London Anarchist Bookfair

The London Anarchist Bookfair in September 2021 took place in the shadow of Covid. Some of it was held outside in Red Lion Square, while inside Conway Hall everyone was wearing masks.

'come friends don a mask and let's make anarchy' - guess many anarchists aren't shy about wearing masks but at a time of covid hoaxer conspiracy theories it was good to see a clear commitment to wearing Covid masks at this event.

A banner in Red Lion Square remembers Anna Campbell and Josh Schoolar, two people from Britian who fought with Kurdish rebels

The 2022 Bookfair takes place on Saturday 17th September 2022 at Bishopsgate Institute with satellite events at nearby venues

 

Ragged Ragtime Girls: Leila Waddell, Aleister Crowley and seven dancing violinists

I have been enjoying Phil Baker's 'City of the Beast: The London of Aleister Crowley' (Strange Attractor, 2022), which traces his life through places associated with him. In doing so he situates Crowley in a specific London bohemian world of cafes, salons, clubs and temples, populated by people often seen only as (mostly temporary) followers of his but who led interesting lives in their own right - and were probably much more pleasant/less abusive people to befriend.

One of the sites Baker mentions is the Tivoli Theatre which stood at 65-70 the Strand in London, a building 'demolished in 1914, replaced by the Tivoli cinema and the site is now a featureless modern office block'.  It was here that in 1913 a musical troupe called The Ragged Ragtime Girls (sometimes spelt Ragged Rag-Time Girls) played for seven weeks, an act consisting of 'seven pretty girls who play the violin and dance at the same time'. I hadn't heard of them previously so set of searching at the British Newspaper Archive and elsewhere to find out more.

A contemporary review describes them as 'a charming septette' sharing a bill with American songwriters Harry Williams and Nat Ayer, composers of 'Oh you beautiful doll' and the dancers Ida Crispi and Fred Farren. On another occasion they shared a bill at the Tivoli with comedian  George Formby sr., father of the later ukelele star (Sporting Life, 19 March 1913).

The connection with Crowley was that among the seven was Leila Waddell, Australian violinist and sometime 'Scarlet Woman' consort of Crowley. If Crowley is to be believed the group was his idea, arising from his suggestion that 'she should combine fiddling with dancing. My idea was, of course, to find a new art form. But of this she was not capable. She failed to understand my idea'. 

He goes on: 'I turned my thoughts to making a popular success for her. We collected six assistant fiddlers, strung together a jumble of jingles and set them to a riot of motion; dressed the septette in coloured rags, called them “The Ragged Ragtime Girls” and took London by storm. It was a sickening business [...] In the early part of 1913, my work had apparently settled down to a regular routine. Everything went very well but nothing startling occurred. On March 3rd, the “Ragged Ragtime Girls” opened at the Old Tivoli. It was an immediate success and relieved my mind of all preoccupations with worldly affairs'. Later that year Crowley was 'free to accompany the “Ragged Ragtime Girls” to Moscow, where they were engaged for the summer, at the Aquarium. They were badly in need of protection. Leila Waddell was the only one with a head on her shoulders. Of the other six, three were dipsomanics, four nymphomaniacs, two hysterically prudish, and all ineradicably convinced that outside England everyone was a robber, ravisher and assassin. They all carried revolvers, which they did not know how to use; though prepared to do so on the first person who spoke to them' (The Confessions of Aleister Crowley).

The group also seem to have played at other London venues including the Tottenham Palace (Stage 10 April 1913) and the East Ham Palace, as well as in Edinburgh, Glasgow and at the Manchester Hippodrome - this time advertised as 'Eight Ragged Rag-Time Girls' (The Era, 17 September 1913).

 Then there were a series of shows in the North East of England including the Sunderland Empire with Tiller girl dancers, Miss Louie Tracey, 'a male impersonator'  and the Great Barnetti who produced 'weird effects of a black magic character';  and the South Shields Empire Place as 'Seven Gipsy Ragged Ragtime Girls dancing fiddlers'. They also gave their services for free as part of a benefit concert for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution at the Empire Theatre, Newcastle (Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 29 May 1913).

 

I can find no reference to them playing after November 1913 but more may turn up. Crowley is sometimes described as their manager and producer but whatever his role they also had professional management.  In an interview with vaudeville producers Ellis Entertainments Ltd, director Anthony Ellis boasted that 'we were responsible for the appearance of the Ragged Rag-time Girls at the Tivol - an act which proved so popular that it is now, after a seven weeks run at the Tivolo, booked for a year ahead in the provinces, including a return visit to London at Christmas time' (The Era, 22 October 1913). 

It should also be remembered that Waddell was an accomplished professional musician - for instance she as described as 'The Queen of Australian Violinists'  while playing at West's Picture Palace, Shaftesbury Hall, Bournemouth (Bournemouth Daily Echo, 4 July 1910). Neither was she a passive muse for Crowley's spiritual work, among other things she played a key role in the Rites of Eleusis performed at Westminster's Caxton Hall in 1910, another site mentioned in Baker's book.

The Ragged Ragtime Girls

Leila Waddell in the Rites of Eleusis

'Women Choose, Don't Argue!' - punks protest against anti-abortion bill 1979

In 1979, Conservative MP John Corrie introduced a private member's bill aiming to restrict abortion rights. In the climate of New Right ascendancy marked in Britain by the election of Margaret Thatcher in that year there were real fears that this would become law and a campaign was launched against the Corrie Bill.  The biggest event was a massive demonstration in London in October 1979 called by the Trades Union Congress and the National Abortion Campaign. In the event Corrie did not succeed in getting his bill through parliament and the 1967 Abortion Act remained intact.

Here's extracts from a couple of reports of the demo highlighting the role of (post) punk bands. 

Lucy Toothpaste:

Get up, eat my porridge, put on my feminist radical chic (or do I mean my radical feminist chic?), anyway, put on my loud yellow coat, fluorescent socks, sensible shoes etc. etc., select a thoughtful cluster of badges for the occasion and set off. Climb on the bus, discover that all the other passengers are wearing those hideous pink 'March for Abortion Rights October 28' badges too. Meet more of the same at Finsbury Park tube.

It looks like everybody in London is going on this march; it makes you feel you actually belong to a community for once. At Marble Arch they've got about twelve extra ticket collectors to cope with the throng. It's striking that despite the defensive nature of the campaign – instead of being any nearer to extending access to abortion, here we go again, trying to hold on by the skin of our teeth to the meagre provisions of the '67 Act – despite this, the atmosphere is so festive.

It's cold but the sun is streaming down, and I'm not the only one in party clothes. Demonstrations have never been the same since the anti-nazi carnivals. Old and young, gay and straight, and trade unionists and all their friends and relations have poured in on coaches from all over the country

Punks hover round the Rock Against Racism truck which is jerking along to the rhythms of the Gang of Four, Mekons and Delta Five (yelping songs like 'Can I interfere in your crisis? No mind your own business!'). Me and my friends finally leave the Park (after about a two hour wait, and we're nowhere near the end of the march) with the feminist all-stars on the Rock Against Sexism lorry. We dance all the way from Park Lane to Trafalgar Square, and all join in singing (except that my voice has mysteriously done a bunk and I can only mime) Lottie & Ada's ditty to the tune of 'I've got a brand new pair of roller skates':

'I've got a brand new Private Member's Bill

Guess what it's going to be

I'm going to make sure lots of women

Remember John Corrie'

By the time we reach Trafalgar Square it's too full to hold any more people, and as it's turned very grey and cold we're glad of an excuse to slope off to the cafe for tea...

Over 50,000 people marched against the Corrie Bill, differing as our political affiliations may be, but all agreeing that it threatens us with substantial risk of serious injury. The bill restricts the time limit and approved grounds for abortion, and decimates the abortion charities, with the aim of reducing legal abortion by two-thirds.

Some see it mainly as a class issue, because even when abortions are illegal, richer women have usually managed to get them done without too much trouble, and it's working-class women who are forced into the danger and humiliation of the backstreets.

Some see it as fundamentally a women's issue, part of the international fight for control over our fertility: If we get pregnant, it's women who have to bear the consequences, so it must be our decision whether to have an abortion or not, rather than that of doctors, priests or MPs. We are demanding not only free access to abortion, but also really safe and effective contraception, and an end to forced sterilization and experimentation on black and brown people in the name of population control.

Some see it above all as part of the fight to determine our sexuality. Thousands of lesbians and gay men were on the march, not just in solidarity, but to point out that an attack on abortion rights is an attack on everybody's right to enjoy sex for its own sake, without guilt and without fear, whether or not we intend to have children.

By the time you read this, some version of Corrie's bill will probably have passed into law . But we won't stop fighting until we get Complete Control'.

Kate Webb:

'In the new climate of this past year, one of rock's most concrete political achievements for women has been the contribution made to the Anti-Corrie Bill Campaign. Temporary Hoarding described the demo on 28 October last year as 'The most vociferous, musical and non-boring demo in the history of the world'

Hundreds of mad joggers dancing along side the Rock Against Sexism truck while hurtled down Park Lane, carrying assorted members of Delta 5, Mekons and Gang of Four blasting out assorted variations of their songs, all under the wonderful Day-Glo banner which proclaimed WOMEN CHOOSE DON'T ARGUE!

It was all too much for the inhabitants of the Playboy Club. They called in the cops to come and line up outside for fear of being attacked by this wild bunch of pogoing punks, expectant mums and mad musicians. And they might well have been, if we hadn't been too busy enjoying ourselves. It was an occasion when one of those boring old 'Against Them' demos turned into a celebration of what we are. Our Bodies and Our Culture and Our Music'.

[from The Book of the Year', edited by David Widgery (Ink Links, 1980)

The Wellcome collection has an online archive of material from the anti-Corrie campaign

Marching against megadeath - June 22 1980 in London

The announcement of the deployment of a new generation of US nuclear weapons in Europe, coupled with increasing tension between NATO and the Soviet Union, led to a mass peace movement across the West in the early 1980s. In England the first major demonstration against these cruise missiles was called by the Labour Party on June 22 1980. 

Around 25,000 people marched in the pouring rain from London's South Bank to Hyde Park.  Speakers included veteran peace campaigner Fenner Brockway,  soon to be Labour leader Michael Foot and the actor Susannah York who told the crowd,  'I refused to accept that 25,000 people here today are one fortieth of a megadeath. I am not a millionth of a megadeath. We are ourselves'.  

The image of the megadeath and mass nuclear destruction haunted the nightmares of young people like myself getting involved in this new peace movement and recurs across popular culture in this period. In its report of the demo, Socialist Challenge noted that 'One of the most striking features of the demonstration was the high proportion of young people who turned out. Groups of friends carried home-made placards calling for an end to war: "Fall in against fallout", "Education not Missiles", "Wage War on Weapons", "Germ Warfare means Nightmare".

'I won't die for Thatcher - stop cruise missiles' badge. According to Socialist Challenge (26/6/1980), 2,000 of these were sold to marchers. The badge was available from Hackney Socialist Education Group.

Socialist Challenge, 12 June 1980

Socialist Challenge front page for the demo - demanding 'Give up NATO', which was not the position of the Labour Party organisers

This is part of an ongoing series on the 1980s peace movement. See also:

The first march against nuclear missiles at Greenham Common,  September 1980

CND Reborn - the Protest and Survive demonstration in London, October 1980

Glastonbury CND Festival 1982

[I am not a particular fan of Socialist Challenge/International Marxist Group but the online archive of this paper is a good source of news on social movements in the period. If you come across other reports of this demo let me know]

New Protest Laws and Two Years of London Protests

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 is now law, bringing in new police powers summarised by Liberty as including:

Creating a ‘buffer zone’ around Parliament.

Giving police power to impose noise-based restrictions on protest.

Criminalising one-person protests.

Giving police power to impose restrictions on public assemblies.

Creating the offence of wilful obstruction of the highway.

Powers to criminalise trespass.

 No sooner has it passed than it was announced in the Queens Speech this week that one of the Government's key forthcoming priorities is to pass yet more laws against protests. 

None of this is really about police 'needing' new powers  - they have for instance had the power to arrest people for obstructing the roads for decades. As with the inhumane plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, this is a theatre of performative cruelty which aims to appease and politically mobilise that section of the population that seethes and resents those seen as 'other' and bringers of social, demographic or political change. But the Government is clearly trying to create a hostile environment for protestors after several waves of inspiring demonstrations over the past couple of years.

Here's a selection from the movements since 2020, as seen from London.

Black Lives Matter 

The police murder of George Floyd in  Minneapolis on May 25th 2020 sparked a global wave of  Black Lives Matters protests. One of the biggest in London took place on 7 June 2020 with at least 50,000 people starting out from near the American Embassy - crowd seen here heading on to Vauxhall Bridge.

Sarah Everard Protests

The murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police office in March 2021 saw the heavy handed policing of a vigil at Clapham Common (near where Sarah was kidnapped) and many local protests against rape and sexual violence, including walk outs from some schools. Picture below is of school students in Trafalgar Square in April 2021.

Kill the Bill protests

What was originally known as the Policing Bill met with a movement of opposition including riots in Bristol in April 2021 (for which 12 people are currently in prison) and protests in many other places. Pictures below are from London demo from Hyde Park, April 2021.

Kill the Bill posters (these were flyposted around Brockley, South London):

Priti Patel, useless criminal (from Brick Lane, April 2021)

Kill the Bill protest squat of former Camberwell police station, Summer 2021

Trans Rights

Small demonstration in Trafalgar Square against conversion therapy, September 2021

Refugees

'Refugees Welcome' rally in October 2021  against Government's anti-refugee bill (more photos and report here).

Extinction Rebellion

Climate emergency protests from Extinction Rebellion and related groups are an explicit target of new police powers. Why can't the Government just be left in peace to do nothing about climate change?

31 August 2021 - Extinction Rebellion blocking approach to the north end of Tower Bridge:

Police surrounding sound system

April 2022 - Extinction Rebellion week of action including here on 16 April a march from Hyde Park up Edgware Road.

Samba band leaving Hyde Park

'Nationality and Borders Bill is Racist' - yes it is, and i'ts now law

The new laws are designed to make protests more difficult but they will not drive us off the streets!

London Club Listings 1982

London club listing from Time Out, 26 February 1982. Before my London clubbing days, and I must say it doesn't sound too great though of course there were many other things going on beneath the radar and not listed here.

I mean less than a year after the Brixton riots was there really a Battersea nightspot called Riots with 'perspex dancefloor, games room and cocktail lounge with resident pianist'?

Elsewhere 'The Best Disco in Town' at the Lyceum would no doubt have been fun, broadcast weekly live on Capital Radio every Friday night with DJs including Greg Edwards.

Le Beat Route in Greek Street was 'attracting second generation New Romantics who've just discovered Kraftwerk' and iD founder Perry Haines was putting on 'Dial 9 for Dolphins' at Dial 9 near Marble Arch. A Monday night in South Kensington might find you dressing 'imaginatively' with 'the nouveaux elites' at Images at the Cromwellian, while the Barracuda Club on Baker Street was also busy.

Elsewhere 'cult' clubs included the Fantasy Attic at Samantha's in New Burlington Street (apparently 'psychedelic'. There was 'rapping' at the Language Lab at the Gargoyle Club on Dean Street, and the Fridge and WAG were mentioned, both of them key London dance music venues for most of the 1980s.

See also:

London Gay Disco 1972

NME Guide to Rock & Roll London (1978): Disco

NME Guide to Rock & Roll London (1978): Gay clubs

NME Guide to Rock & Roll London (1978): Reggae

Clubbing in London i-D listings, 1984

Clubbing in Sheffield i-D listings, 1984

Clubbing in Manchester listings, 1984

Clubbing in Luton, 1984

1987: Dancing in Brixton and beyond

The Face London Club listings, March 1989

Dancing in London in the Second World War

From 'The Dancing Times' magazine, a snapshot of social dancing in London during the Second World War by day and night.

At the Astoria on Charing Cross Road, 'Dancing twice daily' at this 'West End Dance Salon' where 'A new and beautiful floor makes Dancing a pleasure'. Music from Jack Lennox's 'The Astorians' and 'Syd Dean's Band'

Dancing Times, March 1943

At the Hammersmith Palais de Danse, dancing every day in the afternoon and again in the evening with 'two famous bands' - Lou Preager's and Harry Leader's (in 1943) with the latter replaced by Sydney Simone by 1945.

Dancing Times, March 1943


Dancing Times, April 1945 - prices have gone up!

There was also a whole culture of dance schools - for instance at Westbourne Hall in Westbourne Gorve W3 you could try your hand at Spanish classes with Elsa Brunelleschi and Scandinavian Dances with Danish dancer Madame Karina.

Dancing Times, December 1942

'Records for dancers' reviews from Dancing Times, April 1945, note reference to 'Jivists', not sure if that was a term that was widely used:

A post war issue (May 1950) and another change of font for The Dancing Times

 

Refugees are Welcome - rally in London

A good turn out in London's Parliament Square last week (Wednesday  20th October 2021) for the Refugees Welcome rally organised by Solidarity with Refugees and others. The event highlighted opposition to the Government's anti-Refugee 'Nationality and Borders Bill' making its way through Parliament.

As highlighted by Refugee Action: 'Under the bill, only refugees arriving through extraordinarily restricted “official” routes, such as refugee resettlement, will be allowed to claim protection. All others will be deemed “inadmissible” to claim asylum and the Government will seek to deport them. If they cannot be deported, they may be allowed to claim asylum in the UK but if they receive refugee status as a result they will not be given the right to settle. Instead, they will be regularly reassessed for removal, with limited rights to family reunion and benefits'.

'"nikt nie jest nielegalny" ('No one is illegal' in Polish)

'POMOC - Polish Migrants Organise for Change'/'Solidarity knows no borders'

One clause in the anti-refugee bill seems designed to give immunity to Border Force staff who could potentially cause harm or even death in their actions, such as when 'pushing back' migrants in refugees in the Channel. Schedule 4A, part A1, paragraph J1 of the bill states:  “A relevant officer is not liable in any criminal or civil proceedings for anything done in the purported performance of functions under this part of this schedule if the court is satisfied that (a) the act was done in good faith, and (b) there were reasonable grounds for doing it.”

'Afghans beyond borders'

'Social workers without borders'

Appeals to human rights and compassion cut very little ice with the Government and its supporters, paradoxically neither do economic arguments about migration and labour shortages seem to matter to the party of business. This is a theatre of cruelty in which being seen to be harsh to migrants (as well as other folk devils such as travellers and climate protestors) is deliberately performed as a means of solidifying its reactionary political base. The continuing arrival of migrants via the Channel has shown that the Brexit fantasy of cutting off island Britain from the world and returning to some imagined 1950s theme park cannot be realised - the anti-refugee bill is an expression of this rage against reality. 

Little Amal in London

There have been other positive gatherings in the last week to welcome 'Little Amal', the puppet of a young refugee that has made its way across Europe from the Turkey/Syria border.  I went down to Deptford last Friday (22/10/21) where thousands of people, including lots of excited school kids, crowded the streets for Amal's arrival in London (see report at Transpontine).

As described by the projects Artistic Director, Amir Nizar Zuabi: “It is because the attention of the world is elsewhere right now that it is more important than ever to reignite the conversation about the refugee crisis and to change the narrative around it. Yes, refugees need food and blankets, but they also need dignity and a voice. The purpose of The Walk is to highlight the potential of the refugee, not just their dire circumstances. Little Amal is 3.5 metres tall because we want the world to grow big enough to greet her. We want her to inspire us to think big and to act bigger.”

There was a festival atmosphere in Deptford High Street. Music included the South London Samba Band and 'We do Good Disco''s Campomatic giant washing machine - yes, there was dancing to Dead or Alive (by coincidence on the day before the 5th anniversary of the death of the late lamented Pete Burns).

'Disco against fascism' badge from wedogooddisco

'Migration is not a crime' says Paddington
- bag from Migration Museum stall in Deptford