A guest posting by Fraser Pettigrew (aka our New Zealand correspondent)
There’s a social media meme knocking about that says, succinctly, “If you’ve ever wondered what you would have done in Germany in the 1930s… you’re doing it now.” It’s a brutally accurate summary of our impotent inactivity in the face of 21st century fascists taking over the most powerful nation on the planet. Opportunities to resist seem absent.
Was it otherwise before? It may not qualify as much more than the equivalent of modern-day liberal hand-wringing, but in the late 1970s in the UK there was a thing called Rock Against Racism. It did what it said on the tin, got people out to enjoy some music while making their intolerance of racism loud and clear. RAR was formed in response to Eric Clapton’s obnoxious onstage racist outburst in 1976, and alongside the rise of the white-supremacist National Front in English politics.
RAR developed a strong connection with the Anti-Nazi League when the latter was formed early in 1977. Essentially a front organisation for the Socialist Workers Party, the ANL pulled together trade unions and community organisations to mobilise against the National Front, mounting counter-demonstrations that occasionally resulted in the actual shit being kicked out of actual fascists.
Given the typically self-satisfied and apolitical torpor of the musical old guard and the sometimes highly political new wave, it’s little wonder that RAR gigs were a roll-call of punk bands as well as the best in UK reggae. In April 1978 the RAR/ANL Carnival Against Racism in London saw over 100,000 march from Trafalgar Square, led by Misty in Roots on the back of a lorry, to Victoria Park in Hackney where The Clash, Steel Pulse, Tom Robinson Band and X-Ray Spex performed.
In July, a similar event took place in Manchester, and in August, Edinburgh’s branch of the Anti-Nazi League decided to ride the wave while Scotland’s elusive summer was still notionally operative, with a march and free gig at Craigmillar to be headlined by The Clash and primo reggae group Aswad, supported by various local bands.
I was then a spotty 15-year old with one gig under my belt (The Boomtown Rats) and the opportunity to see The Clash (for free!) was an irresistible lure. The politics were fine too, but the name of The Clash on the bill was what Rock Against Racism was all about, using the power of the music to get people out and pogo round the anti-fascist rallying post.
When Saturday 5th of August arrived it was a Scottish meteorological miracle – a fine, warm day! Before heading into town I had to make some adjustments to my embarrassingly flared jeans. I plundered my Mum’s sewing box for every safety pin I could find, turned my Wrangler loons inside out, pinned up the inside leg seam and turned the jeans back out again – voila! Instant drainpipes! An old waistcoat of my Dad’s was adorned with my meagre collection of punk button badges and off I went.
The crowd outside the Scottish Trades Union Congress offices on Hillside Crescent was not of London or Manchester proportions, a few hundred rather than thousands. There were a couple of big trade union banners and a small forest of SWP-standard blocky red and black printed placards saying down with that sort of thing and all the rest of it.
The shortest and most obvious route to Craigmillar was down the Bridges and Dalkeith Road but the police had other ideas, and we were routed around the far side of Arthur’s Seat, thus avoiding any chance of being seen by all but a tiny minority of Edinburgh’s population. Can’t have the good burghers exposed to filthy communistic propaganda such as ‘don’t be racist’ or ‘no nazis here’. They might take it personally.
It was a long walk on a hot day through mysterious parts of the city including the Craigmillar housing scheme, a notorious zone of poverty and social exclusion, or thugs and vandals to Edinburgh’s bourgeoisie. Residents spectated curiously as organisers with megaphones tried to get the crowd chanting lefty slogans as we neared our destination.
The venue was a small park, then known as Peffermill School sports ground, where the stage sat with a scruffy scaffold and tarpaulin roof on it, fronted with a big ANL banner. The park was about the size of two or three football pitches, a couple of food vans parked at the edge. Glastonbury it was not.
At this point people began breaking out of the march to nip through the numerous holes in the vandalised fence, rather than carry on via the gate which was acting as a bottle-neck and slowing everyone to a standstill. The SWP marshals tried to get everyone to stick together as one impressive column of anti-fascist determination. “Stay on the road! Solidarity comrades!” shouted one of them through his megaphone as the Clash fans flooded past him. Fuck solidarity, this is rock’n’roll, mate…
I was more concerned about rehydrating after the long march (nobody carried water bottles in those days), so I may have been queuing at one of the skanky food vans when the first band, Deleted, came on. I have no recollection of them, though I have discovered that in 1979 they changed name and became rather better known as The Visitors. At any rate, I was fully present for second act, The Freeze. I remember being impressed, the lead singer’s striking mop of blond curls cutting a distinctive figure, the music an intriguing step ahead from standard punk thrash, hinting at something more sophisticated and moody.
I never saw them live again, although I realise now that I was at another event they played the following summer in Ironmills Park in Dalkeith, with a bunch of local bands on the back of a single flat-bed trailer. Apparently The Freeze was one of them, but I must have run off home for my tea before they came on.
It was JC’s recent post on what became of that mop-haired singer that dredged up memories of this whole event. Until I read about Cindytalk I had no idea that The Freeze had any kind of afterlife. I found a download of one of their Peel sessions a while ago, but I always assumed they were amongst the multitude of musicians that simply had their brief moment and then went back to the day job.
I was thoroughly enjoying the next band too, more edgy, angular, post-punk strangeness. The singer was dressed all in pink and was even more provocatively weird than The Freeze.
This was Scars, and they were too provocative for the troglodyte hardcore punks who just wanted to skip straight to The Clash. Projectiles started flying towards the stage, full cans of juice and beer forcing some evasive action and bringing the MC onto the stage to call for calm. They tried to start again, barely three or four songs into their set. The bombing continued and regretfully they decided to depart. The drunken mob was not to be messed with.
Sadly, I never saw Scars again either, despite much gig-going in subsequent student years in Edinburgh. They were followed on stage by The Monos (from London) and then The Valves, both sufficiently robust and trad-punk in a pub-rock power-pop sort of way for The Clash fans. There was still some light-hearted projectile-throwing, but only filled rolls, one of which was deftly caught by the lead singer of The Monos who promptly munched into it. “Yum, cheese and onion, my favourite!” he quipped.
An uncomfortable, restive atmosphere persisted. I don’t know why, but there was a feeling that something was up. After The Valves, the MC came on stage and announced that a couple of members of The Clash had been arrested in London the previous day, had been unable to travel and therefore the band would not now be playing. As you can imagine, the response was not good. Missiles flew again. The MC braved the bombardment, tried to blame it all on the ‘fascist pigs’ and urged everyone to give it up for the next band. The punks were having none of it and steamed for the exit as briskly as they’d rushed through the fence a few hours earlier.
I wonder now if the timing of the announcement was cleverly tactical. The next band was Aswad, and perhaps the organisers feared for their treatment by the punks as the hour of The Clash neared. Spilling the beans meant they all pissed off and left the rest of us to enjoy a brilliant performance by the reggae stars. They must have wondered what the hell they were doing in the middle of such a shit-show, but they were utter professionals and we loved them.
For years afterwards I conflated in my mind the Clash’s non-appearance with the infamous pigeon shooting ‘guns on the roof’ episode, stupidly ignorant of the fact that the latter event took place months earlier. All the same, I wasn’t surprised when I finally learned that the whole story of an arrest and last-minute let-down was a complete load of bollocks made up by the organisers before the festival even happened. The Clash were never going to be there, and may never even have been invited. Their name was shamelessly appended to the bill just to get people to come on the march, to make a big show of support for the Anti-Nazi League and get a few more members signed up for the SWP.
It was an idiotic ploy, but perhaps in the end it served its purpose. Like all of RAR and ANL’s activity, it made people feel they were actively opposing racism and fascism and the visibility of the events bolstered the sense of a wide popular groundswell against the National Front. For all that the SWP were largely a bunch of dogmatic saddos, with the Anti-Nazi League they can at least be credited with building and driving a genuine surge against the far right. Undoubtedly that’s something we could sorely do with right now.
mp3: The Freeze – Psychodalek Nightmares
mp3: Scars – Adult-ery
mp3: Valves – For Adolfs Only
mp3: Aswad – Back To Africa
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 