The Ambulance dispute 1989/90 - 'Now the police won't just put you in hospital, they'll drive you there too'

The 1989-90 ambulance workers' fight for a decent pay rise started out with an overtime ban in September 1989 and was escalated to refusing to answer non-emergency calls. Workers who refused non-emergency duties were suspended without pay, though many continued to come into work and run an emergency service themselves from the ambulance stations, dealing directly with calls from the public and in effect cutting out management altogether. 

There was considerable support for the dispute. On a day of action on December 6th 1989 council workers (in Hackney and Hammersmith), construction workers (including 300 steel erectors on the Canary Wharf site) and hospital workers (at the Elizabeth Garret Anderson in Soho) were among those in London who took unofficial strike action for the day in support of the ambulance crews. Another day of action on 30 January 1990 saw London bus drivers staging a short strike. The dispute finished in February 1990 having achieved a 16.9% pay rise. Not quite the 25.8% initially demanded but a big improvement on the original offer of 7.5%.

Report from Evening Standard on 30 January day of action in support of ambulance crews

Flyer for TUC 'Public Assembly in Support of Ambulance Workers' in Trafalgar Square, 13 January 1990

During the dispute the Government brought in the police and the army to drive ambulances. I was involved in producing a couple of posters in response to this. One read 'Now the police won't just put you in hospital, they'll drive you there too', the other was an image of a soldier in Belfast with a woman asking 'are you sure he's an ambulance driver' and her dog answering 'well he's about to put somebody in hospital'. 

The posters were widely distributed and copied across the country, we heard of them being flyposted in various places and they were reproduced in a number of publications (the 'Support the Ambulance Crews - Troops Out' one was unsurprizingly featured in Troops Out magazine). I remember getting rid of a big pile of them at a Chumbawamba gig at Stratford Polytechnic in November.

(A3 original)

North Middlesex Hospital

The posters were printed by a friend working at Union Place Resource Centre, a community print co-op in Camberwell. It was also at Union Place that we made a banner 'North Middlesex Supports the Ambulance Crews'. I was working at the North Middlesex Hospital at the time and was a NUPE union rep. I helped set up a North Middlesex Ambulance Support Group, we collected funds and linked with the nearby Edmonton Ambulance Station. I also went to a couple of meetings of the London Health Workers Co-ordinating Committee at University College Hospital (UCH), an unofficial network of militants from London hospitals. 

'This crew are not being paid'

Support for ambulance crews at North Middlesex Hospital (think this may have been on the 6th December national day of action)

The biggest event we organised was for the national protest on January 30th 1990. Around 100 hospital workers joined the protest outside the North Middlesex Hospital on the north circular road.

Sheffield rally, 18 November 1989

I went to an Ambulance workers rally in Sheffield, here's a few pictures:

'our pay has stopped, but we have not'

I think this is union leader Roger Poole speaking in Sheffield

See also:

Hospital workers say: 'we're not paying': North Middlesex Hospital anti-poll tax leaflet, 1990

Barnet and Edgware Hospital Workers Against the Poll Tax

The Maudsley Nurses Strike 1988

Socialism through Oi? - music and politics 1982

From Socialist Worker (9 January 1982), Chris Moore looks ahead to a year in music (Moore was in the Socialist Workers Party and wrote for NME as X Moore).

'While Adam played Prince Charming and while white funksters swapped favourite shirts, Toxteth danced to the sound of breaking glass... 1981 was the year compliant complacency set in and fightback was drowned out. 1982 will be harder... 

It's depressing but honest to admit that there is in reality no working class mass movement called Oi, no revolutionary punk/skinhead force threatening to smash capitalism... (or whatever it is Gal Bushell

wants to smash now that he's replaced the revolutionary party with Oi! the Party)...

1982 will fight back not with angst-ridden Sturm and Drang aggro singles but with ideas. The strength of musical muscle behind CND and the strength of three and a half million on the dole will force the music press this year to give the movements the level of coverage RAR [Rock Against Racism] used to get when Webster was fouling the TV screens and Lewisham was throwing bricks and bottles tiswas style(e)

The bands you will see that fuel and fire the arguments, pulling the music press away from the bar and beyond will be varied. Scritti Politti will talk a lot and win people to their ideas and music, in spite of coming it with the intellectual verbals. Grace Jones and Pigbag will keep you dancing through the

year, the Higsons and the Stunt Kites will surprize you, and Black Flag and Death in

June will crack it... Listen to the poets, dance to the rhythm, clash and rock against Thatcher!'

Some interesting choices there - Death in June may have had their roots in radical left punk band Crisis but they were soon being denounced as fascist sympathisers. 

Moore's dismissal of Oi brough an angry response from a left wing skinhead which was printed under the heading 'Socialism thru' Oi': 'Oi bands and their followers have short hair cuts and Air Wair boots. We just can't afford all the trendy gear the high street posers wear'.

Moore was not averse to the skinhead look himself. Later that year he founded The Redskins.

[found this browsing through old copies of SW scanned by the excellent Splits and Fusions]

 

Poll Tax Archive (8): The Poll Tax Amnesty Demonstration, October 1991

The Poll Tax Amnesty demonstration took place in London on 19th October 1991 and was I believe the last of the national poll tax demonstrations. On 31st March 1990, hundreds of thousands had marched through central London, ending in the 'Battle of Trafalgar Square' riot. In October 1990 a smaller demonstration made its way to Brixton Prison.

A year later the movement was winding down as it had been successful - the Government had announced the poll tax was to be scrapped. But people were still being prosecuted for non-payment (and could be jailed for up to 90 days) and for taking part in earlier poll tax protests around the country. Hence the call for a 'poll tax amnesty' to write off poll tax debts and release poll tax prisoners. The initiative for the demonstration came from the Prisoners Support Group of the Trafalgar Square Defendants Campaign with the support of some local anti poll tax groups.

The call for the demo in 'Poll Tax Prisoners News' (Prisoners Support Group TSDC), September 1991:

'This amnesty demonstration has been called in order to offer solidarity with poll tax prisoners, and to make the following demands:

- An amnesty for all those people who have been imprisoned as a result of defending anti poll tax demonstrations against police attacks.

- An amnesty for all non-payers who have been imprisoned;

- An unconditional debt amnesty for all non-payers with debts to be written off;

- An immediate halt to jailings of poll tax non-payers, and the continuing police harassment of anti-poll tax activists;

[...]The poll tax will not be really defeated until no one has to pay and no one remains imprisoned because of it'.

Report from 'London Fight the Poll Tax' (December 1991):

2000 March for Amnesty

'On October 19 around 2,000 Anti-Poll Tax protesters marched through London in support of the movement's demand of an amnesty for all non-payers and Poll Tax prisoners. The day's events  started with a 20 strong women's picket of Holloway prison to show solidarity with women jailed for resisting the Poll Tax and with women jailed for resisting domestic violence. The calling of a separate women's picket was not without controversy within the movement [...]

The march started at 2pm from the Clock Tower in Caledonian Park and marched past Pentonville prison, where we left the authorities in no doubt about our determination to see our prisoners released. The march in defiant mood with much musical accompaniment marched onward to central London and Trafalgar Square.

On the way Class War showed a new gimmick of stopping for the cameras and then running to catch up. The first time this was amusing, but the continual stopping and starting imposed on the demo soon became annoying. There were no arrests. No doubt the large number of Legal Volunteers (the pink bibs) prevented the police from their usual excessive behaviour.

However, at least one police motorcycle drove through the demo a few times all the way from Caledonian Road to central London. The police unnecessarily drove their vans, sirens wailing, at high speed down the side of the demo in Charing Cross Road just so they could get to Trafalgar Square before the march.

When it got to the Square, the organisers found that the electricity needed to power the public address system had been cut off. It appears possible that the DoE was in breach of their hiring agreement, if this is the case then suing the DoE is a possibility. As a result the speakers were limited to speaking though a couple of loud hailers. This, unfortunately, meant many could not hear the speeches. But the presence of former Poll Tax prisoners was still applauded loudly.

Norman Laws and Soroosh Ayandeh (both jailed for non-payment) gave arousing speeches which were greatly appreciated by those who could hear them. A letter of support for the march, from Chris Howes of Barking APTF then in Pentonville for non-payment, was read out. The demonstrators, from as far away as Edinburgh, mainly came from non-politically aligned local APTUs as well as members of the community at large.

It was unfortunate that Militant did not see fit to mobilise their supporters and members for this march, especially as some of their supporters have been picked on by councils to be jailed for their stance against the Poll Tax. The SWP also has to be criticised for its apparent failure to mobilise heavily for the march, however some of their members were present. Oe group that did publicise and mobilise for the march was the band RDF who promoted the march on stage and handed out posters during their

national tour in October'.

Report from 'Poll Tax Prisoners News' (Prisoners Support Group TSDC), January-February 1992:

Poll Tax Amnesty Demonstration

'Despite the cold, the rain, the poverty and, in some cases, the disillusionment of anti-poll tax activists, over 2000 people attended the Poll Tax Amnesty demonstration in London on October 19th. The march

was noisy, cheerful, colourful and playful as groups continually charged through central London to a rally in Trafalgar Square. Before the demonstration there was a women's picket of Holloway prison in solidarity with all women jailed for resisting the poll tax, domestic violence and police violence. 

We had our usual problems with the authorities, such as the gates to Caledonian Park being locked, thereby excluding the van with the P.A. from the park. This was despite previous arrangements being made. The Department of Environment turned off the power supply in Trafalgar Square only minutes before the march arrived in the Square. It seems that they waited until the sound checks were completed in order to avoid us beingable to find an alternative power source in time for the rally. The speakers, many of whom were recently released from prison, had to make do with megaphones.

Speakers included Non-Payer and Trafalgar Square ex-Prisoners Norman Laws, Steve Murray, and Soroosh Ayandeh and Anti Poll Tax activists from Birmingham, Bristol, Scotland with guest speakers including speakers from Anti-Fascist Action and the Free Dessie Ellis Campaign*

amongst others.  

The TSDC-PSG thanks everyone who put in so much time and bloody hard work to organise the demo, especially the London APT activists and Prisoner Support Groups without whom the work of supporting prisoners struggles and fighting criminalisation could not take place. Especially, a big

thanks to all the Legal and Communications Volunteers who turned up on the day.

International Solidarity

Canada: When Prince Charles and Lady Di visited Kingston, Ontario, recently local anarchists organised a demo. 80 people split into 2 groups and one group held a demo in solidarity with APT prisoners/APT movement in Britain. A banner and placards saying AMNESTY FOR POLL TAX PRISONERS got a good response. Despite 800 (!) police the demo was peaceful, apart from

the two Police cars crashing into each other near the march!!!

France: On October 19th 100 people demonstrated outside the British embassy in Paris, calling for the release of all poll tax prisoners and the cancelling of poll tax debts. Riot police forced the demonstration back from the Emhassy building but a delegation went in to hand in 

a letter of protest. The demonstration was supported by a number of socialist and anarchist groups.  There was a lot of chanting (in particular, there was a lot of support from socialists chanting 'Free Matt Lee!!).

In Sweden, a concert in Goteberg in support of the Poll Tax Amnesty Campaign in Goteborg raised £89. An anarchist newsletter in Freiburg, Germany, regularly reports the anti-poll tax campaign. It has translated articles by Tim Donaghy and Beccy Palmer.

[*Dessie Ellis was an Irish republican on trial having been the first person extradited from Ireland to Britain. The speaker said that he might have been the first Irish speaker in Trafalgar Square since 1972, as Bloody Sunday demonstrations had repeatedly been refused permission to march to the square]

Leaflets in English and Turkish advertising the 'Women's picket of Holloway Prison' which took place just before the Poll Tax Amnesty march.

I was involved with the Prisoners Support Group, indeed I recognise my Word Perfect layout 'skills' in the leaflets and PSG Newsletters (using the resources of the anti poll tax hotspot of the Barnet AIDS Education Unit at Colindale Hospital!) . I remember lots of disagreements in the lead up to the demo. The Militant-dominated Anti Poll Tax Federation refused to support it, which was no great surprize, but even some people in the TSDC were lukewarm about it. Personally I doubted that our small group had the resources for a march on this scale, but on the other hand even a couple of thousand people on a march explicitly supporting prisoners would be worthwhile. As I wrote to a prisoner at the time:

'The poll tax amnesty march went reasonably well on Saturday. There were about 2000 people on it, and it was fairly lively... At one point I thought the police were going to attack the march in Charing Cross Road when they drove down the road at high speed with their sirens blaring. One missed me by about six inches. I think they were just trying to wind people up.

It's difficult to evaluate how successful a march is. Marching to Trafalgar Square inevitably invited comparison with March 31st and in a way demonstrated how weak the poll tax movement is (on the streets at least, in terms on non-payment we are probably stronger than every, although its a very individualised 'movement'). On the other hand it was important to 'reclaim the square' and show that we weren't going to be stopped from marching in Central London'.

More on the poll tax:

Poll Tax Archive (1): Hospital workers say: 'we're not paying': North Middlesex Hospital anti-poll tax leaflet, 1990

Poll Tax Archive (2): St Valentines Day 1991 - Massacre the poll tax (in Lambeth)

Poll Tax Archive (3): Community Resistance Against the Poll Tax (Lambeth, March 1990) 

Poll Tax Archive (4): Poll Tax Prisoners Support Conference (Birmingham 1991)

Poll Tax Archive (5): Trafalgar Square Defendants Campaign Appeal for Witnesses

Poll Tax Archive (6): Barnet and Edgware Hospital Workers Against the Poll Tax

Poll Tax Archive (7): Brixton Prison demo, October 1990

Trafalgar Square Poll Tax Riot Memories

'Mobs riot in the West End': Poll Tax Riot press coverage

 

'The fight is for life!' - protests against Italian anti-rave law

The far right Italian government is planning to bring in a new law against raves. The law was announced following the recent closing down of a three day Halloween party attended by some 3000 people in Modena.

The  proposed law includes provision to convict 'anyone who organizes and promotes the arbitrary invasion of other people's land or buildings, public or private, in order to organize a musical gathering or gathering for other entertainment purposes', punishable by up to 6 years in prison.

Opposition to the law is growing. The pictures here are of a demonstration against it by hundreds of people in Treviso on 11th November 2022. The march was organised by the Treviso social centre CSO Django and featured a sound system, flares and a large 'No to repression' banner.

CSO Django say that the law is part of a pattern of measures that 'aims to suppress everything that is somehow considered uncomfortable, unpleasant or that expresses radical criticism, in words and in facts, to the model of society we live in.

On Saturday we reiterated clearly that the repression of movements, struggles and social phenomena is one of the forms in which those who exercise power try to leave the model of society we live in unaltered.

Saturday's street parade brought different subjects into communication, who together built a demonstration that went through the city in a colorful and noisy manner, proving that it is possible to work together, within our differences, to build, from the bottom up, different moments of sociality free from market logic, delivering anti-racist, anti-sexist and anti-fascist messages...

Against the ideology of profit, the practice of creating resilient and caring communities. We claim the right to be anomaly, to be a grain of sand in the gear of a world in which market logics aim to make everything a consumer product.We claim the right to practice dissent and conflict, as the only engine capable of changing the balance of power and modifying the existing one.

Against the advancing nothingness, the fight is for life!'

Statement and photos from CSO Django on facebook. There is also a report with video footage at La Tribuna di Treviso.

The Italian government is led by Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy party, with its roots in the fascist movement.

London queercore 1995: Vaseline, Up to the Elbow, Sick of it All

'Vaseline zine' started out in 1995 'for gay people who love indie and alternative music and want to rage against the scene'. They put on club nights including at the Bell in Kings Cross (later the Cross Bar, today the Big Chill). The period saw a flourishing of 'queercore', riot grrrl and LGBTQ+ indie clubs and bands in the UK - including Sister George, Mouthfull,  Bandit Queen and Sapphic Sluts. 

Vaseline, no. 2 1995 'rage against the scene' - with review of PJ Harvey at Kentish Town Forum, May  1995

Vaseline no.2 (May 1995) mentions that 'Popstarz is a new weekly gay indie night' opening at at Paradise Club with 'indie-pop downstairs and 70s discos and trash upstairs'. Not sure where the Paradise Club was (don't think this was the Paradise Bar in New Cross) but Popstarz went on to be a massive club night moving to the Scala in Kings Cross and continuing for 20 years at various locations. Its founder Simon Hobart died in 2005 (see Remembering Popstarz)

from Vaseline no.5

'Mouthfull' interview from issue 7

My friend Katy Watson DJ'd  at the time at Up to the Elbow, a club night started by the band Mouthful, and then started another night Sick of it All. Here's her brief account of the scene, from an interview I did with her:

'I’ve played music with a few people over the years but we never got it together to be a performing band.  I did try to start a band with my old flatmate Rosanne but it didn’t work out. She had been in a band called The Sluts from Outer Space. We had a very nice drummer we used to rehearse with, I was well into her.

I used to DJ in a couple of gay punky clubs, that was lots of fun. It gives you a focus for lots of record buying, so lots of shopping in Rough Trade. It was very nice doing it, having the motivation to check out lots of new records and you can justify buying them and also I was writing reviews of them for Bad Attitude. 

At first I played music in a sort of indie gay club - Up to the Elbow (the world’s worst name). That had quite an indie music policy, I put in my punky classics as well, like Iggy Pop and New York Dolls. The club was in Islington and sometimes at The Bell, an alternative gay pub in Kings Cross.

 And then after that I bonded a bit with these two gay punks called Rick and Satoshi and we did our own club very positively called Sick of It All (that was Rick’s gloomy American approach to things!). That was more punky than indie sort of gay stuff.  We didn’t do that many nights of it, but it was lots of fun. We had trouble fixing a venue, it was in a different place every time - we did one night at 121 Railton Road, the anarchist centre. Another one we did upstairs in a funny little club place off Warren Street with gold lame curtains and velvet chairs, it was a bit too smart for us..

 It was around the period of riot grrrl with bands like Bikini Kill. We went to two or three Bikini Kill gigs, and hung out with the band including Kathleen Hanna. She’s a very good self-promoter, so we interviewed her for Bad Attitude and she hung out with us in the squat that I was living in at the time. Tribe8, another US queercore band, also came and stayed in Brixton.  It was a very happening time for gay punky/indie bands and female punky/indie bands – the whole riot grrrl thing. We were being very cool and punky with our dyed hair and squatty lifestyle and all that sort of thing'

[notes: you can see Rosanne Rabinowitz in the great Rebel Dykes movie and the Sluts from Outer Space feature on the soundtrack; Katy's Brixon squat where Kathleen Hanna once stayed was at 2 Saltoun Road; I remember meeting San Francisco band Tribe8 in Brixton, in someone's house in Josephine Avenue around this time]

Katy (right) on her way to see Bikini Kill

Good to see some mentions of some of these nights in Vaseline. It seems that the first Sick of it All was at Sol's Bar near Warren Street in July 1995

Sick of it All's first night - 'The philosophy of the club seemed to be 'fuck the common denominator' and the atmosphere was reminiscent of Up to the Elbow. DJs Rik and Katie careered their way through punk, queercore and harder edged indie music, while Satoshi added the je ne sais quoi' (Vaseline no. 5).

The 'punk party extravaganzathon in a huge Brixton squat' in October 1995 was presumably the night at the (not particulary huge!) 121 Centre in Railton Road, Brixton. Katy was involved with the feminist paper Bad Attitude which had an office upstairs at 121.

Vaseline no. 7

Flyer for Sick of it All at 121 Centre, Brixton, 21 October 1995
'A one off punk party for homosexuals, bisexuals, heterosexuals, fags, dykes, and their special "friends" ("gays" admitted at discretion of management)'

I went to a couple of  'Up to the Elbow' nights with Katy on the decks at the Bell (I saw Bandit Queen and the Frantic Spiders) and downstairs at Freedom in Wardour Street. Of the latter I noted at the time (January 1995) that I went  'to 'Up to the Elbow', the queercore club where Katy (DJ KT) does her stuff. It had moved from the Bell (which has been bought by the Mean Fiddler for heterosexualisation) to the Freedom Cafe in Soho. There were a couple of good bands playing - Mouthfull who were a bit Nirvana-like but did a great punkified version of 2 Unlimted's No Limits and Flinch who were more in the Pixies/Throwing Muses mould'.

Katy Watson (1966-2008)

See also:

Remembering Katy Watson

Katy's music column in Bad Attitude (1995)

[thank to MayDay Rooms archive, whose display of Vaseline zines at the radical bookfair at the Barbican library set me off down this wormhole. The bookfair was part of Quiet Revolutions: A Celebration of Radical Bookshops, 26 November 2022]

[updated September 2023 with Sick of it All flyers found at 56a Info Shop]

Skins and Scum: Rene Matić and Simeon Barclay at South London Gallery

Rene Matić's exhibition 'upon this rock' at the South London Gallery features their very moving film 'Many Rivers' about their father, growing up through family trauma and the care system to be a black skinhead in Peterborough. Jimmy Cliff's song plays over the credits just in case you haven't got a lump in your throat by that point.

Richard Allen novels and a Peterborough scarf among the memorabilia

Matić takes their 'departure point from dance and music movements such as Northern soul, Ska and 2-Tone, using them as sites to queer and re-imagine the intimacies between West Indian and white working-class culture in Britain'. In particular they reference the 'Skinhead movement, which originally emerged in the mid-1960s as a cultural exchange between Caribbean and white working-class communities' (source: South London Gallery).

A wall of crucifixes feature a model of Rene Matić's father and references the familiar image of the crucified skinhead.

There are parallels with another exhibition at the South London Gallery's other site on the other side of Peckham Road: Simeon Barclay's 'In the name of the father'. Here too a black artist explores themes of exclusion and masculinity with a nod to late 70s/early 80s British working class culture. In this case the references include the 1979 movie 'Scum', set in a brutal Borstal. Barclay's work includes a puppet of Ray Winstone's Carlin character in the film, offset against a puppet of the artist in a 1970s Elton John duck costume.

Guard dogs and a fenced off sign for Huddersfield nighclub Johnnys - reportedly hard to get into for young people like Barclay - also feature.

 

Exhibitions continue until 27 November 2022

Suzi Quatro and AC/DC: punk rockers in Australia 1974/75

I don't think anyone who knows 1970s UK pop culture would argue with the fact that Suzi Quatro was one of the leather clad pop rockers who prepared the ground for punk. Still was surprized to see her being mentioned in relation to punk as far back as 1974 in the Australian press on the occasion of her touring there:

'She looks like the leader of a motorcycle gang, but pretty like the girls who run with the pack ought to look. She's 23, dresses all in skin-tight leather zippered down to her waist, off stage as well, but usually adds a shirt under the leather suit. Her eyes look out soft and warm from photographs. In real life Suzi Quatro is tough, but still soft underneath.

She's from Detroit, and in this country that says a lot. A harsh city, "Motor City," with the highest crime rate in the U.S.A., it is the birthplace of punk rock, the MC5 (Motor City 5, a once famous rock group.) Suzi continues the image though she does complain that "people who've only heard my voice expect me to be about 6 feet tall." In fact she's five feet. Wearing a small star tattooed on her right wrist, she explains, "I got the star four years ago 'cause that's what I wanted to be'  (Australian Women's Weekly, th May 1974).

From searching on the great Trove newspaper archive this seems to be the first reference to 'punk rock' in an Australian newspaper, earlier even than a 1975 mention of 'top punk rockers' AC/DC.

Interestingly, the AC/DC gig in question at the Harmonie German Club in Canberra took place on 7 November 1975, one day after the first Sex Pistols gig at Central St Martins art college in London.

Canberra Times, 7 November 1975