Dole Days in Luton: unemployed protests 1985

In the turbulent mid-1980s - 1984 to 1986 to be precise - I was unemployed like most of my punky friends in Luton. My 1985 diary has the same entry on almost every Thursday – ‘Sign on, Switch’. The weekly ‘Giro Thursday’ routine consisted on signing on at the dole office, cashing in our ‘Personal Issue’ cheque at the post office, buying in our vegan supplies for the week, and 'then going home to crimp our hair before heading to the pub and then The Switch Club, the town’s only regular alternative night. There to drink and dance to songs like Spear of Destiny’s Liberator, Baby Turns Blue by the Virgin Prunes, the Sisters of Mercy’s Alice, Dark Entries by Bauhaus and The Cult’s Spiritwalker. In a departure from the general gothdom the last record was usually 'Tequila' by The Champs' (see more here on Luton nightlife at this time).

Many of us were living in bedsits in the town’s London Road area owned by the late Gerry Cremin, a generally amiable Irish landlord who nevertheless thought it necessary to collect the rent accompanied by an Alsatian, a baseball bat and his burly sons (my dad had coached some of them at St Joseph's football club). The deal was that in return for providing a nominal breakfast which hardly anyone got out of bed for, the landlord was able to charge the Government's Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS) a higher rent, and the tenants got a little bit more on their dole – so we took home a massive £39 a week. It wasn’t exactly paradise, but it was too good to last.

‘In Luton hundreds of unemployed people under the age of 26 are being made homeless by new government rules on Bed and Breakfast accommodation. The government and their friends in the media claim that these new regulations are to stop people taking free holidays at the taxpayers’ expense. The reality is that most people live in B&B because they have nowhere else to go. Who’d take a holiday in Luton?’ (Luton Bed and Breakfast Claimants Action Group leaflet, June 1985)

In 1985, the Government decided to change the rules so that young people under 26 could only stay in board and lodging for four weeks before their rent and benefits were cut – for those of us living in the Costa del Cremin this threatened homelessness. Actually it was no joke – the Luton News reported that Michael Ball, a 24 year old from Marsh Farm, hanged himself when he was forced to move by the new regulations.

In June 1985, a Bed and Breakfast Claimants Action Group was set up at a meeting at the TUC Centre for the Unemployed (17 Dunstable Road, Luton). This was a trade union sponsored centre which offered benefits and other advice, and for which Luton bands including Karma Sutra, Click Click and Party Girls had played a benefit at the local college (now University of Bedfordshire). I wish I still had my ticket for that, as they were hand printed by Elizabeth Price who went on to be in indie pop band Tallulah Gosh and then to win the 2012 Turner Prize for her video art. 

The Centre was one of around 200 similar projects around the country in this period set up with the support of the Trades Union Congress and local unions. An oral history of this movement has recently (2023) been written by Paul Griffin (Unemployed Workers Centres: politicising unemployment through trade unions and communities). There was a political tension in these centres - were they top down, even paternalistic, welfare service for the unemployed, or were they centres for agitation and organising by the unemployed? That tension certainly played out in Luton, as we shall see.

Flyer for the first meeting on 10 June 1985

 A campaign of action followed on quickly from that first meeting. Over the next few weeks, we occupied Luton DHSS and the Anglia TV office in the town, and disrupted council meetings (Luton had a Conservative Council at the time). Between 20 and 50 people took part, mostly drawn from our punk circles but not just the usual anarcho activists. When Prince Charles visited the town's Youth House we occupied the Radio Bedfordshire office in Chapel Street, while Karen Tharsby (singer with Luton punk band Penumbra Sigh, who sadly died in 2013) was arrested for sticking her fingers up at the heir to the throne. The clip below includes short Radio Beds reports of one of the town hall protests and an interview with Pete K. about the Prince Charles visit.

 

Transcript of BBC Radio Bedfordshire clip: 'There was a demonstration outside Youth House where Prince Charles was on a tour. The demonstration was by young unemployed people from Luton protesting about the government's new board and lodging rules which they claim have made them homeless. One person was arrested. One of the protesters explained why they  tried to disrupt the Royal day: 'to show we're angry about people being thrown out of their homes, made homeless while people like Prince Charles can visit Luton and like £50,000 be spent out on someone like him to visit Luton. People like myself, people in bed and breakfast accommodation all over Luton are being made homeless. I don't see how can they can justify spending all this money on him'. [and how would you prefer the money be spent?] Well for a start I think it should be spent giving people houses, renovating houses, Council houses whatever… hospitals, kidney machines, things like that things that, things that are worthwhile'

 Plans were also laid for squatting – a list of empty properties was put together at the Centre for the Unemployed and circulated in the name of ‘Luton Squatters Advisory Service’ (‘Jobless Encouraged to become Squatters’, Luton News, 27 June 1985). 

Things came to a head in July 1985 when during a protest at another council meeting in the Town Hall there was a scuffle with councillors. Gerard Benton – an advice worker at the Centre for the Unemployed  - was arrested and later jailed for six months for ‘actual body harm’. Gerry was definitely innocent of the charge of hitting a councillor, he had just stayed around after others had left and been the one there to be picked up. After he was convicted, some of Gerry’s friends repaid the councilor who they believed had given deliberately misleading evidence against him with a number of pranks, including placing an advert in a local paper offering prison uniforms for sale, with their phone number. On his release, Gerry continued in advice work until his untimely death in 2005 at the age of 47.

It was all too much for the respectable Labour Party types who ran the Centre for the Unemployed. We were banned from meeting there anymore, and even before Gerry was jailed he was told by the management not to associate with us. One of the contradictions of the unemployed centre movement was that staff were often paid with funding from the Manpower Services Commission - a kind of Government job creation scheme - so there was always a limit to how far they could go in opposing the state. Not long afterwards the Centre moved buildings - leaving the original one to be squatted for one night for a  great Luton punk gig (see post here). 

‘Jobless Protestors Occupy DHSS Office - A demonstration at Luton’s DHSS office against new Government rules for the unemployed ended when police were called in to break it up. Around 40 unemployed people occupied the Guildford Street office on Thursday… They occupied the offices for two hours and hung up banners in windows until police were called by the manager’ (Luton News, 20 June 1985)

‘furious councilors and demonstrators jostled and argued when a protest got out of hand during a committee meeting at Luton Town Hall last week. Around 30 punk-style protestors objecting to the new bed and breakfast laws were ejected by police. One arrest was made after coffee cups were broken during the row’ (Herald, 11 July 1985)

 I believe that the Centre for the Unemployed continued elsewhere in Luton until 1999, and then changed its name to  Rights - this advice service  is still going 40 years later. Looking back I can see that we were sometimes quite obnoxious to  some of the no doubt well meaning people running the Centre for the Unemployed, but equally we felt justified in our anger at their failure to support actual unemployed young people fighting back against cuts to our benefits.

Another leaflet advertising the first meeting on 10th June 1985:

Report on the campaign from Black Flag magazine:

'Youth Dole Sit-in Demo' - Luton and Dunstable Chronicle & Echo, 14 June 1985

A bit more here about Gerard Benton.  A definite Luton character,  I first met him when I was at school and had joined the Labour Party Young Socialists for a while. Gerry arranged a coach trip to the Welsh seaside resort of Llandudno for the LPYS conference, with us all being put up in a hotel. A lot of people came along for the ride, some of whom never even stepped foot inside the conference, with no questions asked about ability to pay. We got to see Steel Pulse too. It was only when we got back that we found out that Gerard had simply arranged for the hotel bill to be sent to Luton Labour Party, who weren't very happy but paid up anyway.

Footnote: a Tory landlord and an imaginary strike in Luton

Another Luton landlord at the time was Mr Mason, a Tory councillor with shabby accommodation in Stockwood Crescent and elsewhere. Some of his tenants took to painting graffiti or otherwise vandalising his office on the way back from the pub and a group of them got arrested in the process. A couple of them were members of the Socialist Workers Party and one of their leading members locally, Ged Peck, was believed to have reported them to the SWP's control commission (their internal disciplinary body). Those involved were furious at what they saw at this lack of support and the response was to submit a fake strike report that was unwittingly printed in Socialist Worker in July 1984. The bad employer was a fictional Pecks Publishing in Luton - named for Ged Peck (who incidentally had played guitar at the Isle of Wight Festival). Gerard Benton was named as the shop steward at  this imaginary firm and the person named as the author of the piece had nothing to do with it. Just goes to show you can't believe everything you read in the archive - let future historians note there was no such strike in Luton! I believe those held responsible for this fake news were suspended from the party.

[This is an edited extract, with some additional material, from my article - Neil Transpontine, Hyper-active as the day is long: anarcho-punk activism in an English town, 1984-86 in 'And all around was darkness' edited by Gregory Bull and Mike Dines, Itchy Monkey Press, 2017.  The full article goes on to look at more Luton activism covering animal rights, anti-apartheid, the peace movement, Stop the City, the miners strike and more. The book is an excellent collection of participant accounts of the scene including The Mob, Crass, Flowers in the Dustbin, anarcho-feminism and Greenham Common etc. You can buy copies of it here and recommend you do if you are at all interested in this kind of stuff.

One of the criticisms sometimes levelled at the anarcho-punk scene of that time is that its politics were a kind of militant liberalism in which activists always seemed to be seeking to act on behalf of others – whether animals or people in far off places – rather than confronting their own position as young, mostly working class people in a capitalist society. There is some merit in this, though a counter argument could of course be made that they refused to be confined to their narrow sectional interest and instead tried to embrace a more global critique of oppression and exploitation. But I guess in the above episode at least we were directly self-organising around our own needs in the context of unemployed benefit cuts.

Other Luton writings:

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

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

Luton punk squat gig 1985

Clubbing in Luton 1984

We are Luton - opposing the English Defence League in 2012

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

Left at the Pier Festival, Brighton 1994

A feature of the 1980s and 1990s in England was officially sponsored free music festivals, usually one day affairs supported by local councils or other organisations such as trade unions.  One such event was the Left at the Pier Festival held on the seafront at Brighton as a 'festival to celebrate public services' and sponsored by Southern and Eastern Regions of the Trades Union Congress and the Workers Beer Company.

The bands playing at this festival would have been familiar at many summer festivals in this period, including Dreadzone, Tribal Drift, Bhundu Boys, the Oyster Band,  Co-Creators and Transglobal Underground. I remember seeing the latter two on a hot afternoon, with a big screen showing action from the World Cup then taking place in the USA. I was staying in Brighton at the time taking part in an international  conference (AIDS Impact: Biopsychosocial aspects of HIV Infection).

My London musical/radical soundscape 2023

Reading other people's end of year lists is like listening to people talking about their dreams - occasionally interesting but mostly very much not. So this round up of musicking and political activity from (mostly) London 2023 is really for my own benefit and to document a few things which might otherwise vanish from the historical record or at least my memory.

Best gig of the year for me was Kneecap at the Electric Ballroom in Camden, a giant mosh pit in a sold out gig for Belfast Irish language rappers. Just up the road at the Roundhouse in December, Lankum were also excellent. Irish hegemony in my music tastes for the first time since the 1990s. Love the Roundhouse (also saw Big Moon there in May  and a couple of years ago Laura Marling), not so keen on the cavernous Ally Pally where I saw Sleaford Mods with John Grant, but a good gig.

On a jazzier tip, loved Ezra Collective at Hammersmith Apollo in February, and Laura Misch's mellow cloud bath performance at the Peckham Old Waiting Room. Nearby at the Ivy House pub SE15, The Goose is Out continued to curate some excellent folk nights including Martin Carthy and Stick in the Wheel. They also put on a monthly singaround session where people take it in turns to stand and sing one song at a time; I sang there earlier in the year and also at Archie Shuttler's Open Mic at the Old Nun's Head. Strummed the banjo and mandolin a bit.

In terms of my own music making the highlight was taking part in the Wavelength Orchestra event on the beach in Gravesend in June, an improvisational performance where assorted musicians sustained notes based on the duration of waves (although it was low tide and they were more like ripples). I took along my old Wasp synth, my dad's bagpipe chanter and my grandad's harmonica to add to the mix.

 

Went out for my birthday to a Mungo's Hi Fi night at the Fox & Firkin in Lewisham, checked out my local Planet Wax record shop and bar in New Cross. Enjoyed giving a Peckham anti fascist history walk for around 30 people in October, and chatting about my own history on Controlled Weirdness' 'Tales from a disappearing city' podcast.

I always appreciate the unexpected random encounters with music in the city, like coming across an Italian hip hop collective (Hip Hopera Foundation) performing in Beckenham Place Park or bumping into morris dancers by my local pub. Loved dodging the rising tide on the Thames shore for a dark 'Noise TAZ' in the summer.

Politically I am not a super activist at the moment but do try and get myself out there in times of emergency - and with climate change, war, anti-migrant racism and transphobic 'culture wars' it feels like that is most of the time at present. Or as Benjamin put it, 'The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule'.

The year started with ongoing strikes from NHS, rail workers and teachers, I popped down to various picket lines and protests. It has been hard to keep track of the endless state onslaught against refugees, including the 'Illegal Migration Act' which criminalised seeking asylum. Protest too becoming increasingly criminalised with climate emergency activists being locked up for months or even years just for walking in the road or doing a banner drop.  My most sustained activity was turning up regularly to defend a drag event at the Honor Oak pub in South London from far right opposition (which I wrote about at Datacide). I got increasingly fed up with anti-trans nonsense from fellow old lefties  and said so. The end of the year dominated by the massacre of October 7th and the seemingly never ending massacre in Gaza ever since - highlighted by both Kneecap and Lankum at their gigs.

Perhaps it remains true, as Frederic Jameson said, that 'it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism', but the neo-liberal capitalist utopia of a world united and pacified by globalised markets has vanished too. It is not hard to imagine a kind of end of capitalism as we know it, at least as a global system, replaced by endless ethno-nationalist violence and conflict for shrinking resources like water and arable land. Harder sometimes to hold onto a politics of hope for a better world, but what is the alternative?

'South London Loves Trans People' - at the Honor Oak pub in May

Stop the Migration Bill protest at Westminster with speakers on Fire Brigades Union fire engine (13 March 2023)

Refugee solidarity on London anti-racist demo, 18 March 2023

Gaza ceasefire demo blockades Carnaby Street, 23 December 2023

Anyway here's a slice of London's musical/radical soundscape as experienced by me in 2023:

Seen and heard in film above:

1. Striking Lewisham teachers, January 2023.

2. Ezra Collective perform Space is the Place, Hammersmith Apollo, February 2023.

3./4./5. Extinction Rebellion demo in London, April 22 2023.

6. Martin Carthy singing High Germany at Goose is Out folk club at the Ivy House SE15, April 2023

7. Wavelength Orchestra in Gravesend (OK not actually London) on beach next to St Andrews Art Centre, June 2023

8./9. Dancing in the streets in Honor Oak, defending drag event from far right opposition, 24 June 2023

10. Stick in the Wheel at at Goose is Out folk club at the Ivy House SE15, June 2023

11. Torquon on Thames Beach, Noise TAZ, 19 August 2023 

12. Khabat Abas, Thames Beach Noise TAZ, 19 August 2023 (Kurdish experimental cellist)

13 Leslie, Hilly fields, September 2023 (pop up electronic performance in the park)

14. Blanc Sceol,  Deptford Creekside Discovery Centre, September 2023 (acid sounds on self made acoustic instruments as part of 'Thorness and Green Man' autumn equinox performance with artist Victoria Rance)

15 Cyka Psyko - Sardinian rapper with Hip Hopera Foundation, Beckenham Place Park, 24 September 2023

16. Laura Misch in Peckham 21 October 2023

17. Palestine demo, Battersea, 11 November 2023

18. Kneecap, Electric Ballroom, 29 November 2023

19. Sleaford Mods cover West End Girls at Ally Pally 2 December 3034

20. Lankum singing The Pogues' Old Main Drag to remember Shane MacGowan at the Roundhouse, 13 December 2023.

21. Palestine demo, Carnaby Street, 23 December 2023

'Do not play acid' - London club listings October 1988

London Club Listings from a local paper in October 1988 (Westminster and Pimlico News) in the midst of the acid house upheaval. KISS FM crew 'know how to make a rave swing' at Second Base at Dingwalls 'but steer well away from acid'. Meanwhile at Memphis/Legends DJs Rajan and Tim Archer 'do not play acid' but do mix in some Chicago House with their P-funk and r'n'b. Cafe de Paris offers 'salsa, soul and Balearic beats for a packed dancefloor of sloanes, trendies and those who know the doormen'. ACID! very definitely promised though at Asylum at the Harp Club (later the Venue) in New Cross with 'total mayhem, surprises and visuals'. Not sure of the exact music policy  at The Rok at Brixton's Fridge but there's 'delecatable deejays' and 'dishy dancers'.

('Top Twenty' chart here is just a pop listing from HMV, not representative of club sounds from the time).

See also other listings posts:

London Gay Disco 1972

NME Guide to Rock & Roll London (1978): Disco

NME Guide to Rock & Roll London (1978): Gay clubs

NME Guide to Rock & Roll London (1978): Reggae

London Club Listings 1982 - Time Out

Clubbing in London i-D listings, 1984

Clubbing in Sheffield i-D listings, 1984

Clubbing in Manchester listings, 1984

Clubbing in Luton, 1984

1987: Dancing in Brixton and beyond

The Face London Club listings, March 1989

Speed and other London clubs, i-D 1995

Muzik Magazine 1995 club listings

More 1995 London Clubs

 

'How to produce a feminist magazine': Bad Attitude - radical women's newspaper (1992-97)

Bad Attitude was a London-based radical women's newspaper that ran from 1992 to 1997. It was put together by a group of women (mostly friends of mine) operating for much of this time from an office in the anarchist squat centre at 121 Railton Road, Brixton. The paper was an ambitious project, aiming for high production values and international coverage while having no funding and no paid staff. Unsurprisingly it eventually ran out of steam but not before many great interviews, news stories and other articles.

The story of Bad Attitude is told in some documents in the 56a infoshop archive, which also has a collection of the paper. The first document is a letter promoting Bad Attitude to potential sellers (bookshops etc). It promises that it will be 'wicked, witty and wild' and 'will inherit and expand the success of Shocking Pink and Feminaxe - members of the collective worked on both these publications... with a mission to overthrow civilisation as we know it Bad Attitude will put blander publications in the shade'. Distribution was handled by Central Books, originally set up in the 1930s to distribute Communist Party publications.

Five years and eight issues later the collective issued a 'Bye Bye Bad Attitude' letter to subscribers. 

 'BA brought a class struggle, anti-state approach to feminism that is scarce in any nationally distributed publication, and we managed to have few laughs along the way. It was  something worth fighting for! But life is change and the core of BA members have moved on in different ways — in  some cases, out of London. Lack of enough money and lack of energy have re-inforced each other, though our low overheads have enabled us to carry on longer than others. 

Most imporant, we're feeling the knock-on effect of changes in the benefits system. It's no   easy to sign on, keep going with the odd earner on the side and devote yourself virtually full-time to a project like BA. With wage cuts, pressure on low-rent housing and squatting and all the other survival hassles, it's also become more difficult to live on  part-time employment. This has made it difficult to find new collective members who can make the commitment to a regular publication on the scale of BA... Still for the overthrow of civilisation as we know it'

The group hoped that others would pick up the torch and with this in mind they 'How to produce a feminist magazine or how we did BA' with various practical points and 'advice from burnt-out baddies':  'Don't be over-ambitious. When we started as a bi-monthly. we roughly kept to schedule for a year. We also got ill! In retrospect. this sense of burn-out hung over the rest of the time we published. even as we went to quarterly. to bi-annual. to....non-existent.  It's better to start off with a publishing schedule you know you can stick to without giving up the rest of your life. 

At the same time, photocopies won't get the word out. Printing an attractive. well-produced publication makes it more accessible to those who don't already have a determined mission to read extremist tracts. And remember partially-sighted women will be interested too in what you've got to say. Try and get as many people as possible involved from the very beginning. We started off as a group of five or six, with the idea of involving more women when we published. But women coming in often didn't feel quite the same commitment. even though we tried to work out ways of including new volunteers. When we were overstretched we got stuck. We didn't have enough women to work regularly and train new volunteers which made it difficult for new women to get involved. which meant we didn't enough of us to  open the office. put out the paper and train volunteers...and so on'.

Bad Attitude benefit party during Hackney Anarchy Week 1996, held at the Factory Squat in Stoke Newington (more details of the Week at Radical History of Hackney)

Bad Attitude stall at Pride, Brockwell Park, 1993 - with Rosanne Rabinowitz (left) and Katy Watson

Sparrow's Nest Archive have scanned some copies of Bad Attitude

See previously:

Remembering Katy Watson (Bad Attitude collective member)

Bad Attitude Music Reviews

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

Muzik magazine issue One: 1995 club listings and Drexciya

Muzik magazine was launched with this June 1995 issue by IPC magazines, the publishers of NME and many other established publications. The mainstream music press had been caught hopping by the massive dance music explosion of this period, outflanked by magazines like Mixmag, DJ and Jockey Slut. Muzik was IPC's attempt to get a slice of the pie, and to me it felt a bit of a step backward. Or what I no doubt ranted about at the time as a musical counter revolution applying usual culture industry techniques of elevating cover star music makers out of the relatively anonymous masses of DJs, dancers and producers. It was all about 'proper' musicians (even if electronic ones), making proper albums filed neatly into product categories of techno, garage, house or even, as in this issue, hardbag. Of course Muzik didn't start the 'superstar DJ' trend but I think they went further than before in separating out the music from the experience of dancing to it - it was less clubbing focused than say Mixmag.

Still there's extensive record reviews and the club listings are evocative, even if very far from the 'definitive club listings' promised on the cover. Here's an extract for a weekend in May 1995 with some of the many places (the more obvious ones)  I was going to at the time: Leisure Lounge in Holborn, the Cross at Kings Cross, the Mars Bar,  Ministry etc.

The Techno reviews section does at least include a critique of the state of music from the late James Stinson of Drexciya:

'Too many people focus on what label a record comes out on, rather than what the track actually sounds like. To me, that means there's something wrong. I remember the days when nobody cared if you were on Warner Brothers or Booty Up, just so long as what you were doing was good. When you throw a party, what are you spinning? Are you spinning the middle of a record where all the writing is at or are you spinning the wax? You know what I'm saying? When a group comes to perform, who's up on the stage? Is it the business people punching their little computers or is it the artists themselves? 

Drexciya won't be putting records out for a while now. We'll still be making music, but not records. We won't allow this form of music to just stop where it's at, but we're not even satisfied with the quality that we are producing. And I have to say that I really wish people wouldn't follow us. Be inspired, sure, but please don't follow. The minute we hear footsteps following us, we switch our style. We'll totally abandon what we're doing. We won't release any records or perform anywhere until things change'

I believe the magazine continued until 2003, and having fiddled around taking photos of my one surviving copy I see that Dance Music Archive have scanned in the lot. So if you want to read more go there!

See also other listings posts:

London Gay Disco 1972

NME Guide to Rock & Roll London (1978): Disco

NME Guide to Rock & Roll London (1978): Gay clubs

NME Guide to Rock & Roll London (1978): Reggae

London Club Listings 1982 - Time Out

Clubbing in London i-D listings, 1984

Clubbing in Sheffield i-D listings, 1984

Clubbing in Manchester listings, 1984

Clubbing in Luton, 1984

1987: Dancing in Brixton and beyond

1988 London club listings: 'do not play acid'

The Face London Club listings, March 1989

Speed and other London clubs, i-D 1995

More 1995 London Clubs

 

100 years of anti-fascism in Britain

Mussolini's ascent to power in Italy in 1922 was the start of a terrible period in European history, followed by similar far right dictatorships in Germany, Spain, Romania, Hungary and other places - leading to war and genocide. Mussolini's admirers in Britain set up their first organisation, the British Fascisti, in 1923. There was opposition from the start, so 2023 marks the centenary of  both organised fascism and anti-fascism in Britain.

In his excellent  history of 'Anti Fascism in Britain', Nigel Copsey dates anti-fascism here from efforts to disrupt the founding meeting of the British Fascisti in London's Hyde Park in 1923: 'The roots of Britain's anti-fascist tradition can be traced back to 7 October 1923, when Communists disrupted the inaugural meeting of the British Fascisti (BF). This rally of Britain's first fascist organisation, attended by some 500 people, ended in 'pandemonium'. Two further meetings, both held in November 1923 in London's Hammersmith, were also disrupted'. These early British fascists were a wannabe paramilitary outfit with a main focus on anti-communism and defending King, Country and Empire (with anti-semitism never far behind). 

Their public launch in October 1923 followed several months of secretive organising but it was described in the Daily Herald (8 October 1923) as 'British Fascisti's Comic Show' interrupted by hecklers:

 

There does seem to have been a slightly earlier anti-fascist effort in London associated with the milieu around Sylvia Pankhurst's Women's Dreadnought (later Workers Dreadnought) paper. Sylvia, the most radical of the famous suffragette family, had by this point helped established a Communist Workers Movement independent and critical of the mainstream Bolshevik inspired Communist International.

In March 1923 Sylvia Pankhurst spoke at 'A protest meeting against the fascist reaction in Italy' held at Signor Dondi's Club in Clerkenwell (Eyre Street Hill).  Also on the bill was Pietro Gualducci, a long term anarchist exile in London  who had once been jailed in Italy for singing anarchist songs.The paper also advertised 'Il Comento', an Italian anti-fascist newspaper. 

In May 1923 it was reported that 'An Anti-Fascist Organisation, specially appealing to young people between 15 and 30 has been formed. It proposes to attend demonstrations, carry banners. collect, sell literature, and so on  on. It will organise classes and meetings for the young. A Red Shirt uniform is being discussed. Secretary, Mr H . T. Noble. 157 Church Street, Stoke Newington'. Copsey dates the first anti-fascist organisation to 1924 when the People's Defence Force was established in Soho, but this seems to predate that. How long it lasted is unclear but this does seem to be the first specifically anti-fascist organisation in Britain.

Interesting to see that the Dreadnought crew held a series of jazz dances in this period at Circle Gaulois in Archer Street off Shaftesbury Avenue. The fascists too were dancing, with a Black Shirt Gala Ball  held at the Cecil Hotel in the Strand with Italian fascists and their supporters  in February 1923.

[sorry to have missed Alfio Bernabei’s exhibition “Sylvia and Silvio” is at the Charing Cross Library earlier this year, which covered some of the above - see his article here]

Sheffield Gramophone Shops

Sucker for old gramophone record sleeves, advertising the shops they were bought in. I found these examples in a Peckham charity shop, both of them from Sheffield I'm guessing in the 1920s. Cann the Radio Man sold musical instruments and record players as well as records, while Goddard's Pianos in the same city clearly also sold instruments too. If you want to know more about these places check out the exhaustive Sheffield Music Archive.

 i

 

Birmingham Stop the City 1984

We've previously covered the Stop the City demonstrations in London of 1983/84 when a couple of thousand  people, mainly young anarcho-punks, attempted and partly succeeded in bringing chaos to the financial centre of the city. The biggest event was in March 1984, by September 1984 heavy policing more or less shut it down with nearly 500 arrests. 

The idea spread around the country. Leeds Stop the City in August 1984 was by all accounts quite successful with around 400 people taking part, 100 of whom were arrested. Later, in 1985, there was a decentralised Stop Business as Usual with events happening simultaneously in different towns and cities.

But the attempted Birmingham Stop the City on October 11th 1984 was generally viewed as a dismal failure. Less than 200 people turned up and were contained by a large police operation, only occasionally managing to break away to little effect. Getting nicked in the Tesco meat department by plain clothes cops was not my finest moment. The night before some doors were glued up at banks and there had been some graffiti too.

Report from Black Flag, 10/12/84: ' 'We decided to meet at Chamberlain Square on the way noticed many banks had excessive numbers of security guards, shops had their windows greased to prevent paint getting on. A few people marched into Barclays to leaflet but got escorted out quickly. Leafletting was done on many matters. Several supermarkets had meat thrown about, people filled trolleys and either dumped them or took them to the cash register and refused to pay, saying no South African goods'.

Report from Green Anarchist, November 1984 - "Stop the City: we couldn't even stop a public loo"

The night before eight people who had travelled from London for the protest were arrested when their van was stopped by police. Charged with conspiring to cause a public the case dragged on for many months, with a committal hearing at Birmingham Magistrates Court in July 1985 and a trial at Birmingham Crown Court in December 1985 (I haven't been able to find out outcome of trial - does anybody know?).

'The so called evidence in relation to this charge is that the eight travelled together to Birmingham the night before Stop the City and during their stay in police custody the eight refused to co-operate and some shouted and sang for much of the time. During this time the police found a leaflet on the police station floor, not even on or near any of the defendants. The leaflet suggested actions for Stop the City such as sit-ins, blockades and causing damage to oppressive property. It went on to suggest that if arrested disruption should continue, non-cooperation with police and making lots of noise in the cells. The police are trying to claim that because the eight were  'carrying out' the second part of the leaflet they must have been intending to carry out the first and disrupt Birmingham so cauusing a public nuisance... if the eight are found guilty this will mean that to conspire to cause a public nuisance you need only to travel with others to a demo where anything like this might happen'

Black Flag 12 August 1985

Freedom, December 1985

See previous posts:

Stop the City, London, March 1984

Stop the City, London, September 1984

Karma Sutra and Luton anarcho-punk

Stop the City, London, September 1984

1983/84 saw a series of anti-capitalist 'Stop the City' actions focused on the financial centre of London and other cities too, including Leeds and Birmingham. In London, momentum built with large protests in September 1983 and March 1984 (I've written about the March one here). A fairly half hearted one in May 1984 didn't amount to much, but a more serious attempt to organise and mobilise led up to the action on September 27 1984. By this point though the police had got used to this mode of protest and had developed their own tactics for dealing with it - largely mass preventative arrest. 470 people were arrested, most of them later released without charge. A high proportion of people came from the anarcho-punk scene, but there was advice to dress in more casual clothes to avoid being singled out by the police. I did so, not sure I would have passed for a city gent but I didn't get nicked!

There were occasional short lived breakaways from police lines, as reported below: 'There was a small rampage not far from the Stock Exchange where windows were smashed and cars jumped on and later Barclays Bank off Cheapside had windows broken'. I recall somebody stepping up on the window sill of a bank and kicking the window in. Other than these brief moments there was a lot of wandering around aimlessly.

Dave M, who helped organise the London events as part of London Greenpeace, summarised the day as follows:

'On Sept 27th, maybe 2000 came - mostly anarchists and unemployed, as well as some peace and animal rights campaigners. Police repression was well organised and strong. It was impossible to gather at the City centre (St Paul's and the Bank of England, used previously, were cordoned off). Individuals and isolated small groups who were 'looking for the demo' were threatened with arrest, and soon left, disillusioned. Anyone looking like a punk was particularly harassed. 470 were arrested and held hostage (only 35 were charged) to break up the collective strength.

However, many people who'd organised into independent groups were able to do quick actions all over the place (graffiti, smashing bank windows, a quick occupation etc). 2 or 3 times 3-400 people came together for a march into the centre… Hundreds who were dressed up smart continued to float about (giving out leaflets, passing messages, doing actions...). But generally the City became a no-go area almost for us. Many demonstrators therefore decided to go to Oxford Street, and Soho in central London and were able to make quite a few effective protests at various banks, offices and stores etc.' (A Brief Account of the Stop the City Protests)

Report from Green Anarchist, November 1984

There was quite a lot of soul searching afterwards. The following chronology from anarcho zine Socialist Opportunist (October 1994) ends up asking 'People put months of planning into all this. Was it worth it?'

The general consensus was that it was 'time for us to move on, having learnt from Stop the City' as expressed in this response written on the day:

 

(there a couple of other responses in the same issue, full copy of which can be read at the excellent Sparrows Nest Archive).

Press coverage

Evening Standard calls for police to move in on the organisers

Guardian: 'Police swamp  City's 2,000 anarchists'

Benefit Gig

The night before there was a benefit gig for the Stop the City Bust Fund in Camberwell at Dickie Dirts, featuring among others Conflict, Subhumans and Stalag17. The venue was an old Odeon cinema that for a while had been a Dickie Dirts jeans warehouse before being squatted.   I think there may have been some Stop the City planning meetings in the same venue.

There's a little confusion about the Conflict/Subhumans gig, the flyer is clear that it was the night before Stop the City though some people (mis?)remember it as being on the night of the protest. 

Earlier that Summer Subhumans had recorded a song Rats about Stop the City, having taken part in the previous London actions. As lead singer Dick recalls:

"We're talking about thousands of people — a lot of them punk rockers, hippies, alternative types — all turning up, dressed up, making a lot of noise... bells, whistles and drums, that sort of thing. It was an angry party atmosphere, and it was just really refreshing. It was one of the first protests I'd been to that wasn't a CND march, and it felt slightly more relevant, more 'everyday' than a protest for nuclear disarmament. That was a one-subject protest, but this was against the exploitation of people across the world by the people who press all the buttons and control all the money — it was about the very  hold that money and profit and greed have got on society in general. It felt more urgent to be there. I went up there on my own, and met up with lots of people. I remember the band Karma Sutra from Luton were there.  At one point, people were being violently thrust around by the cops, and I overheard one of them say, 'If you act like rats, you'll get treated like this... ', which became a line in the song and is the reason the song's called 'Rats' , which may not be an obvious name for a song about protesting against capitalism" (quoted in 'Silence Is No Reaction: Forty Years of Subhumans' by Ian Glasper).

The lyrics of the song do capture the feeling of those days (maybe especially the line  'Co-ordination was not so good, But everyone did just what they could'!):

A sense of enterprise is here, The attitudes that conquer fear

Stability, togetherness, The feeling cannot be suppressed

Hand in hand we had our say,  United we stand but so did they

Hands in handcuffs dragged away, To cheers of hate and victory!

We fought the city but no-one cared, They passed it off as just a game

The city won't stop til attitudes change, Rats in the cellars of the stock exchange

Co-ordination was not so good, But everyone did just what they could

Unarmed with inexperience, We had to use our common sense

If you act like rats you get treated like this,  Said a policeman like we didn't exist

When the force of law has lost it's head, The law of force is what you get

We fought their calculations, Money gained from third world nations

All that money spent on war, Could be used to feed their poor

The papers played the whole thing down, Said there was nothing to worry about

The rats have all gone underground, But we'll be back again next time round

See also:

Stop the City, London, March 1984

Karma Sutra and Luton anarcho-punk

Ewan McColl and Peggy Seeger interview (1978)

An interview with folk singers Ewan McColl and Peggy Seeger from 1978, published in the socialist  newspaper Militant (28/7/1978) after the couple had played at a Militant Folk Night at Wallasey Labour Club.  The interview includes  McColl's reflections on the mass trespass movement of the 1930s:

'The earliest songs I wrote were for factory newspapers, from 1928 onwards. At one time I was writing satirical political songs for five different newspapers. Only some were folk songs, but by the time I wrote "The Manchester Rambler' in 1933 it naturally slipped into that style. I wrote four songs for the Mass Trespass that we organised over Kinder Scout [in 1932]. One was for the Ramblers rights Movement, which was affiliated to the British Workers Sports Federation- but that's history now. the only one that survived was the "The Manchester Rambler' Another one started:(sings)

"We are young workers in search of healthy sport, We leave Manchester each weekend for a hike, Oh 'the best moorlands in Derbyshire are closed, to us, we ramble anywhere we like. For the mass trespass is the onlv way there is to gain access to mountains once again".

It's a very crude song as you can hear- but expressed our feelings. Nearly all the open areas were closed off. There were more than 3 million unemployed, and nearly half a million were young workers or had come straight from school at 14 on to the dole... A big hiking movement developed out of the young unemployed and from this all the best of the young militants came'