Communist Party nights out in London, 1930s

From the pages of the Daily Worker, newspaper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, some dances and other social events in the 1930s.

Daily Worker Carnival Dance at Hoxton Baths with 'Real Red Band', December 1931:

Also from 1931, 'Great Boxing Night Revels' at New Greenwich Baths with 'South East London's Finest Dance Floor' and 'the Varsity Revels Band'. Plus Hackney National Unemployed Workers Movement social and dance at Holcroft Road school; Woodcraft Dance at Savoy Ballrooms in Dalston (presumably liked to radical scouting alternative the Woodcraft Folk) [source Daily Worker, 12 December 1931)

From 1934 - Young Communist League Flannel Dance at Bermondsey Library, Spa Road; Relief Committee for the Victims of German Fascism dance at Conway Hall; League Against Imperialism and Negro Welfare Association Social and Dance at the Pindar of Wakefield in Grays Inn Road. Plus some Eisenstein film nights. Also an advert for Nanking Chinese Restaurant at 4 Denmark Street, off Charing Cross Road 'the place for internationalists'

See also: Anarchist Dances in London, 1890s-1910s

 

London Life 1966: Discotheques, Psychedelic Samantha's and Francoise Hardy at the Savoy

London Life cover, 31 December 1966

London Life was a mid-1960s what's on magazine that for a little while replaced the Tatler to reflect a shift away from conservative posho style guide towards a more socially democratic swingin' London - tellingly by the end of the 1960s it had reverted to its former name and to being a conservative posho etc.

'Discotheques' were included in the listings, still quite a new phenomenon in UK so with the helpful explanation that these were 'Informal nightclubs and restaurants with dancing, usually to gramophone records. Some discothèques feature musicians from time to time'. Most of these don't sound too appetising, a lot of gambling and no doubt overpriced drinks (overpriced for the time - a goldfinger cocktail at the Hilton for 35p sounds very reasonable now!). Still wouldn't mind a time machine to check out the Flamingo or to see Francoise Hardy at the Savoy in January 1966.

London Life, 29 January 1966

And what of Samantha's in New Burlington Street, described in 1966 as 'London's first psychedelic club' promising to 'create atmosphere with machines' for people who 'want to be taken out of their minds as if they had taken LSD'. All with a talking dummy called Samantha and a dancefloor with 'powerful strobe lighting, which throws malevolent screens of speckled rays over the dancers' while 'a projector in the ceiling imprints vivid coloured slides over the contorted bodies of the music seekers'. 

London Life, 12 November 1966