As Japan industrialised in the late 19th and early 20th century large numbers of young women were employed in textile mills, often living in tightly regulated dormitories under the control of their employers. Like people in many places they sang songs of despair and defiance.
Here's some extracts from a few textile workers' ballads, from an article by E Patricia Tsurumi (Female Textile Workers and the Failure of Early Trade Unionism in Japan, History Workshop Journal, 18, Autumn 1984).
Song of the Living Corpses
My family was poor,
At the tender age of twelve,
I was sold to a factory.
Yet though I work for cheap wages,
My soul is not soiled.
Like the lotus flower in the midst of mud,
My heart too,
Will one day blossom forth.
Carried away by sweet-sounding words,
My money was stolen and thrown away.
Unaware of the hardships of the future,
I was duckweed in the wind.
Excited, I arrived at the age,
Where I bowed to the doorman,
I was taken immediately to the dormitory,
Where I bowed to the room supervisor.
I was taken immediately to the infirmary,
Where I risked my life having a medical examination.
I was taken immediately to the cafeteria,
Where I asked what was for dinner.
I was told it was low grade rice mixed with sand.
When I asked what the side dish was,
I was told there weren't even two slices of pickle to eat.
Then I was taken immediately to the factory,
Where I donned a blue skirt and blue shirt,
And put on hemp-straw sandals and blue socks.
When I asked where I was to work
I was told to fasten threads on the winder.
Because my parents were good-for-nothings,
Or, because my parents weren't good-for-nothings
But I was a good-for-nothing myself,
I was deceived by a fox without a tail.
Now I'm awakened at 4:30 in the morning;
First I fix my face, then go to the cafeteria;
Then it's off to the factory
Where the chief engineer scowls at me.
When I return to my room,
The supervisor finds all manner of fault with me,
And I-feel like I'll never get on in this world.
When next I'm paid
I'll trick the doorkeeper and slip off to the station,
Board the first train
For my dear parents' home.
Both will cry when I tell them
How fate made me learn warping,
Leaving nothing but skin and bone on my soul.
We friends are wretched,
Separated from our homes in a strange place,
Put in a miserable dormitory
Woken up at 4:30 in the morning,
Eating when 5 o'clock sounds,
Dressing at the third bell,
Glared at by the manager and section head,
Used by the inspector.
How wretched we are!
Though I am a factory maid,
My heart is a peony, a cherry in double blossom,
Though male workers make eyes at me,
I'm not the kind to respond.
Rather than remain in this factory,
I'll pluck up my courage,
And board the first train for Ogawa,
Maybe I'll even go to the far corners of Manchuria.
Prison Lament
Factory work is prison work,
All it lacks are metal chains.
More than a caged bird, more than a prison,
Dormitory life is hateful.
The factory is hell, the manager a demon,
The restless floorwalker a wheel of fire.
Like the money in my employment contract,
I remain sealed away.
If a male worker makes eyes at you,
You end up losing your shirt.
How I wish the dormitory would be washed away,
the factory burn down,
And the gatekeeper die of cholera!
I want wings to escape from here,
To fly as far as those distant shores.
My Factory
At other companies there are Buddhas and Gods.
At mine only demons and serpents.
When I hear the manager talking,
His words say only 'money, money, and time
'They sang lovingly and longingly of their parents and siblings at home; they sang angrily and resentfully of the factories and sheds in which they toiled and of the owners and managers who supervised that toil' (Tsurumi)
Lots to love in 'Parallel Mothers'/'Madres Paralelas' (2021), the latest Pedro Almodóvar film.
One plot thread concerns the uncovering of a mass grave for victims of Franco's fascist forces, very much a live issue in Spain where The Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (which features in the film) has been leading the movement to uncover the stories, and physical remains, 'of thousands of civilians executed during the 1936-39 Civil War and the 1939-75 Franco regime. It is estimated that 200,000 men and women were killed in extrajudicial executions during the War, and another 20,000 Republicans murdered by the regime in the post-war years. Thousands more died as a result of bombings, and in prisons and concentration camps'.
The film finishes with a quote on screen from the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano
'No history is mute. No matter how much they burn it, break it, and lie about it, human history refuses to shut its mouth'.
The quote in its wider context is as follows:
'Does history repeat itself? Or are the repetitions only penance for those who are incapable of listening to it? No history is mute. No matter how much they burn it, break it, and lie about it, human history refuses to shut its mouth. Despite deafness and ignorance, the time that was continues to tick inside the time that is. The right to remember does not figure among the human rights consecrated by the United Nations, but now more than ever we must insist on it and act on it. Not to repeat the past but to keep it from being repeated. Not to make us ventriloquists for the dead but to allow us to speak with voices that are not condemned to echo perpetually with stupidity and misfortune. When it is truly alive, memory doesn’t contemplate history, it invites us to make it' (Eduardo Galeano, Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-glass World, New York: Picador, 1998, p. 210).
'Section 28' of the Local Government Act 1988 was a piece of culture war-style legislation framed by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government to ban 'the promotion of homosexuality' by local councils. It prompted a massive movement of opposition with probably the most militant LGBTQ+ demonstrations ever seen in the UK, including in early 1988 in Manchester (see previous post) and in London. The following is a report from the Pink Paper ('Britain's only national newspaper for lesbians and gay men') of the demo in London on 9th January 1988. The march went from the Embankment to Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park by the Imperial War Museum in north Lambeth, with a breakaway en route to Downing Street. Although the movement failed at one level - the law was passed - it paved the way for the largely successful movement for equality that followed in the 1990s.
Pink Paper front cover, 14 January 1988
'More than 12,000 lesbians and gay men and our supporters marched through London on Saturday to protest about Clause 27 (now 28) of the Local Government Bill, which bans "promotion" of homosexuality by local authorities - and 33 of them were arrested and charged with criminal offences.
The Rally attracted four times as many marchers as its sponsors, the Organisation for Lesbian and Gay Action, had expected. Police rapidly revised their own estimate of attenders from five to eight thousand as trouble flared at Whitehall, where part of the march broke away to besiege Downing Street and make their feelings known to the Prime Minister, who was hiding in Number Ten. The march ground to a halt as activists, scene queens and bar dykes all gathered round to shout their anger at the Goverment-backed attempt to turn homosexuals into second class citizens. There were several minor injuries as police forced the crowd away from the entrance to the Thatcher residence and about 20 people were arrested for obstruction or assault. Organisers appealed for calm as police threatened to bring in officers on horseback to disperse the crowd.
After almost three quarters of an hour the tension abated and people drifted back to the route. There were further arrests at Waterloo. People from as far apart as Pontypridd and Norwich, Brighton and Edinburgh, crowded into Harmsworth Park to hear Chris Smith, Linda Bellos and other speakers. The father of a lesbian spoke movingly about the pain of having rejected his daughter before learning to understand and love her. Robin Tyler, US entertainer and activist gave a hilarious account of her affair with Dame Jill Knight - "That bitch - she swore she'd get even" - and talked about Ronald Reagan being "Margaret Thatcher in drag". But her speech turned to anger as news came through that police were arresting and harassing people at the perimeter of the park, picking out young women and black people. "If they want to arrest all of us, they'll have to arrest millions" she shouted, "including MPs and members of the Royal Family".
Legal observers and organisers rushed to the trouble spot, where Kennington police had brought up 10 mounted police ready to charge and were arresting people carrying banner poles or kissing. Both marchers and locals were arrested for drinking after hours - about three minutes after hours in fact at a nearby pub. Arrests continued at Cannon Row Police Station, where a lesbian who had gone to enquire about her girlfriend was charged retrospectively with assault on a policeman earlier in the day at Downing Street. Later, the legal officer of City Anti-Apartheid Group, Anhil Bhatt, was arrested outside the station for obstruction while waiting for the last person to be released. "He was nicked just for being there and being black" said Jennie Wilson of OLGA who witnessed the arrest'
(note advert for Fallen Angel bar in Islington - I believe the Pink Paper had an office upstairs there at one point. Used to go there for lunch when working in Islington in early 1990s)
'There are 12,000 men and women after Saturday's march proud to say - "I was there". There on the day when the lesbian and gay movement of Britain came of age; there on the day when we put our differences aside striding step by step as one; there on the day when the gentle loving people became angry and we started fighting for our lives.
Even before the march left Temple in central London an uneasy sense of expectancy hung in the air. This was no Pride Carnival. There were no floats, bands or balloons. The drag queens were in their civvies and all the pink was tinged with grey. In only three weeks the organisers had attracted four times the numbers they expected as the ranks of the regular activists were swelled by representation from all sections of our communities. There was no gay or lesbian, no black or white. We were one. Strong and defiant.
All around people united. Fearful that our businesses will be closed, frightened that our jobs will be taken away, afraid that our books will burn. Our very existence is at stake and we are beginning to battle'.
List of banners on the demo
Appeal for witnesses from the January 9th Defence Campaign 'Were you on the OLGA/Stop Clause 27 Campaign March in London on Saturday January 9th? There were 33 arrests at Whitehall, Waterloo and Kennington. Charges brought against people include obstruction and assault'.
I was in Whitehall, lots of pushing and shoving at the entrance to Downing Street, not quite Stonewall 1969 or San Francisco 1979 but it was quite heavy. Here's a couple of photos of mine from Stop the Clause demos in London. I think the first one was from that day, the other one possibly from a later demo.
'the first breath of a chilling wind of intolerance'
My 'Council workers against Clause 28' badge. I recently donated this to the LGBTQ+ archive at the Bishopsgate Institute, as I realised that they had a set of a similar badges but not this one (including 'Librarians against Clause 28' and 'Defy the Clause'
Report from Counter Information, February 1988 - referring to 'Jill's Bill' as it was proposed by Dame Jill Knight, a Conservative politician who had been a member of the far right Monday Club.
'Yesterday evening a grand ball, attended by the leading members of the Hebrew persuasion in the city, took place at the London Tavern, in celebration of the removal of the Jewish disabilities and in aid of the funds of the Jews' General Literary and Scientific Institution.
The ball took place in the large room of the tavern, which has recently been entirely re-decorated in simple, but most graceful, style making it one of the handsomest as it has long been one of the finest in the city of London. Dancing commenced about 10 o'clock - the band being led by Mr La Motte - and was continued with the utmost spirit till the lights began to 'pale their ineffectual fires'. Upwards of 200 of the leading members of Jewish firms were present' (Times 4th February 1859).
The reference to 'the removal of the Jewish Disabilities' is to the passing of the Jews Relief Act 1858, which removed previous barriers to Jewish people entering Parliament
The City of London Tavern was located in Bishopsgate during the 18th and 19th Century. While the word Tavern today implies a simple pub, this was a large building with a grand hall for balls, public meetings and other events.
interior of the London Tavern, 1814
The balls that were held here sometimes went on very late, as mentioned above and also referred to in an account of another ball in aid of the Licensed Victuallers Asylum: 'About two hundred happy couples, mostly juveniles, joined in the mazy dance, evidently very much to their own mutual delight,.. After supper dancing was renewed, and kept up with untiring spirit to an early hour in the morning'. (Morning Advertiser, 10 January 1838). Yes it was possible to dance through the night in London even before electricity.
The murky story of American “psychological operations” in the Vietnam war features many strange episodes. As told in ‘If Then: How One Data Company Invented the Future’ by Jill Lepore ((2020) this included the largely unsuccessful efforts of a private company contractor, The Simulmatics Corporation.
Set up in 1959, the company pioneered the use of computers for market research and predictive modelling. As early as 1960 they had begun developing what they termed the People Machine ‘a computer program designed to predict and manipulate human behavior, all sorts of human behavior, from buying a dishwasher to countering an insurgency to casting a vote’.
At their suggestion the Pentagon established the Hamlet Evaluation System in 1966, a massive bank of computerized data [...] compiled, updated, and analyzed, day by day, on 12,500 strategic hamlets in forty-four provinces’ in Vietnam, supported by more than 300 staff.
Simulmatics Saigon uniform patch
In Vietnam one of Simulmatics' operatives was Joseph Hoc, a locally born Catholic priest. His plans included ‘something called the Sorcerers Project, he explained, because "Vietnamese villagers believe in prophecy and the power of holy men to foretell the future." For this project he intended to circulate false magic, the way another sort of psychological warrior might circulate, for instance, fake news. Alas, "the sorcerers did not say what they were supposed to say."
Linked to this, his 'Prophesy Project' saw thousands of booklets being distributed with a prophesy that "the Viet Cong will be defeated in 1969". Unfortunately for him, very few believed it.
Another initiative, the Folksinger Project, 'involved composing new folk songs intended to "inject dislike and hatred of the V[iet] C[ong]." But North Vietnamese attacks immobilized all of Ho's folksingers'.
As uprisings spread through the United States in 1967 the company turned its efforts to riot research and prediction, using computers and questionnaires. As Lepore observes 'Simulmatics' work on riot prediction in American cities bore an eerie similarity to McNamara's giant computer program, the Hamlet Evaluation Study, which, after all, aimed to predict insurgency. In the United States, Simulmatics attempted to determine the "Mood and Atmosphere Within Riot Community" and to assign it a number ("1-Calm restrained; 2-Tense; 3-Angry; 4-Fearful,nervous; 5-Apathetic; 6-Euphoric, Carnival; 7-Friendly, good-willed; 8-Chaotic; 9-Orderly; 10-Other")'
The company was targeted by anti-Vietnam war protesters including Students for a Democratic Society at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which had links to the company. Simulmatics was declared bankrupt in 1970. Lepore suggests that one reason was that it’s ideas were ahead of what the technology could actually deliver in the 1960s but that its vision has subsequently been realised by corporations like Facebook, Google, Amazon and Cambridge Analytica.
'9 August 1980. Ninth anniversary of internment, and the Au Pairs are playing a free gig for the kids in West Belfast. Rock The Block - it's in support of the women in Armagh and the men on the blanket in H-Block. The band deliver a tight set, mostly songs written by singer Woods about sexual politics, roles and relationships. The audience are stunned by Lesley; they've never seen anyone like her.' (Kate Webb, in The Book of the Year, Ink Links, 1980)
The Au Pairs were one of the most interesting of UK post-punk bands, exploring subject matter rarely if ever explicitly addressed in music from the sexual politics of relationships to the abuse of Irish women prisoners (the subject of their song Armagh). Their politics was a thread through everything they did, from their guitar playing to their choice of benefit gigs. They played for Rock Against Racism (indeed were started out by people involved in Birmingham RAR), Rock Against Sexism and various other causes.
This interview is from the radical left magazine 'The Leveller' (August 7-20 1981). True to style it took place at a No Nukes Music gig the band were playing at Lambeth Town Hall in Brixton (just round the corner from The Leveller's office at 52 Acre Lane SW2).
(click image to enlarge)
Extracts from interview:
'I don't think you can have any political awareness, though, without being aware of the way women are exploited in this society; it's a patriarchal society and women are oppressed. People are so paranoid about being told that, but it just happens to be a fact, not a point of view, a fact, and an inevitable result of the way society is organised right down to the basics. Capitalist society relies on the family, and women exist for the family and for producing children. In our society anybody who's involved in production gets exploited... I just read that today! Brecht's The Mother. It's really good. I get fed up always having to apologise or to defend the argument that women are oppressed. It is a fucking fact; not my point of view, or the left's point of view. I don't know what the solution is. I don't see a solution. But I could say that if every woman in the world decided to stop fucking with men and just became separatist then you'd be forcing the issue!'
'it's not about women making it in a man's world - like Cosmopolitan is always saying that in order to be a liberated woman, to be emancipated, you've got to climb the ladder to the top. It's not about men who've set standards for success that women must follow; it's not about women having to achieve those standards in order to be thought of as successful in our society. Women don't need to be the boss of a big firm; that's not the requirement for their liberation that's just following the traditions that men have established. It's more important that women get together - they're constantly set against each other, made to feel very threatened by other women. I don't mean, you know - all us wonderful sisters, unite and fight. But we have to find our own standards.
It really upsets me when I see a women's band who get up and play a gig, and I see them playing their guitars in a way well, you know how to play a guitar; that's all been set down by men. Who's to say that to play a guitar, though, you've got to do it like Jeff Beck? And they might get self-conscious about male macho rock guitar styles, so they play really nice twiddley bits, or nice bits of lead around minor chords which is fair enough, but it just upsets me in a way because I just think we've got to find other ways; women have to start developing new styles. I only know from my own experience that I can't play anything like that on guitar; I don't know how to play a lead break, but as far as I'm concerned what I play on my guitar is good, and who's to say I'm not a good guitar player... I think I'm fucking brilliant!'
More Au Pairs in the Leveller
The band seem to have had a strong association with the Leveller, an independent socialist magazine with a strong feminist content. They played a benefit for the magazine at Lambeth Town Hall in July 1982.
From 'The Leveller', 9 July 1982
The following review from The Leveller (5 March 1982) takes an Au Pairs gig at North London Poly as a launchpad for some musings on 'what would a feminist musical form sound like?' (note also review of The Marine Girls album).
(I've been reading back through lots of old copies of The Leveller in the 56a Infoshop archive, a great insight into late 1970s/early 1980s radical left, some of it fantastic, some of it not so good. This article and some others strike a slightly odd tone seen from my 2020s perspective with male writers judging women musicians on how feminist they are)
I used to have t-shirt with this on!
I was lucky to see the band a couple of times, once at Kent University in 1981 and at the legendary Beat the Blues festival at London's Alexandra Palace in 1980. The latter saw some of the best post-punk bands (Slits, Pop Group, Raincoats, Au Pairs, Essential Logic plus punk poet John Cooper Clarke) play to mark the 50th anniversary of the Communist Party's Morning Star newspaper. I found this picture of the band playing there on flickr from Alan Denney):
Milton Keynes Gallery has been hosting an exhibition on the famous MK club The Sanctuary (it closes on 23 January 2022).
'How did an unsuspecting Milton Keynes warehouse become one of the UK’s largest and most beloved rave venues? Sanctuary: The Unlikely Home of British Ravewill tell the story of the infamous all-night club that operated in the city from 1991-2004, drawing close to an estimated million ravers from across the country.
The exhibition, an archive project that will display original ephemera, flyers, merchandise, artefacts, footage and more, is curated by Emma Hope Allwood, a writer and former Dazed editor who grew up around Milton Keynes. “It wasn’t until I became a journalist and came across the flyer for Dreamscape 1 that I learned of The Sanctuary,” she says. “For me, this project is about doing justice to the youth culture history of MK – a place which is too often unfairly maligned as a cultural void.”
'1991. A man walks into Milton Keynes Council's offices. His name is Murray Beetson, and he wants to put on a rave. The proposed venue? An empty warehouse in Denbigh North, little more than a colossal silver shell. A licence is granted, and one night in December, thousands show up for an event that goes down in history: Dreamscape 1.
Officially opening as The Sanctuary in 1992, the club marks a new chapter in the story of British rave. The hedonistic freedom of the late 1980s acid house movement - where fields and abandoned buildings were transformed into all-night venues - has become the target of Conservative politicians and scaremongering media.
The party isn't over, it just has to adapt: emerging from the underground into licensed, legal venues.The Sanctuary is one of them. Over the following decade, hundreds of thousands make the pilgrimage there, cars of excited ravers snaking down motorways to dance until dawn to jungle, hardcore, and drum & bass in one of Britain's biggest clubs' (from exhibition).
The exhibition includes flyers for various events held there including Dreamscape and Helter Skelter, as well as some for earlier house/techno nights not far away at Rayzels in Bletchley.
Press headlines tell of the usual troubles of drug casualties, dealers and some more comic moments like the one about the 'Missing Raver' found asleep in a field.
There are also memories left by visitors
'people lying on the floor in white t-shirts having conversations and standing up filthy!'
... and an original blow horn!
The club closed in 2004 and was demolished to make way for an Ikea store. In 2008 Sanctuary veterans staged a flashmob reunion in the aisles of Ikea.
Long ago and far away (well mid 1980s Luton) there was a great punk band called Karma Sutra. I hung out with them and made a few squiggly noises on my wasp synth on one of their 1985 demo tapes. Now 35 years later said demo tape and others from that time have appeared on vinyl as an album 'Be Cruel With Your Past And All Who Seek To Keep You There' put out by Sealed Records (listen/buy it here). It comes with a great booklet with interviews and flyers. For me Karma Sutra were a portal into anarcho-punk and its associated activism, perhaps in particular hunt sabbing as I explain in the following
I’d had the Crass records, the Conflict badges, and a mohican, I’d been on a Stop the City demo too but my real initiation into the world of ‘anarcho punk activism’ didn’t come until September 1st 1984 when I went to a Hunt Saboteurs benefit gig at Luton library theatre arranged by local band Karma Sutra. Headliners Antisect from Northampton were one of the more metal tinged punk outfits, with heavy guitar riffs and gruff vocals growling “why must I die?” (The “I” in question being a laboratory animal of course).
If the extremism of
noise and content was impressive it wasn’t unexpected. What really amazed me
was what was going on off the stage. I’d been to loads of gigs where I’d steamed
in with my mates, bought some drinks, watched the bands, and left with the only
interaction with others being some slam dancing at the front. Here there were
people talking, and busy bookstalls from the Hunt Saboteurs and from Housman’s,
the London radical bookshop, with a selection of anarchist papers and other
publications (I later found out that several people from the Luton scene were
working the odd shift there, and eventually I did the same myself).
Hunt Sabs benefit at Luton Library Theatre September 1984, flyer advertising Antisect, Karma Sutra, Ring and Danbert Nobacon. Not sure if this was the actual line up on the night - in my diary I noted seeing Antisect, Karma Sutra, The Sears (from Walsall) and The Remnants (Luton punk band). The night ended up with somebody being stabbed in the hand, though not seriously injured, I think linked to skinhead trouble - earlier a skinhead had jumped on stage and given a nazi salute. As discussed below, violence from far right skinheads was an ongoing threat at this time
I chatted with someone
about hunt sabbing and within a week I was standing in a field in
Northamptonshire at 8 am in the morning at the beginning of the fox cub hunting
season. It was the start of a couple of years of intense activity, with
countless hours spent in the back of a white van hurtling between punk gigs,
hunts, demonstrations and protests. I'd been politically involved in various left wing movements before but this was a different intensity of activism.
Of course these were
tumultuous times across the world – the days of Thatcher vs. the miners, of
Reagan and the new Cold War, of uprisings against Apartheid in South Africa.
And in towns and cities across the UK, some of the most determined opposition
to the state of the world came from groups of young, invariably black-clad
punks. This article is a snapshot of one of those scenes, in Luton, but similar
stories could be told about many other places.
Punk in Luton
Thirty miles north of
London, Luton in the mid-1980s was still an industrial town dominated by the
Vauxhall car factory, as it was to remain until General Motors stopped making
cars there in 2002. There had been a punk scene in the area since the early
days: The Damned played one of their first gigs at Luton’s Royal Hotel in 1976
and the Sex Pistols played at the Queensway Hall in neighbouring Dunstable in
the same year. Luton’s first punk band, The Jets, featured on the famous Live
at the Roxy album in ’77.
The best known punk band
to come from Luton was UK Decay, formed in 1979. The band had some association
with Crass - in December 1979 they played with Crass and Poison Girls at a gig
in a tin Nissan hut at Marsh Farm in Luton, and their final record – the ‘Rising
from the Dread’ EP - was released on Crass’s Corpus Christi label in 1982. But while
UK Decay released the great anti-war track ‘For my country’, they weren’t
really part of that anarcho-punk protest scene as such. Along with
Northampton’s Bauhaus they were developing a proto-goth aesthetic, referencing
horror themes and plundering Edgar Allen Poe and Herman
Hesse for inspiration. Indeed the reference to them as ‘the face of punk
gothique’ by Steve Keaton in Sounds (February 1981) is credited as being one of
the originators of the term ‘goth’ for this emerging sound.
UK
Decay were influential stalwarts of the indie charts, and among other things
supported The Dead Kennedys on their 1980 UK tour. For a while they were
involved in a short lived punk/new wave record shop in Luton town centre,
Matrix, which closed down shortly after a party where the Kennedys and other
party goers ran amok in the Arndale Centre car park.
By
1984 UK Decay had split up, giving rise to a couple of splinter bands (Furyo
and In Excelsis) and the post-punk scene too had begun to fragment. The town’s
sub-cultural outcasts tended to congregate at one pub in particular - The
Blockers Arms in High Town Road (of which more here). Among the punky types there
were different factions, albeit overlapping and coexisting peacefully – some
slightly older first generation punks, early goths, what would later be called
indie kids, and what might be termed ‘anarcho-punks’.
Luton Marsh House Free Festival, September 1984 with Newtown Neurotics, Attila the Stockbroker, Nick the Poet, Karma Sutra, Black Mass (St Albans anarcho punk band) and Snatch - a memorable day, it poured with rain towards the end and loads of us got up on the stage for shelter and joined in singing with Attila.
There
were no strict borders between these groups - every individual had their own
combination of politics, music tastes and hairstyles - so it’s perhaps
misleading to talk of a discrete, separate anarcho-punk scene. But within this
continuum there was a definite current that was more overtly political and
musically more into the bands like Crass and Conflict.
I
don’t think most people like this would have defined themselves then as anarcho-punks
or even necessarily as anarchists, but there was a shared, loose
anti-authoritarian politics, with a strong focus on being against war and militarism
and for animal rights. People were typically vegan at a time when supermarkets barely
catered for vegetarians - these were the days of homemade houmous.
It
would be misleading too to use the term ‘Crass punks’. Crass had certainly been
very influential earlier on but they were coming to the end of their active
life, playing their final gig in 1984 – a miners’ benefit in Aberdare. At the
thrashier end of things Conflict were now the most influential band, but the
scene had become much more musically diverse. Bands like Chumbawamba with their
harmonies, Slave Dance with their situationist squat funk sound, and No
Defences with their tricky time signatures were a long way from being Crass or
Conflict copyists.
In
Luton, the house band of the scene was Karma Sutra. They had been included on
Conflict’s 1984 Mortarhate compilation ‘Who? What? Why? When? Where?’ with
their track ‘It’s our World Too’ and were later to release an album ‘The Day
Dreams of a Production Line Worker’ on their own Paradoxical Records. Another
Luton band on a similar wavelength, Dominant Patri, had already split up by
1984. The other main ‘anarcho’ band in the town at the time was Penumbra Sigh, who formed I
believe in 1985, and there were also like-minded bands in nearby towns, such as
Medical Melodies in St Albans.
I
sometimes operated the slide projector at gigs for Karma, and I occasionally
turned up at their rehearsal space with my wasp synth – you can hear it on one
of their demo tapes from the period recorded in Luton's Midland Road studio. But mostly I just travelled around with
them and others to gigs – squat gigs in London such as in the Ambulance Station
on the Old Kent Road, a pub in Brixton or a bus station by Kings Cross; gigs in
far off places like a CND benefit supporting Chumbawamba in Stockport, gigs in
nearby towns like Welwyn Garden City and St Albans; gigs with Conflict, Chumba,
Antisect, The Sears, Blyth Power, Flowers in the Dustbin, Slave Dance, State Hate, No
Defences, Sacrilege, Brigandage, Black Mass, The McTells, The Astronauts and many more. But
the music was only part of it and here I want to focus on some of the other
things we got up to.
Chumbawamba, Karma Sutra and Sacrilege, CND benefit at Scunthorpe Baths, 1 March 1985 (I remember burning my hand on the slide projector as well as some great music!)
Hunt Sabbing
‘It’s normally a
quiet Northamptonshire lane – but on this occasion it looks more like a
battlefield. Furious members of the Grafton Hunt are blocking the road with
their horses and refusing to move. Angry hunt saboteurs rev their cars, hoot
their horns and demand that the horses get out of the way… A battered van and
an assortment of old cars appeared and about 30 mainly young protestors dashed
down a track close to the wood. A genuine Cotswold hunting horn, blown by a
saboteur, did a good impression of the Grafton’s rallying horn, while the rest
of the party joined in with fake shouts and calls…There’s another whirling
confrontation and a young female saboteur is lying unconscious in a ploughed
field – knocked flat by a horse… another saboteur is thrown into a stream by
hunt followers, and there are more scuffles’ (When the hunters become the
hunted’, Alex Dawson, Chronicle and Echo, September 10 1984)
The fine art of
preventing hunters killing foxes and other animals dated back to the formation
of the Hunt Saboteurs Association in 1963. Luton had been home to a
particularly militant sabbing group in the early 1970s, from which emerged the
Band of Mercy to take direct action including sabotaging hunt vehicles. This
group, which included Ronnie Lee, was to become one of the founding cells of
the Animal Liberation Front.
The mid-1980s Luton
sabs operated across the Beds, Bucks, Herts and Northantscountryside with occasional forays further
afield. Our nearest fox hunt was the Enfield Chace, in pursuit of which we
would head out of town having scoured Horse and House magazine for intelligence
of where they were to be found of a Saturday morning.
We quite often went out
with the Northampton group, sabbing the Pytchley, Grafton or the Vale of
Aylesbury fox hunts.. There was also a group in Bedford but even though there
were some sound people in it we didn’t entirely trust them because we suspected
that their van driver had dubious fascist connections (she later ended up as a Labour councillor in Milton Keynes, I guess people can change).
The biggest events were
national and regional ‘hits’, when sab groups from across a wide area would
converge on one hunt. Sometimes these would feature spectacular clashes, with
red coated hunters on horseback, hunt followers, police and a hundred or more
brightly haired sabs scuffling and chasing each other, and sometimes a fox, across
fields and through woods. I remember being in the woods near Sole Street in Kent, disrupting the East Kent hunt with sabs from Canterbury, Thanet, Brighton and Surrey in March 1985. It felt like being in a medieval peasants revolt with sabs carrying sticks charging at the hunters deep in the trees - it was the week that Kent miners returned to work at the end of their strike and class war was in the air.
Ideally the hunt would be delayed by stopping it
moving off, or blockading the kennels where the hounds were kept. At the start
of the 1985 season for instance, around 100 sabs blockaded the kennels of the
Cambridgeshire Foxhounds, preventing the van carrying the hounds from leaving
on time [I believe the pictures below are from that day, I recognise a couple of Coventry sabs in them including all in black John Curtin].
The guy on the right rode his horse straight at me, so I was knocked on the ground a couple of seconds after taking this photo!
At other times,
sometimes with as much effect, it would just be a handful of us, hardly seeing
the hunters but distracting the hounds from a distance blowing hunting horns or
spraying anti-mate on the ground to obscure the scent of the fox.
There were also less direct tactics - there were tales of some sabs doing magic rituals to protect the fox before setting out on a Saturday morning. This was the first time I had heard of such 'magical activism' and shortly afterwards I was introduced to the work of Starhawk - hanging around court while watching one of the Unilever trials (arising from a mass animal liberation league raid on a Bedfordshire laboratory) someone was reading 'Dreaming the Dark: Magic, sex and politics' which described the work of witches in the US peace and anti-nuclear movements.
Whatever the numbers out sabbing the conflict was usually uneven with the hunting cavalry facing the animal rights infantry. On my very first hunt, a sab was knocked out by a horse from the
Grafton Hunt near Slapton in Northants. On another occasion I was knocked
flying by a horse, but escaped serious injury. A few years later, in 1991, hunt
saboteur Mike Hill was to be killed by a hunt vehicle used by the Cheshire
Beagles (and indeed in 1995 Jill Phipps, who I remember meeting at that first
hunt at Slapton, was killed by a lorry during an animal rights protest at
Coventry airport).
My first time hunt sabbing - a woman lies injured after being hit by a horse from the Grafton Hunt. Her friend comforts her - note Crass patch on trousers (Chronicle and Echo, September 10 1984).
The police generally
turned a blind eye to any violence inflicted by hunt followers on sabs, and it
was the latter who tended to get arrested if there were any clashes. For
instance in March ’85, eleven sabs were arrested as we tried to stop the Old
Berkeley Beagles hunting hares near Thame in Oxfordshire.
Sometimes the hunt could not be found at all, and there would be fruitless tours of country lanes in the back of a van. Where large numbers of sabs were gathered together with nothing to do the temptation to mischief elsewhere was strong. In March 1986, a big group of sabs who had originally gathered to oppose the Warwickshire hunt headed to Leamington Spa town centre. After a sit down in McDonalds, we moved to a couple of local fur shops, The Sunday Mercury reported (16.3.1986): ‘A crowd of 70 demonstrators caused disturbances throughout the afternoon in the centre of Leamington. Some burst into Brians Specialist Furriers in Regent Street and grabbed expensive fur coats from racks before hurling them outside into the road’. 12 people were arrested including three women from Luton who were detained over the weekend - one of whom was slapped in the face by police for refusing to answer questions. A ‘Leamington Dirty Dozen Defence Fund’ was set up to support them.
Report of Leamington Spa animal rights protest from Luton Animal Rights bulletin no.2, April 1986- one person was later jailed for 6 weeks for assault
On another occasion, in November 1986, Luton sabs headed off for a national hit near Leicester with around 150 sabs from Coventry, Leamington, Birmingham, Sheffield, Northampton, Rugby, Leicester and Lincoln. After chasing after the hunt, aided by CB radios, fog stopped play and the hunt went home early without a kill. The sabs headed into Leicester to join an anti-fur demo, with one of the Luton group being arrested for ABH after a scuffle during a sit in at a fur shop.
Not all sabs were punks of course, but our group was predominantly so, as were others. As well as the sabbing itself, keeping it going involved raising funds for van hire, petrol, materials and the occasional fine. Jumble sales and benefit gigs were the main source of income, including an amazing hunt sabs benefit we put on back at the Luton Library Theatre in 1985 with Chumbawamba, No Defences and Karma Sutra. Karma also played a benefit gig for the Leamington defendants at Luton’s Cock Inn (May 1986) along with Medical Melodies, Herb Garden and Kul.
1985 Luton Hunt Sabs benefit with Chumba, No Defences, Karma Sutra and Penumbra Sigh. What a great gig that was, No Defences' mesmerising performance was fortunately recorded for posterity
Report from Luton Animal Rights newsletter no.4, December 1986 - mentions Leicester fur shop demo following national 'hit': 'We went inside the shop and staged a sit-in, some people stayed outside the shop chanting. While inside some protestors had a slight scuffle with an irate shopkeeper'
Luton hunt sabs jumble sale 1986
Report from Luton Animal Rights newsletter no.1, December 1985 - 'On November 23rd we were one of eleven van loads of sabs who went to sabotage the Pytchley, another vicious gang of fox killers who were hunting near Northampton'
The donkey-jacketed Luton Hunt Sabs march through the mud near Pulloxhill in Bedfordshire, January 1985. I think this may be the day described in diary extract below
'26th January 1985: about 12 of us went in a hired van to Pulloxhill where the Enfield Chace were hunting. When we arrived the local sherrif, sorry police officer, tried to run us out of town. He said we had no right to be there, and told us to drive home. Needless to say we ignored him'
[This is an edited extract, with newly added pictures, 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]
Update November 2024:
Ian Trowell has written a great piece on hunt sabbing in South Yorkshire in this period: A Field in England: Anarcho-punk, anti-fashion and the thrill of the chase. I liked his reflections on hunt sabbing style, including some anarcho-punks appropriating the country look of Barbour jacket (I do remember some people doing this, though our group was defo more black donkey jacket):
'On top of the all the recollections of fights, near scrapes, slinging insults, bloody messes, antics with glue, tipping sugar in fuel tanks, minor victories, mud, explosive profusions of swear words back and forth, boring hours sat in the back of a van, more boring hours in broken down vans and occasionally the physical exertions of the hunt, the thing that sticks most clearly in my memory involved a scene at a another joint meeting – a common event where different hunt-sab groups met up to jointly target a hunt... On this particular day our Sheffield van met others, including a small group from Lincoln who arrived in their own battered Land Rover. I vividly recall the palpable collective gasp from our motley crew (generally slightly worse for wear from a late-night Friday) as the three Lincoln hunt-sabs made their choreographed appearance as the rear doors of their vehicle opened. They were pristine and box-fresh, resplendent in Barbour jackets with matching long hair combining a mini-mullet and floppy asymmetric fringe (the hunt-sab look), stunningly coloured in bright henna hair dye which was radiant in the winter sunshine. It was surreal – more like a foppish pop band (Duran Duran or Gene Loves Jezebel) emerging from the stage doors to admiring fans and flashbulbs. Or an advert for shampoo in a post-punk parallel universe. It oozed the popstar cool of Mick Jagger captured in Richard Hamilton’s famous image Swingeing London 67(f). I thought, that’s how to do hunt-sabbing - with style'.
Also added additional Leamington Spa press clippings
