Life Between Islands

Images of musicking and dancing feature heavily in the exhibition 'Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art' at Tate Britain.

Paul Dash - 'Dance at Reading Town Hall' (1965). Dash played piano in a band, the Carib Six - this is a view from the stage.

'As unofficial 'color bars' restricted access to public social spaces, homes became places of sanctuary. The front room, full of reminders of the Caribbean, became a site for intergenerational connection and somewhere to socialise with family and friends. Sound systems provided the soundtrack to the period. DJs, engineers and MCs set up in homes, on the streets and in community centres. They offered a way to connect with culture coming out of the Caribbean, especially Jamaica. For young Black Britons, music created opportunities for collectivity and celebration but also a means to address hostility and discrimination with a spirit of defiance. Dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson named them the 'Rebel Generation' (exhibition notice)

Tam Joseph - 'The Spirit of Carnival' (1982)

Denzil Forrester - 'Jah Shaka' (1983)

from Liz Johnson Artur, 'Lord of the Decks' featuring photos from the early UK grime scene.

'The various musical styles created in widely defined Black Atlantic history have proved so influential that we are obliged to consider the consistency with which they have summoned the possibility of better worlds, directing precious images of an alternative order against the existing miseries, raciological terrors and routine wrongs of capitalist exploitation, racial immiseration and colonial injustice. Those gestures of dissent and opposition were voiced in distinctive keys and modes. They carried the cruel imprint of slavery and were influenced by the burden of its negation.

However, that is not the most important observation we can make about them. The transcoding and transcendence of suffering made productive, becoming useful, but never, in spite of what Bob Marley had said, seeking redemption, directs our attention towards more elusive possibilities. Energised by political and social movements, those musical formations were anticipatory. They helped to construct and enact a 'not-yet' and enchanted it so that it could be both pleasing and seductive. It could be intoxicating and it could be enhanced the ingestion of intoxicants. 

Here we encounter the possibility that, under optimal conditions, singers, dancers and audiences, DJs and selectors might be able to collaborate so that they could glimpse the edge of their world, grasp the fragility of the order they inhabited and apprehend the fleeting but fundamental possibility of Babylon's overthrow'

(from Paul Gilroy, 'Colour Bars and Bass Cultures, Dub Aesthetics and Cockney Translations: Music in the Creole History of Black Life in Britain' in 'Life Between Islands' (Tate 2021)

The exhibition closes on 3 April 2022

Lunch magazine- London gay disco 1972

Lunch magazine ran from 1971 to 1973, starting out as a newsletter put out by Campaign for Homosexual Equality members in London and expanding to become a well designed 'magazine for the new homosexual man and woman' reflecting the range of gay activist opinion at that time. As part of its great LGBTQ+ Archives, Bishopsgate Institute has scanned the entire print run and made it available online. 

It's a fascinating read, with news, debates and interviews (including David Hockney, Holly Woodlawn and George Melly)

Lunch, June 1973 - cover star Holly from Warhol's factory
('Holly came from Miami, F.L.A.. Hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A.')

I had a quick trawl through to look at what it tells us about nightlife in a transitional period when publicly advertised gay discos were taking place but the commercial gay club scene had not yet really taken off. Fulham Town Hall in west London was a venue for disco nights and balls organised by CHE and the Gay Liberation Front and where, as reported in Lunch, people were sometimes subject to violent attacks

'Grand Masked Ball' - CHE event at Fulham Town Hall (Lunch, December 1971)

'Full Moon Disco' in aid of Campaign for Homosexual Equality at Fulham Town Hall
(Lunch, April 1972)

GLF Notting Hill Group night at Fulham Town Hall wtih 'Disco-Lights-Freak Outs'
(Lunch, July 1972)

Violent mobs of hooligans are terrorising the "gay" people of West London. Members of the Gay Liberation Front claim they are being subjected to brutal, callous attacks by roving gangs of thugs every time the hold a dance at Fulham Old Town Hall' (West London Observer report, reproduced in Lunch, September 1972)

An account from June 1972 describes direct action against discrimination in a Notting Hill pub (wonder which one?): ''Not so long ago in Notting Hill Gate, GLF were being charged 20p per pint of beer, as against 14p for heterosexuals. We eventually staged a sit-in at the pub concerned, the police were called and said they could not eject us for wearing our badges. The landlord had to ask us all to leave one by one (300 of us) which, when we refused, the police carried us all out quite peacefully, accompanied by the strains of 'All things bright and beautiful' being sung by our brothers and sisters already removed, sitting outside the pub. Next week we were charged 14p per pint and allowed to come and go as we pleased, badges or not'.

'A Fancy Dress Rave... Drag or Casual' at Porchester Hall (Lunch, December 1972)

'Mike Winter, the non-stop disco-king of the East End, tells us there's another scene going now. It's at the Kings Arms - 213 Bishopsgate.... Meanwhile the already established disco at the Father Redcap, Camberwell Green recurs every Thursday and Sunday' (Lunch, March 1972)

David Hockney interview from Lunch, September 1972 'he looks like a wise blond owl' - Hockney mentions going to a couple of Gay Liberation Front meetings but finding them a bit boring.

'Brutal police attack on disco women' - London Lesbian Conference Social 1981

'Brutal police attack on disco women'

by Michael Mason (Gay News [London], April 16-29, 1981)

'Lesbians attending the main social event of the second National Lesbian Conference in London on April 4 were shattered by scenes of violence unprecedented in the history of the recent British gay movement – even if not in the history of the women’s movement.

Eye witnesses told of “brutality I simply could not believe", of women thrown to the pavements and beaten, of others holding back fearfully, yet desperate to help their sisters.

The shocking events of that night began when a man and a woman started arguing across the square from the lesbian disco at the Tabernacle, Notting Hill. The man chased the woman, threatening her with attack. Outside the Tabernacle she held a broken bottle in front of her to fend him off. At this moment a police constable arrived on the scene – and made a grab for the woman while the man stood by grinning.

Two lesbians went to the women’s aid and almost simultaneously police reinforcements – summoned when and by whom remains a mystery – rounded the corner in a van. There was utter confusion as the police milled around women leaving the disco, and accounts from people in different parts of the crowd tell no clear story. But within moments the violence had begun.

One woman was held spread-eagled at waist height. Her T-shirt was rolled up her body to bare her torso and she was repeatedly struck in the stomach with a truncheon, report eyewitnesses. Other women were thrown to the pavement. Still others were slapped and punched. There were serious injuries inflicted, and at least one woman had to be taken straight to hospital by ambulance.

But the trouble did not in there. Some 20 women were arrested for obstruction and assault and taken to a Notting Hill police station. In cells, in charge rooms and in the public areas of the station there was even further abuse – both verbal and physical. One woman called forward to have her details taken was slapped in the face and pushed back into the wall behind her. Another, in great distress at the scenes, was taken to the cells where three officers are said to have attacked her. Police women offered as much violence as police men, said those who were released from the station at 4 am the following morning.

Only a partial list of injury was given to the conference the next day. One woman had a cracked spine, another a cracked rib. Cuts and extravagant bruising were commonplace.

Lawyers attending conference gathered statements from eyewitnesses in preparation for the prosecution to be brought and for official complaints which are to be laid against the police involved.

Women who travelled to London for the conference and must now stay for the court hearings badly need financial support for their unexpected delay. Conference launched the Lesbian Social Defence Fund and contributions are urgently needed. They should be sent to the fund c/o A Woman’s Place, 48 William IV Street, London WC2'.

Another account:

There's a brief account of this incident in this interview with Trisha McCabe at Gay Birmingham remembered:

'The first national lesbian conference was in London, in 1981 and I don't recall there being a second one. The women I went with were a real cross over between the revolutionary feminist group and the Women and Manual Trades group, some weren't part of our group but hung out with us because they were plumbers or carpenters and there was a link.

I can't remember anything about the conference itself, what it was for, the content, or what came out of it, but I do remember the excitement and the postcard which I thought was very cool. It had a black background with three lesbian symbols against a flash of fire. I sent one to my mother, her response was 'What will the postman think?', and my father was going 'I don't think you should worry about the postman'. I do remember there was a lot of aggro around it and the reaction of the police. For some reason the police were out a lot and a lot of different women got arrested and there was a real carry on. We must have been having some sort of protest, I remember running round on the streets, piling in when a copper tried to get someone out of the crowd, and making sure they didn't. One woman was put in a police car, and these other women went round and opened the other door and she just got out again, but ended up being arrested again and up in court the following morning, so we did a lot of hanging around in the police station. Another friend had this huge argument with the policeman and I dragged her off and nearly suffocated her, just holding her so she couldn't fight and get arrested. A couple of friends of mine got convictions, but I can't remember what they were doing'.

The photo below, which features in Anita Corbin's Visible Girls project, was taken in the Tabernacle, Notting Hill Gate, 1981 on the night of the National Lesbian Conference social:

London Political Graffiti 1968

From the excellent Oz Magazine archive, here's some images of London graffiti from Oz number 13 (June 1968), photographs apparently from 'a series of postcards being prepared by JLTY, 49 Kensington Park Road, W11'

'Pop is Dead'
'Crime is the highest form of sensuality'
'Burn Baby Burn'
'A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear, A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief'
(Coleridge quote in Moorhouse Road W2)
'All you need is dynamite'
'Burn it all down'
'Cars are dead' (from Denbigh Terrace W11)