrs for distributing a leaflet in Nottingham) we soon acquired an SPG van as escort. As we drew level with the turning that leads to the American Embassy in Grosvenor Sq, the police attacked Without warning this entirely legal and, though loud, peaceful march was assaulted by van loads of police. The police used were from the SPG and the newly formed, SPG style, quick-response riot units. They jumped out of their vans and waded into the march.
Several anarchists were knocked to the ground in the melee. 48 anarchists were arrested. During the arrests they were beaten up. Several others were rescued by comrades who resisted the assault. In one case it has been reported that two comrades were actually pulled back out of one of the vans. One escaped, the other was recaptured. The arrested have now been released and face a range of charges from insulting behaviour to assault.
Not content with just breaking up the march, the police vans then patrolled the side streets stopping anyone who looked as if they had been on the march. This was particularly unfortunate for the punk comrades with their easily recognisable form of dress. Several more conventionally dressed comrades managed to evade these patrols. There were also reports of police at nearby Underground Stations checking for possible marchers'.
(Freedom, 12 June 1982 - the address for the campaign at 84b Whitechapel High St was/is the Freedom bookshop)
'48 people were arrested when police attacked a march of 500 walking peacefully up Oxford Street on Sunday 6th June after the CND rally. Most are denying the charges, some of which are serious'.
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