Things that were Gay in school - Trackie McLeod

'Soft Play' is an exhibition of work by Scottish artist Trackie McLeod (b.1993) at Charleston in Lewes (15 October 2025–12 April 2026). Drawing on his experience of growing up queer in the Glasgow area in the 2000s, it references popular culture of the time including sportswear, music and computers.

I was moved by 'Gay if you don't', a 'List of things that were 'Gay' in School' inscribed on aluminium. It's a long list, to quote just a few examples:

HAVING YOUR RIGHT EAR PIERCED 

HAVING YOUR LEFT EAR PIERCED 

HAVING NICE HAND WRITING 

HAVING SHORT HAIR 

HAVING LONG HAIR 

WEARING A GAP HOODIE 

WEARING PINK 

WEARING SKINNY JEANS 

WEARING TROUSERS THAT WERE TOO SHORT 

WEARING A VEST 

WEARING A BLAZER 

WEARING SHORT SHORTS 

WEARING WHITE SOCKS WITH BLACK TRAINERS 

WEARING BLACK SOCKS WITH WHITE TRAINERS 

BEING PASSIONATE ABOUT ANYTHING 

ACKNOWLEDGING YOUR MUM AT THE SCHOOL GATES 

ACCIDENTLY CALLING THE TEACHER MUM 

GIVING SOMEONE A CHRISTMAS CARD 

HAVING A RING FINGER LONGER THAN YOUR INDEX FINGER 

Recently Nigel Farage has been accused by some of his former school'mates' of terrible racist abuse of pupils at Dulwich College. Some of his apologists have claimed that it should all be forgotten as it was so long ago - or even questioned whether these witnesses could really recollect what was said in the late 1970s. But nobody on the receiving end of bullying and abuse at school ever forgets such words no matter how many years go by. McLeod's list reminded me of incidents at my school in Luton - like the boy being homophobically teased as 'ballet boy' because his sister had a dance magazine delivered with the paper round (he was outed by paper boy). Dancing, or seemingly even your sister dancing, was definitely 'a thing that was gay in school'.

Trackie McLeod, Infrared (speakers were playing Showtex 'FTS' while I was in there)

 

Portrait of the artist in trackie (source)

For my country - UK Decay, punk and the war poets

I went to see Luton punk band UK Decay at a rare hometown gig at the Luton Hat Factory arts centre last Saturday (8/11/2025).  As expected a peak of their set was their 1980 song 'For my country' with its chorus 'for the honour, I don't ask why, it's my pleasure, my honour to die, for my country.'

The song riffs on Wilfred Owen's First World War poem 'Dulce et Decorum Est' which contrasts the reality of soldiers 'guttering, choking, drowning' in a gas attack with 'The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori' ('It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country').

The poetry of Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and other First World War poets had a big impact on the first punk generation. Penny Rimbaud of Crass has credited Benjamin Britten's War Requiem (1962), which set Owen's poems to music, as a key influence on his pacifism. But I think most of us probably encountered these poems in school and/or through Brian Gardner's anthology 'Up The Line To Death: The War Poets 1914–1918', first published in 1964 and reissued in a 1976 paperback edition. A lot of punk anti-war sentiments were expressed through an imagery from this time, and UK Decay's song is a good example from its lyrics to its sleeve.

This was largely an anti-heroic poetry, grounded in the lived experience of the First World War trenches and sceptical of the glories expounded by armchair generals and propagandists. How different from today when once again militarism is simply equated with heroism and few in the public eye are brave enough to question the uncritical celebration of the armed forces (see for instance the hounding of any TV presenter who doesn't wear a poppy in November).  I have no doubt there have been soldiers who have performed heroic deeds - which I would define as going beyond the expected boundaries of your role and putting yourself at risk in order to save other people's lives. But nobody gets to be a hero just by virtue of their job title, and I certainly wouldn't classify shooting unarmed demonstrators in Derry in 1972 as heroic, or more recently executing unarmed captives in Afghanistan or sexually abusing women in Kenya. If it is an 'old lie' that dying for your country is an honour, it is even more of a lie that killing for your country is honorable too.

[the gig was great by the way, sometimes seeing a band many years after their heyday can be a bit sad, but in this case it felt like UK Decay managed to reconjure up a community with lots of people coming from different places to catch up with each other and perhaps with their younger, maybe more hopeful selves. I saw many people I haven't seen in the flesh for years including people from most of the Luton bands of that punk and post-punk/proto-goth period (let's say 1978-85) including Pneu Mania, Dominant Patri, Karma Sutra, Passchendale (another WW1 reference), Party Girls, Rattlesnakes etc. not to mention the legendary Switch Club]

More Luton stuff:

Marsh House Luton - from punk to henge

How it all began (for me): a School Kid against the Nazis in Luton 1979/80

Luton Nuclear Disarmament Campaign go to Greenham Common 1980

The Luton Riots of 1981 - 'Brixton comes to Bedfordshire'

The Hunger Strike, the Irish War and an English Town

Partisan Books: a Luton 1970s radical bookshop

Crass, Poison Girls, UK Decay in Luton, 1979

Karma Sutra, Luton anarcho-punk and hunt sabbing

Clubbing in Luton 1984-6

Dole Days in Luton: unemployed protests, 1985

Luton Punk Squat Party 1985 - with Karma Sutra

We are Luton - opposing the English Defence League in 2012

'Angry White People' book review (in Datacide magazine)

D'Angelo (and Fred Hampton) RIP

Sorry to hear of the passing today of D'Angelo. Quite a lot of obituaries focusing quite rightly on his sexy neo-soul, but some tough politics in there too. His 2010 album 'Black Messiah' is a classic of radical black liberation theology, the track '1000 deaths' including a sample from murdered Chicago Black Panthers leader Fred Hampton:

'Because the people that we're asking for peace

They′re a bunch of megalomaniac war-mongers and they don't even understand what peace means

But we′ve got to fight 'em, we've got to struggle with them

To make them understand what peace means'

D'Angelo, 1974-2025

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.

Still living with the English Fear: The Mob, Kae Tempest & Roni Size at London Anarchist Bookfair 2025

The 2025 London anarchist bookfair crossed the river into South London for the first time since it started in the early 1980s and having been to many of them I have to say this was a very good one. Location was the Leake Street railway tunnel by Waterloo station, famous for its graffiti so aesthetically appropriate. Lots of stalls lining both side of the tunnel, and a busy crowd. 

Kae Tempest

Some amazing live performances - I saw  the mighty Kae Tempest doing a pop up spoken word only set in the tunnel, including 'These are the Days' and 'Hyperdistillation' from the new album ('Self Titled') with its observations of contemporary London:

'I watch it flow, the old river

Empty penthouses

But still the lone figure slept out the whole winter

And died before spring

Passersby saw, but felt sure

They were not like him

Life by numbers

Looking for the punchlines

Only getting punches

Crunches in the morning

Lunches in the boardroom

Numbness in the courtroom'

Later at the after party in 26 Leake Street anarcho punk band The Mob played a rare gig followed up by Roni Size (Paul Simenon from The Clash was also supposed to be doing a DJ set in the afternoon, did that happen? I also missed Kildren and Anarchistwood).

The Mob's 'Let the Tribe Increase' (1983) is one of my favourite albums from the 80s anarcho-punk scene and I regret never seeing them at the time. Mark Wilson still sounds great and sadly the lyrics are still too topical. 'No Doves Fly Here', a 1982 single on Crass Records, seemed to imagine the aftermath of the nuclear war we all feared. But with the ongoing massacre in Gaza we don't have to imagine terrible scenes of devastation, they are happening in front of our eyes:

'The buildings are empty and the countryside is wasteland

It never was before

And we never asked for war

The playgrounds are empty and the children limbless corpses

They never were before

And they never asked for war

No-one is moving and no doves fly here'

As for 'Witch Hunt', 40+ years later we are most definitely still living with the English fear.  A week before and just round the corner I had found myself stuck in a crowd of far right nationalists swarming over the area on their Tommy Robinson/Elon Musk rally and sadly they don't seem to be going away any time soon.

'Stubbing out progress where seeds are sown

Killing off anything that's not quite known

Sitting around in a nice safe home

Waiting for the witch hunt

Still living with the English fear

Waiting for the witch hunt, dear'

With the Mob's Mark Wilson now heavily involved with Bristol area space Rockaway Park, it felt like a bit of a Bristol takeover with Roni Size finishing off the night. I last saw him in 1999 in a tent at Reading Festival, still riding high after winning the Mercury Prize for the New Forms album. He dropped plenty of that in Leake Street and it still sounds fresh. Could have done with a bit more low end on the sound system, but hey I can never get enough bass. Great drum and bass set anyway.

Roni Size

Banners from Black Lodge Press:

'Everything for Everyone'

Oh yes and I did pick up usual collection of printed material and tote bags, including this book from the Minor Compositions stall -  Brian Massumi's 'Toward a Theory of Fascism for Anti-Fascist Life. A Process Vocabulary'

 

Youth CND Rock the Bomb Festival for Peace, Brockwell Park 1983

My first ever visit to Brixton, where I later lived, was on May 7th 1983 when I came to Brockwell Park  for the Youth CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) 'Rock the  Bomb Festival for Peace'. The day started out with a march from the Victoria Embankment to the Park led by the 'Youth CND - a future without fear' banner.

According to Socialst Action around 20,000 people took part in the march, with up to 60,000 in the park ('60,000 rock the bomb, 13 May 1983). I must have been near the front of the march because I remember seeing The Damned play (including Smash it Up and Love Song) and I know that a lot of people missed them as the march was still coming into the park. That left a lot of disgruntled punks moaning and throwing mud at other acts.

The festival also featured Clint Eastwood and General Saint, Hazel O'Connor, Madness and the Style Council. I was excited by the latter as I had been to the Jam's last London gig at Wembley in the previous December, and this was the first London outing for Weller's new band. They played two numbers, which were to be their first two singles - 'Speak Like a Child' and 'Money go Round'. 

Style Council on stage in Brockwell Park, May 1983

'Let Europe Dance. Our Future in Nuclear-Free'

The festival was sponsored by the left wing and soon to be abolished Greater London Council, who put on some great festivals in London parks in that period

More details at https://www.ukrockfestivals.com/glc-peace-festivals.html

 

Protest Behaviour not Protest Songs? Jeremy Deller on free parties

Aaron Trinder's 'Free Party: a folk history'  is a documentary telling the story - or at least some of the stories - of the 1980s/90s free party scene. There is a particular focus on the crossover with the earlier free festival /traveller movement,  cross pollinated at Glastonbury and giving rise to Castlemorton in 1992 and much more besides. Interesting interviews feature with people involved at the time with sound systems including Spiral Tribe, Circus Warp, Bedlam and Nottingham's DiY. These help us to see free parties in a longer term historical context - for instance people involved with DiY had previously been involved in hunt sabbing and anarchist activism; Steve Bedlam remains active today with Refugee Community Kitchen.

A recent online fundraiser for the film, with the aim of securing a wider release, featured some additional material including a discussion between Aaron and artist Jeremy Deller. The latter mentions going to Reclaim the Streets parties and reflects on the wider politics of free parties and raves:

'that's what's dangerous when things get joined up. Which never really happened with punk, punk was burnt out so quickly, like two years - gone. Then it was just like bands with Top of the Pops. Dance music affected the whole country, it linked up  with other people, so it was massively political. The songs weren't necessarily but it was the context of what you were doing, and who you were meeting and how you got there. In a way they were more scary, they weren't protest songs but protest behaviour... it's what the state really really  fears, it's people meeting up, forming groups, then those people form bigger groups, it's something you can't really control',

Marsh House Luton - from punk to Henge

Luton Henge Festival last month (29 July 2025) marked the opening of  Luton Henge, a landscaped space featuring a circle of eight chalk stones that will serve as an outdoor venue for social and cultural events. The festival included music and dance, with Laura Misch playing her saxophone in the sunset. While I was there Bird Rave were doing their thing, dancing in feathered headdresses to classic rave tunes like  'Voodoo Ray' in bird inspired moves that they call 'dancefloor ornithology'. Anyway it was great fun.

Capoeira display

The location by Marsh House at the Leagrave end of town is significant, located as it is near to the source of the River Lea and the ancient earthwork of Waulud's Bank. It is also a place linked to Luton's subcultural history. The green barn just about still stands where Crass, Poison Girls and Luton punk band UK Decay played in 1979, and where people also put on jazz funk dances in that period (as recalled by Fahim  Qureshi, see below).

I missed Crass, but it was here around the same time that I saw my first punk gig. From 1977 to at least 1984 there was an annual late summer one day Marsh House Festival. 16 year old me cycled over in 1979 and saw UK Decay and Pneu Mania, as well as 'Stevie's band', a scratch band made up of members of both bands who did a version of YMCA. Also on the bill were local rock band Toad the Wet Sprocket, Arcadaz (jazz/funk band), and acoustic singers Clive Pig and Heinrich Steiner.

'About 1500 people were entertained at the peak of the six hour concert which featured six local bands, solo singers and the White Dwarf Disco' all 'on a stage provided by Vauxhall Motors' (Luton News, 30 August 1979)

'yes, finally in the whole of desolate/boring Luton, people have finally done something positive'. 

A review of the 1979 Marsh House UK Decay/Pneu Mania gig from Stevenage based fanzine 'Cobalt Hate' no.1)

I know I was there in 1983 with The Pits, Click Click (post punk electronica) and Passchendale, kind of Houghton Regis Killing Joke. In the following year my friends Luton anarcho-punk band Karma Sutra played along with their St Albans counterpart Black Mass, Harlow punk leftists the Newtown Neurotics, Snatch and Nick the Poet.  It poured with rain towards the end and loads of us got up on the stage for shelter and joined in singing with Attila the Stockbroker.

1984 Marsh House Festival flyer

Marsh House was originally a farm house for Marsh Farm - the land on which the Marsh Farm council estate was built in the 1960s. In the 1990s, Luton free party collective Exodus started off on this estate and Glenn Jenkins and other people who had been involved in Exodus helped save Marsh House after it was boarded up and threatened with demolition in the 2000s. It now acts as a hub for various community projects, including a music studio.

For me, Marsh House was primarily a place where I went to summer holiday open access playschemes as a kid, charging around the ramshackle adventure playground (getting temporarily banned for stone throwing), bouncing on inflatables and playing softball by the river.  I now know that some of the people who ran those playschemes were part of the local radical/alternative art scene some of whom had previously been involved with Luton Arts Lab and Reflex collective and went on to found the 33 arts centre which gave me a later education in experimental film and theatre-  but that's another story.

Marsh House today

Revoluton Arts  who put on the Henge festival and are based at Marsh House are a descendent of these multi-faceted efforts to make things happen in my home town. They have done some interviews with people involved in some of these past projects, interesting to hear Fahim Qureshi (who I remember from the anti-racist movement of that time), Glenn Jenkins and Linda ‘Muddie’ Farrell (who worked on playschemes and helped set up 33) talk about the River Lea and its wildlife. Guess I followed that river down to London but never stop Luton.

Bird Rave

As for the stone circle, I used to be cynical about contemporary efforts to recreate ancient looking monuments but I have seen the Brockley stone circle on Hilly Fields near where I live now become a focus in the south london park where it dates back only to 2000. At the end of the day the combination of stone, sky and people is as real today as it ever was. Build it they will come. 

More Luton stuff:

How it all began (for me): a School Kid against the Nazis in Luton 1979/80

Luton Nuclear Disarmament Campaign go to Greenham Common 1980

The Luton Riots of 1981 - 'Brixton comes to Bedfordshire'

The Hunger Strike, the Irish War and an English Town

Partisan Books: a Luton 1970s radical bookshop

Crass, Poison Girls, UK Decay in Luton, 1979

Karma Sutra, Luton anarcho-punk and hunt sabbing

Clubbing in Luton 1984-6

Dole Days in Luton: unemployed protests, 1985

Luton Punk Squat Party 1985 - with Karma Sutra

We are Luton - opposing the English Defence League in 2012

'Angry White People' book review (in Datacide magazine)

Out to the Dancers - Emma Warren and Femi Koleoso

I really enjoyed 'Out to the Dancers', a conversation between  Emma Warren and Ezra Collective’s Femi Koleoso at the South Bank Centre's Purcell Room, centred around what dancing means to them in different ways (8 August 2025).

A key theme was around inclusivity - who gets to dance, how and where? In answer to the opening question, 'What makes a great time on the dance floor?', Femi expanded on Emma's ingredients of space and sound by adding inclusivity - 'I think dancing is like almost a human expression of feeling welcomed. And it's very difficult to dance, if you don't feel welcome somewhere....  I think if you can make people feel included, they dance'.

As a young black man growing up in London Femi has of course had a particular experience of what welcome means. As he recalled, planning for a night out was always accompanied by the nagging worry of whether he and all his friends would actually get in.  There was an interesting discussion about doors, Emma talking of the excitement of the bass rattling of the door as you approach it, 'the door as a kind of holder of the sound' promising how you will soon be feeling the music inside. Femi said that he hated that very moment, carrying with it the threat of rejection at the final hurdle after all the queuing. No wonder he said he preferred dancing outside with one less door to negotiate.

Interesting to see how this perspective plays out in Ezra Collective's approach to performance - 'the party starts on stage and everyone's invited' with a conscious effort to make people in the audience feel included, something I really felt when I saw them.

The talk was part of the South Bank's summer programme 'Dance your way home', inspired by Emma's book of the same name and featuring a month of dance-themed events. In fact while the talk was going on hundreds of people were dancing on the riverside terrace outside to Deptford Northern Soul Club.

'Out to the Southbank dancers' - Emma Warren's mini-zine for the events

Looking forward to reading Emma's new book on youth clubs, out soon.

(thank to Jools for photo of Emma and Femi)

Jordan photos at Colony Room Green

 

Jordan Uncovered is a small exhibition of personal photos of first wave punk icon Jordan (Pamela Rooke, 1955-2022), put together by Andrew James and Darren Coffield. Working at Sex in the Kings Road, starring in Derek Jarman's Jubilee, and managing Adam and the Ants, Jordan was one of the people who in effect created the punk look, at least in its 1970s London incarnation. Sometimes its not the people in the bands who are the most influential in defining a subcultural aesthetic, it's also the faces in the scene and that was certainly the case with Jordan.  Later in life she returned to her love of animals and became a veterinary nurse on the south coast.

Jordan and Jarman

The exhibition is at Colony Room Green in Heddon Street, Mayfair, a basement bar reviving the original Colony Room Club which closed in 2008.  There's lots of memorabilia from the famous Soho Bohemian drinking den, with some drinks still on sale at 2008 prices. A friendly place for a drink in this part of town.

Exhibition closes 22 August 2025