Handsworth Revolution - yes please

Here we go again... Conservative shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick laments ‘not seeing another white face’ in Handsworth in Birmingham. What is wrong with these people? It was in Birmingham that Enoch Powell made his infamously racist Rivers of Blood speech in 1968, and nearby in Smethwick where 'Britain's most racist election' took place in 1964, prompting a visit to the area by Malcolm X shortly before he was murdered.

The message is always the same - 'too many' black or brown faces in one place is a problem, the sub text that only white faces really belong. 

So yes once again this great 1978 track, and indeed album, is painfully topical: 'Handsworth Revolution' by Birmingham reggae band Steel Pulse.

'Handsworth means us the Black people, 

we're talking now... 

Babylon is falling

It was foolish to build it on the sand

Handsworth shall stand, firm, like Jah rock

Fighting back

We once beggars are now choosers

No, no intention to be losers

Striving forward with ambition

And if it takes ammunition

We rebel in Handsworth revolution'

Seeing Steel Pulse in Llandudno 1980

Steel Pulse were stalwarts of Rock Against Racism gigs and festivals in the late 1970s, I saw them in Llandudno in north Wales in 1980 playing at the Labour Party Young Socialists conference - an early gig for me as I was still at sixth form. The LPYS was dominated at the time by 'Militant' trotskyists and indeed I was semi-recruited to them for a short time at that conference where it was revealed to me that they were a 'secret' organisation infiltrating the Labour Party, the Revolutionary Socialist League. Yes I sold their paper for a little while outside Luton Arndale Centre by Don Miller's bakers but I found them politically turgid and soon moved on. But the cultural programme at that conference was quite eye opening and a bit more interesting than speeches from Militant leaders Ted Grant and Peter Taaffe -  7:84 Theatre Company performing their play 'Sus' and also in the Astra Theatre, Steel Pulse, donning white hoods to perform 'Ku Klux Klan' and singing of revolution in Handsworth...

'Forward Ever, and Backward Never'

 

Leicester unemployed centre occupation 1987

Amidst the mass unemployment of the 1980s more than 200 unemployed workers centres were set up around the UK, sponsored by the Trades Union Congress and sometimes supported by local councils. They typically provided advice, support and places to meet.  I have written previously about my experience of one of these in Luton, where young punky activists clashed with the centre management and later squatted the centre for a memorable gig.

As the 1980s ground on, many of these centres closed or were scaled back due to funding cuts. One example of this was the Leicester Unemployed Workers Centre (upstairs at 138 Charles Street), where among other things meetings were held in 1984/85 in support of striking miners. In March 1987 council plans to reduce the scope of the centre led to a month long occupation.

 I visited the occupation and recently came across this leaflet in an old diary, setting out the basic demands: 'We, some of the unemployed users feel this is reducing the limited facilities available for the unemployed people of Leicester... Basically we want the Unemployed Workers Centre to be run by the unemployed for the unemployed'. Another occupation leaflet quoted in Workers Press article below, says 'We are oppressed by property and the human lottery of unemployment' and criticises decisions made by people 'with no personal experience of long-term unemployment and without consultation with the "experts" (the unemployed)'.

According to a report in Counter Information, occupiers set up 'a free food kitchen and workshops, with the result of more people than ever using the centre'. There were tensions between occupiers and what Counter Information describe as 'trade union bureaucrats and Labour Party hacks' and I remember there was some discussion about whether decisions in the occupation should be just for the unemployed or whether paid workers at the centre could be involved. There were also some of the problems familiar to anybody who has been involved in organising open access spaces - one person had to be evicted for stealing from the occupation fund and a woman occupier was sexually assaulted. The occupation seems to have finished on 7 April 2025, by which point around 30 people were involved according to local paper the Leicester Mercury. The centre continued afterwards until at least 1990.

Counter Information, July 1987

Workers Press, 14 March 1987

Workers Press, 21 March 1987

Other 1980s Leicester bits...

I had some close friends living in Leicester in the 1980s and spent quite a bit of time there. It had a radical bookshop, Blackthorn Books, with a cafe in the basement (Bread & Roses) and I recall a lot of us hanging out there in 1985 as there was a threat of it being attacked by the British National Party on the day before a planned Bloody Sunday demonstration in the city. The next day (3/2/1985) the Bloody Sunday event went ahead and was followed by a picket of Leicester prison in support of Irish Republican prisoners (see full report of this here).

The following year one of the Unilever animal rights trials was held in Leicester and I went to to the prison to visit one of those jailed, the late Gari Allen. Also in 1986 (20th January), I noted that I had 'Shouted abuse at my second cabinet minister in 4 days, when I joined a demo of about 200 people outside Leicester Poly where Keith Joseph [Thatcher's education secretary] was visiting'. A few days earlier I had heckled Thatcher herself when she was on a visit to Luton.

Leicester visits also sometimes involved dancing at the university student union Mega Disco or the Leicester Poly equivalent, and I remember seeing Chumbawamba's Danbert Nobacon playing in the uni's Mandela Bar, singing a song in support of the Silentnight strikers. The latter dispute, involving bed makers at factories in Lancashire and Yorkshire, was one of the longest strikes in British history lasting from June 1985 to April 1987)