On June 10 1984 the left Labour-led Greater London Council, on the verge of being abolished by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, put on the free 'Jobs for a Change' festival by County Hall on the South Bank. I was one of the estimated 150,000 who went along, with the line up including Billy Bragg, Misty in Roots, Mari Wilson, Hank Wangford, Gil Scott-Heron and Ivor Cutler.
The biggest draw was The Smiths, at that time my favourite band. It was the fourth and last time I saw them, and in less than a year they had gone from being third on the bill at the Lyceum (where I saw them supporting the Gang of Four) to becoming the focus of something like mass hysteria. To be honest though I can't actually remember much about The Smiths performance that day, with events earlier in the day leaving a stronger impression.
Socialist band The Redskins played too, and while they were on stage a largish group of neo-nazi skinheads stormed the stage and attacked people in the crowd. Although the fascists were massively outnumbered by the festival goers, many of the latter fled in panic. Indie kids were never known for their streetfighting skills! I wasn't very handy either but I did end up with a group of punks, anarchists and Red Action members chasing and scuffling with the nazi boneheads round the South Bank.
Some remarkable photos have resurfaced recently and capture some of what happened (most of these photos are from the great
Rio Tape Slide Project with the exception of the third one down showing Martin Hewes which I found at
Redskins Archive on facebook)
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| Redskins' Chris Dean on stage |
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| Crowd by County Hall |
The Redskins started out with their anthem 'Kick Over the Statues' and were 40 minutes into their set when trouble started. On a
recording of the gig singer Chris Dean can be heard shouting 'fuck off out of here' and 'you sound like Margaret Thatcher' at the National Front boneheads just before the latter stormed the stage, knocking over the band's equipment and attacking people.
I was standing near the back with friends and remember large parts of the crowd running in panic towards us (i.e. away from the stage). We stood our ground but it wasn't immediately clear what was happening, though people did start fighting back and the NF disappeared quite quickly.
As described in Sean Birchall's 'Beating the Fascists: the untold story of Anti Fascist Action' (2010): 'Halfway through the event, about 80 or more NF suddenly materialised and immediately set about the audience gathered around the main stage where the Redskins were playing. The boldness of the assault panicked the large left-wing gathering. Not all were cowed. Some elements within the crowd, including some striking miners, regrouped, and after some hand-to-hand fighting in which one Red Action member was slashed and another anti-fascist had his jaw smashed, the right-wingers, mostly skinheads, were driven off'.
In this photo the Redskins bassist Martin Hewes, on left of picture, can be seen grabbing one of the attackers (I think the bare chested lads were defending too):
Some of the crowd headed off after them (see below), but they dispersed only to return later.
The crowd around the stage had emptied out very quickly:
A little while later I saw a procession of boneheads heading back over Waterloo Bridge towards the event and it was obvious to me that there was going to be more trouble, I tried to speak to stewards and left wing paper sellers etc. about it but nobody seemed very interested. Shortly afterwards they attacked again while country singer Hank Wangford was performing.
This time there was a more concerted fight back, as described by Birchall:
'But the NF had not finished. Again led by the 6ft 2in Nicky Crane, who had just completed a four year sentence for a similarly indiscriminate attack on a queue of black cinema goers, and buoyed up by the impact they had made on the many thousands of the left-wing enemy present, the rampaging right-wingers returned to attack the Hank Wangford Band on stage at the other end of the park. It proved to be a major blunder. Where the crowd had been taken unawares the first time, news of the second attack saw RA [Red Action] in particular more than eager for the unexpected chance of a replay. Armed with cider bottles, and anything else to hand, Red Action members sprinted toward the trouble. Their charge had the effect of further galvanising the crowd.
In attempting to make a getaway, Crane was felled by Peter C. and only by using a young female anti-fascist as a shield, survived the onslaught with cuts and bruises. Less fortunate was another skinhead who, to his evident relief, had been rescued from the crowd by two police officers who held off vengeful left-wingers with batons. The stand-off ended when a leading militant stepped out of the crowd and punched one of his benefactors full in the face. When the officer bent to retrieve his helmet, he was bundled headfirst into a concrete litter-bin. Terrified, the skinhead made a run for it with just time, possibly, to reflect on the shortcomings of huge steel toe-cap boots in such a situation, before being brought to earth and kicked unmercifully while the police, understandably putting their safety first, stood by and watched. Nearby another couple of skinheads, one male and one female were both booted on the ground, with police again unwilling to mediate'.
Fighting continued by St Thomas Hospital, where casualties from both sides had gone for treatment, and later that night anti-fascists stormed an Islington pub that had become a haunt for nazi skins (The Agricultural on Liverpool Road).
Here's Red Action's reports on the events from Issue 13 of their paper (Summer 1984), including their reflections that they should have attacked the fascists when they first saw them.
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| 'After the initial confusion, a determined counter-attack by miners, 'red' skins and anti-Nazis had the Front on the run' |
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| Fascism 'thrives on the weakness and indecision of its opponents... [the NF] 'pulled off a major propaganda victory by coming into and disrupting a major event attended by thousands of people' |
Hang Wangford later wrote about these events in a song called 'On the Line', which likewise criticised the lack of preparedness for the attack:
'There were hippies and punks and OAPs,
UB40s and CIDs
But no one noticed them bad, bad boys
With the bottles, the skins and their mouth full of noise
Cause they slipped through the crowd like a shiver of fear
With their menswear steps that you never can hear
And I knew what they were when I saw them salute
And they knew I was a commie from my flesh pink suit
Now we started a polka, they went Sieg Heil
They jumped us and trod on our faces for a while
While they knocked us down and they put in the boot
They made a real mess of my flesh pink suit
Well they smashed a guitar, jagged like a knife
And cut it through the face of my friend for life
And there was no one to stop them, no security
From the police, the crowd or the GLC
No one told us while Billy Bragg sang
That the redskins just had the boot put in
No one warned us before we went on
A hundred to one we wouldn't finish our song'.
See previously:
