Up the Youth Club - and my punk period Luton youth club memories

Emma Warren's 'Up the Youth Club: illuminating a hidden history' is an enthusiastic account of 150 years of recreational provision for young people. This has taken many forms, but she identifies a number of common themes:

'A central quality connects all the spaces in this book, whether they're attended by five young people or five hundred, in a shed or a purpose-built centre. A youth club, as far as I'm concerned, is a broadly warm and welcoming space where those who are in their second decade of life can gather regularly, in person, without compulsion, to do things they like doing, or to discover what they like doing, where restorative 'hanging out' is welcome. Some of these are officially designated, others less so. Youth clubs are places of mutual aid, not easily flipped into private profit'.

Warren doesn't shy away from the fact that many such initiatives have been motivated in various ways by attempts to influence or control young people amidst panics about 'juvenile delinquency', lack of patriotism or religion, or the physical fitness of the next generation of workers and soldiers. But she is less interested in the motives of funders and organisers than in what happens when young people are given, or sometimes take, a space of their own.

She is particularly interested in connections with music, with clubs not only hosting music events but sometimes giving access to music production equipment. Examples highlighted include the Holyhead in Coventry, attended in the 1970s by some of those later involved in the ska scene, and the Basement in Bristol in the 1990s, where Roni Size started out his DJing/music production career. Warren notes that: 

'There are significant youth work histories in UK music and culture, particularly those that relate to global majority creative expression. Think, for example, of the youth clubs across the UK that hosted reggae sound systems in the 1970s, or the widespread practice in the '80s of using the space as a practice pen for hip hop, dance, DJing or MCing. The youth club disco has been replaced by studios, adding to the discography of UK music'.

Luton youth club memories

Of course reading the book makes you reflect on your own experiences.  For me, as for many of my peers, youth clubs were important transitional spaces in those years when I wanted to get out and socialise but was mostly too young for the adult world of pubs and clubs. I started going to Biscot Youth Club in Luton when I was 14, a club linked to the adjacent Biscot Church of the Holy Trinity -an Anglican 'High Church' in the Limbury area of town, where my parents had got married.  The youth club met in the church hall, a converted stables building with the former hayloft upstairs a secluded den. At the time I was obsessed with sport, with my diary recording of that first visit 'there is snooker, table tennis and darts. Upstairs in the loft there is a room where you sit and listen to music' (there was also bar football upstairs). All this for 5p a week. 

Biscot Church Hall - with the youth club loft window upstairs

For the next few years I was a regular there on a Friday night, with my interests transitioning from games to music.  The club sometimes had discos - I recall dancing in a circle with linked arms to Jeff Beck's 'Hi Ho Silver Lining' - though the discos further afield at the St Joseph's youth club (linked to the local Catholic church) which we occasionally went to, were a bigger event.

A key feature of the Biscot club was its small upstairs loft reached by a ladder where the 'older kids' (maybe 14+) were trusted to hang out without any adults venturing in.  There was some seating and a kind of DJ booth - one turntable behind a wooden counter - where we took it in turns to play our records. This was in the punk period, and we were soon conducting a teenage cultural revolution against the slightly older teenagers with their Genesis and Barclay James Harvest records (actually they were now old enough to get served in pubs so were moving on).

On our pocket money and paper boy-girl/Saturday job income nobody could afford to amass a huge vinyl collection, but between us we covered all the bases of  the 1977-80 punk/post-punk moment . I can still remember which of my friends had which records, and the circumstances in which I bought mine. To give a few examples:

• The Saints - 'This Perfect Day' - my 14 year old diary from 14 July 1977 mentions seeing this on Top of the Pops along with The Sex Pistols 'Pretty Vacant'. The next day somebody had the 12" of this at the youth club which had an extra track (Do the Robot). I phoned round every record shop in Beds and Herts trying to find a copy but failed. But I did get the 7" - my first punk single and still one of the greatest. Never heard Do the Robot again until recently on Spotify.

• The Clash first LP - August 1977 was momentous for me,  I started reading NME and bought this, my first proper album from HMV in Luton. I can also vividly remember buying the Clash 'Complete Control' from FL Moore on the day it came out (thanks to Wikipedia I now know this was 23 Sept 1977). We went on a school trip that day to see David Lean's Great Expectations at Luton Odeon, just down the road from the independent record shop where I bought most of my punk singles. My diary records that at the youth club in February 1978, 'Gordon Charlton offered me £1 for my Clash Complete control picture sleeve'. I declined; he went on to work in A&R for Polydor I think. A friend recalls a similar experience of a school trip to see Wuthering Heights at same cinema and sneaking off to buy Squeeze 'Cool for Cats' on pink vinyl.

• Coloured vinyl was a big deal. I remember another friend bringing 'Crossing the Red Sea with The Adverts' to club, 12" of red plastic and singing of 'Bored Teenagers...watching the planes burn up through the night like meteorites'. Well we weren't far from Luton Airport.

• The Stranglers - Black and White LP - there was an annual trip to St Marys church, Meppershall, in the north Beds countryside where we camped in the grounds and went on long walks. One of our number turned up late having just bought this freshly released album (in May 1978). Nice'n'Sleazy on the vicarage record player.

• Bauhaus - Bela Lugosi's Dead - the younger brother of one of my friends thought this was called 'Bela the Goose is dead' and painted this on a t-shirt complete with said goose.

• Joy Division 'Transmission' - I got this from Matrix, a short lived (1979-81) shop in John Street behind Luton Arndale Centre run by Luton punk band UK Decay and associates. The band had a rehearsal space in the basement which 'once housed a memorable after tour party with The Dead Kennedys. During the proceedings Jello Biafra from the ‘DK’s and the UK DK’s, ran amok amidst the Arndale car parks where Jello graffiti-ed his name over the place' (the tour was in 1980). I'd seen UK Decay by then, and we played 'California Uber Alles' at the youth club, but I didn't know the Dead Kennedys had been in town (albeit not to actually play a gig) until years later.

Although quite a few of us did go to the church for a while, there was no religious content to the club as such and the only vaguely religious music I remember was the time we went to sleep over in a disused church in Chellington, north Beds, where the only music on hand was a copy of the Jesus Christ Superstar album! 

(A few years ago after reminiscing online with some friends I made a playlist of some of the records played at the club - check it out on Spotify).

All of this is a long way of saying that the youth club was a major formative influence on the music taste of me and my friends, where we educated and enthused each other by pooling our records on a Friday night. It wasn't just the sounds we were picking up on but politics and attitude. It was quite a momentous time in music with the punk and post-punk explosion and for those of us slightly too young to fully participate in gigs and drinking, youth clubs were a place where in our own more limited way we could collectively participate in the culture.

Walking back from the club we would often head to the chip shop in Birdsfoot Lane, but before too long we were getting served as underage drinkers in the Biscot Mill pub and other hostelries. What started out as a drink on the way back from the club soon gradually became the main event, as (still underage) drinking in Luton town centre began to supplant the youth club at pubs including the Vic, the Vine and the Richard III. I moved on from the church too as I got more involved in radical politics, before I was old enough to legally drink I had helped set up a local branch of CND, joined Anti-Nazi League protests and become vice-chair of the local Labour Party Young Socialists, though I didn't stay there long.

I think the the church played a role in my politicisation. The vicar, Reverend Eric West, ran a short course he called 'Charlie Brown's Three Steps to World Revolution', based around readings from New Internationalist magazine and some liberation theology-lite, most notably 'Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger' by Ron Sider. Me and my mum both went along. The basic idea was that food shortages were caused by the unequal global economy, not any kind of natural scarcity.  On another occasion,  I think following an Easter pilgrimage walk, one of us gave a reading in St Albans Abbey of that great prayer, 'A worker reads history' by Bertolt Brecht! All good stuff, though in one of the familiar contradictions of much Anglo-Catholic leftism the vicar was an adamant opponent of the ordination of women. Perhaps it was from those tracks listened to and discussed upstairs in the youth club that I imbibed a more hard hitting critique and call to action.  

See previously:  

Out to the Dancers - Emma Warren and Femi Koleoso 

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

Luton Jazz Boom (1958-63)

My mum mentioned to me recently that she went to a jazz club in Luton at the TUC Hall in Church Street around 1960, which got me searching the archive. Its seems that the town, like many other parts of the country, experienced a jazz boom in the late 1950s with several weekly clubs running.

In 1958 the New Orleans Jazz Club was running a Sunday night 'Jazz at the Dome' at the Cresta Dome Ballroom in Alma Street, while the New Luton Jazz Club was happening every Thursday at the TUC Hall.

 

Over the course of that year some of the big names on the trad jazz circuit played in Luton, including Mick Mulligan, George Melly and Acker Bilk at the New Luton Jazz Club, and Cy Laurie. The latter's gig at the Cresta was promoted by the Delta Jazz Club - not sure if this was the New Orleans Jazz Club renamed  or a different faction in the fractious jazz scene of the time. There was a promise of 'non-stop jiving'.

There were local bands too including the Leaside Seven (sometime Leaside Six), the Wayfarers and Savannah City. 

The Luton News reported in April 1958 that 1,730 people had attended three Luton jazz sessions in one week - 380 to a Cy Laurie gig, 450 at the New Luton Jazz Club (with Bruce Turner and Teddy Layton) and 900 'to listen and dance' to Ted Heath's big band at the Cresta Ballroom.

This was a time of the split in the jazz scene between 'mod' and 'trad' jazz fans, with the modernists catered for by the Luton Modern Jazz Club at the Connaught Rooms. Rather snottily they promised 'no skiffle', unlike the New Luton Jazz Club which did feature the likes of the  'Midland City Vampires Skiffle Group' and 'Highfliers Skiffle Group' alongside jazz performances.

The serious minded could even attend jazz record recitals and talks at Farmers Record shop, featuring jazz writers including Alun Morgan and Sinclair Traill.

If 1958 was the peak, by 1962 it was being noted that  'the popularity boom of traditional jazz is settling down. A smaller crowd that than the peak audience of a year ago gathers at the [New Luton Jazz] club'. A club spokesperson bemoaned  'Audiences are falling away all over the country, but these are only the people who were never really keen on jazz, dropping away now that the Twist is the rage' (Luton News, 20 December 1962).

In April of the following year the Luton News reported that 'Trad died in Luton last week, on the closure of the six year old New Luton Jazz Club', the 'only jazz haunt left in Luton'. Promoters 'Tony Lovell and Ray Elliot can take heart in the fact that they lasted longer than many other clubs'. Blame was attributed to fire safety regulations that had restricted numbers, but the fact is that jazz was waning as the popular dance music of choice for young people. Later that year The Beatles played in Luton at the start of a new pop era, while in 1965 the Tamla Motown review hit town.

(title 'Luton Trad is Dead now, Dad' refers to a 1962 film 'It's Trad, Dad!')

See also

'Are you a trad or a mod?' (1958)

More Luton stuff:

Luton Street Press - mid-70s radical zine

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

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

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)

Happy Christmas from Radical Luton 1975

From 'Luton Street Press' (December 1975), an alternative take on the 12 days of Christmas:

 the 12th day of Christmas  we wish that we could see

12 nurseries playing

11 troops deserting

10 streets for squatting

9 lanes for cycling

8 food co-ops sharing

7 adventure playgrounds growing

6 workers' factories

5 free schools

4 fare-less buses

3 veggie caffs

2 street theatres

and a free pardon for Ronnie Lee'

'Luton Street Press' was published by people around Partisan Books, a mid-1970s radical bookshop at 34 Dallow Road, Luton. The list reflects things that those involved were actually trying to make happen - they set up a food co-op, claimants union, a Dallow Hills Adventure Playground, and organised childcare through their Luton Women's Action Group and Luton Men Against Sexism. 

Ronnie Lee was one of  14 peace activists acquitted of charges in 1975 under the Incitement to Disaffection Act 1934  for distributing leaflets produced by the British Withdrawal from Northern Ireland Campaign (BWNIC) encouraging soldiers not to serve in the army there. Lee had been involved in the Luton bookshop, and indeed lived upstairs there for a while, but at this point was in prison for taking parts in an an animal rights raid on  Oxford Laboratory Animal Colonies in Bicester. Upon release he set up the Animal Liberation Front.

Listings from Luton Street Press, December 1975. These include jam sessions at Farley Hill community centre organised by Refleks, who were involved in setting up the 33 Arts Centre in the town. Anybody recongise the bands? I believe 'English Assassins' included Ian Gibbons who was in later line ups of the Kinks.

(I have written about Partisan Books in Luton here before. I recently met up with Brian Douieb and Liz Davies - aka Liz Durkin-  who set up the bookshop and they told me some more stories as well as sharing some great printed materials from the time, so will be writing up some more about this. They have the first three copies of Luton Street Press, does anybody know if there were any more?)

More Luton stuff:

Marsh House Luton - from punk to henge

Luton Jazz Clubs 1958-63

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

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

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)

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

Luton Street Press 1975 - a radical paper

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)

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)

Partisan Books: a 1970s radical community bookshop in Luton

Continuing the series on the radical history of Luton, here's a bit about a 1970s radical bookshop, Partisan Books which was based at 34 Dallow Road from 1974-76.

The bookshop announced its presence in socialist and anarchist publications in June 1974,  with notices in Freedom, Peace News and Socialist Worker:

Freedom 26 June 1974

Socialist Worker 8 June 1974

Key figures in the bookshop included radical social workers Brian Douieb and Liz Curtis (aka Liz Durkin) who had previously been involved in setting up the Mental Patients Union (a Luton branch of this was listed at the Luton bookshop in Peace News, 5/7/1974).  The bookshop was linked to a wider 1970s radical culture of 'community activism including creches, squatting, community wholefoods, vegetarianism, legal and welfare rights and community newspapers':

Source: Nora Duckett and Helen Spandel,  Radically seeking social justice for children and survivors of abuse, Critical and Radical Social Work, 2018

One of the groups that operated from the bookshop was Luton Women's Action Group. Some of their material has been deposited in Bedfordshire Archives who have written this summary of the group:

'The Luton Women's Action Group held their first meeting in June 1974. At that time the partner of Liz Durkin (now Dr Liz Davies), one of the group's founder members, ran a non-profit political bookshop, Partisan Books, in Dallow Road. This book shop became the centre for lots of groups, including the Women's Action Group and the Luton Street Press.

The Women's Action Group had about 8 women at the core and others that came and went over time. The group was very inclusive and as well as women they had male supporters, including Andrew Tyndall of the Luton News who wrote a number of pieces relating to their campaigns.

The group campaigned for various women's rights and also for nurseries and an adventure playground for children. They believed in direct action and took action, for example, against advertisements that they found offensive. Other activities included writing anti-sexist stories for children and running a women's study course at Luton College. Members of the group attended national conferences and meetings.

'In 1976 Liz and her husband moved back to London and the shop in Dallow Road closed. Some of the group's activities carried on for a little while after this and some of the members continued to be active in campaigning for women's rights but the group had ceased to be active by about 1977. The two former members who were responsible for depositing material with Bedfordshire Archives remember being part of the organisation as very exciting and energising. Although the group was only active for a relatively short period it was an important period for the women's liberation movement'.

Partisan Books published a series of non-sexist children's stories including 'Project Baby', 'Doughnuts' and 'Linda and the Food Co-op'

Source: Libertarian Struggle, July/August 1975

Peace News, 16 May 1975

A 1975 jumble sale for Partisan Community Bookshop

I was intrigued to see mention of a 'Luton Street Press', so assume there was actually a Luton radical news sheet similar to Bristol Free Press, Hackney Gutter Press and others of the era, for a while at least. Please get in touch if you have any copies. There's a listing for it in the 'International directory of little magazines and small presses' (1976)  

Also around this scene was Ronnie Lee, founder of  the Animal Liberation Front and its predecessor the Band of Mercy.  Lee was living in Luton's Ashburnham Road at the time and active in Luton Hunt Saboteurs  as well other radical movements - he was one of 14 peace activists arrested in 1975 for distributing leaflets produced by the British Withdrawal from Northern Ireland Campaign (BWNIC)  encouraging soldiers not to serve in Northern Ireland.

When Lee was jailed in 1975 for a raid on a vivisection laboratory, the bookshop hosted campaign meetings in his support. Released from prison the following year, Lea moved into a squat in north London with Liz Davies and Brian Douieb and helped open a new bookshop in Archway:

Source: Jon Hochschartner (2017), The Animals' Freedom Fighter: a biography of Ronnie Lee .

This new Partisan Books was on Archway Road, and I assume that the Luton one closed around the same time.

Undercurrents, June/July 1976

Both Davies and Douieb went on to careers in critical social work, the former a leading writer and campaigner against child abuse including whistleblowing on abuse in Islington children's homes. 

This 1987 Luton News report of Ronnie Lee being jailed for ten years in relation to ALF activities mentions the earlier Luton campaign in his support in 1975 with meetings 'at a bookshop in Dallow Road and at the Recreation Centre in Old Bedford Road' as well as 'youngsters in the Dallow Road area' planning a sponsored swim to raise funds.

(as an aside there's an interesting 2023 interview with Lee at DIY conspiracy where he talks about being in an animal liberation punk band Total Assault and about the influence of the Situationists and the Angry Brigade on him. He also recalls being in an ALF group who would play The Flamin Groovies 'Shake Some Action' before going on a raid)

[I had never heard of the bookshop until recently despite growing up in Luton and getting involved in politics only 5 years later. Would love to know more, please comment/get in touch if you have any memories or documents]

Other Luton writings:

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

Blinded by the Light - memories of racism and job cuts in 1980s Luton (including the Luton Youth Movement)

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

The Hunger Strike, the Irish War and an English Town

Karma Sutra, Luton anarcho-punk and hunt sabbing

Clubbing in Luton 1984

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)

Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent and youthful montage adventures

Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent at the Whitechapel Gallery is a retrospective of 50 years of radical image making. 

'attempt to express that outrage by ripping through the mask, by cutting, tearing, montaging and juxtaposing imagery we are bombarded with daily. It shows what lies behind the mask' the victims, the resistance, the human communality saying no to corporate and state power'

His work was very much the most striking visual imagery of the radical left in Britain when I was first getting involved in politics as a teenager in the 1980s, including designing posters for some of the first big demonstrations I went on for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (such as the 1980 protest and survive demo)

If much of the exhibition content was familiar to me, seeing it in a new context made me look at it afresh. For instance some works were projected onto pages of the Financial Times.

'blast open the continuum of history] - illustration for Guardian article on Walter Benjamin, 1990

Radical Photomontage

I've no doubt that it was through discussion of Kennard's work in the left press at this period that I first came across John Heartfield who of course was a big influence on him.

The juxtaposition of images and newspaper clippings was also a feature of punk/post punk sleeve design, such as The Pop Group's 'How much longer do we tolerate mass murder?' (1980)

Possibly my first print political intervention at this time (1980) was sticking up crude photocopied montages around my school (Luton Sixth Form) - 'The Propaganda of Real Life' - with me and my friend Robert F. Not sure how many people read them, but it acted like putting a spell out in the world to find like minded people. Off the back of this somebody invited us to a meeting in Sundon Park where a group of us teenagers set up Luton Peace Campaign, soon to become the Luton branch of the reborn CND. 

I am sure many other people were similarly inspired by Kennard, Heartfield and the DIY possibilities of photomontage at this time. Hopefully the Whitechapel exhibition will inspire some even now to pick up scissors and glue.

Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent at the Whitechapel Gallery, 23 July 2024- 19 January 2025 (admission free)