Mick Jones' Rock & Roll Public Library

Over the years Mick Jones of  The Clash and Big Audio Dynamite has built up a huge archive which he has christened the Rock & |Roll Public Library (RRPL)  'including books, comics, magazines, musical equipment, literature, art, clothing, ephemera, as well as music and film in every format, revealing a wide network of influences that span the entire 20th century.' The latest incarnation of the project is an exhibition at the Farsight Gallery in London to mark the launch of an RRPL magazine.

It is a fantastic snapshot of popular culture and of the influences that have shaped Jones' music, which has in turn influenced so many others - not least my 14 year old self buying Complete Control on the day of release from F L Moore record shop in Luton just down the road from the Odeon Cinema where on that afternoon I had been on a school trip to watch the 1940s David Lean black and white film of Great Expectations. A couple of months earlier I had bought my first album - The Clash. But enough for now about teenage Clash obsesssion... 

As you might express there is musical memorabilia aplenty in Jones's collection, lots of  punk fanzines and press cuttings, but also his old guitar, Akai sampler and  the boombox painted by graffiti artist Futura 2000 that featured in the The Clash 'Rock the Casbah' video. Going back further there are the kind of  war story comics and toys that were a staple diet of male childhood in the 1960s. 

An effective way of displaying some of the material is grouping it together by colour creating some interesting juxtapositions. So the yellow display includes material from acid house club Shoom, a 1977 issue of anti-fascist magazine Searchlight and the 1983 programme for the play 'Another Country'

I was quite intrigued to see what kind of political material he has accumulated. I expected to see Rock Against Racism stuff  but there was a lot more than that including:

- a 1969 edition of Anarchy magazine with Che Guevera on the front and another issue from 1974 with Trotsky on cover

- A 1969 pamphlet by Trotskyist Ernest Mandel on 'The Revolutionary Student Movement: Theory and Practice'

- 'Pioneers of Women's Liberation' by Joyce Cowey - first published by Pathfinder Press in 1969

- 'The Menace of Fascism' by Ted Grant

'History and Revolution' by Paul Cardan, a 1971 pamphlet published by libertarian communist group Solidarity

Another Solidarity pamphlet on 'Paris May 1968'

A copy of  The 70s - put out by a Hong Kong based libertarian socialist group active in the 1970s

Jamaica: A Challenge from the Right by Richard Hart - a 1976 pamphlet from Caribbean Labour Solidarity

'Save the Sharpeville 6' - mid-1980s anti-apartheid publication

'Covert Action Information Bulletin'  - founded by CIA whistleblower Philip Agee

'Manifesto of Combate' - Combate were a Portuguese radical group active around the mid-1970s revolution there.

'Bash the Rich - the Class War Radical History Tour of Notting Hill' by Tom Vague.

'Boycott Quarterly' - 1990s US magazine.

 - And what of that A5 image saying 'Solidarity is Strength = Scabs are Scum'? I recognise that from my own 'archive' (pile of old pamphlets and papers) as the back cover of 'Barbed wire lies', an anarchist Tin Tin cartoon about the 1986/87 Wapping print strike.

All of this suggests Jones had at least a passing familiarity with radical left politics before and during his Clash/BAD days and I am guessing would have picked this kind of material up at London radical bookshops of the period including Compendium in Camden, Collets in Charing Cross Road and/or Housmans near Kings Cross.

The Rock & Roll Public Library runs at the Farsight Gallery, 12  - 7 pm from 1 -  16 March 2025. The gallery is at  4 Flitcroft St, London WC2H 8DJ - just at the end of Denmark Street. Those involved with the gallery include former club promoter (Club UK etc) and Jo Boxers drummer Sean Mclusky. They are putting on some interesting exhibitions and events there.

See previously:

Derek Jarman film night at Farsight Gallery

Sophie Richmond on the Politics of Punk 1977

Joe Strummer, Rock Against the Rich and Spycops

In 1988 Joe Strummer embarked on a 'Rock Against the Rich' tour organised by anarchist group Class War. The tour had its origins in the Warwick Castle pub in Notting Hill where Class War's Ian Bone and the ex-Clash lead singer came up with the idea over a few pints.

 

As part of the ongoing Undercover Policing Inquiry, thousands of  reports filed by police infiltrators have been published. Among them are many reports from 'HN10' Bob Robinson (real name Bob Lambert) who infiltrated animal rights groups in north London in the 1980s but also kept an eye on anarchists and others he came across in London Greenpeace and similar groups.

Lambert, who was married with children in his 'real' life, notoriously had a number of  intimate relationships while undercover (none with informed consent) including fathering a child before vanishing. Part of his schtick was  to use music to develop connections with activists, travelling to the Glastonbury and Cambridge Folk Festivals and peppering his letters with references to Steely Dan and Van Morrison and, seemingly, his police reports with references to The Clash.

In his reports to his Special Branch and security service bosses he notified them of the emerging plans for the Strummer gigs. The first report in March 1988 includes the claim that Strummer was 'contacting Mick Jones and other former members and associates of The Clash with a view to reforming the notorious punk band especially for the gig'

A second report on the 10th May from this 'secret and reliable source' noted that 'Ian Bone and. Darren Ryan, leading Class War activists continue to have regular discussions with veteran punk music star Joe Strummer in connection with a series of planned Rock Against the Rich concerts... certain to attract a high level of interest amongst London's resilient punk community'. The report also mentions a forthcoming Rock Against the Rich launch party at the Golden Lady pub in Albion Road with disco provided by an Animal Liberation Front activist'.

There's a couple of pages about the tour in Class War newspaper, no. 28 (1988), some extracts follow:

'Welsh band Anhren are bringing out a Rock Against the Rich benefit single'

Round up of Rock Against the Rich gigs, including Strummer playing in Brixton (at the Fridge) and Camden. The latter was at the Electric Ballroom on July 7th 1988, supported by Chelsea and World Domination Enterprises. Found an account on facebook from somebody who was there: 'Set included his single Trash City , covers of Big Audio dynamite songs V13 & Sightsee mc, Keys to your heart from his pre Clash 101ers days & the stuff most of us were there for White man in Hammersmith Palais,Police & Thieves, Police on my back ,This is England, Somebody got murdered, he also chucked in a lively Pogues cover If i should fall from grace with God'. 

'At a time when rock music and its surrounding cults and causes are about as threatening as a bowl of marshmallows, Class War has initiated Rock Against the Rich to put class politics back onto the agenda, using music as a weapon'

Class War's Darren Ryan has written an account of the tour, conlcuding: 'It may not have been how we originally intended it, but it was moderately successful in some ways. And it was a lot of fun. But I look back in anger at it, as we had such great ideas for it, and it still gets my blood boiling the way it was turned from potentially dangerous to pleasantly adventurous by people who used it as their ticket into the music industry. And such are the best of working class ideas, watered down for safe consumption for the middle classes. However, the original idea and plan of Rock Against the Rich remains as relevant and as dangerous as it was then'. Not all planned gigs happened, in particular events on the Isle of Dogs and at Hackney Empire were blocked.

Probably shouldn't romanticise all this too much. I think some of these gigs at the time were seen as being quite shambolic, Strummer backed by an unprepared band. In a way it was a bit out of time in emphasising rock when other musics were becoming more important. Other things were stirring in 1988...

From NME, 30 July 1988 - a Rock Against the Rich gig at the Tunnel Club in Greenwich with Anhrefen, Sign on Valley Rangers and the Mega City 4. Another South London gig mentioned in the Class War article was apparently scheduled for July 2 1988 in Lewisham, with The Dispossessed and Beethoven.

See previously:

Unite Against Racism demo in East End 1994 + a spycops report on David Bowie donating to Anti Nazi League