Compilations against the Criminal Justice Act

The mid-1990s movement against the British Government's Criminal Justice Act, and in particular it's 'anti-rave' police powers, was one of the more exciting episodes of that time (see my Datacide article 'Revolt of the Ravers: the movement against the Criminal Justice Act, 1993-95). Naturally this movement found musical expression including a number of disparate compilation albums.

The one with perhaps the biggest names - some of them surprizing - is Criminal Justice! (Axe the Act), with tracks from Jamiroquai, Radiohead, The Shamen, Stereo MCs, Aswad, Orbital, Dodgy, Corduroy, EMF and a frankly bizarre Duran Duran cover of Public Enemy's '911 is a joke' in a Beck style. In between the tracks there's spoken work narration from Malcolm McLaren. 

  

The 1995 release was billed as a benefit for the Coalition Against the Criminal Justice Act. Initiated by the Socialist Workers Party, the Coalition was viewed with some suspicion by many of those in the anti-CJA movement though it did manage to get various trade union branches and civil liberties groups to affiliate. I doubt whether many of the acts on this CD were being played out on free party sound systems at the time with the possible exception of Orbital, still fair play to these bands for putting their names and music to the cause. 

'Taking Liberties' (Totem Records, 1994) was closer to the actual soundtrack of the movement, featuring mainly electronic/dance music acts including The Orb, The Prodigy, Loop Guru, Tribal Drift, Trans-Global Underground, System 7 (with Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy from Gong), Galliano, Fun-Da-Mental, DreadZone,  Ultramarine, The Drum Club, Test Dept and Zion Train. The Shamen and Orbital feature on both this and the compilation above.

Proceeds were ear-marked for the Freedom Network and the sound systems' based Advance Party (who had jointly kicked off the grassroots anti-CJA movement), along with civil rights organisation Liberty and Squall magazine.

The cover art, reflected on the cassette tape version too, was by Jamie Reid.

 

'NRB:58 - No Repetitive Beats' refers to clause 58 of the initial Criminal Justice Bill which infamously defined raves as including music characterised by repetitive beats. It is basically a compilation of fairly mainstream house music of the period including a mix version by Hacienda DJ Graeme Park. It has some great mainly US/Italian tracks on it by the likes of Loleatta Holloway and The Reese Project (Kevin Saunderson),  not sure if any of them specifically endorsed the campaign but there was a promise of a donation from each sale to famous Nottingham based free party sound system DiY Collective and its associated anti-CJA campaign 'All Systems No!'

'For every copy of No Reptetitive Beats sold Network will pay a royalty to DIY/All Systems No! (an advance payment of £3000 was made before the release of the album), the monies will be used by DIY/All Systems No! towards the cost of a sound system which will be on hand to replace any sound equipment seized by the police using draconian powers granted to them by the Criminal Justice Bill... Fight for your right to party'

Finally and on a real DIY tip is 'They call this Justice?' a benefit for the Freedom Network put out on cassette by Spanner in the Works, a label started by London-based Earzone zine

No famous names, but just the kind of bands you would find playing at squat/benefit gigs at this time, like Scum of Toytown, 70 Gwen Party, Electric Groove Temple, Spithead and Blind Mole Rat.

Notice of compilation from Earzone zine

'About the Freedom Network' article from Earzone, with contact addresses of various anti-CJA grops from Football Fans Against the CJA to the Hunt Saboteurs Association

[I have Taking Liberties and NRB:58 on cassette. I have never heard the other two compilations though familiar with some of the bands/tracks. Intrigued in particular by the Malcolm McLaren contributions to Criminal Justice!, would like to listen to them if anybody can help me out. Thanks to nobrightside for Earzone pictures]

 See also on the CJA:

Marching against the CJA, July 1994

Eternity report of July 1994 anti-CJA demo

Revolt of the Ravers – The Movement against the Criminal Justice Act in Britain 1993-95

British Hip Hop Championships 1985

Flyer for first 'National Hip Hop Championships' at the Rok Rok Club at Brixton Recreation Centre, 'the freshest most awesome place to be'.  Two heats and a final in July/August 1985 with rapping, scratching, breaking and popping. Organised by British Hip Hop Alliance (184 Brixton Road) for ‘people interested in scratch DJing, Breaking, Graffiti, Rapping and related performance arts’. 

Flyer comes from 'Mirror Reflecting Darkly: the Rita Keegan Archive', book published  to accompany interesting exhibition at South London Gallery and available from their great bookshop.

Some video footage of the event, with some great moves to tracks including Doug E Fresh & Slick Rick 'The Show':

William Scott at Studio Voltaire (En Vogue in Clapham)

William Scott is an Oakland, California based artist with an exhibition of his work at Studio Voltaire gallery in Clapham, South London. Outside the gallery on the corner of Clapham High Street there's Scott's billboard sized picture of 1990s R&B group En Vogue, who also started out in Oakland.

Scott's paintings have an afrofuturist and spiritual dimension with spaceships  ('Citizen Ships') of his imagined Skyline Friendly Organization bringing peace and indeed bringing the dead back to life.

As well En Vogue, other musical reference points include Janet Jackson (in painting above), Diana Ross and Prince who we are told 'will be coming back to life soon'.

For an interview with the artists see 'THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF AUTISTIC ARCHITECTURAL ARTIST WILLIAM SCOTT' at Pin-Up.

William Scott at Studio Voltaire, 15 October 2021—2 January 2022

 

Gender Autonomy Now

Lots of interesting material at the South London Gallery (fire station site) in the School SOS display of work from a recent critical design programme, SOS-21.

As I'm posting this in Transgender awareness week (November 2021)  I'll highlight a couple of relevant works from this exhibition.

O.S. Warren risograph print 'Gender Autonomy Now' and pamphlet 'Transgender health in the UK: a primer':

'Gender, and identity more broadly, is work: an alienated labour of enacting or failing to enact an amorphous set of supposed norms, the value of which is handed over for judgement by supposed experts'

Jackson Deans' video piece 'Malicious gay faggotry 'interrogates historical trans exclusion from LGBTQ+ activism and the current climate of corporate late-stage Pride':

 

Dancing in London in the Second World War

From 'The Dancing Times' magazine, a snapshot of social dancing in London during the Second World War by day and night.

At the Astoria on Charing Cross Road, 'Dancing twice daily' at this 'West End Dance Salon' where 'A new and beautiful floor makes Dancing a pleasure'. Music from Jack Lennox's 'The Astorians' and 'Syd Dean's Band'

Dancing Times, March 1943

At the Hammersmith Palais de Danse, dancing every day in the afternoon and again in the evening with 'two famous bands' - Lou Preager's and Harry Leader's (in 1943) with the latter replaced by Sydney Simone by 1945.

Dancing Times, March 1943


Dancing Times, April 1945 - prices have gone up!

There was also a whole culture of dance schools - for instance at Westbourne Hall in Westbourne Gorve W3 you could try your hand at Spanish classes with Elsa Brunelleschi and Scandinavian Dances with Danish dancer Madame Karina.

Dancing Times, December 1942

'Records for dancers' reviews from Dancing Times, April 1945, note reference to 'Jivists', not sure if that was a term that was widely used:

A post war issue (May 1950) and another change of font for The Dancing Times

 

'Freedom of Movement': Anti Fascist Action on the dancefloor 1993

One way or another music was at the heart of the movement against racism and the far right in the UK in the early 1990s. Some of the heaviest confrontations, notably the fighting at Waterloo station in 1992, arose out of mobilisations against planned gigs by bands in the neo-nazi 'Blood and Honour' music scene. Meanwhile Anti Fascist Action (AFA), the most militant of the opposing groups, had its own Cable Street Beat musical arm and put on gigs and festivals.

A rare explicit intervention into dance music was 'Freedom of Movement', launched in 1993 by Manchester AFA and sympathetic DJs associated with Manchester clubs.

The aim was 'to raise awareness of fascism and encourage people at least to identify with the anti-fascist cause and get active'. The title 'arose out of the idea that the largely unpolitical dance club scene is one where black and white, and gay and straight people mix and enjoy themselves together... Under the divisive hate politics of fascism, such a vibrant and multiracial scene could not exist'.

Freedom of Movement put on a number of benefit club nights, including at Home in Manchester and the Venue, Edinburgh in December 1993, with sets from Justin Robertson, Norman Jay, Luvdup and, Flesh DJs.

Report on Freedom of Movement from Fighting Talk (Anti Fascist Action), no.7, 1994

A write up of Freedom of Movement in i-D magazine, December 1993

Norman Jay in anti-fascist t-shirt

Rosaleen Norton: Dance of Life

Getting in the Halloween zone, I watched 'The Witch of Kings Cross' (2020)- a fascinating documentary about New Zealand born artist and occultist Rosaleen Norton (1917-1979) who scandalised Australia in the 1950s. Her erotic/esoteric paintings led to prosecution and the destruction of some of her work, and newspapers published sensationalist accounts of her supposed involvement in 'black magic and sex orgies'.

I'm always amazed by figures like this who bravely lived a 'counter-cultural' life decades before there was such thing as mass counter culture. Pursuing a life of queer sex, magic and drugs in the face of overwhelming repressive conformity was dangerous - no wonder they felt they needed to invoke the powers of gods like Pan against the world that confronted them.  This was an age in which social ruin awaited 'deviants', as for instance the composer and conductor  of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra Eugène Goossens (1893-1962) found when his bisexual relationship with Norton and the poet Gavin Greenlees was exposed.  50 years later, hundreds of thousands of people were parading every year down the same streets in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras- but maybe in their own ways it was people like Norton's circle who helped open a space for this.

'Individuation' by Rosaleen Norton

 'In the spiral horns of the Ram,

In the deep ascent of midnight,

In the dance of atoms weaving the planes of matter is Life.

Life spins on the dream of a planet,

Life leaps in the lithe precision of the cat,

Life flames in the thousandth Name,

Life laughs in the thing that is ‘I’.

I live in the green blood of the forest,

I live in the white fire of Powers,

I live in the scarlet blossom of Magic,

I live'

(Dance of Life by Roslaeen Norton)

In this case the accused was asked why 'despite police warnings she was still consorting with homosexuals'. She was said to have been to a Black Mass conducted by Rosaleen Norton, and to have explained to court that 'although she had some other clothes she preferred to wear black - "the sign of the witch cult"'. She was sent to jail for 2 months for vagrancy  with 'recommended psychiatric treatment'' (full article here)

Refugees are Welcome - rally in London

A good turn out in London's Parliament Square last week (Wednesday  20th October 2021) for the Refugees Welcome rally organised by Solidarity with Refugees and others. The event highlighted opposition to the Government's anti-Refugee 'Nationality and Borders Bill' making its way through Parliament.

As highlighted by Refugee Action: 'Under the bill, only refugees arriving through extraordinarily restricted “official” routes, such as refugee resettlement, will be allowed to claim protection. All others will be deemed “inadmissible” to claim asylum and the Government will seek to deport them. If they cannot be deported, they may be allowed to claim asylum in the UK but if they receive refugee status as a result they will not be given the right to settle. Instead, they will be regularly reassessed for removal, with limited rights to family reunion and benefits'.

'"nikt nie jest nielegalny" ('No one is illegal' in Polish)

'POMOC - Polish Migrants Organise for Change'/'Solidarity knows no borders'

One clause in the anti-refugee bill seems designed to give immunity to Border Force staff who could potentially cause harm or even death in their actions, such as when 'pushing back' migrants in refugees in the Channel. Schedule 4A, part A1, paragraph J1 of the bill states:  “A relevant officer is not liable in any criminal or civil proceedings for anything done in the purported performance of functions under this part of this schedule if the court is satisfied that (a) the act was done in good faith, and (b) there were reasonable grounds for doing it.”

'Afghans beyond borders'

'Social workers without borders'

Appeals to human rights and compassion cut very little ice with the Government and its supporters, paradoxically neither do economic arguments about migration and labour shortages seem to matter to the party of business. This is a theatre of cruelty in which being seen to be harsh to migrants (as well as other folk devils such as travellers and climate protestors) is deliberately performed as a means of solidifying its reactionary political base. The continuing arrival of migrants via the Channel has shown that the Brexit fantasy of cutting off island Britain from the world and returning to some imagined 1950s theme park cannot be realised - the anti-refugee bill is an expression of this rage against reality. 

Little Amal in London

There have been other positive gatherings in the last week to welcome 'Little Amal', the puppet of a young refugee that has made its way across Europe from the Turkey/Syria border.  I went down to Deptford last Friday (22/10/21) where thousands of people, including lots of excited school kids, crowded the streets for Amal's arrival in London (see report at Transpontine).

As described by the projects Artistic Director, Amir Nizar Zuabi: “It is because the attention of the world is elsewhere right now that it is more important than ever to reignite the conversation about the refugee crisis and to change the narrative around it. Yes, refugees need food and blankets, but they also need dignity and a voice. The purpose of The Walk is to highlight the potential of the refugee, not just their dire circumstances. Little Amal is 3.5 metres tall because we want the world to grow big enough to greet her. We want her to inspire us to think big and to act bigger.”

There was a festival atmosphere in Deptford High Street. Music included the South London Samba Band and 'We do Good Disco''s Campomatic giant washing machine - yes, there was dancing to Dead or Alive (by coincidence on the day before the 5th anniversary of the death of the late lamented Pete Burns).

'Disco against fascism' badge from wedogooddisco

'Migration is not a crime' says Paddington
- bag from Migration Museum stall in Deptford