Short Hot Summer 1981: Moss Side

The third in a series of posts on the summer riots of 1981.

The fighting in Toxteth died down on Monday, but the following day the torch (more or less literally) was passed from Liverpool to Manchester.

On that Tuesday night (7th July), or technically in the early hours of the next morning, 'after Moss Side's Nile Club closed a crowd of mainly black men spilled out on the street. A brick was thrown at a shop window and the trouble spread as other shops were attacked with petrol bombs'. Things calmed down after an hour or so, but just until the next day.

On the Wednesday, ‘Manchester and Salford were struck by severe and widespread riots... More than 1,000 youths stormed Moss Side police station, causing severe damage before being driven back… vehicles [were] overtuned, fires started and shops destroyed and looted…. Many petrol bombs were thrown… Three policemen, including an inspector injured by a bolt from a crossbow, were casualties’ (The Times, 9 July 1981).




The next night (Thursday), the police mounted a massive operation to clear the streets. That night, Manchester police were the first in Britain to deploy crash helmet-style riot headwear and to adapt the Northern Ireland tactic of using vehicles to break up crowds '54 vans swept through Moss Side charging at crowds with their back doors hanging open' (Uprising!: the police, the people and the riots in Britain's cities - Martin Kettle and Lucy Hodges, Pan Books, 1982)

The official Hytner report into the riot reported 'that many of the policeman in Moss Side in vehicles... were actively spoiling for trouble with young blacks. There was evidence of police vans toruing the area with officers leaning out of the back shouting racial insults at black youths and taunting them to come and fight'. Many people were beaten up by police, some of whom (according to the Guardian) were beating their truncheons on their vans and chanting 'Nigger, nigger, nigger - oi, oi, oi' (quoted in Kettle and Hodges).

Clashes continued for a couple more nights - after five days there had been 241 arrests (the majority white, unemployed and aged 17 to 24, though 48 were under 17). 22 police cars had been damaged.

Manchester Street Art

All pictures taken last month, mostly around the 'Northern Quarter' area of Manchester.

Dance on 'benefits scrounger'

Predictably, the new UK ConDem government has announced the launch of a new crackdown on benefits claimants, including using private credit checking companies to snoop on the financial affairs of the sick and unemployed. Yes that's right, after pouring billions of pounds into propping up failing banks the state is going after the poorest people in the country to make them pay for it.

BBC News, the Daily Mail and others have been obediently highlighting the following clip as an example of 'benefits scrounging' - film of a man dancing whilst claiming Disability Living Allowance. Personally I think the guy's a bit of a hero, as well as a sharp dancer. Like most people bending the benefit rules to their advantage, he was just trying to get by - getting a few quid extra, but hardly getting rich at anybody else's expense.

As the court report makes clear (see below), he spent years virtually crippled with arthritis before an operation finally enabled him to have an active life, an opportunity he grasped by taking up dancing. He has spread his enthusiasm to care homes. In short he seems to have led a far more socially useful life than many other people who have got rich at other people's expense - and who don't get prosecuted or publicly denounced as a 'scrounger'. Dance on dude!



'Dancer spared jail over benefits fraud (Independent 4 August 2010)

A 61-year-old jazz dancer who fraudulently claimed nearly £20,000 in disability benefits walked free from court today. Terence Read said he was crippled by arthritis and barely able to walk but his condition improved following a hip replacement operation.

He failed to notify the change in his circumstances to the Department for Work and Pensions and officials later covertly filmed him dancing enthusiastically at a swing music night after receiving an anonymous tip-off that he was wrongly claiming Disability Living Allowance. Read, of Blackley, Manchester, was caught on camera gliding across the dancefloor and spinning his dance partner around while being cheered on by crowds of onlookers at an event in his home city.

Sentencing Read at Manchester Crown Court, Judge Rudland told him that in his case public interest was not served by imposing a custodial sentence. He was given a 12-month community order and ordered to complete 120 hours of unpaid work.

The court heard that Read had legitimately claimed for benefits for 10 years from March 1995. He suffered arthritis from the age of 25 and in the early 1990s he was virtually housebound. However, the operation on his left leg provided "instant relief" and proved such a success he was able to take an interest in his new hobby. He illegally continued to claim Disability Living Allowance between June 2005 and December 2008 to the tune of £19,915.

Judge Rudland told him: "You learned to live frugally and contentedly, going out rarely, until the dancing came into your life, which seemed to transform your joie de vivre. There is absolutely no suggestion you are a shirker who has avoided work. It is agreed that the sad fact is you were afflicted by arthritis from as young an age as 25 when most people are enjoying life with an abundance of vigour. In your mid to late 40s you were assessed as being eligible for the appropriate benefits. A time came when you undertook a hip replacement operation which had a significant impact on your mobility. Your life opened up because of the dancing and interest in the swing music of the '40s, which has a considerable following, and you became an accomplished performer on public display. I suspect over time the claim being made went to the back of your mind and it was something you took for granted. Your case was genuine at the start and then drifted into dishonesty. It is not in the public interest that you should be deprived of your liberty. You are doing good work by taking the activity (swing music) into care homes, that brings some pleasure and therapy into lives as a result of the commitment you make in that way."

...David James, defending, said his client is still affected by arthritis and before the operation had essentially been unable to move his left leg. He said the dance evenings were not a weekly event and Read went through the pain barrier as he suffered discomfort in the following days. "He is a proud man who has been humbled by his fallibility," he said. "His past was not a life, it was more of an existence"'.

Ian Curtis (1956-1980)

Thirty years ago this week... Ian Curtis, 15 July 1956 – 18 May 1980. An industry of Manchester retro-mania and Killers cover versions still can't numb how radical Joy Division sound even today. Here's the famous 1978 first TV appearance, introduced by Tony Wilson.

'To the centre of the city, where all roads meet, waiting for you'

(Shadowplay)

Dancing Questionnaire (20): Smith3000, Expletive Undeleted

Next up on the Dancing Questionnaire, is Smith3000 of Expletive Undeleted blog and much more besides - 'did fanzines as a kid, promoted bands like the Membranes and Bogshed in Scunthorpe, first DJed in Darlington in 1984, moved to Leeds, was a founder member of techno collective Microdot, DJed on Leeds pirate Dream FM for five years, freelanced for NME, Mixmag and iD, started after-hours Ministry of Shite parties, moved to Manchester. Now write a blog and occassionally DJ at our 'early doors easy listening and bossa nova' do Easy Tiger with the lovely Jeanie'.

1. Can you remember your first experience of dancing?

My parents used to buy a bit of chart music and I remember us all doing some awful synchronised hands-on-hips dance to Mud’s Tiger Feet in the front room, over and over and over again. Wikipedia tells me this would have been 1974, so I will have been nine. I got a rush.

2. What's the most interesting/significant thing that has happened to you while out dancing?

I met my girlfriend when I was DJing early doors in a bar in Manchester a few years ago and persuaded her to stay out later than she planned so we could go to a club where a mate was playing. It was on the dancefloor there that I began to really understand exactly how fantastic she was. We’re still together.

3. You. Dancing. The best of times…

A lot of is to do with women and drink and drugs. If I’m dancing, I’m probably in a pretty contented state of mind anyway. But I have two happy moments that immediately spring to mind: Glastonbury’s experimental music field, sometime in the early 90s. Underworld played through Pink Floyd’s quadraphonic soundsystem for like 12 hours or something and me and my then girlfriend were tripping and dancing and acting daft pretty much the whole time.

One new year’s eve at the Band on the Wall in Manchester, at a gig by A Certain Ratio and Fila Brazillia, drunk but completely synchronised with an equally drunk then girlfriend. We tripped the light fantastic. It felt like a scene from a musical. And I also have very happy memories of making shapes at a birthday party for Bob Marley in Jamaica, at Bora Bora on the Playa den Bossa in Ibiza, on a podium at la Terrazza in Barcelona, the Mardi Gras in Kings Cross in Sydney and at Robodisco at Planet K in Manchester. When it got to 6am and the light started to come in through the glass roof during Back to Basics residency at the Pleasure Rooms always felt very special. Maybe it was just the drugs. And the night that I met my lady, of course. I could go on all night here.

Back to Basics, Leeds - detourning Jamie Reid's God Save the Queen détournement

4. You. Dancing. The worst of times...
I had a bit of a funny turn at the Big Chill a few years ago where I inadvertently did too much MDMA and got some intense visual hallucinations (every surface of everything had like a layer of cling film hovering about a centimetre above it) which was kind of okay - but eventually I became utterly disorientated and incoherent and would have been up shit creek if I’d not had a mate with me. I also ending up puking so hard I did something to my diaphragm (which hurt for weeks afterwards). I had to go for a lie down.

5. Can you give a quick tour of the different dancing scenes/times/places you've frequented?
I always used to dance at punk and indie gigs but as far as clubbing goes, I went to places like the Limit and the Top Rank in Sheffield, Spiders in Hull and the Ad-Lib in Nottingham.The club where I was first a regular was the Baths Hall in Scunthorpe in the early Eighties, where they stuck a dancefloor over the pool in winter and Steve Bird used to play punk, indie, alternative stuff and a little bit of reggae. Big tunes (for me at least) were stuff like Puppet Life by Punilux, Where Were You by the Mekons, Walls of Jericho and Nag Nag Nag by the Cabs, Follow The Leaders by Killing Joke and anything by the Stranglers. It was fucking brilliant. John Peel always used to say that the Baths was his favourite gig. We believed him.

I lived in Leeds during the late Eighties / Nineties and haunted places like the Well Funked Society at the Phono, Dig at the Gallery, Joy at the Warehouse, Kaos at Ricky’s, the Dream all-nighters at the Trades in Leeds, Back to Basics at the Music Factory, and Hard Times in Huddersfield, plus odd dances at the West Indian Centre and blues like Les’s and 45s in Chapletown.

In Manchester, Mr Scruff’s Keep it Unreal things is always good, as was the Robodisco and Electrik Chair and anything that Chris Jam or Rob Bright are DJing at.

6. When and where did you last dance?
When Weatherall did the one-deck wonder thing at Electrik bar the other week.

7. You're on your death bed. What piece of music would make your leap up for one final dance?
If I’ve got the energy, Le Freak by Chic. If not, Sweet Love by Anita Baker for one last erection section, propped up by my long-suffering missus.

All questionnaires welcome - just answer the same questions in as much or as little detail as you like and send to transpontine@btinternet.com (see previous questionnaires).

Rivington Castle Free Party

From This is Lancashire, 14 September 2009:

'A massive rave in a quiet beauty spot was broken up by police officers after it attracted hundreds of youngsters through the internet. More than 400 people attended the illegal, open-air rave at Rivington, near Horwich, in the early hours of yesterday. Officers were first alerted to the gathering at Liverpool Castle, at Rivington Reservoir, shortly after midnight, following complaints from residents living more than half a mile away that music could be heard.
A number of vans with industrial speakers inside were being used to pump out loud music at the castle until 7am.

More than 40 police were sent to disperse the crowds, thought to be youngsters in their late teens to early 20s, and the officers remained at the scene until about 9am.

...Insp Kevin Otter, of Lancashire Police, said it was the first event of its kind in the area that they had been called to deal with. He said... “This is a highly-unusual incident for the area, they happen more in the south of England. We did have one about 18 months ago, near Rawtenstall, but there were only about 50 people. He added: “Although this was obviously a very well organised event, it was an illegal gathering and those who attended were trespassing.”

The event was described on the Facebook site as “the first but hopefully never the last rave that was at Rivington Lower Castle”. Last night, a member of the group posted on the internet: “Really enjoyed the music, people raving dancing, juggling fire, everybody was shaking hands even though we didn’t know each other. People came from all over Manchester, Bolton, Horwich, Lancashire and Yorkshire.”

Some footage follows from Conan2472 at youtube where comments included: 'we got there before the coppers had blocked the road off, if it weren't for that helicopter we wouldn't have found it. heard loads about people duckin thru bushes swamps..walls, barbed wire ahaha. worth it tho!' Apparently Manchester's Daylite Robbery Sound System were involved

In the forest

A hot bank holiday weekend, no doubt with lots of partying. 4000 people attended a free party on farmland near Warminster in Wiltshire last Saturday night, one of the bigger parties in recent years.

Here's some footage from earlier in the year of a free party in the woods at Worsley (outside Manchester) in April 2009, held in an abandoned military Bunker apparently there were '5 rigs, thousands of people came it was absolutely mental went on until 8 on the sunday evening'. Looks pretty intense - lots more photos of it here.



The party was put on by North West England free party crew GASH collective, who declare:

'There are many Myths & Legends surrounding the first GASH Party. We were all fed up with the dire state of the Manchester/Bolton Scene, and the domineering presence of commercial clubs and music venues. We decided to do something about it.

Starting off with small squat parties and gigs, we have grown from strength to strength and have since put on some of the biggest music events this area has ever seen. The idea has always been to ignite a spark... to get other people involved with creating our own scene, instead of complaining about the state of the current one.

GASH has never been about one style of music... The People involved have diverse tastes, ranging from Punk, Ska and Reggae, to Rock, Metal and HC, To Drum n Bass, Techno and Trance. We just want to get pissed and have fun in relaxed and autonomous environments filled with like minded people.

We have put on touring bands from all over the world. We have taken our Sound System On tour. We have collaborated with other collectives to bring some of the most diverse parties we have ever seen. We have taken over Abandoned buildings, Open woodland, a myriad of Pubs and Clubs to bring something very special... A genuinely good time. Parties teetering on the edge of chaos, held together by a common consensus to look out for each other and work together to create something beautiful. We are not done having fun yet.. This is just the beginning. Get involved... We are GASH - You are Invited...'

More Silent Raves

Earlier this month, police staged an operation to prevent a silent rave at Glasgow's central station. Elsewhere people did manage to put on similar events - 100 people danced at Chorlton Green (Manchester), apparently to celebrate somebody's birthday. In Milton Keynes, up to 400 people partied in the main shopping centre (see below):



Not so silent in Milton Keynes was a party in a Church Hall. The 18 year old organiser received a police caution for fraud after booking the hall for a family '50th birthday party' and then inviting hundreds of people via Facebook who apparently left the 'area strewn with broken glass, cans, beer bottles and glow sticks'.

All you judges beware

I wasn't sure about going to see Grant Gee and Jon Savage's new Joy Division documentary so soon after weeping my way through Control. Joy Division had a massive impact on me as a teenager and I worry about the mystery being obscured in over-documentation of what was a very short episode. But since my partner won two tickets for the screening at the Brixton Ritzy I could hardly refuse to go, and I am glad I did.

I thought it nicely complemented Anton Corbijn's fictional treatment. The latter evoked the period very well, but as a movie inevitably it raised the story to the dimension of the mythic and universal. The documentary on the other hand is very much rooted in the specifics of time and place, with lots of grainy footage of Manchester and Joy Division gigs and a tour of the sites of lost landmarks in their story - the Electric Palace, Rafters, Pips and other nightclubs. There is mention of Manchester's notoriously right-wing police chief, James Anderton, and super 8 footage of the racks in a left-wing bookshop stocked with magazines like Peace News and World Revolution.

Nice to see the late Anthony Wilson in what must have been one of his last interviews, although part of me thinks that there is danger - typified by his comments - of inscribing Joy Division too tightly within a narrative about the transformation of Manchester. Joy Division's beauty was their defiance of the mundane. As was mentioned in the film their songs opened up windows into other worlds for those looking for them - whether it was referencing J.G. Ballard (Atrocity Exhibition), Kafka (Colony), or Williams Burroughs (Interzone). There's a funny story in the film about Ian Curtis's encounter with Burroughs at a gig in Belgium. Others who wrote about Joy Division, like Paul Morely and Jon Savage, were also inspired and inspiring - even if the latter's quote from Raoul Vaneigem in his 1979 Melody Maker review was later to take on a macabre resonance: 'To talk of life today is like talking of rope in the house of a hanged man'.

Several people in the film talk of Ian Curtis in terms of possession, as if he was channelling some kind of energy. Most memorably, Genesis P. Orridge, talks of him switched on by electricity like some 'tranced out symbol for a human being'. Curtis himself seems to have been interested in such notions, and the film features a recording of him undergoing some amateur 'past life regression' hypnotherapy with Bernard Sumner.

All this and an opening quote from Marshall Berman's All That is Solid Melts into Air: "To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world - and at the same time threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are" .

Clubbing in Manchester 1984

From i-D magazine, no.21. December 1984/January 1985, Manchester listings by Wiganovski:

Berlin, King Street: Ballroom Blitz every thursday, adm.75p for members. 15 years of glitter from Bolan to Bauhaus, all drinks 60p till 10.30. Friday House Of Noise, the ultimate dimension in terror! Subversive and underground classics from the last decade.

Cloud-Nine, 15 Cross St: Sats, Alternative party night, Alan Maskell & Dave Booth DJ. Wed &: Thurs bands and disco, only £1.

The Ritz, Whitworth St, round the corner from Oxford Rd station. Monday night.
Archway 66 Whitworth St West, Mon-Sat 10-3 (bar to 2am) Hi tech, macho men and trendies. Tues: men only, free membership with UB40.

Heroes. Ridgefield St, off John Dalton St. Wed-Sat 10-2, Sunday 9.30-2 (special sunday membership). Thursday (Powerhouse) mixed. Other nights mainly men and mainly High HRG.

Jilly’s Rock Club, 650 Oxford St Manchester. Fri &: Sat rock music 8-2. Alternative night every Thursday 60p admission, drinks 60p.

Hacienda, 11-13 Whitworth St West. Fridays when no gigs adm.50p before 11pm, most drinks 60p, special offers on cocktails. Tues: l hometown gig.

Band on the Wall, 25 Swan Street, live music 6 nights a week.

See also 1984 clubbing in London, Luton and Sheffield

1996: chronology of parties and police

Following the recent 1997 chronology we go back another year to 1996, a time of Reclaim the Streets parties, police raids on gay clubs and, in Algeria, the killing of rai performers . All events below from UK unless otherwise stated. As always I'd be interested in any recollections or reflections on these events

January:

100 police raid Hollywoods club in Romford, Essex. As well as arresting some people for drugs, two women are arrested for assaulting a police officer.

Police bust a Vox Pop/Virus squat party in South London, and people move up to a Hackney venue. When they get there the police steam in making arrests and beating people up.

Police confiscate rig at Immersion Sound System party on the site of the Newbury road protest in Berkshire.

Gay rubber night GUMMI at Club 180 in London is stopped after a visit from the Met’s Vice Squad.

Local council take out injunction against four members of the Exodus Collective in Luton, forbidding them to hold free parties

February:

200 police in riot gear raid the Coliseum nightclub near Stockton-on-Tees, arresting 35 people

On Valentine’s Day hundreds of people dance, drum and bounce on Brighton’s North Street. Police pile in at end of the Reclaim the Streets party and arrest 43 people.

Three people from Black Moon Sound System arrested in Corby at the prevous July’s attempted Mother festival found guilty under Section 63 of the Criminal Justice Act and their £6000 rig confiscated.

March:

Police raid a party at the A.R.T.L.A.B. in Preston with an Environmental Health Officer who removes equipment under noise pollution regulations [Dream Creation, 1996]

Police set up road blocks to search people going to Lost in Paradise at Fantasy Island, Skegness. 11 arrests.

Jury throw out disorderly house charges against Club Whiplash in London, raided by sixty police with dogs in 1994.

Sex Maniacs Ball at the Fridge in Brixton cancelled at the last minute after police pressure. The tenth annual Ball, a charity event, was to be held at Brixton Academy, but they cancelled the booking after the police threatened a raid. Bagley’s at Kings Cross did the same. [Pink Paper 29/3/86] In response the Sexual Freedom Coalition was set up to “combat police inteference in clubs and with publications”, and on April 20th 200 people danced through Soho to Downing Street in protest at police action.

“Four people were arrested on drug possession and sale charges after police crashed a ‘rave’' party at a local nightclub in Danbury [USA]. More than 600 people ranging in age from about 14 to 21 attended the party, staged by an out-of-state production company at the Subzero nightclub on Elm Street”. [News Times, Danbury, March 25, 1996]

April:

Police in Essex board a privately-hired coach taking people clubbing in London and search everybody on board. Several arrests for drugs offences.

May:

Sussex police seize a sound system at a warehouse party in Bevendean.

Mounted police move in at the end of a Leeds Reclaim the Streets party; 12 people arrested

Tribal Gathering festival, Britain’s largest dance event, cancelled after authorities in Oxfordshire refuse it a licence following police objections - despite a successful event last year, months of preparation, and advance ticket sales of 25,000.

50 people arrested in dawn raids on two gay clubs in Santiago, Chile [Pink Paper, 24 May 1996]

June

100 riot police raid the Zoom Bar in Halle, Germany on the day before the city’s first ever gay pride event. 70 people inside the gay bar are handcuffed and made to lie on the floor during searches for drugs. Some are clubbed to the floor, others strip searched [Pink Paper, 4 July 1996].

On June 9th, several hundred people block the main A6 road into Leicester city centre for a Reclaim the Streets party, with sound system, comfy chairs, children’s paddling pool and fire jugglers. After three hours the police force people off the road, making six arrests.

A woman in Melbourne, Australia, wins compensation from the police after being stripsearched in a raid on the city’s Tasty nightclub in 1994. During the drugs raid, 465 were stripsearched, many of whom now claim compensation [Pink Paper14 June 1996]

The Tunnel and Limelight clubs in New York are raided and closed down, and the owners charged with conspiracy to sell ecstasy.

July:

On the biggest Reclaim the Streets action so far, 8000 people party on the M41 motorway in West London. There are no arrests on the day, although in the aftermath police raid the RTS office and an activist’s home and charge one person with conspiracy to cause criminal damage to the M41, parts of which were dug up during the party.

Royal Ulster Constabulary and British Army crack down on Irish nationalists in Derry (N.Ireland), blocking off the streets in the city centre as people leave pubs and clubs. 900 plastic bullets are fired. 41 people suffer injuries including a fractured skull, broken jaw, and a broken leg. 18-year-old Michael McEleny, on the way home from Henry J’s disco with his sister, is hit in the face with a plastic bullet which tears away his cheek leaving him with a broken palate and cheekbone. According to his sister “Bullets just flew everywhere. Every two seconds there was another one. You couldn’t stand up. Every time I tired to get up and run, another bullet was fired. Anyone who stood up was hit”. 16 year-old Kevin McCafferty is left unconscious and critically injured after being shot in the chest and head with plastic bullets on the way home from Squires disco. Rioting spreads throughout Derry in the following days, and Dermot McShane iss killed after being run over by a British army vehicle. [An Phoblact/Republican News, 18 July 1996].

350 CRS police close down the Bordeaux Arts Festival in France, searching 600 people and making 23 arrests. Although the dance music festival had the permission of the landowner, the French Interior Minister Jean-Louis Debre declared it an illegal event. [Wax, August 1996, Muzik September 1996]

August:

Big police operation against Smokey Bears legalise cannabis picnic in Portsmouth - sound systems stopped from entering the area

Riot police baton charge revellers at Maidstone River Festival in Kent.

10 people arrested at Reclaim the Streets party in Birmingham on.17 August. On the same day there is a five hour RTS party in Bath. The following week, 80 people are arrested as police mobilise to stop a Brighton Reclaim the Streets party.

Sussex police use a helicopter to break up a party near Brighton.

September:

95 police raid the Living Room club, the Marlowes, Hemel Hempstead. 250 clubbers are evacuated, and 18 arrested, mostly on drugs charges.

100 police stage a drugs raid on I Spy, a gay night at Leeds club Nato. 19 people arrested. Police clear the club with people being met on the streets by at least 25 vans of police [Mixmag, Nov 1996]

Reclaim the Streets activists take part in the Reclaim the Future events in Liverpool in support of striking dockers. A march of 10,000 people is livened up with sound system, and a docks building squatted for a free party. On the Monday 600 people picket the docks and there are 44 arrests.

In Barnsley a planned gay night at the local Hedon Rock bar is blocked after a local hompohopic campiagn by the so-called Campaign Against Homosexual Equality [Pink Paper27/9/96]

The popular Rai singer Boudjema Bechiri, 28 (known as Cheb Aziz) is killed by Islamic militants. He is the fourth Rai star to be killed, since Rai songs which are often about sex and drink have been declared blashpemous and banned in areas dominated by Islamic fundamentalists [Observer, 22 Sept 1996]

October:

Police raid on Love Muscle gay club at the Fridge, Brixton, London.

Reclaim the Streets Halloween Party in Oxford- over a thousand people dance on the road and on bus shelters with music from Virus Sound System, Desert Storm, Rinky Dink and some bagpipers. Police escort sound systems out of Oxford as they attempt to set up an after party-party. There is also an RTS party in Cambridge.

Reclaim the Streets party in Manchester with free music and free food. No arrests, but one van is impounded

Taliban seize power in Afghanistan: “Women are barred from work, men ordered to grow beards... They snatch music cassettes from cars and smash them with rocks by the roadside” [Guardian 9.10.96]

Riot cops evict squatted social centres in Madrid and Barcelona. Armed riot cops storm a squatted cinema firing hundreds of rubber bullets. Riots follow as people marched on the police station to demand the freeing of the 48 people nicked. The centre has been used for films, gigs, exhibitions and debates as well as huge parties to raise money for the Zapatistas and other causes.

November:

100 police raid Jubilee pub in Camden, north London and arrest 23 people

Riot police with dogs bust a party in a tunnel in Beddgelert, North Wales

December:

Adrenalin Village, London fined for opening beyond their 2 am limit [South London Press, 13.12.96]

London gay sex pub/club the Anvil loses its licence; police had raided the pub (also known as the Shipwright’s Arms) in Tooley Street following reports of sex in the upstairs bar [Pink Paper, 29.11.96]

Heaven events in Motherwell cancelled after police pressure

Ten Years On: 1997, a year of dancing dangerously

This chronology of raves, clubs and policing was compiled from the dance music press at the time (Mixmag, Muzik, Eternity, DJ etc.). Much of it is the familiar story of cat and mouse chases between police and sound systems in East Anglia, Wales etc. - just as happened in 2007. But some things have changed - no more Reclaim the Streets parties in England, and more positively people being able to go out dancing in the north of Ireland without having to worry so much shootings and plastic bullets.

January 1997, Scotland: Fusion close down operations in Grampian after police threaten the licence of any venues allowing them to put on events

January 1997, London: Club UK in south London loses its licence. The club had appealed against the council withdrawing its licence, but this was upheld by a magistrates court.

February 1997, Holland: Police confiscate vans containing tripods, sound systems and banners to prevent a Reclaim the Streets party outside the Amsterdam motor show. After police baton charge the crowd, there is free food, music and dancing with a huge bonfire in a market square [Earth First Action Update, March 1997]

February 1997, USA: A nail bomb explodes at the Otherside Lounge, a lesbian club in Atlanta, Georgia, injuring five people. The attack is claimed by the far right Army of God saying it is aimed at “sodomites, their organisations and all who push their agenda”.

February 1997, London: Battersea police licencing section announce they are to oppose the renewal of the public entertainments licence for the club Adrenalin Village, up for renewal by Wandsworth Council.

February 1997, Leicester: Hardcore club Die Hard raided by 50 police - everyone searched.

February 1997, London The Cool Tan the building in Brixton, previously evicted, is resquatted for two parties and then evicted after a fortnight.

April 1997, London: A man dies from a heart attack and 8 people are arrested when riot police raid a squat party in Putney.

April 1997, Luton: The Exodus collective win the right to appeal against eviction from their site by the Department of Transport

April 1997, London: Linford Film Studios in Battersea, south London loses its licence

April 1997, N.Ireland: Robert Hamill a 25 year old Catholic father of two, is kicked to death by Loyalists while on his way home from a dance at St Patrick’s Hall in Portadown. The attack happens in full view of police who refuse pleas to intervene. In March 1999 his family’s solicitor, Rosemary Nelson, is killed by a car bomb. She has been preparing to bring private prosecutions against those involved and the Royal Ulster Constabulary

April 1997, London: 5000 party in Trafalgar Square at the end of march for social justice in support of Liverpool dockers, organised by Reclaim the Streets. Police seize sound system at the end and arrest four people in the van, charging them with conspiracy to murder for allegedly driving through police lines (charges later dropped). 1000 riot police clear people out of the square

May 1997, London: Southwark Council refuse licence to Urban Free Festival (formerly held in Fordham Park, New Cross), after earlier given permission for it to take place in Peckham in July
May 1997, Wales: Police use helicopters and road blocks to stop free party at a disused quarry in North Wales, seizing the T.W.A.T. sound system and dispersing a 4 mile convoy of party cars to the English border (despite this two parties go ahead later)

May 1997, Manchester: Police and bailiffs evict treetop and tunnel protesters, including the Zero Tolerance sound system tied into the trees, at the site of the proposed Manchester Airport Terminal 2

May 1997, Brighton: Police action prevents parties at three venues in Brighton, but one goes ahead on a travellers site at Braepool on the outskirts of town. A Noise Abatement notice is served, and the Council begins legal action to evict the site [Big Issue, 4.8.97]

May 1997, Hull: 300 party at Hull Reclaim the Streets, with sand pits and dancing for three hours (no arrests)

June 1997, Bristol: Police make 22 arrests at Bristol Reclaim the Streets and confiscate the Desert Storm sound system

July 1997, N.Ireland: Police open fire with plastic bullets on young people returning from a teenage disco on the Falls Road, Belfast. A 14-year-old boy is left in a coma.

July 1997, USA: The Stonewall Inn in New York is once again under threat, scrutinised by the city’s Social Club Task Force because of concerns about noise levels and ‘illegal dancing” [Pink Paper, 8/8/97]

August 1997, Wales: Two people on their way to set up an open air party in Deiniolen, North Wales are stopped and strip searched by police, who set up road blocks to prevent the party going ahead.

August 1997, London: Local councillor calls for the Dog Star pub/club in Brixton to be closed, claiming it is a magnet for drug dealers.

August 1997, Surrey: Hundreds of people turn up at a free party in old chalk pits in the Mole Valley in Surrey by the time police turned up the next morning to serve a notice under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act most people had gone home [Guilfin, September 1997]

August 1997, Portsmouth: Police with dogs and video surveillance teams ring a common in Portsmouth and search people trying to attend the Smokey Bears Picnic; council byelaws banning music on the common are enforced and 10 people are arrested [Guilfin, September 1997]

Summer 1997, Surrey: Police close down a free party in a forest near Guildford put on by Timber sound system.

September 1997, France: Police in Paris close down five mainly gay clubs supposedly because of ecstasy dealing (Le Queen, Le Cox, L’Enfer, Le Scorp and Les Follies Pigalle). 2000 people march in protest with one banner declaring “Paris, capitale de l’ennui” (Paris, capital of boredom).

October 1997, Russia: Moscow gay club Chance is raided by “a team of men wearing special troops uniform, black masks and carrying automatic guns”. The special police claim to be searching for drugs; dancers are beaten up and abused a 90 people are arrested [Pink Paper, 17.10.97]
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October 1997, Wales: 24 police raid a party in a private house in North Wales and impound the sound system. The Country Landowners Association have set up a Rave Watch scheme in the local area encouraging local farmers to tip off the police about possible parties

November 1997, Greece: police violently raid the ACID trance club in Thessaloniki.

November 1997, Norfolk: Police bust squat party at Thelveton Hall, an unoccupied country house in Norfolk, seizing the Brighton-based Innerfield Sound System and carry out intimate body searches. The house belongs to Sir Rupert Mann, but had been empty for seven years.

November 1997, Oxford: Police use a helicopter and horses in an effort to stop Oxford Reclaim the Streets party. Despite the seizure of the solar powered sound system, and the Rinky Dinky Sound System being escorted out of the city, 400 people party in the road [Peace News, December 1997]

December 1997, N.Ireland: Loyalist Volunteer Force open fire on a disco in Dungannon, County Tyrone, killing a doorman. Another man is killed in an attack on a bar in Belfast.

December 1997, Scotland: Street party halts traffic for 1.5 hours outside the Faslane nuclear submarine base . Several people injured by Ministry of Defence police.

December 1997, Wales: 22 arrests in police drug raid on Hippo Club, Cardiff.

December 1997, Israel: Trance outfit Juno Reactor are deported from the country, where they were due to be playing at a 5000 capacity rave, prompting the launch of a Freedom to Party organisation. “Indoor parties are usually legal, as opposed to outdoor parties which are usually not. But even so, many of the indoor parties are constantly being raided by the police” (Dream Creation July 1997)

December 1997, N.Ireland: Edmund Treanor killed and five injured in a Loyalist Volunteer Force attack on New Year celebrations at the Clifton Tavern, Belfast.

December 1997, Brighton: 27 people arrested as police try and close down New Year’s Eve squat party in Brighton; people throw bottles at police.

More on Situationists and Factory Records

Further to previous post about Tony Wilson and Situationists, I've come across the following statement from Wilson made at the Hacienda in 1995:

"I was at Cambridge with other would-be Situationists like Paul Sieveking and I was a member of the Kim Philby Dining Club which I think had some people from the Angry Brigade involved. We all wanted to to destroy the system but didn't know how. We knew about Strasbourg and the Situationist tactics of creative plagiarism and basing change on desire. The Situationists offered, I thought then and I still think now, the only future revolution I could imagine or want" (quoted in Andrew Hussey, The Game of War: The Life and Death of Guy Debord, 2001).

The Kim Philby Dining Club did indeed include among its members John Barker and Jim Greenfield, later jailed for their part in the Angry Brigade bombing campaign of the early 1970s. According to Gordon Carr in his book 'The Angry Brigade' (1975) the Club was named after the ex-Cambridge Russian spy in around 1968 'by a group of Cambridge Situationists in honour of the man they regarded as having done more than any other in recent times to undermine and embarrass the Establishment'.

Also came across On The Passage Of A Few Persons Through A Rather Brief Period Of Time by John McCready, another article specifically on the SI and Factory Records. He uncovers some other connections, reminding us that it was actually Rob Gretton (among other things New Order's manager) who came up with the Hacienda as a name for the Factory nightclub in Manchester, inspired by reading a copy of Christopher Gray's Leaving the Twentieth Century - a collection of Situationist International texts given to him by Tony Wilson. He also notes that there was a Kim Philby bar in the Hacienda, that A Certain Ratio name checked a Situ/Surrealist hero on 'Do The Du(casse)' and gets Peter Saville (designer of iconic Factory sleeves) enthusing about the 'two cowboys' image in the situationist 'Return of the Durutti Column' comic strip.

See also Owen Hatherley and Sonic Truth on Wilson.

Tony Wilson and the Situationist International

The recent death of Tony Wilson has prompted a few mentions of the influence on him of Situationist ideas. Most famously, the name of the Hacienda club in Manchester was apparently inspired by a statement in Ivan Chtcheglov's Formulary for a New Urbanism (1953) that 'the Hacienda must be built'. The following extracts are from Howard Slater's Graveyard and Ballroom: A Factory Records Scrapbook, originally published in his excellent Break/flow magazine in 1999. It presents a more nuanced discussion of the relationship between music, commerce and radical ideas that the kneejerk dismissal of the likes of Wilson as simply 'situationist recuperators' (see for instance this recent discussion at libcom). Image is from a 1978 Factory flyer.

There are many Situationist references around Factory Records that range from the obvious (Haçienda) to the tenuous (Stockholm Monsters named after Swedish youth riots of 1956?). Most would be agreed that this influence stems from Factory impresario Tony Wilson who had met short-lived SI member Christopher Grey at Oxbridge and once flashed a copy of the Situationist International Anthology during a Factory documentary, Play At Home, on Channel 4 (1984).

The closeness between Tony Wilson and the long-term Factory act the Durutti Column may suggest that this group's mainstay, Vini Reilly, shared Wilson's enthusiasm: on A Factory Sample Reilly lists ex-band members in terms of 'Exclusions' and includes, as his image contribution, the Situationist Group's 'Two Cowboys' graphic. There was the sandpaper album sleeve after Debord's book Memoirs and Wilson's management alter-ego, in a reference to the French student uprisings of 1968, was called Movement of the 24th January.

These connections between Tony Wilson and a popularisation of the Situationists was made explicit by Factory's sponsoring of the ICA's SI exhibition catalogue in 1989 and by hosting the 1996 SI conference at the Haçienda. However, most people within a post-situationist milieu would more than likely view Wilson and Factory with suspicion: he has been a long term TV presenter with Granada and a music industry mogul via Factory Records (albeit a company that went into receivership, appears to have kept minimal financial records and seemed more interested in 'sacrificing' its wealth on buildings and ostentatious interior design).

To all extents and purposes Wilson occupies a position within the 'spectacle' but it should not be forgotten that Guy Debord's one-time publisher Gerald Lebovici was just as similarly involved with the entertainment industry through his activity in French cinema and publishing. Contradictions such as these are fruitful for discussion for they keep alive the issues about how best to promote and popularise revolutionary ideas: from within or from without? Can a particular social context be more conducive to these ideas than another? Is it more fruitful in the media, at the workplace, or in a club? Can music and cinema be revolutionary? What wider, transversal effects can a slight shift in cultural paradigms have? These contradictions also reveal something about the 'establishments' people are fighting against. What contents will it co-opt and why? How much is allowed through? Where does censorship begin? In sleep or at the end of an assassins rifle?

It is easy to discount the likes of Wilson and Lebovici and it is made easier, even comfortable, by their being identified and dismissed as middle-class: such contradictions, capable of containing a political charge, are thus defused. For most people, seeing a copy of the SI Anthology as a subliminal flash-frame image on TV, going to a nightclub called the Haçienda or listening to a Durutti Column track is hardly a call to revolution but it is a means of keeping ideas of social change at least symbolically active and, just by thinking of advertising and the tight control capital wields over its 'self-image', we cannot deny that forms of 'symbolic warfare' are more than necessary.

There is always a danger that those committed to revolutionary action forget how it was that they arrived at their position or, similarly, how that position needs to change and adapt to differing conditions and potentials. There is a cumulative effect where every little counts and in every social context. The claim that Factory, as 'pop-situationists', have watered down situationist ideas is maybe to infer that these ideas have a privileged area of application and whilst 'recuperation' is a process that can't be ignored, it too often seems to revolve around an 'individualised' response and a classification and hierarchic ordering of an action or intention.

The former occurs through the idea that an action, a track or a reference only has one intentioned meaning: if Tony Wilson flashed the SI Anthology this is in order that he accrue some trendy radical chic to his label. But this would be to feel certain of the reason the book is displayed and from there to control and feel certain of the response of viewers when the follow-through can hardly be predicted. What occurs here is that too much weight is granted to the action of an individual who is judged according to an individualised criteria of motives that has a too definite idea of what actions rank as 'premier league' when revolution is concerned. The judgmentalism that is often inherent in claims of 'recuperation' is, moreover, one that whilst seeking sole possession of a text's use, also elevates it into the status of a religious icon...

Vaneigem Mix 1: Though Tony Wilson has not, as far as I am aware, made any detailed references to the SI's influence on Factory he has expressed an interest in music's role in propelling youth unrest. What should be stated is that music is not revolutionary per se but carries with it many presuppositions of an awareness of a need for social change; not least in terms of its activation of desire in the listener, its opening up of unconscious and imaginary terrains and its proclivity towards social interaction. It can be rhetorical, propagandist and a source of optimism and hope, and from jazz scenes through anarcho-punk to rave and techno, music has always been attached to counter-cultural and political movements, exacerbating dissatisfaction with the status quo and working the contradictions between ideas of reality and what it could be transformed to be...

One common pro-Situ objection to the idea of music's being political is its very insertion into the 'industry', that it manufactures and sells for profit a range of consumer objects and that these consumer goods are themselves a source of mystification, sublimation and oppression. Just as this can encourage a 'transcendent' failure to engage with the political-charge of 'actually-existing' capitalism, the idea of a purchase being the alienation of some ineluctable human essence is to infer that a sold object has only one quality (its being a commodity) when, as former SI-member Asger Jorn has demonstrated, there are other qualities or values that are at play. One of these is Jorn's idea of "counter value" or "artistic value" where, instead of limiting value to exchange value and the concomitant imposition of iron-clad commodity-relations, Jorn speaks of value not "emerging from the work of art" as if it is an innate property, but being "liberated from within the spectator", from a "force which exists within the person who perceives" a painting, a movie, an installation, a record.

Jorn, putting it grandly, adds "artistic value, contrary to utilitarian value (ordinarily called material value) is the progressive value because it is the valorisation of mankind itself, through a process of provocation". Jorn is attempting to look for cracks in the "reign of the commodity" and by moving his survey towards spectator or listener reaction he is asserting that response is not necessarily controlled or contaminated by commodity-relations, but that it is the variable that could release latent energies that have the potential for change. This is not to deny that the majority of manufactured music is nothing other than a commodity pure and simple, but the important point is that this is what it sounds like: commodified, system-built and market-researched, these are products that sell themselves in terms of their being aligned to already established concepts and motivations and which diminish the potentially disruptive oscillations of the variable i.e the role of a sense of nation in Brit-pop...

Vaneigem Mix 2: The most explicit and unadulterated references to the Situationist International made anywhere in the back catalogue of Factory Records can be heard on the three tracks that the Liverpudlian band Royal Family & The Poor recorded for the Factory Quartet compilation: Vaneigem Mix, Death Factory and Rackets. With the first of these we are confronted by a track where the vocalist presents a montage of paragraphs from Raoul Vaneigem's Revolution of Everyday Life that reveal strategies of consumption as a means of reviving a post-war capitalist economy through the creation of needs and expectations that have been accelerated by advertising...

Vaneigem Mix, incomprehensible on a first listen, stood out as both angry and rational at the same time (a kind of praxis) and what may have sounded like a spontaneous outburst soon revealed itself as needing countless listenings so as to crack its theoretical code. It is here where many people first encountered the writings of the Situationist International and it was enhanced by the added musical accent, the phrasing and unwavering conviction of the voice that drew you towards wanting to understand and learn from what was being said.