Ghost Town racism and resistance - The Specials play Coventry 1981

The Specials classic 'Ghost Town' single was released in June 1981. In the same month the band played an anti-racist gig in their home city of Coventry in a period of murderous racist attacks by far right-affiliated skinheads.

This report is from 'The Leveller' magazine, 26 June 1981, written by Chris Schüller with accompanying photos by Alastair Indge:

'The Precinct is a large modern shopping centre in the middle of Coventry, a warren of split level consumerism, fountains, pubs, car parks and lightbites. Last Saturday morning it was business as usual, thousands of shoppers, bored kids milling around, a number of skinheads. The only unusual things about it were the number of police on patrol in pairs and stationed in vans near every main entrance. And the fact that, for a city with an Asian population of 22,000, there are remarkably few to be seen.

Two months ago, Satnam Singh Gill, a student at Henley College, was beaten, kicked and stabbed to death by a group of skinheads in broad daylight within 50 yards of the Precinct. It wasn’t the first racist attack to take place in Coventry. Just two weeks earlier, 17 year old Susan Cheema was minding her father;s grocery shop when she was attacked about the face, arms and hands with a scythe, losing one of her fingers. But it was the worst so far, focusing attention on the growing racial violence in the city, and prompting local Asian groups to organise anti racist campaigns and set up self defence groups [...]

The day after Satnam Singh Gill died, a meeting was called by Asian and West Indian community leaders. Attended by over 400 people, it’s set up the Coventry Committee against Racism, a broad based organisation to which 37 community associations, temples and political groups are associated. They range from the Supreme Council of Sikhs through to the Communist Party to the Anglo-Asian Conservative Association. On May 23, they held a march to the city centre to protest at the death of Satnam Singh Gill. As the 10,000 strong procession reached Broadgate, a large group of ‘seig heiling’ skinheads began to hurl missiles and abuse from behind the police lines. As the young Asian marchers attempted to retaliate, some of them shouting, 'Brixton! Brixton!', 74 arrests were made. Many felt that the arrests were made far from impartially, and that the police had acted in defence of the right-wingers [...]

May 23 also provided the first concrete evidence that racist activity in Coventry was being coordinated by fascist organisations. Rumours had circulated before that the British Movement had moved some members into Coventry in January, that on May 9, four or five members of the BM and New National Front were seen in the city centre, but on May 23, hundreds of unorganised skinheads who had gathered to abuse and attack the marchers were met by Robert Relf and Leicester BM organiser Ray Hill [...]

Despairing of fair treatment and protection from the police, many members of the Asian community are organising their own defence. Harjinder Sehmi told me that his temple are providing judo and karate classes. 'We’re not out to revenge anything' he says, 'just out to defend ourselves'. Some of the more militant groups and individuals in the Coventry Committee against Racism have formed the Committee for Anti-racist Defence Squads under the umbrella of the larger organisation.

Meanwhile the attacks have intensified. On May 17, arson attempts took place at the Krishna temple and the Indian and Commonwealth Club. A woman of 50 was stabbed by skinheads while out shopping; a bus driver was attacked with a broken bottle, and another, who attempted to defend himself again skinheads was charged with actual bodily harm and with carrying an offensive weapon [...]  At the Coventry Carnival on May 13, the carnival queen, a West Indian, had to ride in a closed car because of stoning threats, and when a group of West Indian youths intervened to help an Asian boy who was being roughed up by skinheads, the police chased them off […]

Then on June 7, Dr Amal Dharry was stabbed in the heart by a 17-year-old skinhead as he left the chip shop in Earlsdon. He staggered to his car, where he locked himself in before collapsing. He died in hospital after 10 days on a life support machine. His attacker gave him self up immediately. He’d done it for a £15 bet that you wouldn’t “get a p*ki that night”.

It was against this background of racist violence that the Coventry-based two tone group The Specials decided to hold a festival for racial harmony in the Butts Stadium last Saturday. They asked other popular Coventry bands to perform for free – and put up the £13,000 it cost to put on the festival. The profits were to go to local anti racist groups [...]

On the day, barely 1000 people turned up. Perhaps they were scared away by rumours of trouble, perhaps they found the £3.50 entrance fee too expensive [...] Things livened up when The Specials came on. They seemed to turn the tension and frustration and disappointment into musical energy, and the small passive crowd suddenly became a big, excited one, and the songs never sounded so urgent, so relevant. But perhaps the high point of the whole set was a guest appearance by Rhoda Dakar who used to be with the Bodysnatchers. 'This is a song about another kind of violence, sexual violence'. It was called The Boiler and was about rape'.

[Hazel O'Connor also played at the festival. A few weeks later riots swept the country - see previous posts on the 1981 Summer Uprisings]

See also:

The Specials headline Leeds Carnival Against Racism 1981

Youth Strike 4 Climate in London

I jogged along to cheer on the Youth Strike 4 Climate in  central London yesterday. Great to see thousands of school students seemingly wandering in groups all round the area holding up the traffic on Westminster Bridge, Whitehall etc. There was a tangible wave of noise and energy sweeping across the area. It felt like one of those once in a generation moments when people come out on the streets and experience for the first time the sweet taste of collective agency and possibility... that feeling can have life changing effects for many years to come.


In the UK  mass protests on a school day are rare and generally signal a historical moment, like the anti-war school strikes of 2003 and the student/anti-austerity protests of 2010.  The fact that this Friday's school strike in 60 UK towns and cities is part of an international movement makes it all the more significant in this period of resurgent nationalism.  None of the big issues facing us can be solved in one country, even by left wing national governments, so globalisation from below is the only way to go.  

New Wave Rave 1977

As documented here before, the words ‘rave’ and ‘ravers’ seem to date back to the post-WW2 UK jazz scene and were widely used through to the late 1960s underground before seemingly largely falling out of use until the acid house era. But here’s a rare example from the punk period- an advert for a 1977 series of gigs in the West Country by Chelsea and The Cortinas (both on Step Forward records) with the strapline ‘New Wave Rave’. A ‘New Wave Disco’ is also promised.

In recent years the name ‘New Wave Rave’ has been used for various punk/indie club nights (a quick search throws up nights in Sydney and Berlin, among others). But I’m not aware of other examples of the use of the word ‘rave’ in the high punk period (1976-78). 

The poster features in the excellent ‘Oh So Pretty: Punk in Print 1976-80’ book by Toby Mott and Rick Poynor. 

How it all began (for me): a School Kid against the Nazis in Luton 1979/80

Going on a recent march against the far right in central London got me thinking about my earliest forays into anti-fascism when I was at school...

In 1979 I was 16, in my last year at school in Luton and getting into radical politics off the back of a couple of years listening to punk. I was voraciously reading anything relevant I could get my hands on from local libraries and bookshops, which included that year Martin Walker's The National Front (dedicated to 'anti-fascists everywhere'), George Woodcock's The Anarchist Reader anthology and Gordon Carr's The Angry Brigade. The latter introduced me to the Situationists and I tried unsuccessfully to get Luton Central Library to find a copy of The Society of the Spectacle. The actual radicals on the ground in Luton were a bit more mundane than my fantasy 1968 utopians, basically the Communist Party, the Labour Party Young Socialists (including 'Militant') and the Socialist Workers Party selling papers in the town centre next to Don Miller's bakers.  

The Clash were my favourite band, and I'd read all about the great Rock Against Racism carnivals of 1977/78 (in fact I wrote off to Rock Against Racism to enquire about getting involved). In the lead up to the  May 1979 General election, conflict between the far right National Front and its opponents increased in intensity. There were riotous clashes in Leicester and on the 23rd April 1979 socialist teacher Blair Peach was killed by the police in Southall while taking part in protests against an NF meeting in that predominately Asian area of West London.

The election, infamously won by Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives, nudged me towards participating in politics rather than just reading about it. I went to see Tony Benn speak in Luton town centre (29/4/1979), but I still hadn't been on an actual protest. All that changed in June 1979.

Luton Anti Nazi League leaflet, June 1979 - 'your Council allows the Nazi and Racist organization the National Front to use your library. We, the people of Luton, have joined together to oppose this... support racial harmony, oppose fascism'

 Someone I bought a paper off must have told me that the National Front were holding regular meetings at Luton Library with Anti-Nazi League pickets opposing them on the second Friday of every month. The NF had had a presence in the town for some time. In February 1977, NF Chairman John Tyndall was greeted with eggs and chants of  'nazi scum' when he arrived to speak at a meeting in Luton Town Hall (Luton News 10.2.77). The NF stood candidates in both Luton constituencies in the 1979 general election, with Donald How securing 701 votes in Luton West and MG Kerry 461 votes in Luton East. Notorious racist Robert Relf, who had once been jailed after putting a 'no coloureds' for sale sign outside his house in Leamington Spa, was working locally as a bus driver. 

I approached my first protest on Friday 6th June 1979 nervously and excitedly expecting some kind of Leicester/Southall confrontation, if on a smaller scale. In the event it was all rather tame. There were about twenty of us picketing and a handful of suspected NFers sneaking in and out under the eye of a small number of police, a pattern that was repeated on subsequent similar protests over the summer. 

The very next day though a group of us from Luton travelled up to Bedford town centre where a group of racist skinheads had been making a nuisance of themselves. As we gave out our leaflets in the name of 'People of Bedfordshire Against Racism' there was a a brief stand off with far right skins and anti-fascists squaring up to each other before the former moved off. Afterwards we went for a drink at a local gay pub, The Barley Mow, another first for me.

'People of Bedfordshire Against Racism - Day of Action, Sat 7th June... your support in the fight against racism is needed'
(reverse of Luton Anti Nazi League leaflet reproduced above)

People of Bedford Against Racism - sometimes known as People of Bedfordshire Against Racism - was set up 'to fight all forms of racism and the growth of fascism in our town'. Founders included Balbir Dutt and Bedford Young Indians.  Here's another leaflet of their's:

Also from this period a Bedford Rock Against Racism leaflet (thanks to Glyn Harries for supplying this and the one above).

'to stand aside is to take sides'

I heard a first hand account of the Southall events soon after, when I went to a Luton Anti Nazi League meeting with Balwinder Singh from Southall ANL. There were also speakers from Luton Trades Council (Jim Thakoordin) and the Pakistani Workers Association, and a collection for the Southall Defence Fund.

Leaflet for Luton Anti Nazi League meeting, 14 July 1979 'Learn the lessons of Southall'
I went to this meeting with a friend, David Heffer. Sadly he was killed in 1992 in an IRA bomb at the Sussex pub in London's Covent Garden.

 On my last day at school at the start of that summer I wrote in my diary 'bought a School Kids Against the Nazis badge, filled in a form to join the Labour Party Young Socialists, left school' (OK last day in school was a bit late to buy a school kids badge, but I did go on to Sixth Form College!).



'SKAN' - School Kids Against the Nazis



Opposing the British Movement in Notting Hill, 1980

It was another year before I went on my first major anti-fascist demo. In November 1980, the neo-nazi British Movement marched from London's Hyde Park to Edgware Road chanting 'We are the Whites' and 'Death to the Reds'. According to the report in The Leveller magazine, there were around 600 BM 'opposed by between 4 and 5,000 anti-fascists' who marched from Portobello Road in Notting Hill. Large numbers of police were mobilised - Socialist Challenge reported '8,000 cops defend 500 nazis' - turning Notting Hill into a 'sterile area'  to stop people getting near to the fascists. My main memory is  of standing around and of endless rumours about the whereabouts of the British Movement, who I never saw. There were 73 arrests, mostly in scuffles between anti-fascists, BM skins and the police Special Patrol Group near Paddington Station, with press photographers having their cameras taken by cops. Afterwards a Luton comrade, who was Jewish, took me to a Jewish Socialist Group meeting at a flat in north London.

So no great heroics, no Cable street or Lewisham-style battles... but maybe that was a good lesson. If you're in it for the long haul, you sure need to learn patience and low key local organising. On the counter-demo to the Tommy Robinson/UKIP 'Brexit Betrayal' march (December 2018) I actually saw somebody else who was also there on that first protest of mine in 1979. Of course it's more than annoying that the leading figure on the contemporary British far right also comes from Luton. But hey, Tommy Robinson doesn't represent us (as recently pointed out by Ash Sarkar he doesn't even represent 52% of mortgage fraudsters). We have Nadiya Hussain, Stacey Dooley and the mighty Luton Town FC, we certainly don't need him.

[I didn't stay in the Labour Party Young Socialists for much longer - that's another story - but 40 years later I've been on quite a few more demos! The following year  (1981) things hotted up further in Luton with the formation of an anti-racist Luton Youth Movement and a riot sparked by the presence of nazi skinheads in the town centre. I will come back to that another time].

See also: Blinded by the Light - memories of 1980s Luton racism and job cuts  

(from 'The Leveller' no. 45, November 28 1980).

(Socialist Challenge, 27/11/1980)

[post updated August 2020 with Socialist Challenge press clipping; updated January 2021 with Bedford RAR leaflet]

Other Luton writings:

Blinded by the Light - memories of racism and job cuts in 1980s Luton (including the Luton Youth Movement)

Luton Nuclear Disarmament Campaign go to Greenham Common 1980

The Luton Riots of 1981 - 'Brixton comes to Bedfordshire'

The Hunger Strike, the Irish War and an English Town

Karma Sutra, Luton anarcho-punk and hunt sabbing

Clubbing in Luton 1984

Dole Days in Luton: unemployed protests, 1985

Luton Punk Squat Party 1985 - with Karma Sutra

We are Luton - opposing the English Defence League in 2012

'Angry White People' book review (at Datacide magazine)

Walking in the swarm of stars

I've long been interested in dreams and visions of flight and space, something I experimented with a bit during the fantastic voyage of the Association of Autonomous Astronauts.

‘Nan Domi’, Mimerose P. Beaubrun’s deeply personal account of her ‘inititiate’s journey into Haitian Vodou’, is much concerned with  visions, dreams and the means  for moving between visible and invisible worlds. The title itself refers to what the author describes as ‘the  second level of attention... a state that permits one to see abstract things unknown until then. A lucid dream state’.


Her mentor teaches her that she has three bodies- the physical body (kadav ko) supplemented by a ‘double’, the nannan - ‘our mystery side... that is conscious of the two states- the state of being awake, and the dreaming state’ - which ‘in Nan Domi... is enveloped in light and becomes light-  the nannan-rev’. Her ‘Aunt’leads her on a visionary journey into space, ‘walking in the swarm of stars’.

Opening with the words ‘Ann ay monte Anwo. N apray palmannaze nan Lapousiye’ (‘Lets ascend towards ecstasy. We are going to walk in the Milky Way’), her singing and the sound of the tchatcha rattle help Mimerose to ‘drift into somnolence’and then become ‘conscious of walking in a place where everything was coloured mauve... At intervals, an abyss opened and then fell away. A prolonged movement like the swell of big waves broke into foam the colour of yellow saffron. The scenes before me came and went, fast and fascinating. I plunged into them as one plunges into the sea. The waves rocked me, and suddenly I saw myself as a baby. I watched my own birth’.

The author is lead singer and founding member of the Haitian band Boukman Eksperyan.

'Sound of police truncheon against body': David Peace's miners strike soundscape

I've written here before about music and the 1984/85 miners strike, including putting together a mix which you can find on mixcloud. But the day to day soundscape of the strike, and particulalry its picket line battles, was less about the bands playing benefit gigs  than the sounds of crowds (including some songs and chants) and sounds of the police with their vehicles, horses and riot shields.


One of the things I like about 'GB84', David Peace's fictionalised ‘occult history’ of the strike, is his description of this. He writes of  'The noise of the battle... The shouts. The sirens' and of the 'Noise of it all. Boots and Stones. Flesh and bones... They beat them shields like they beat us... I heard them again - Them hooves, them boots'.


In his visceral, multi-sensory account the author invites the reader to recall or imagine the  'sound of body against Perspex shield', 'sound of rock hitting Perspex shield' and 'sound of police truncheon against body'.


These sounds are integral to the emotional landscape of the strike which Peace also conveys very well - anger, jubilation, pain, hope, powerlessness, despair, pride...


Peace himself grew up in Ossett in what was then the West Yorkshire coalfied, and as a 17 year old at the time of the strike played miners benefits gigs with his band.

Haircut Sir? - Flat Top Days in Brixton

I was sad to hear of the death of  barber Andy Haralambous (1/06/1944 - 09/10/2018). For ten years from the late 1980s, Andy cut my hair regularly at his barber's shop at the bottom of Tulse Hill, Haircut Sir? In fact he cut my hair very regularly, as it was short and in need of constant attention. Andy was famous for his flat top haircuts at a time when this was the coolest hair style in town.

I'd had my first a few years earlier at Cyril's in Canterbury, where I was a student. That first time, around my 20th birthday, I didn't even know what it was called, I had to point at some passing rockabilly rebel and say 'like that'!  Not long after I started going to regular Thursday night sessions put on by Whitstable rockabilly band The Keytones at The Tankertons Arms there (this would have been 1983/84). I gravitated towards punkier hair styles for a while, including a short lived mohican, but within a few years I felt the call of the full flat top again.

In the 1980s, the flat top and variations of it were not confined to 1950s revivalists. There was the whole psychobilly scene wtih gothish elements and various post-punk short back and side merchants from Kirk Brandon to Morrissey. There was a black hip hop version, and let's not forget Grace Jones. In the pre-rave warehouse party/rare groove scene, there were flat tops aplenty and it was the haircut du jour of young gay London (including many lesbians as well as gay men).

When I moved to Tulse Hill Estate in Brixton in early 1987, I needed to keep my flat top sharp to go with my black Levi 501s and DMs for nights out at The Fridge and elsewhere. Andy was the local barber. But he was well known beyond the local area for his flat top skills - I remember him being mentioned in either Time Out or The Face, or possibly both, as doing one of the best flat tops in London.  People came from far and wide. Like many London barbers, Andy was from Cyprus, like most barbers from wherever he enjoyed regaling his captive seated audience with his views on the state of the world!

Some Haircut Sir handiwork

collecting for striking P&O shipping workers in Brixton 1988 with Andy flat top

In the ecstasy fuelled 1990s long hair made a come back, but there was no going back for me. There might have been some colouring added at times, but it's short back and sides for life (well for as long as I have hair) even if I now have a not-so stark number 3 at the sides. I moved to New Cross in '96 and my regular trips to Andy's faded out. Nowadays I head to KRS Barber Station in Brockley where the clippers are wielded by barbers from the Turkish side of Cyprus. But Haircut Sir? is still going strong in SW2, where Andy passed on the business to his children.

So long Andy and thanks for the haircuts.

update: thanks to Andrew Brooks on Twitter for reminding me of Andy's standard introduction when somebody entered the shop - 'Cup of tea? Kettle’s there. Help yourself'. Of course if you did make one the etiquette was to offer one to Andy and anybody else queuing.

Andy in action (photo from Haircut Sir? facebook page)

London from punk to Blair EDITED BY JOE KERR & ANDREW GIBSON

Photographic Consultant Mike Seaborne

Update May 2024:

London: from Punk to Blair, edited by Andrew Gibson and Joe Kerr (2003) includes an overview of London hair styles which mentions Andy's:

 'Punk hairstyles continued to inspire looks throughout the next decade, providing the basis for the teased, dyed, androgynous black hair displayed in the Goth movement whose adherents haunted Camden Market and the infamous Batcave. By the late 1970s, the punk notion that a haircut could be a walking work of art on the streets of London was pushed even further by the New Romantic subculture, whose shock value rested on a deliberate confusion of gender seen in clubs such as Blitz and Taboo. Kevin Ryan of Antenna, Kensington Church Street, was responsible for some of the most exciting developments in male hairstyling of this period, and used extensions in his session work for singers such as Boy George. A whole host of retro references began to influence men's styles, such as the brushed flat top - Andy's Cut and Blow Dry of Tulse Hill was reputed to do the best flat top in London, followed closely by Atlas Associates of Fulham Road (Caroline Cox, White Hair Right Now: Styling the London Man)

July Days in London: Trump as Tyrant Monster and our opposition

I've been thinking again about the Trump phenomenon. As many have pointed out, plenty of other US  Presidents have presided over racist penal systems, nationalist sabre rattling and domination by corporations. Why is Trump any worse? Well partly because he represents an attempt to turn the clock back on some of the limited social progress that has been made in the past 50 years, in the process unleashing overt racism and legitimising the extreme right at home and abroad. But he also prompts  fear because of his very unpredictability  - he is not simply a smooth front man for capitalist business as usual, but someone who creates an impression that his personal power comes before everything, and that therefore nothing is sacred and nobody is safe. There is something almost archetypal here - he is like the 'tyrant monster' described by Joseph Campbell in 'The Hero with a Thousand Faces' (1949):

'The figure of the tyrant-monster is known to the mythologies, folk traditions, legends, and even nightmares, of the world; and his characteristics are everywhere essentially the same. He is the hoarder of the general benefit. He is the monster avid for the greedy rights of "my and mine." The havoc wrought by him is described in mythology and fairy tale as being universal throughout his domain... The inflated ego of the tyrant is a curse to himself and his world—no matter how his affairs may seem to prosper. Self-terrorized, fear-haunted, alert at every hand to meet and battle back the anticipated aggressions of his environment, which are primarily the reflections of the uncontrollable impulses to acquisition within himself, the giant of self-achieved independence is the world's messenger of disaster, even though, in his mind, he may entertain himself with humane intentions. Wherever he sets his hand there is a cry (if not from the housetops, then- more miserably—within every heart): a cry for the redeeming hero, the carrier of the shining blade, whose blow, whose touch, whose existence, will liberate the land'.

Yes I know that Campbell's work is problematic in many ways, but there's something to think about in this descrition of a type even if we have to be our own collective redeeming hero rather than waiting for a knight in shining armour to save us... And on the subject of our collective potential, here some pictures from last month's protests in London.
Donald Trump's visit saw one of the largest week day demonstrations in living memory on Friday 13th July 2018. In fact there were two major demos over the course of the day, the second and largest featuring as many as 250,000 people marching to Trafalgar Square.

The statue of liberty in Trafalgar Square:

Women dressed as characters from the Handmaid’s Tale with a sign declaring ‘Gilead steals our babies too’ alluding to the caging of children of migrants caught crossing the Mexican border:

Sound systems:

'we are all migrants'

'Latin American Migrants United Against Trump'



'Latin X Bloc - anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, feminist'

Frida Kahlo says 'Trump, get your nasty little hands off my people'

one of many marching bands

'Trumpets against Trump'



Harry Potter bloc? - Trump as dementor with the words ‘Expecto Patronum’ – the magic charm used by Potter against the dark forces of Voldemort (note Dumbledore quote on placard too)

The next day a far right 'welcome Trump to London' march from the US Embassy attracted an embarrassing turn out of less than 200. But it was followed by a Free Tommy Robinson demo in central London that included activists from the UK Independence Party, PEGIDA (Germany), Breitbart, Generation Identity, the Swedish Democrats (SD) and France’s Rassemblement National (formerly the Front National), among many others. Figures associated with Trump such as his former strategist Steve Bannon have supported Robinson (former leader of the English Defence League), indicating a dangerous convergence between elements close to the White House and the previously marginal global far right.

The master race drinking at The Lord Moon of the Mall (Wetherspoons pub) on Whitehalll

In size, this was a smaller protest than the Free Tommy demo in London a month before which ended in clashes with police (maybe 5000 compared with 15,000). The counter demo was also more effective, including an Anti Fascist Network mobilisation (perhaps 3000 anti-fascists out on the day after the 250,000 anti-Trump protest - compared with a few hundred the month before). Still nothing to be complacent about, even if the immediate UK far right grievance has now been resolved with Robinson being released from prison. Globally the far right have been emboldened by Trump's success and believe that history is swinging their way. Last time some of their Tyrant Monsters achieved power it did not end well.

'We are all anti-fascist' - at Jubilee Gardens on South Bank from where marchers moved to Whitehall.

'Defend London: defeat the fascist creep'



'Blake Bloc - Opposition is true friendship' - great William Blake inspired banner on anti-fascist demo

Motorway Madness: 'ravers take over motorway services' (i-D, 1991)

Great article from i-D magazine, no. 91, April 1991 about post-club gatherings at Motorway service stations (click on images to enlarge):

'3 AM, Saturday morning. The M6 is windy, wet and desolate. Its service stations offer comfort only to lorry drivers and sleepy executives. For many weeks, however, selected services have paid host to the coffee and communal smoke of hundreds of ravers' post club comedown. After the semi legendary Blackburn parties, police continually harassed the convoys criss-crossing Lancashire and beyond. Although parties such as Revenge provided a brief replacement, the next best thing was driving long distance to a club and afterwards passing a few hours chilling at a service station. A network of clubs around the Midlands and Northwest, such as Legends in Warrington, Quadrant Park in Liverpool and Oz in Blackpool now provide the excitement and camaraderie of the raves of 1989 and 1990. Each club generates its own Service station mayhem; favourites including Burtonwood (M62), Charnock Richard (M6) and Anderton (M61).

The usual M6 choice, Knutsford (with its commanding views of all six lanes from the cafe) has tonight been cordoned off by the police (the “dibble“) and so the hordes head south to Sandbach. Most are returning from Shelley’s Laserdome in Stoke. As the cafeteria fills up and the ghetto blasters rev up, the staff and the casual callers look bewildered, probably by the size of the bubble jackets as much as the weight of numbers.

In the jungle humidity of the clubs, the ubiquitous baggy T-shirt is the only garment which prevents fainting, but in the chillier atmosphere of the services, mountaineering gear and sportswear reign. The clothes are from Chipie, Gio Goi, Soviet and still Joe Bloggs; favourite jackets and thick, fleecy tops come from Tog 24 and Berghaus. The bobble hat, once the preserve of train spotters, is now sported  with pride and appears in a vast range of bobbles, colours and ear-flaps...

A similar situation goes off on Sunday morning at Charnock Richard. 300 cars, each full, descend on the service area. This has been happening since the north-west after hours raves diminished last autumn. However by Christmas the management and police got wise to the game and started shutting the coffee bar, leaving the car park as the congregation area...'

'Phoebe 16, music journalist from Derby, clothes from Stussy and Guy's in Derby. Maddest thing you've ever done? 'Had the best night of my life at Shelleys and then got stuck in Stoke'

Reagan vists London (1984): mass demo, 'punk anti militarists' and a quick rampage through Covent Garden

In June 1984, US President Ronald Reagan visited London to participate in a World Economic Summit at Lancaster House. This was during the period when US cruise nuclear missiles were being deployed in Britain in the face of widespread opposition.

To coincide with the summit, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and other peace groups called for demonstrations on Saturday 9th June 1984. We know a fair amount about how these protests were viewed by the state as a result of the release of various official files relating to CND in this period, collected together at the Special Branch Files Project.

Home Office and police correspondence indicates that UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was unhappy about the potential for news coverage of the demo distracting from the Summit. However she was advised that there was no legal basis to prevent the march and that in any event it would be impractical to enforce any ban. Summarising police advice, a note from Home Office F4 Division (Counter-Subversion/Terrorism) states 'unwelcome though this demonstration may be, there do not appear to be any grounds or powers to prohibit it'. The predicted large crowd would be 'a body of a size which cannot be physically prevented from moving if it wished to do so, and the police have proceeded throughout on the basis that some demonstration on these lines should be allowed to go ahead'.  A note from Downing Street (28 May 1984) states that 'Mrs Thatcher agrees that we have to accept the judgement of the police on the handling of this demonstration'.

The Metropolitan Police Special Branch Threat Assessment of the protests was shared with the Home Office on  8 June 1984. It advised was that the main event was to be the 'Return to Sender' march from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square, expected to attract around 100,000 people (the name of the demo referring to sending back cruise missiles).  In addition a non-violent sit down blockade of the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square was expected to attract 2,000 people. What the report describes as 'autonomous pacifists' under the banner of 'Summit '84' were proposing to undertake similar action to try and blockade Lancaster House itself.

On the day, Reuters estimated that around 150,000 demonstrated (CND claimed it was nearer to 200,000).  There were 214 arrests, including 13 who were arrested in the evening outside Buckingham Palace as Reagan arrived to attend a banquet given by the Queen (Canberra Times, 11 June 1984). There was also a sit down protest in Oxford Street.

Socialist Organiser, 14 June 1984

Trafalgar Square, 9 June 1984. photo by Alan Denney at flickr

The police threat assessment also included reference to anarchists:

'The Class War Collective of Anarchists and its motley collection of punk anti-militarist followers are known to oppose the middle-class manner in which CND conducts itself. At the 22nd October 1983 demonstration some 100 Class War followers attempted to storm the stage at the rally but were unsuccessful. Whilst there is no intelligence to suggest they will attempt the same maneouvre, it is known that their 'Spring Offensive against the rich' has not so far been successful. There has been a suggestion, however, that they may use the cover of the demonstrations to go on the rampage in Mayfair and even to subvert other extremists into similar action. It is most unlikely that any other group would in fact act in this way, but if sufficient confusion can be generated these anarchists (about 100) might be emboldened to commit acts of random criminal damage.

Easily identifiable, with their punk hairstyles and dirty black clothing, these anarchists will undoubtedly congregate around their black, and black and red, anarchist flags in Hyde Park prior to joining the main demonstration'.

Knowing what we know now about infiltration of groups like Class War it is highly likely that undercover police were present at an organising meeting held in the lead up to the Reagan demo at the Roebuck pub in Tottenham Court Road, called by Class War with people attending from around the country. So perhaps not surprizingly the police assessment turned out to be fairly accurate.

The events of the day are described in Class War founder Ian Bone's book 'Bash the Rich':

'We couldn't get anywhere near Lancaster House and tail-ended a whooping it up anarcho-punk mob running around central London - ending up at a rally in Trafalgar Square (the opposite of what we'd intended). We had to rescue something from the day's disappointment. Thinking on our feet we decided to trash the Savoy just up the Strand. The word was spread furtively out of the corners of many mouths and about 100 black flag carriers sidled away from the rally at 4 pm and self-consciously drifted up towards the Savoy. Down the side of the Savoy towards the embankment there was a lorry load of scaffolding poles.

Whoop! Go for it!. The poles came off the lorry. Red Rick - an old brick shithouse builder mate from Swansea - caves the first windows in with the poles. Crash, every Savoy glass window in sight goes in. Up and away and leg it down to the river. Five minutes and still no sign of the cops coming. OK, let's have another pop, 4:30 pm. Covent Garden - disperse, mingle and meet up there., and we'll start with the big bank on the corner.  Covent Garden - no black flags now - the distant sound of belated copes getting to the Savoy. People have picked up ammunition on the way. 4:40 pm we'll go for it...  Red Rick leads the way again. Two bricks straight through the bank windows. Shoppers scatter screaming. We run through Covent Garden trashing everything in sight. The sound of smashing glass cascading after us. A two minutes rampage around the streets - an American skinhead girl gets pulled for trashing one restaurant window too many'.

Ian's Bone's account is pretty much as I remember it. There's an alleyway down by the side of the Savoy Hotel leading down to Victoria Embankment and most of the damage was on that side of the hotel. I think the main Covent Garden action was running west along King Street, there was a skip near a branch of Midland Bank (now HSBC) full of lumps of rock some of which ended up crashing through windows. I also recall a window being broken in the office of the Lady magazine nearby.

All of this was taking place against the background of the first few months of the national miners strike - note banner being held up in Trafalgar Square saying 'Yorkshire NUM will win'.

Photo by Chris Dorley-Brown on flickr

'Thousands march against missiles... and make links with miners'
Socialist Worker report of demo - 'what made Saturday's anti-Reagan demonstration better than many of its equally large predecessors was the marvellous response given to the miners. On Saturday morning Bruce Kent [CND] was in Scotland addressing the miners' gala, and in the afternoon he was in London telling CND marchers of the miners' fight'

From 'Socialist Action', 1 June 1984

The Reagan demo was to be just the start of a busy weekend. The following day (10th July 1984) there was a free 'Jobs for a Change' music festival on London's South Bank, organised by the left wing Greater London Council. Fascist skinheads stormed the stage as The Redskins were playing, and I ended up with an ad hoc group of anti-fascists chasing them around the area (see here for further details of those events).