Racist skinheads attack GLC 'Jobs for a Change' festival while Redskins and Hank Wangford band play (June 1984)

On June 10 1984 the left Labour-led Greater London Council, on the verge of being abolished by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, put on the free 'Jobs for a Change' festival by County Hall on the South Bank. I was one of the estimated 150,000 who went along, with the line up including  Billy Bragg, Misty in Roots, Mari Wilson, Hank Wangford, Gil Scott-Heron and Ivor Cutler. 

The biggest draw was The Smiths, at that time my favourite band. It was the fourth and last time I saw them, and in less than a year they had gone from being third on the bill at the Lyceum (where I saw them supporting the Gang of Four) to becoming the focus of something like mass hysteria. To be honest though I can't actually remember much about The Smiths performance that day, with events earlier in the day leaving a stronger impression.

 Socialist band The Redskins were on the bill too, and while they were playing a largish group of neo-nazi skinheads associated with the racist National Front stormed the stage and attacked people in the crowd. Although the fascists were massively outnumbered by the festival goers, many of the latter fled in panic. Indie kids were never known for their streetfighting skills! I wasn't very handy either but I did end up with a group of punks, anarchists and Red Action members chasing and scuffling with the nazi boneheads round the South Bank.

Some remarkable photos have resurfaced recently and capture some of what happened (most of these photos are from the great Rio Tape Slide Project with the exception of the third one down showing Martin Hewes which I found at Redskins Archive on facebook)

Redskins' Chris Dean on stage

Crowd by County Hall

The Redskins started out with their anthem 'Kick Over the Statues' and were 40 minutes into their set when trouble started. On a recording of the gig singer Chris Dean can be heard shouting 'fuck off out of here' and 'you sound like Margaret Thatcher' at the Sieg Heiling National Front boneheads just before the latter stormed the stage, knocking over the band's equipment and attacking people.

I was standing near the back with friends and remember large parts of the crowd running in panic towards us (i.e. away from the stage). We stood our ground but it wasn't immediately clear what was happening, though people did start fighting back and the NF disappeared quite quickly. Some of those who helped repel the attack were apparently striking miners who had been temporarily employed by the GLC as stewards on the day

As described in Sean Birchall's 'Beating the Fascists: the untold story of Anti Fascist Action' (2010): 'Halfway through the event, about 80 or more NF suddenly materialised and immediately set about the audience gathered around the main stage where the Redskins were playing. The boldness of the assault panicked the large left-wing gathering. Not all were cowed. Some elements within the crowd, including some striking miners, regrouped, and after some hand-to-hand fighting in which one Red Action member was slashed and another anti-fascist had his jaw smashed, the right-wingers, mostly skinheads, were driven off'.

In this photo the Redskins bassist Martin Hewes, on left of picture, can be seen grabbing one of the attackers (I think the bare chested lads were defending too):

Some of the crowd headed off after them (see below), but they dispersed only to return later.

The crowd around the stage had emptied out very quickly, in this photo the Redskins can be seen surveying the aftermath of the attack:

Guy with bleeding head injury after first attack

A little while later I saw a procession of boneheads heading back over Waterloo Bridge towards the event and it was obvious to me that there was going to be more trouble, I tried to speak to stewards and left wing paper sellers etc. about it but nobody seemed very interested. Shortly afterwards they attacked again while country singer Hank Wangford was performing. 

This time there was a more concerted fight back, as described by Birchall: 

'But the NF had not finished. Again led by the 6ft 2in Nicky Crane, who had just completed a four year sentence for a similarly indiscriminate attack on a queue of black cinema goers, and buoyed up by the impact they had made on the many thousands of the left-wing enemy present, the rampaging right-wingers returned to attack the Hank Wangford Band on stage at the other end of the park. It proved to be a major blunder. Where the crowd had been taken unawares the first time, news of the second attack saw RA [Red Action] in particular more than eager for the unexpected chance of a replay. Armed with cider bottles, and anything else to hand, Red Action members sprinted toward the trouble. Their charge had the effect of further galvanising the crowd.

In attempting to make a getaway, Crane was felled by Peter C. and only by using a young female anti-fascist as a shield, survived the onslaught with cuts and bruises. Less fortunate was another skinhead who, to his evident relief, had been rescued from the crowd by two police officers who held off vengeful left-wingers with batons. The stand-off ended when a leading militant stepped out of the crowd and punched one of his benefactors full in the face. When the officer bent to retrieve his helmet, he was bundled headfirst into a concrete litter-bin. Terrified, the skinhead made a run for it with just time, possibly, to reflect on the shortcomings of huge steel toe-cap boots in such a situation, before being brought to earth and kicked  unmercifully while the police, understandably putting their safety first, stood by and watched. Nearby another couple of skinheads, one male and one female were both booted on the ground, with police again unwilling to mediate'.

(Nicky Crane was notorious as the main face of far right street violence at the time - he later came out as gay, renounced his former views, and died with AIDS in 1993).

Fighting continued by St Thomas Hospital, where casualties from both sides had gone for treatment, and later that night anti-fascists stormed an Islington pub that had become a haunt for nazi skins (The Agricultural on Liverpool Road).

Here's Red Action's reports on the events from Issue 13 of their paper (Summer 1984), including their reflections that they should have attacked the fascists when they first saw them. Red Action were a militant group who later played a leading role in Anti Fascist Action.  Some of its members had been expelled from the Socialist Workers Party for taking the fighting part of fighting fascists too seriously.

'After the initial confusion, a determined counter-attack by miners, 'red' skins and anti-Nazis had the Front on the run'

Fascism 'thrives on the weakness and indecision of its opponents... [the NF] 'pulled off a major propaganda victory by coming into and disrupting a major event attended by thousands of people'

Hang Wangford later wrote about these events in a song called 'On the Line'. As described, his band took quite a battering and suffered from the lack of preparedness for the attack - seemingly they were unaware that the earlier attack had happened when they went on stage:

On the Line (extracts)

'Now back in the summer of '84. 

We tried to help the miners win their war

We came to do a gig for the GLC

That’s Good Loud Country for you and me.

There were hippies and punks and OAPs,  

UB40s and CIDs

But no one noticed them bad, bad boys

With the bottles, the skins and their mouth full of noise

Cause they slipped through the crowd like a shiver of fear

With their airwear steps that you never can hear

And I knew what they were when I saw them salute

And they knew I was a commie from my flesh pink suit

Now we started a polka, they went Sieg Heil

They jumped us and trod on our faces for a while

While they knocked us down and they put in the boot

They made a real mess of my flesh pink suit

Well they smashed a guitar, jagged like a knife

And cut it through the face of my friend for life

And there was no one to stop them, no security

From the police, the crowd or the GLC

No one told us while Billy Bragg sang

That the Redskins just had the boot put in

No one warned us before we went on

A hundred to one we wouldn't finish our song'.

Hank Wangford (centre) with GLC leader Ken Livingstone (left) and Miners' union leader Arthur Scargill at the festival shortly before Wangford was attacked. The historic 1984/85 miners strike had been going for three months by this point.

Bobby Valentino, probably best known for the fiddle part he wrote and performed on the Bluebells 'Young at Heart', was playing with Hank Wangford at the time. On his website he has recalled:

'At the beginning of the second number of the set (probably a pre-arranged signal) a gang of about fifteen skin’eads, from the National Front, surged out of the crowd, invading the stage, intent on aggression and attemped to ruin the afternoon. Apparently they had done the same to the Redskins, a well known very left leaning band of the time (who were part of the same management stable as Hank and Billy Bragg), about 15 minutes before on the second stage.

Well, the whole thing was a bit of a mess, Hank got fairly badly kicked and I saw an Ovation Acoustic Guitar being swung toward me. Automatically turning away to protect the violin, my back took the force of the blow. The guitar shattered against my shoulder blades. It was one of those classic cases of adrenaline dulling any pain because of the “flight or fight“ syndrome type thing I suppose, because it didn’t hurt for at least ten minutes and then it hurt like hell as the bruises started to appear.

But I was very lucky. B.J. Cole, sitting behind his pedal steel had hardly noticed what was happening so he didn’t see the jagged remains of the Ovation Acoustic being swung at him. It was a splintered remnant, the end of the fingerboard and the remains of the body that had survived the impact with my back, that made contact with his face and went through the side of his nose and then through his top and bottom lip. He ended up needing about fifteen stitches and grew a beard to cover the scar for a couple of years.

One fantastic sight that I will never forget is that of a huge Rasta, with his dreadlocks steaming out behind him, swinging a lighting safety chain above his head and chasing the fascist idiots off the stage - they fled like sheep in the face of his single handed onslaught. Apparently certain elements in the crowd, inspired by the noble action of said Rastafarian, took it upon themselves to give the flock a good kicking. I was really pleased to hear, from BJ later, that the skin’eads were left waiting, bleeding and bruised, in the hospital corridor (they’d all ended up at the same one) for hours as nobody wanted to treat them as an emergency'.

For better or worse the festival just continued after the fighting, with a huge crowd by the time The Smiths played, many people no doubt unaware of the details of what had happened.

Band times from programme - Redskins were scheduled to play at 2 pm and Hank Wangford at 3 pm.

Update: More memories

There have been some interesting memories prompted by this and related posts on various social media, here's some examples:

'I remember running over the footbridge by the Shell building being chased by a group of racists'

'we chased and caught some of them at Waterloo station trying to hide' 

'I remember them streaming through the crowed lashing out at random spectators. Still didn't stop a great Smiths set later'

'I was there, 21 years old, moved to London the year before. It was mayhem during The Redskins set. For The Hank Wangford set many people were sitting down, the fascists came in from the back kicking the sitting people in the face, as we scattered I saw three blokes, one with a metal crutch, chase and fell a skinhead, whilst he was on the ground they beat him with the crutch'.

'I was there and a lady next to me got a bottle thrown in her face and she had a baby in a pram. I finished up in the train station being protected by the police. We had to fight the police to get our hands on them'

'I was there. Shinned up a lamp post as they ran by'

'I was there. Turned around and got hit in the mouth by some fascist for the trouble. Had a fat lip for a bit but was comforted by Miki who later went on to be in Lush'

(Miki Berenyi has spoken previously of her love for Redskins - 'The other side of The Redskins was the idea of anti-fascist skinheads and it was a weird ting to see played out. You’d have racist, ‘skinhead’ skinheads who really didn’t like the idea, as they felt, of someone appropriating their look and making it left-wing and multicultural. They protected their identity very strongly and it led to some real clashes, which culminated when The Redskins played a GLC gig and there was a complete riot. It was fucking terrifying, the stage got invaded and bricks were being thrown but it showed The Redskins’ will')

Miki has responded directly on X: 'it was terrifying! The Sieg Heiling from a section started during the Redskins set and they invaded the stage. One guy picked up the entire drum kit to hurl it at the crowd. I saw Mitch (Hagar the Womb/Mekons) piling in to fend them off as the bottles and bricks flew'.

[it goes without saying that not all skinheads in this period, or in other periods, were racist/far right but there was a definite neo-nazi skinhead scene]

See previously:

Redskins: revolutionary rock'n'roll?

(It was an eventful weekend - the day before saw a mini-rampage during a demonstration against Ronald Reagan in London)

The Redskins - revolutionary rock'n'roll?

The Redskins were one of the few avowedly revolutionary socialist bands in mid 1980s Britain. They also had some decent tunes as well as a very sharp look. Two members of the band were active in the Socialist Workers Party and their musical output reflected this, indeed their first and only album took its name from the SWP's defining tagline 'Neither Washington nor Moscow' (but International Socialism). The band played numerous benefit gigs, especially during the miners strike. 

We might expect the party hierarchy to have been pleased at having such a band talking up its politics in songs and in the music press. But when the band were covered in Socialist Worker in September 1984 the tone was decidely lukewarm. After acknowledging their use 'to raise funds and fuel the spirit' Ed Warburton's article 'Powerful music, political pitfalls' goes on to warn that 'the dangers are great'.  Some of the arguments are not particularly controversial - yes, the music press builds people up then knocks them down again, and 'the music business turns everything  into a commodity. Rebellion is safely packaged'. The final sentence 'you can have revolutionary rock'n'roll but you can't be a revolutionary rock star' does though read a little bit like a direct warning to the band and a lot less than a glowing endorsement.

The negative tone was certainly picked up by many and there was an outpouring of support in the letters page of the paper. Paul McGinlay from Glasgow described the article as 'cynical, uneducated' and '  that 'The Redskins are the poison in the machine, and if you'd seen them you'd know that they'd go down rather than sell out'.

A Tyneside miner likewise called the article 'insulting and narrow-minded' and said 'I say all power to the Redskins and thank them for their Victory to the Miners gigs'.

'Ed Warburton's friend' came to his defence, claiming that he hadn't been slagging off the Redskins but making a broader point of critiquing those on the left 'who believe that red bands and stars spouting socialism in the NME are the shortcut to getting our message across. All that does is turn socialism into a fashion that the rock business can turn into last year's model and discard at a whim'.

A review of miners strike music in the paper shortly after does highlight the Redskins 'Keep on keeping on' single. Seemingly the band 'aren't to everyone's taste musically, but for sheer hard work, commitment and rock 'ard politics they can't be beat'.

The band split up in 1986. Over at Moving the River I found the story announcing this from the NME with the headline 'A rock and roll socialist fantasy ends'. It reads a little like the kind of state sponsored 'apology' read out by prisoners on Chinese media with the band's Martin Bottomley bemoaning the band's drift away from 'the party and its collective discipline'. He did though make the point that 'socialists should not discount the possibilities that popular culture can present'.

The SWP's ambivalence about the band most associated with it had a number of sources I think. The first stemmed from the top down culture of the party. Essentially a small number of people did the writing and thinking for the party, the job of the thousands of other members was to distribute this by the main activity of selling the paper.  Before social media and the internet, there was very little opportunity for people to put their own political views out there unless they started their own publication. People in the SWP who had their own platform independently of the party, such as a band or a zine, were always viewed with some suspicion.

But in the case of the Redskins there was perhaps a more specific issue. To lay claim to the skinhead identity as a socialist in the early 1980s was a bold move: a  statement of intent to occupy a subcultural space that the far right thought belonged squarely to them. Inevitably this was going to get a violent response, and it did at on June 10 1984 at the Greater London Council's 'Jobs for a Change' festival  in Jubilee Gardens on the South Bank.  An estimated 150,000 went along to see The Smiths, Billy Bragg, Misty in Roots, Gil Scott-Heron and the Redskins. As the latter were playing a group of around 100 bonehead fascists stormed the front and attacked people around the stage. I was in the crowd and there was a lot of panic as most people ran to get away, despite the fascists being massively outnumbered. Later there was more fighting as the fascists regrouped and attacked the crowd at another stage where Hank Wangford was playing (see photos and full report of these events here)

By this point the SWP, who had arguably been amongst those at the forefront of militant anti-fascism in the 1970s, were in no position to respond to such attacks even if they wanted to. It had actually recently expelled some of its most militant streetfighters for the offence of 'squadism' by which they meant putting too much focus on physically opposing fascists. Those expelled went on to form Red Action which was to be the backbone of Anti Fascist Action for at least the next 10 years.  Red Action members present at the GLC Festival had fought back against the National Front while many of the left activists present faded away, and when The Redskins next played a London gig it was Red Action who provided the security. The experience of The Redskins showed that the SWP's position at the time of more or less ignoring the far right threat was untenable, not that they would ever acknowledge it. The SWP acted like nothing had happened on the South Bank and neither the event or the fascist attack fiasco were mentioned in the following week's Socialist Worker. 

From Red Action no.13, 1984:

Stand up and Spit has lots of good material about Redskins and related scenes

1984 Socialist Workers courtesy of excellent Splits and Fusions

See previously Socialism through Oi? Chris Moore (Redskins) looks at the music scene in 1982