'Low Class foreigners' and men dancing with men: Police raid Italian club in Soho (1900)

A police raid on an Italian-run club in Soho in 1900 led to fighting with police outside and the proprietors being jailed.

The Co-operative Club was at 2 Little Dean Street and was raided at one o'clock in the morning where around 100 people were drinking and 'dancing to piano music'. Previously 'dancing had been seen going on, men sometimes dancing with men, and very bad language had been heard in the place. All the men found there were low-class foreigners'. During the raid a 'disturbance took place' outside and 10 people were arrested - one for assaulting a constable (Evening Standard 31 July 1900)

Francesco Covini, the alleged club proprietor, and  Sebastian Cordori, a waiter, were charged with 'keeping a common, ill-governed and disorderly house'. They were jailed for 12 months and 6 months respectively (London Evening Standard, 10 August 1900)

Rwanda 'Stop the Plane' deportations protest

Demonstration on Wednesday 9 June 2022 at Rwandan embassy in London (Seymour Place W1H) protesting against UK government plans to start deporting asylum seekers there. The first forced flight is planned on 14th June. This does feel like a real turning point in British politics, with the Conservative Party implementing the far right slogan of the 1970s of 'sending them back to Africa', even if they never came from there in the first place. 

 Follow @Care4Calais & @followMFJ on twitter and instagram for news of planned protests  -and join in. This is not a drill. 

Anti-Jubilee Agitprop 1977

The most famous moment of opposition to the Queen's 'Silver Jubilee' in 1977 (to mark 25 years on the throne) was of course the success of The Sex Pistols' 'God Save the Queen' single which got to number 2 in the charts despite a lack of radio play and many shops refusing to sell it - and everyone knows it probably would have been number one without some rigging of the charts.

I still think this is the greatest of the first wave UK punk songs-  'God save the Queen, She ain't no human being, There is no future In England's dreaming...We're the flowers in the dustbin, We're the poison in the human machine. We're the future, we're the future'

Still there were other expressions of anti-monarchist feeling from the radical left in Britain and Ireland. Here's a few examples:

Stuff the Jubilee badge - according to Sherrl Yanowitz:

'I designed this badge with Neil McFarlane. It was my first badge design. When I ordered 4000 badges from the Universal button company in Bethnal Green, they sort of laughed at me. The same company had the order for hundreds of thousands of pro monarchy items. We advertised the badge mainly through a small advert in Private Eye and in Socialist Worker. the badge became a campaign. In the end we sold over 40,000 badges in less than three months. there were stickers too. and Stuff the Jubilee parties in a number of cities'

'Stuff the Jubilee - roll on the red republic'
(front and back cover of Socialist Worker, 4 June 1977 -from excellent Splits & Fusions Archive)

Women's Voice (SWP women's magazine), May 1977

Socialist Challenge, June 1977 

(paper of the International Marxist Group)

Anti-Jubilee Picnic organised by Y Fflam ddu/Black Flame (Swansea Anarchist Group)
Freedom (Anarchist Fortnightly), May 28 1977

Freedom (Anarchist Fortnightly), June 11 1977

'ER Queen of Death 69-77- 1800 dead' - banner on demo somewhere in Ireland 1977
(from  Ireland: The Class War and our tasks, Revolutionary Struggle. RS were a small Irish communist group influenced by the Italian radical left)


Lots more contemporary articles about the Jubilee if you follow the links to the SW, SC and Freedom full papers.

Ma'at, slave ships and refugees at Runnymede

Runnymede by the River Thames was the site of the signing of the Magna Carta*, a step towards limiting the power of monarchy (though still some way to go towards its abolition!) and enshrining the principle of trial by a jury of peers.

A recent art work there by Hew Locke, The Jurors, consists of 12 chairs decorated with images relating to struggles for justice and equality.

 

The front of one chair features the Egyptian goddess Ma'at on the front and the slave ship The Zong on the back.

'Ancient Egyptian scales are topped with the head of Ma’at, the goddess of truth, justice and balance. A dead person’s heart is weighed against a feather to see if the owner is worthy to enter paradise. Ma’at’s symbolism is still apparent in the western personification of Lady Justice'

'In 1781, 133 slaves were thrown overboard from this ship, The Zong. The owners made an insurance claim for the loss of their human cargo and the resulting legal case caused public outcry. On the sails, the West African symbol Epa represents captivity, law and justice'.

Another features a refugee boat:

'A boat carrying refugees inscribed with the names of boats connected to legal cases that marked changes to maritime law, the responsibilities of nations towards refugees, and maritime search-and-rescue protocols'

All sadly relevant as refugees continue to die crossing the maritime deathscapes of the Mediterranean and the Channel, and the British government schemes to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda. 

(all quotes from The Jurors leaflet, National Trust, 2019)

* I recommend The Magna Carta Manifesto by Peter Linebaugh for a broader understanding of the significance of this historical moment.

May Days in Dublin, 1994

I have taken part in many May Day celebrations large and small, but the biggest was certainly in Dublin in 1994. The occasion was a huge parade to mark the centenary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, I believe it was actually held on Monday 2nd May 1994, notable as the first May Day bank holiday in Ireland.

It was more a celebratory affair than a demonstration with a spectacular street theatre pageant. It looked great, and in the evening there was a fantastic open air gig with a rare (for then) appearance of Moving Hearts, including a couple of songs with Christy Moore, and 1990s favourites The Saw Doctors. I ended up with friends and a guitar singing rebel songs in a pub. 

There's some RTE footage of the event online; here's a few photos I took on the day:

Still it was also a dangerous and tragic time in the North, with the Irish Peace Process inching forward towards an IRA ceasefire later that year while loyalist killers seemed to be stepping up sectarian attacks.  The following month saw the UVF kill six people watching a World Cup match at a bar in Loughinisland.

 In Dublin we stayed for the weekend with some Irish friends we know from their time in London and who had moved back home. They had been involved with the Troops Out Movement in London, which I was a member of. I was also active in Justice for the Casement Park Accused which campaigned around an infamous miscarriage of justice in Belfast.  

That weekend in Dublin we went to an an event in a hotel where long time Troops Out Movement member Nina Hutchinson was being honoured for her support for Irish prisoners in English jails (I will write more about Nina another time). The 'Gathering of the Clans' brought together families of prisoners.

After it finished some of us went on to an after party in the far-famed Ballymun Flats, late night drinking with ex-prisoners amongst others. The next day we went to the Widow Scallans pub in Pearse Street for a drink, followed by the May Day parade on the Monday.

Later that month, on the 21st May, the band The Irish Brigade were playing a benefit gig at Widow Scallans for prisoners in an event organised by Sinn Fein's Prisoner of War department. There were hundreds of people inside. Two UVF members approached the bar with a bomb, intending to place it inside but were blocked by one of the stewards, Martin Doherty. Doherty was shot dead but he managed to prevent them getting in and they abandoned the bomb and fled. Had the bomb exploded inside the pub, there would have been a massacre and no doubt many of the people we had met on that May Day weekend would have been killed or injured (I later heard that Doherty, who was from Ballymun, had been at that party).

Martin 'Doco' Doherty memorial fund appeal, An Phoblact, 23 June 1994

[I recently donated some photos and papers to the MayDay Rooms in London for their archive of Troops Out Movement and related materials. If you have anything you can share with them get in touch with them. This post is one in a series where I contextualise this material with my recollections]

See also:

The Hunger Strike, the Irish War and an English Town: Luton 1980-81

Remembering Bloody Sunday 

Time for Peace, Time to Go: demonstrations in Belfast, Dublin and London 1994

New Protest Laws and Two Years of London Protests

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 is now law, bringing in new police powers summarised by Liberty as including:

Creating a ‘buffer zone’ around Parliament.

Giving police power to impose noise-based restrictions on protest.

Criminalising one-person protests.

Giving police power to impose restrictions on public assemblies.

Creating the offence of wilful obstruction of the highway.

Powers to criminalise trespass.

 No sooner has it passed than it was announced in the Queens Speech this week that one of the Government's key forthcoming priorities is to pass yet more laws against protests. 

None of this is really about police 'needing' new powers  - they have for instance had the power to arrest people for obstructing the roads for decades. As with the inhumane plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, this is a theatre of performative cruelty which aims to appease and politically mobilise that section of the population that seethes and resents those seen as 'other' and bringers of social, demographic or political change. But the Government is clearly trying to create a hostile environment for protestors after several waves of inspiring demonstrations over the past couple of years.

Here's a selection from the movements since 2020, as seen from London.

Black Lives Matter 

The police murder of George Floyd in  Minneapolis on May 25th 2020 sparked a global wave of  Black Lives Matters protests. One of the biggest in London took place on 7 June 2020 with at least 50,000 people starting out from near the American Embassy - crowd seen here heading on to Vauxhall Bridge.

Sarah Everard Protests

The murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police office in March 2021 saw the heavy handed policing of a vigil at Clapham Common (near where Sarah was kidnapped) and many local protests against rape and sexual violence, including walk outs from some schools. Picture below is of school students in Trafalgar Square in April 2021.

Kill the Bill protests

What was originally known as the Policing Bill met with a movement of opposition including riots in Bristol in April 2021 (for which 12 people are currently in prison) and protests in many other places. Pictures below are from London demo from Hyde Park, April 2021.

Kill the Bill posters (these were flyposted around Brockley, South London):

Priti Patel, useless criminal (from Brick Lane, April 2021)

Kill the Bill protest squat of former Camberwell police station, Summer 2021

Trans Rights

Small demonstration in Trafalgar Square against conversion therapy, September 2021

Refugees

'Refugees Welcome' rally in October 2021  against Government's anti-refugee bill (more photos and report here).

Extinction Rebellion

Climate emergency protests from Extinction Rebellion and related groups are an explicit target of new police powers. Why can't the Government just be left in peace to do nothing about climate change?

31 August 2021 - Extinction Rebellion blocking approach to the north end of Tower Bridge:

Police surrounding sound system

April 2022 - Extinction Rebellion week of action including here on 16 April a march from Hyde Park up Edgware Road.

Samba band leaving Hyde Park

'Nationality and Borders Bill is Racist' - yes it is, and i'ts now law

The new laws are designed to make protests more difficult but they will not drive us off the streets!

Linton Kwesi Johnson interview, 1982

This interview with Linton Kwesi Johnson was published in the newspaper Socialist Challenge (29 April 1982) under the headline 'We're di forces of vict'ry', alongside a couple of his poems.

'I am an artist who creates for people's entertainment and edification and enlightenment. If my poetry does that I'm happy. If it doesn't I'll have to try harder. If I do write about matters which are of political significance and importance that is only by accident. It's only because I happen to be a political animal who is involved in organisatonal politics.

I have been involved in the black movement since I was a youth. Maybe I would still be writing poetry if I hadn't been involved in the movement with about something completely different. But I don't ever get the two mixed up. You end up with a very cheap progagandist art and I'm totally against that.

I don't believe you can legislate for art. You can't say that the artist must be conscious and the artist must write to free people. An artist creates out of his own experience and at certain times in history there are certain individuals who happen to have these concerns and their art reflects it. For example, Martin Carter, the Guyanese poet; Nicolas Guillen from Cuba; and even in England William Blake who did the painting. These are coincidences. You can have an artist produce good art and be politically reactionary and vice versa.

I think as far as the black movement is concerned that what I do in Race Today is more important than writing ten poems or making ten albums.

Poetry has a role to play. I wouldn't go so far as to say it leads to political action. It has a role to play in the ideological struggle, the struggle for ideas. All it does is to reinforce existing sentiments. I think my poetry has a way of recording our experiences and of expressing the sentiments that we have. These are popular sentiments. I don't invent them. I'm not saying that art has no role to play in the revolutionary movement. Obviously it does. But it is very dangerous to overestimate that role. It is a stimulus.

What most artists hope for if they have a revolutionary perspective is that their art, whether their songs, their novels, their poetry will make people think about their situation or educate them.

It's about entertainment - not in the show business sense but you listen to a piece of music for instance and it'ssad. And because you're a human being and you have that human capacity for sadness you're moved. That's entertainment. And if that isn't what you do then it becomes cheap propaganda. And bad art as well'.

The paper also includes an advert for a '3 the hard way - an evening of poetry with Dub Poets' at Lambeth Town Hall in Brixton with LKJ, Oku Onouua and Michael Smith. The latter was to be killed in the following year in Jamaica after heckling a government minister of the then ruling right wing Jamaican Labour Party.

(Socialist Challenge was the newspaper of the International Marxist Group)

See also:

LKJ Interview in NME, 1984

 

Life Between Islands

Images of musicking and dancing feature heavily in the exhibition 'Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art' at Tate Britain.

Paul Dash - 'Dance at Reading Town Hall' (1965). Dash played piano in a band, the Carib Six - this is a view from the stage.

'As unofficial 'color bars' restricted access to public social spaces, homes became places of sanctuary. The front room, full of reminders of the Caribbean, became a site for intergenerational connection and somewhere to socialise with family and friends. Sound systems provided the soundtrack to the period. DJs, engineers and MCs set up in homes, on the streets and in community centres. They offered a way to connect with culture coming out of the Caribbean, especially Jamaica. For young Black Britons, music created opportunities for collectivity and celebration but also a means to address hostility and discrimination with a spirit of defiance. Dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson named them the 'Rebel Generation' (exhibition notice)

Tam Joseph - 'The Spirit of Carnival' (1982)

Denzil Forrester - 'Jah Shaka' (1983)

from Liz Johnson Artur, 'Lord of the Decks' featuring photos from the early UK grime scene.

'The various musical styles created in widely defined Black Atlantic history have proved so influential that we are obliged to consider the consistency with which they have summoned the possibility of better worlds, directing precious images of an alternative order against the existing miseries, raciological terrors and routine wrongs of capitalist exploitation, racial immiseration and colonial injustice. Those gestures of dissent and opposition were voiced in distinctive keys and modes. They carried the cruel imprint of slavery and were influenced by the burden of its negation.

However, that is not the most important observation we can make about them. The transcoding and transcendence of suffering made productive, becoming useful, but never, in spite of what Bob Marley had said, seeking redemption, directs our attention towards more elusive possibilities. Energised by political and social movements, those musical formations were anticipatory. They helped to construct and enact a 'not-yet' and enchanted it so that it could be both pleasing and seductive. It could be intoxicating and it could be enhanced the ingestion of intoxicants. 

Here we encounter the possibility that, under optimal conditions, singers, dancers and audiences, DJs and selectors might be able to collaborate so that they could glimpse the edge of their world, grasp the fragility of the order they inhabited and apprehend the fleeting but fundamental possibility of Babylon's overthrow'

(from Paul Gilroy, 'Colour Bars and Bass Cultures, Dub Aesthetics and Cockney Translations: Music in the Creole History of Black Life in Britain' in 'Life Between Islands' (Tate 2021)

The exhibition closes on 3 April 2022