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 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 Lizz Durkin) who had previously been involved in setting up the Mental Patients Union. The bookshop was linked to a wider 1970s radical culture of 'community activisit, 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'
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)
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]
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)
The Beat the Blues Festival was a one day event at the Alexandra Palace in north London on 15 June 1980, held to mark the 50th birthday of the Morning Star - the daily paper associated with the Communist Party of Great Britain (technically the Morning Star had only been so named since 1966 but its predecessor, The Daily Worker, was founded in 1930).
I was still at school at Luton Sixth Form and went down to London on a coach which I presume was put on by the local branch of the Young Communist League. I had been to a couple of their meetings and done some fly posting against cruise missiles with them in the underpass near their Crawley Green Road HQ in Luton though I never joined up. They only had a handful of active members in the town but they pulled more of a crowd down to the Ally Pally on account of the fantastic line up.
Looking now I can see that I could have checked out folk acts including Dick Gaughan and Leon Rosselson not to mention jazz from Humphrey Littleton and others, and even 'fire defying motorcycle stuntmen'. But for me at the time it was all about the great post punk line up featuring some of the best acts of that time - The Au Pairs, Raincoats, The Slits, The Pop Group, Essential Logic and John Cooper Clarke. It blew me away, The Slits and The Pop Group in particular had an amazing funky energy- drummer Bruce Smith played with both bands that day, while The Pop Group played with two bassists! I was lucky enough to see the Raincoats, the Au Pairs and The Pop Group again in that period, as well as other great post punk heavyweights including The Gang of Four and Delta 5 but for me this day will always stand out as the pinnacle of that scene and one of the musical highlights of my life. Somebody else who was there recallled: 'I'd just turned 15, Metal Box had just come out and was playing over the PA between bands at this outdoor festival- I guess this was the post-punk Woodstock for me!'. All of this for £2.50. The only thing that could have improved it for me would have been if Scritti Politti had played too, sadly not though I remember standing behind their drummer Tom Morley in the crowd.
A ticket for the day signed by John Cooper Clarke (from ivaninblack)
The politics of it were a little contradictory, the CPGB was generally quite staid and sympathetic to the regimes of Eastern Europe where autonomous music scenes were often the target of state repression. In his NME review of the gig, Graham Lock mentions Czechoslovakia 'where musicians from the bands DG307 and The Plastic People of the Universe have been jailed for playing rock'n'roll without a state licence'. While the cream of innovative English bands played on the stage elsewhere there was an 'International City' - 'about ten tents filled with travel brochures for Eastern Europe'. I think there were also brass bands from that part of the world, and lots of stalls indoors from various left groups.
The Pop Group, with their more independent radical left perspective called these contradictions out on the day, 'dedicating 'Forces of Oppression' to "all the Stalinists in the audience" and "For How Much Longer do we Tolerate Mass Murder' to Leonid Brezhnev' (Lock). In fact I recall a thrilling moment when Mark Stewart smashed up a portrait of then Soviet leader Brezhnev on the stage.
Lock describes the festival, or at least the main stage music as 'the result of a tentative alliance between Rough Trade - freewheeling, anti-biz collectivists [...] and the Morning Star'. Elsewhere Dick O'Dell - who I think managed The Slits and The Pop Group at the time, as well as founding Y records which released their stuff - has said that he organised it with Shirley O’Loughlin, manager of The Raincoats and who worked at Rough Trade setting up their booking agency.
There were many iconic photos taken that day, perhaps most famously David Corio's picture of The Slits' Viv Albertine;
The gig was reviewed in issue number 6 of Vague zine:
'June 15 Morning Star 50th anniversary festival at Alexandra Palace, featuring the Slits, the Pop Group, the Raincoats, Essential Logic, the Au-Pairs and John Cooper-Clarke: Alexandra Palace is full of communist propaganda. The punters are a mixture of Rastas, biker types, punks and old age pensioners. I spent 4 hours walking round the stalls, which was fairly interesting because there were stalls selling souvenirs from Russia, Greece, etc. I won’t go into details though because even the Pop Group aren’t into politics like this. Whether left or right it amounts to the same thing, an authoritarian state that subjugates the weak, poor and minorities...
Anyway most people came to hear the music and this particular music says a lot more than we ever could. The gig was behind the palace and started at 3pm. The Au-pairs came on first and did a very exciting set which got some of the crowd going. The Raincoats came on next and all the crowd were dancing and being friendly with each other. Half way through their set an announcement was made: “Somebody got bottled. So if you want this gig to go on, report anyone who looks as if they might get violent.” Big Brother is watching you. Where have you heard remarks like that before? Even this didn’t do it, after that announcement 2 more people got bottled. John Cooper-Clarke was on next, minus musicians, which I think is much better, because that guy has so much stage presence…
The Pop Group were on next and Mark came on stage with a picture of Brezhnev, shouted “We don’t want communism!” and stamped on the picture. They did all the stuff off the second album which got the crowd shouting and Gareth was doing some brilliant disco-dancing… Apparently the Pop Group stole the show and Iggy didn’t have much (anything?) to say about the Slits, which is a shame, but this is the Pop Group’s piece, feeble as it is. The Pop Group have a highly original style of their own, if you didn’t like them at Ally Pally give them a second chance, they deserve it. They also deserve a better article than this. Their lyrics make Crass seem like failed Cockney Rejects (they are aren’t they?) and their funky dance beat is better than the Crusaders. Sorry we couldn’t do them more justice'.
It was also reviewed in the NME (21 June 1980) by Gavin Lock:
There is some good footage of The Pop Group on the day shot by Don Letts on the stage. If you look carefully you can see a cricket match going on in the background elsewhere in the park.
He also captured The Slits, great clip here of them doing 'Man Next Door' on the day with the young Nenah Cherry on the stage with them (in red beret). I think you can see members of other bands standing around on the edge of stage watching them, including Gina from The Raincoats and maybe Jeannette Lee of Public Image Ltd and later Rough Trade.
The Ally Pally itself was seriously damaged by fire just a month later which broke out during a Capital Radio Jazz Festival there, resulting in it being closed for a number of years.
(I used to have a poster for this event on my teenage bedroom wall, can't find that particular image online, anybody have a copy?)
An advert for Beat the Blues festival from The Leveller magazine, May 1980. At that point looks like only John Cooper Clarke was confirmed of the post-punk acts, the advert highlighting jazz and folk artists as well as mentioning Kent miners brass band and Bulgarian puppet theatre. On the same page of magazine an ad for Gang of Four single and for the great Compendium Bookshop in Camden.
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.
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