In November 1985 there was a squat gig in Luton with local punk bands. Unusually for that time some people actually took photos of it which have popped up on facebook and other places over the years (including I think the old UK Decay website). So we have a lovely snapshot of the some of the beautiful people of my home town and I still have the flyer, which promised a lot:
'On Saturday 16th November an attempt will be made to put on a squat gig in Luton featuring local bands Karma Sutra, Penumbra Sigh and Party Girls. The reasons for doing a squat gig are many and varied. The bureaucratic organisations of the political elite do nothing but spout dead dogma and empty rhetoric about the young and what they think we need. All these schemes do nothing except reinforce our feelings of powerlessness. This attempt to reclaim disused property and put it to constructive use is an attempt to put into practice our own feelings of power and humanity and to do things for ourselves when all around us we are offered nothing except misery and destruction. Here is a constructive attempt to create something of real importance in an atmosphere of love and cooperation as an alternative to what we see around us... we cannot do it alone but we can do it together, come along and participate'
The venue was the TUC Centre for the Unemployed, or rather the building that they had been using at 17 Dunstable Road, Luton, but which they had recently moved out of. Most of the Luton punks were on the dole at the time and many of us had been helped out with our claims and housing issues by the advice workers there - though earlier in the year we had fallen out with the Centre's management when our rowdy protests became too much for them (see previous post on Dole Days in Luton). I think the perception was that the centre was being closed down to punish our ingratitude but actually it reopened later in a different location.
It was a great gig/party, the place decorated with banners, loads of people turning up and three fine bands. Luton's two main anarcho-punk bands from the time, Karma Sutra and Penumbra Sigh (the latter sadly never recorded), plus Party Girls who I guess were a bit more what was becoming known as goth.
Karma Sutra - Graeme, Dave and Neil in shot
Penumbra Sigh - the late Karen Tharsby, Steve, Pete and Mark
Party Girls Dan and Pete
All the bands played in front of a banner declaring 'Revolution is the Festival of the Oppressed'. Looking through photos I can also see 'Alternative Luton', 'Revolution is Every Day Life' and 'Where does the enemy hide?'. The latter question comes from London situationist punk funk band Slave Dance, whose song of that name features the answer '...if not in our everyday lives?'. Yes we'd all been digesting the Situationists, mostly via Spectacular Times booklets. I can also spot a couple of Karma Sutra banners: 'Here lies the world destroyed by greed, profit and envy' and a chained up figure inside a globe cage, plus a red and black flag.
I can also see a poster declaring 'Wickham 19 are innocent'. The gig was actually a benefit for this defendants campaign supporting those arrested in a series of South East Animal Liberation League raids on vivisection related companies in Hampshire. One of our Luton crew was among those arrested, hence the graffiti saying 'hello the Wickham One!'
I don't remember all the names of the people below, but not going to name the ones I do remember (you can out yourselves in the comments if you want). Hope nobody minds though being included in the photo gallery I think it's very evocative of a time and place that seems both recent and a million years ago. Obviously if anybody does object to use of pictures let me know and I will edit accordingly,
I was recently in touch with Dave G. who helped put on the party who has kindly contributed his recollections:
'It took place a very short time after the building was emptied. A group of us went down there one evening (in the dark) to gain access. We knew that breaking and entering would be a criminal offence but entering through a window without causing any damage was “merely” trespass and a civil matter. That said, we also knew that the police usually made mincemeat of these distinctions. I think we knew the building and how to get in via a dodgy window then open the doors from inside.
I remember being very surprised and impressed that someone – I think from Karma – knew about electricity and fuse boxes. I seem to recall that fuses were missing or something had been done to remove power but that this had easily been rectified.
We worked out that entrance to the gig should be via the back of the building to avoid attracting attention with the front available as a fire exit. You’d pass through a kitchen where food had been made and upstairs there were two rooms – one where all the instruments of the bands were kept and another where people could sit and chat.
I remember bits of the evening itself and that at a certain point the police tried to get in but were blocked. They claimed it was about health and safety then said, “don’t blame us if you all burn to death” and disappeared.
I think the event was considered a “success” and there were initial plans to do more. For example, the big old Co-op building opposite St George’s Square had been empty for years and some of us went in via the back one Sunday afternoon and talked about repeating it there – perhaps on Carnival Day - but it never happened. I think one reason is that the momentum of doing something like the squat gig the first time had now gone. I definitely wanted it to happen at the Co-op and went back a couple of times alone to check things out but it was probably just as well it didn’t happen because the Co-op would have been too high profile to pull off successfully without more people involved and better organisation. I also think that the first squat gig popularity was because the centre had done so much to help people in practical terms and that closing it down was regarded as a spiteful injustice. The people who organised the gig and others who turned up – so many of them had received support and the closure felt more personal and something to be challenged - the gig seemed like “having a go back”. Perhaps, having done it once, people didn’t think it had been worth all the effort. Certainly, if you are involved in something and it comes off, there’s a degree of wanting to repeat and scale up the same experience, whereas if you weren’t central to it, you are less invested. I don’t know…
To me, the idea of squat gigs/events felt like we were “reclaiming” space, highlighting the waste of resources during a housing crisis and creating our own cultural spaces as an alternative to “confected entertainment” but there were many weaknesses with those theories… [soon] there were other things to be getting on with like Anti-Apartheid, Section 28, the Alton Bill, pickets at Wapping, local strike action at Vauxhall…'
If you have any memories, photos, flyers related to this or similar nights get in touch
In the turbulent mid-1980s - 1984 to 1986 to be precise - I was unemployed like most of my punky friends in Luton. My 1985 diary has the same entry on almost every Thursday – ‘Sign on, Switch’. The weekly ‘Giro Thursday’ routine consisted on signing on at the dole office, cashing in our ‘Personal Issue’ cheque at the post office, buying in our vegan supplies for the week, and 'then going home to crimp our hair before heading to the pub and then The Switch Club, the town’s only regular alternative night. There to drink and dance to songs like Spear of Destiny’s Liberator, Baby Turns Blue by the Virgin Prunes, the Sisters of Mercy’s Alice, Dark Entries by Bauhaus and The Cult’s Spiritwalker. In a departure from the general gothdom the last record was usually 'Tequila' by The Champs' (see more here on Luton nightlife at this time).
Many of us were living in bedsits in the town’s London Road area owned by the late Gerry Cremin, a generally amiable Irish landlord who nevertheless thought it necessary to collect the rent accompanied by an Alsatian, a baseball bat and his burly sons (my dad had coached some of them at St Joseph's football club). The deal was that in return for providing a nominal breakfast which hardly anyone got out of bed for, the landlord was able to charge the Government's Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS) a higher rent, and the tenants got a little bit more on their dole – so we took home a massive £39 a week. It wasn’t exactly paradise, but it was too good to last.
‘In Luton hundreds of unemployed people under the age of 26 are being
made homeless by new government rules on Bed and Breakfast accommodation. The government
and their friends in the media claim that these new regulations are to stop
people taking free holidays at the taxpayers’ expense. The reality is that most
people live in B&B because they have nowhere else to go. Who’d take a
holiday in Luton?’ (Luton Bed and Breakfast Claimants Action Group leaflet,
June 1985)
In 1985, the Government decided to change the
rules so that young people under 26 could only stay in board and lodging for
four weeks before their rent and benefits were cut – for those of us living in
the Costa del Cremin this threatened homelessness. Actually it was no joke –
the Luton News reported that Michael Ball, a 24 year old from Marsh Farm,
hanged himself when he was forced to move by the new regulations.
In June 1985, a Bed and Breakfast Claimants
Action Group was set up at a meeting at the TUC Centre for the Unemployed (17
Dunstable Road, Luton). This was a trade union sponsored centre which offered benefits
and other advice, and for which Luton bands including Karma Sutra, Click Click
and Party Girls had played a benefit at the local college (now University of
Bedfordshire). I wish I still had my ticket for that, as they were hand printed
by Elizabeth Price who went on to be in indie pop band Tallulah Gosh and then to win
the 2012 Turner Prize for her video art.
The Centre was one of around 200 similar projects around the country in this period set up with the support of the Trades Union Congress and local unions. An oral history of this movement has recently (2023) been written by Paul Griffin (Unemployed Workers Centres: politicising unemployment through trade unions and communities). There was a political tension in these centres - were they top down, even paternalistic, welfare service for the unemployed, or were they centres for agitation and organising by the unemployed? That tension certainly played out in Luton, as we shall see.
Flyer for the first meeting on 10 June 1985
A campaign of action followed on quickly from that first meeting. Over the next few weeks, we occupied Luton DHSS
and the Anglia TV office in the town, and disrupted council meetings (Luton had a Conservative Council at the time). Between 20 and
50 people took part, mostly drawn from our punk circles but not just the usual anarcho activists. When Prince Charles visited the town's Youth House we occupied the
Radio Bedfordshire office in Chapel Street, while Karen Tharsby (singer with Luton punk band Penumbra Sigh, who
sadly died in 2013) was arrested for sticking her fingers up at the heir to the throne. The clip below includes short Radio Beds reports of one of the town hall protests and an interview with Pete K. about the Prince Charles visit.
Transcript of BBC Radio Bedfordshire clip: 'There was a demonstration outside Youth House where Prince Charles was on a tour. The demonstration was by young unemployed people from Luton protesting about the government's new board and lodging rules which they claim have made them homeless. One person was arrested. One of the protesters explained why they tried to disrupt the Royal day: 'to show we're angry about people being thrown out of their homes, made homeless while people like Prince Charles can visit Luton and like £50,000 be spent out on someone like him to visit Luton. People like myself, people in bed and breakfast accommodation all over Luton are being made homeless. I don't see how can they can justify spending all this money on him'. [and how would you prefer the money be spent?] Well for a start I think it should be spent giving people houses, renovating houses, Council houses whatever… hospitals, kidney machines, things like that things that, things that are worthwhile'
Plans were also laid for squatting – a list of empty properties was put
together at the Centre for the Unemployed and circulated in the name of ‘Luton
Squatters Advisory Service’ (‘Jobless Encouraged to become Squatters’, Luton
News, 27 June 1985).
Things came to a head in July 1985 when during a protest at another council meeting in the Town Hall there was a scuffle with councillors.
Gerard Benton – an advice worker at the Centre for the Unemployed - was arrested and
later jailed for six months for ‘actual body harm’. Gerry was definitely innocent of the charge of hitting a councillor, he had just stayed around after others had left and been the one there to be picked up. After he was convicted,
some of Gerry’s friends repaid the councilor who they believed had given deliberately misleading evidence against him with a number of pranks, including
placing an advert in a local paper offering prison uniforms for sale, with their
phone number. On his release, Gerry continued in advice work until his untimely
death in 2005 at the age of 47.
It was all too much for the respectable Labour
Party types who ran the Centre for the Unemployed. We were banned from meeting
there anymore, and even before Gerry was jailed he was told by the management not to associate with us. One of the contradictions of the unemployed centre movement was that staff were often paid with funding from the Manpower Services Commission - a kind of Government job creation scheme - so there was always a limit to how far they could go in opposing the state. Not long afterwards the Centre moved buildings - leaving the original one to be squatted for one night for a great Luton punk gig (see post here).
‘Jobless
Protestors Occupy DHSS Office - A demonstration at Luton’s DHSS office against
new Government rules for the unemployed ended when police were called in to
break it up. Around 40 unemployed people occupied the Guildford Street office
on Thursday… They occupied the offices for two hours and hung up banners in
windows until police were called by the manager’ (Luton News, 20 June 1985)
‘furious
councilors and demonstrators jostled and argued when a protest got out of hand
during a committee meeting at Luton Town Hall last week. Around 30 punk-style
protestors objecting to the new bed and breakfast laws were ejected by police.
One arrest was made after coffee cups were broken during the row’ (Herald, 11
July 1985)
I believe that the Centre for the Unemployed continued elsewhere in Luton until 1999, and then changed its name to Rights - this advice service is still going 40 years later. Looking back I can see that we were sometimes quite obnoxious to some of the no doubt well meaning people running the Centre for the Unemployed, but equally we felt justified in our anger at their failure to support actual unemployed young people fighting back against cuts to our benefits.
Another leaflet advertising the first meeting on 10th June 1985:
Report on the campaign from Black Flag magazine:
'Youth Dole Sit-in Demo' - Luton and Dunstable Chronicle & Echo, 14 June 1985
A bit more here about Gerard Benton. A definite Luton character, I first met him when I was at school and had joined the Labour Party Young Socialists for a while. Gerry arranged a coach trip to the Welsh seaside resort of Llandudno for the LPYS conference, with us all being put up in a hotel. A lot of people came along for the ride, some of whom never even stepped foot inside the conference, with no questions asked about ability to pay. We got to see Steel Pulse too. It was only when we got back that we found out that Gerard had simply arranged for the hotel bill to be sent to Luton Labour Party, who weren't very happy but paid up anyway.
Footnote: a Tory landlord and an imaginary strike in Luton
Another Luton landlord at the time was Mr Mason, a Tory councillor with shabby accommodation in Stockwood Crescent and elsewhere. Some of his tenants took to painting graffiti or otherwise vandalising his office on the way back from the pub and a group of them got arrested in the process. A couple of them were members of the Socialist Workers Party and one of their leading members locally, Ged Peck, was believed to have reported them to the SWP's control commission (their internal disciplinary body). Those involved were furious at what they saw at this lack of support and the response was to submit a fake strike report that was unwittingly printed in Socialist Worker in July 1984. The bad employer was a fictional Pecks Publishing in Luton - named for Ged Peck (who incidentally had played guitar at the Isle of Wight Festival). Gerard Benton was named as the shop steward at this imaginary firm and the person named as the author of the piece had nothing to do with it. Just goes to show you can't believe everything you read in the archive - let future historians note there was no such strike in Luton! I believe those held responsible for this fake news were suspended from the party.
[This is an edited extract, with some additional material, from my article - Neil Transpontine, Hyper-active as the day is long: anarcho-punk activism in an English town, 1984-86 in 'And all around was darkness' edited by Gregory Bull and Mike Dines, Itchy Monkey Press, 2017. The full article goes on to look at more Luton activism covering animal rights, anti-apartheid, the peace movement, Stop the City, the miners strike and more. The book is an excellent collection of participant accounts of the scene including The Mob, Crass, Flowers in the Dustbin, anarcho-feminism and Greenham Common etc. You can buy copies of it here and recommend you do if you are at all interested in this kind of stuff.
One of the criticisms sometimes levelled at the anarcho-punk scene of that time is that its politics were a kind of militant liberalism in which activists always seemed to be seeking to act on behalf of others – whether animals or people in far off places – rather than confronting their own position as young, mostly working class people in a capitalist society. There is some merit in this, though a counter argument could of course be made that they refused to be confined to their narrow sectional interest and instead tried to embrace a more global critique of oppression and exploitation. But I guess in the above episode at least we were directly self-organising around our own needs in the context of unemployed benefit cuts.
1983/84 saw a series of anti-capitalist 'Stop the City' actions focused on the financial centre of London and other cities too, including Leeds and Birmingham. In London, momentum built with large protests in September 1983 and March 1984 (I've written about the March one here). A fairly half hearted one in May 1984 didn't amount to much, but a more serious attempt to organise and mobilise led up to the action on September 27 1984. By this point though the police had got used to this mode of protest and had developed their own tactics for dealing with it - largely mass preventative arrest. 470 people were arrested, most of them later released without charge. A high proportion of people came from the anarcho-punk scene, but there was advice to dress in more casual clothes to avoid being singled out by the police. I did so, not sure I would have passed for a city gent but I didn't get nicked!
There were occasional short lived breakaways from police lines, as reported below: 'There was a small rampage not far from the Stock Exchange where windows were smashed and cars jumped on and later Barclays Bank off Cheapside had windows broken'. I recall somebody stepping up on the window sill of a bank and kicking the window in. Other than these brief moments there was a lot of wandering around aimlessly.
Dave M, who helped organise the London events as part of London Greenpeace, summarised the day as follows:
'On Sept 27th, maybe 2000 came - mostly anarchists and unemployed, as well as some peace and animal rights campaigners. Police repression was well organised and strong. It was impossible to gather at the City centre (St Paul's and the Bank of England, used previously, were cordoned off). Individuals and isolated small groups who were 'looking for the demo' were threatened with arrest, and soon left, disillusioned. Anyone looking like a punk was particularly harassed. 470 were arrested and held hostage (only 35 were charged) to break up the collective strength.
However, many people who'd organised into independent groups were able to do quick actions all over the place (graffiti, smashing bank windows, a quick occupation etc). 2 or 3 times 3-400 people came together for a march into the centre… Hundreds who were dressed up smart continued to float about (giving out leaflets, passing messages, doing actions...). But generally the City became a no-go area almost for us. Many demonstrators therefore decided to go to Oxford Street, and Soho in central London and were able to make quite a few effective protests at various banks, offices and stores etc.' (A Brief Account of the Stop the City Protests)
Report from Green Anarchist, November 1984
There was quite a lot of soul searching afterwards. The following chronology from anarcho zine Socialist Opportunist (October 1994) ends up asking 'People put months of planning into all this. Was it worth it?'
The general consensus was that it was 'time for us to move on, having learnt from Stop the City' as expressed in this response written on the day:
(there a couple of other responses in the same issue, full copy of which can be read at the excellent Sparrows Nest Archive).
Press coverage
Evening Standard calls for police to move in on the organisers
Guardian: 'Police swamp City's 2,000 anarchists'
Benefit Gig
The night before there was a benefit gig for the Stop the City Bust Fund in Camberwell at Dickie Dirts, featuring among others Conflict, Subhumans and Stalag17. The venue was an old Odeon cinema that for a while had been a Dickie Dirts jeans warehouse before being squatted. I think there may have been some Stop the City planning meetings in the same venue.
There's a little confusion about the Conflict/Subhumans gig, the flyer is clear that it was the night before Stop the City though some people (mis?)remember it as being on the night of the protest.
Earlier that Summer Subhumans had recorded a song Rats about Stop the City, having taken part in the previous London actions. As lead singer Dick recalls:
"We're talking about thousands of people — a lot of them punk rockers, hippies, alternative types — all turning up, dressed up, making a lot of noise... bells, whistles and drums, that sort of thing. It was an angry party atmosphere, and it was just really refreshing. It was one of the first protests I'd been to that wasn't a CND march, and it felt slightly more relevant, more 'everyday' than a protest for nuclear disarmament. That was a one-subject protest, but this was against the exploitation of people across the world by the people who press all the buttons and control all the money — it was about the very hold that money and profit and greed have got on society in general. It felt more urgent to be there. I went up there on my own, and met up with lots of people. I remember the band Karma Sutra from Luton were there. At one point, people were being violently thrust around by the cops, and I overheard one of them say, 'If you act like rats, you'll get treated like this... ', which became a line in the song and is the reason the song's called 'Rats' , which may not be an obvious name for a song about protesting against capitalism" (quoted in 'Silence Is No Reaction: Forty Years of Subhumans' by Ian Glasper).
The lyrics of the song do capture the feeling of those days (maybe especially the line 'Co-ordination was not so good, But everyone did just what they could'!):
A sense of enterprise is here, The attitudes that conquer fear
Stability, togetherness, The feeling cannot be suppressed
Hand in hand we had our say, United we stand but so did they
Hands in handcuffs dragged away, To cheers of hate and victory!
We fought the city but no-one cared, They passed it off as just a game
The city won't stop til attitudes change, Rats in the cellars of the stock exchange
Co-ordination was not so good, But everyone did just what they could
Unarmed with inexperience, We had to use our common sense
If you act like rats you get treated like this, Said a policeman like we didn't exist
When the force of law has lost it's head, The law of force is what you get
We fought their calculations, Money gained from third world nations
All that money spent on war, Could be used to feed their poor
The papers played the whole thing down, Said there was nothing to worry about
The rats have all gone underground, But we'll be back again next time round
Long ago and far away (well mid 1980s Luton) there was a great punk band called Karma Sutra. I hung out with them and made a few squiggly noises on my wasp synth on one of their 1985 demo tapes. Now 35 years later said demo tape and others from that time have appeared on vinyl as an album 'Be Cruel With Your Past And All Who Seek To Keep You There' put out by Sealed Records (listen/buy it here). It comes with a great booklet with interviews and flyers. For me Karma Sutra were a portal into anarcho-punk and its associated activism, perhaps in particular hunt sabbing as I explain in the following
I’d had the Crass records, the Conflict badges, and a mohican, I’d been on a Stop the City demo too but my real initiation into the world of ‘anarcho punk activism’ didn’t come until September 1st 1984 when I went to a Hunt Saboteurs benefit gig at Luton library theatre arranged by local band Karma Sutra. Headliners Antisect from Northampton were one of the more metal tinged punk outfits, with heavy guitar riffs and gruff vocals growling “why must I die?” (The “I” in question being a laboratory animal of course).
If the extremism of
noise and content was impressive it wasn’t unexpected. What really amazed me
was what was going on off the stage. I’d been to loads of gigs where I’d steamed
in with my mates, bought some drinks, watched the bands, and left with the only
interaction with others being some slam dancing at the front. Here there were
people talking, and busy bookstalls from the Hunt Saboteurs and from Housman’s,
the London radical bookshop, with a selection of anarchist papers and other
publications (I later found out that several people from the Luton scene were
working the odd shift there, and eventually I did the same myself).
Hunt Sabs benefit at Luton Library Theatre September 1984, flyer advertising Antisect, Karma Sutra, Ring and Danbert Nobacon. Not sure if this was the actual line up on the night - in my diary I noted seeing Antisect, Karma Sutra, The Sears (from Walsall) and The Remnants (Luton punk band). The night ended up with somebody being stabbed in the hand, though not seriously injured, I think linked to skinhead trouble - earlier a skinhead had jumped on stage and given a nazi salute. As discussed below, violence from far right skinheads was an ongoing threat at this time
I chatted with someone
about hunt sabbing and within a week I was standing in a field in
Northamptonshire at 8 am in the morning at the beginning of the fox cub hunting
season. It was the start of a couple of years of intense activity, with
countless hours spent in the back of a white van hurtling between punk gigs,
hunts, demonstrations and protests. I'd been politically involved in various left wing movements before but this was a different intensity of activism.
Of course these were
tumultuous times across the world – the days of Thatcher vs. the miners, of
Reagan and the new Cold War, of uprisings against Apartheid in South Africa.
And in towns and cities across the UK, some of the most determined opposition
to the state of the world came from groups of young, invariably black-clad
punks. This article is a snapshot of one of those scenes, in Luton, but similar
stories could be told about many other places.
Punk in Luton
Thirty miles north of
London, Luton in the mid-1980s was still an industrial town dominated by the
Vauxhall car factory, as it was to remain until General Motors stopped making
cars there in 2002. There had been a punk scene in the area since the early
days: The Damned played one of their first gigs at Luton’s Royal Hotel in 1976
and the Sex Pistols played at the Queensway Hall in neighbouring Dunstable in
the same year. Luton’s first punk band, The Jets, featured on the famous Live
at the Roxy album in ’77.
The best known punk band
to come from Luton was UK Decay, formed in 1979. The band had some association
with Crass - in December 1979 they played with Crass and Poison Girls at a gig
in a tin Nissan hut at Marsh Farm in Luton, and their final record – the ‘Rising
from the Dread’ EP - was released on Crass’s Corpus Christi label in 1982. But while
UK Decay released the great anti-war track ‘For my country’, they weren’t
really part of that anarcho-punk protest scene as such. Along with
Northampton’s Bauhaus they were developing a proto-goth aesthetic, referencing
horror themes and plundering Edgar Allen Poe and Herman
Hesse for inspiration. Indeed the reference to them as ‘the face of punk
gothique’ by Steve Keaton in Sounds (February 1981) is credited as being one of
the originators of the term ‘goth’ for this emerging sound.
UK
Decay were influential stalwarts of the indie charts, and among other things
supported The Dead Kennedys on their 1980 UK tour. For a while they were
involved in a short lived punk/new wave record shop in Luton town centre,
Matrix, which closed down shortly after a party where the Kennedys and other
party goers ran amok in the Arndale Centre car park.
By
1984 UK Decay had split up, giving rise to a couple of splinter bands (Furyo
and In Excelsis) and the post-punk scene too had begun to fragment. The town’s
sub-cultural outcasts tended to congregate at one pub in particular - The
Blockers Arms in High Town Road (of which more here). Among the punky types there
were different factions, albeit overlapping and coexisting peacefully – some
slightly older first generation punks, early goths, what would later be called
indie kids, and what might be termed ‘anarcho-punks’.
Luton Marsh House Free Festival, September 1984 with Newtown Neurotics, Attila the Stockbroker, Nick the Poet, Karma Sutra, Black Mass (St Albans anarcho punk band) and Snatch - a memorable day, it poured with rain towards the end and loads of us got up on the stage for shelter and joined in singing with Attila.
There
were no strict borders between these groups - every individual had their own
combination of politics, music tastes and hairstyles - so it’s perhaps
misleading to talk of a discrete, separate anarcho-punk scene. But within this
continuum there was a definite current that was more overtly political and
musically more into the bands like Crass and Conflict.
I
don’t think most people like this would have defined themselves then as anarcho-punks
or even necessarily as anarchists, but there was a shared, loose
anti-authoritarian politics, with a strong focus on being against war and militarism
and for animal rights. People were typically vegan at a time when supermarkets barely
catered for vegetarians - these were the days of homemade houmous.
It
would be misleading too to use the term ‘Crass punks’. Crass had certainly been
very influential earlier on but they were coming to the end of their active
life, playing their final gig in 1984 – a miners’ benefit in Aberdare. At the
thrashier end of things Conflict were now the most influential band, but the
scene had become much more musically diverse. Bands like Chumbawamba with their
harmonies, Slave Dance with their situationist squat funk sound, and No
Defences with their tricky time signatures were a long way from being Crass or
Conflict copyists.
In
Luton, the house band of the scene was Karma Sutra. They had been included on
Conflict’s 1984 Mortarhate compilation ‘Who? What? Why? When? Where?’ with
their track ‘It’s our World Too’ and were later to release an album ‘The Day
Dreams of a Production Line Worker’ on their own Paradoxical Records. Another
Luton band on a similar wavelength, Dominant Patri, had already split up by
1984. The other main ‘anarcho’ band in the town at the time was Penumbra Sigh, who formed I
believe in 1985, and there were also like-minded bands in nearby towns, such as
Medical Melodies in St Albans.
I
sometimes operated the slide projector at gigs for Karma, and I occasionally
turned up at their rehearsal space with my wasp synth – you can hear it on one
of their demo tapes from the period recorded in Luton's Midland Road studio. But mostly I just travelled around with
them and others to gigs – squat gigs in London such as in the Ambulance Station
on the Old Kent Road, a pub in Brixton or a bus station by Kings Cross; gigs in
far off places like a CND benefit supporting Chumbawamba in Stockport, gigs in
nearby towns like Welwyn Garden City and St Albans; gigs with Conflict, Chumba,
Antisect, The Sears, Blyth Power, Flowers in the Dustbin, Slave Dance, State Hate, No
Defences, Sacrilege, Brigandage, Black Mass, The McTells, The Astronauts and many more. But
the music was only part of it and here I want to focus on some of the other
things we got up to.
Chumbawamba, Karma Sutra and Sacrilege, CND benefit at Scunthorpe Baths, 1 March 1985 (I remember burning my hand on the slide projector as well as some great music!)
Hunt Sabbing
‘It’s normally a
quiet Northamptonshire lane – but on this occasion it looks more like a
battlefield. Furious members of the Grafton Hunt are blocking the road with
their horses and refusing to move. Angry hunt saboteurs rev their cars, hoot
their horns and demand that the horses get out of the way… A battered van and
an assortment of old cars appeared and about 30 mainly young protestors dashed
down a track close to the wood. A genuine Cotswold hunting horn, blown by a
saboteur, did a good impression of the Grafton’s rallying horn, while the rest
of the party joined in with fake shouts and calls…There’s another whirling
confrontation and a young female saboteur is lying unconscious in a ploughed
field – knocked flat by a horse… another saboteur is thrown into a stream by
hunt followers, and there are more scuffles’ (When the hunters become the
hunted’, Alex Dawson, Chronicle and Echo, September 10 1984)
The fine art of
preventing hunters killing foxes and other animals dated back to the formation
of the Hunt Saboteurs Association in 1963. Luton had been home to a
particularly militant sabbing group in the early 1970s, from which emerged the
Band of Mercy to take direct action including sabotaging hunt vehicles. This
group, which included Ronnie Lee, was to become one of the founding cells of
the Animal Liberation Front.
The mid-1980s Luton
sabs operated across the Beds, Bucks, Herts and Northantscountryside with occasional forays further
afield. Our nearest fox hunt was the Enfield Chace, in pursuit of which we
would head out of town having scoured Horse and House magazine for intelligence
of where they were to be found of a Saturday morning.
We quite often went out
with the Northampton group, sabbing the Pytchley, Grafton or the Vale of
Aylesbury fox hunts.. There was also a group in Bedford but even though there
were some sound people in it we didn’t entirely trust them because we suspected
that their van driver had dubious fascist connections (she later ended up as a Labour councillor in Milton Keynes, I guess people can change).
The biggest events were
national and regional ‘hits’, when sab groups from across a wide area would
converge on one hunt. Sometimes these would feature spectacular clashes, with
red coated hunters on horseback, hunt followers, police and a hundred or more
brightly haired sabs scuffling and chasing each other, and sometimes a fox, across
fields and through woods. I remember being in the woods near Sole Street in Kent, disrupting the East Kent hunt with sabs from Canterbury, Thanet, Brighton and Surrey in March 1985. It felt like being in a medieval peasants revolt with sabs carrying sticks charging at the hunters deep in the trees - it was the week that Kent miners returned to work at the end of their strike and class war was in the air.
Ideally the hunt would be delayed by stopping it
moving off, or blockading the kennels where the hounds were kept. At the start
of the 1985 season for instance, around 100 sabs blockaded the kennels of the
Cambridgeshire Foxhounds, preventing the van carrying the hounds from leaving
on time [I believe the pictures below are from that day, I recognise a couple of Coventry sabs in them including all in black John Curtin].
The guy on the right rode his horse straight at me, so I was knocked on the ground a couple of seconds after taking this photo!
At other times,
sometimes with as much effect, it would just be a handful of us, hardly seeing
the hunters but distracting the hounds from a distance blowing hunting horns or
spraying anti-mate on the ground to obscure the scent of the fox.
There were also less direct tactics - there were tales of some sabs doing magic rituals to protect the fox before setting out on a Saturday morning. This was the first time I had heard of such 'magical activism' and shortly afterwards I was introduced to the work of Starhawk - hanging around court while watching one of the Unilever trials (arising from a mass animal liberation league raid on a Bedfordshire laboratory) someone was reading 'Dreaming the Dark: Magic, sex and politics' which described the work of witches in the US peace and anti-nuclear movements.
Whatever the numbers out sabbing the conflict was usually uneven with the hunting cavalry facing the animal rights infantry. On my very first hunt, a sab was knocked out by a horse from the
Grafton Hunt near Slapton in Northants. On another occasion I was knocked
flying by a horse, but escaped serious injury. A few years later, in 1991, hunt
saboteur Mike Hill was to be killed by a hunt vehicle used by the Cheshire
Beagles (and indeed in 1995 Jill Phipps, who I remember meeting at that first
hunt at Slapton, was killed by a lorry during an animal rights protest at
Coventry airport).
My first time hunt sabbing - a woman lies injured after being hit by a horse from the Grafton Hunt. Her friend comforts her - note Crass patch on trousers (Chronicle and Echo, September 10 1984).
The police generally
turned a blind eye to any violence inflicted by hunt followers on sabs, and it
was the latter who tended to get arrested if there were any clashes. For
instance in March ’85, eleven sabs were arrested as we tried to stop the Old
Berkeley Beagles hunting hares near Thame in Oxfordshire.
Sometimes the hunt could not be found at all, and there would be fruitless tours of country lanes in the back of a van. Where large numbers of sabs were gathered together with nothing to do the temptation to mischief elsewhere was strong. In March 1986, a big group of sabs who had originally gathered to oppose the Warwickshire hunt headed to Leamington Spa town centre. After a sit down in McDonalds, we moved to a couple of local fur shops, The Sunday Mercury reported (16.3.1986): ‘A crowd of 70 demonstrators caused disturbances throughout the afternoon in the centre of Leamington. Some burst into Brians Specialist Furriers in Regent Street and grabbed expensive fur coats from racks before hurling them outside into the road’. 12 people were arrested including three women from Luton who were detained over the weekend - one of whom was slapped in the face by police for refusing to answer questions. A ‘Leamington Dirty Dozen Defence Fund’ was set up to support them.
Report of Leamington Spa animal rights protest from Luton Animal Rights bulletin no.2, April 1986- one person was later jailed for 6 weeks for assault
On another occasion, in November 1986, Luton sabs headed off for a national hit near Leicester with around 150 sabs from Coventry, Leamington, Birmingham, Sheffield, Northampton, Rugby, Leicester and Lincoln. After chasing after the hunt, aided by CB radios, fog stopped play and the hunt went home early without a kill. The sabs headed into Leicester to join an anti-fur demo, with one of the Luton group being arrested for ABH after a scuffle during a sit in at a fur shop.
Not all sabs were punks of course, but our group was predominantly so, as were others. As well as the sabbing itself, keeping it going involved raising funds for van hire, petrol, materials and the occasional fine. Jumble sales and benefit gigs were the main source of income, including an amazing hunt sabs benefit we put on back at the Luton Library Theatre in 1985 with Chumbawamba, No Defences and Karma Sutra. Karma also played a benefit gig for the Leamington defendants at Luton’s Cock Inn (May 1986) along with Medical Melodies, Herb Garden and Kul.
1985 Luton Hunt Sabs benefit with Chumba, No Defences, Karma Sutra and Penumbra Sigh. What a great gig that was, No Defences' mesmerising performance was fortunately recorded for posterity
Report from Luton Animal Rights newsletter no.4, December 1986 - mentions Leicester fur shop demo following national 'hit': 'We went inside the shop and staged a sit-in, some people stayed outside the shop chanting. While inside some protestors had a slight scuffle with an irate shopkeeper'
Luton hunt sabs jumble sale 1986
Report from Luton Animal Rights newsletter no.1, December 1985 - 'On November 23rd we were one of eleven van loads of sabs who went to sabotage the Pytchley, another vicious gang of fox killers who were hunting near Northampton'
The donkey-jacketed Luton Hunt Sabs march through the mud near Pulloxhill in Bedfordshire, January 1985. I think this may be the day described in diary extract below
'26th January 1985: about 12 of us went in a hired van to Pulloxhill where the Enfield Chace were hunting. When we arrived the local sherrif, sorry police officer, tried to run us out of town. He said we had no right to be there, and told us to drive home. Needless to say we ignored him'
[This is an edited extract, with newly added pictures, from my article - Neil Transpontine, Hyper-active as the day is long: anarcho-punk activism in an English town, 1984-86 in 'And all around was darkness' edited by Gregory Bull and Mike Dines, Itchy Monkey Press, 2017. The full article goes on to look at more Luton activism covering animal rights, anti-apartheid, the peace movement, Stop the City, the miners strike and more. The book is an excellent collection of participant accounts of the scene including The Mob, Crass, Flowers in the Dustbin, anarcho-feminism and Greenham Common etc. You can buy copies of it here and recommend you do if you are at all interested in this kind of stuff]
Update November 2024:
Ian Trowell has written a great piece on hunt sabbing in South Yorkshire in this period: A Field in England: Anarcho-punk, anti-fashion and the thrill of the chase. I liked his reflections on hunt sabbing style, including some anarcho-punks appropriating the country look of Barbour jacket (I do remember some people doing this, though our group was defo more black donkey jacket):
'On top of the all the recollections of fights, near scrapes, slinging insults, bloody messes, antics with glue, tipping sugar in fuel tanks, minor victories, mud, explosive profusions of swear words back and forth, boring hours sat in the back of a van, more boring hours in broken down vans and occasionally the physical exertions of the hunt, the thing that sticks most clearly in my memory involved a scene at a another joint meeting – a common event where different hunt-sab groups met up to jointly target a hunt... On this particular day our Sheffield van met others, including a small group from Lincoln who arrived in their own battered Land Rover. I vividly recall the palpable collective gasp from our motley crew (generally slightly worse for wear from a late-night Friday) as the three Lincoln hunt-sabs made their choreographed appearance as the rear doors of their vehicle opened. They were pristine and box-fresh, resplendent in Barbour jackets with matching long hair combining a mini-mullet and floppy asymmetric fringe (the hunt-sab look), stunningly coloured in bright henna hair dye which was radiant in the winter sunshine. It was surreal – more like a foppish pop band (Duran Duran or Gene Loves Jezebel) emerging from the stage doors to admiring fans and flashbulbs. Or an advert for shampoo in a post-punk parallel universe. It oozed the popstar cool of Mick Jagger captured in Richard Hamilton’s famous image Swingeing London 67(f). I thought, that’s how to do hunt-sabbing - with style'.
Also added additional Leamington Spa press clippings
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