JOHN DENNIS My first formal involvement with Rock Against Racism was the Nazis Are No Fun gig at the Royal College of Art in September ’77. That was 999, Misty In Roots, the Members and John Cooper Clarke. Punk was really taking off, and all these snotty little shits used to hang around a lot, people like Sid Vicious. We were like, ‘Fuck, man, what are you doing here?’ I’d never seen John Cooper Clarke before and he was getting heckled by the punks. He said, ‘I can’t understand what you’re saying, mate. Your mouth’s full of shit.’ It was such a great put-down and they loved it. Musically, punk wasn’t speaking to me, but I saw the way the kids reacted to it and that was fucking amazing. I was like, ‘I love this. I really want to do this.’ The dynamism of the ‘fuck you’ attitude was seductive in its rebellious veneer and some people bought into that as being pure RAR.
WAYNE MINTER We’d woken up to punk because it was happening down the road with Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s shop and the Sex Pistols. We advertised the Nazis Are No Fun gig in all the pubs in Chelsea so the college was full of punks. We had four or five photographers taking pictures on little black-and-white film cameras as the audience came through the door in all their finery and then we were taking the strip film, developing them on the spot in portable tanks, making them into slides and projecting them up on the stage. It sounds archaic now because you could do it in five minutes, but in those days it was quite remarkable. So somebody would walk in and then half an hour later they’d see a picture of themselves on the stage and think it was fantastic.
JOHN DENNIS Coincidentally, the firefighters were on strike down the road at Kensington Fire Station. We went down and said, ‘We’re doing this gig and we’ll do a collection if you come and talk.’ So these firemen came along with crew cuts and fair hair and military-style tops with yellow fluorescent plastic trousers and axes on their belts. They looked like punks and one of them went on stage and said, ‘I’m a firefighter,’ and the audience all went fucking mad. That’s all he had to say!
BOB HUMM Nazis Are No Fun was a strong idea: that if the Nazis did get in you wouldn’t have any fun; you’d be marching around in a military fashion. It became a key slogan of Rock Against Racism.
JOHN DENNIS I designed the badge. We made a thousand of them and gave them away at the gigs.
RUTH GREGORY Most of the fundraising money for Rock Against Racism came from badges. They cost 10p or something. We sold millions of them. People walked round covered in badges.
SYD SHELTON You’d pick up a newspaper and there was Patti Smith with an RAR badge on.
WAYNE MINTER The wonderful Universal Button Company down in Bethnal Green let us run up massive bills. We’d send badges and stickers out all over the country.
BOB HUMM The stickers were quite political: ‘Love Music. Hate Racism.’ ‘Troops Out of Ireland: would you want one in your garden?’ ‘Coming Soon: Zimbabwe.’
RUTH GREGORY We did one sticker with just ‘N . . .’ and ‘F . . .’ and people could fill in what they wanted: ‘Nasty Fuckers’. There were loads of stickers. ‘Nobble the Nazis.’ ‘They said wanking would turn you blind. Now they say punk is dead.’ ‘Apathy is Out. Action is In’, which was on a black-and-white Union Jack. ‘Right on, Sister! Bondage Up Yours!’ ‘Soul Satisfaction Society.’ ‘All Power to the Imagination’, that came from the surrealist days. We were a visually orientated organization. John Heartfield’s montage started it all. He was an influence on us graphic designers and the writers as well.
JOHN DENNIS We would project visuals to bring the political content to the gigs. There was always this danger of the motives of the band. A lot of the 999 fans wore swastikas.
WAYNE MINTER John and I made the Nazis Are No Fun film, which was designed to whip up people’s feelings between the bands. It was black and white, made with stuff we had shot at the Grunwick photo-processing factory strike and the Notting Hill Carnival and the Wood Green anti-National Front demonstration. We also projected slides and political collages: ‘Rock Against Shit Jobs’, ‘Homes Not Profits’, ‘Rock Against Shit Housing’. They were all banged up in quick succession on the wall. The idea was to whack it down in any way as punk graphics and use your John Bull printing outfit.
NEIL SPENCER I went to a very early Rock Against Racism gig at Hackney Town Hall in August 1977 with Generation X snarling their way through ‘Wild Youth’ and the Cimarons chanting down ‘Babylon’. My jaw was on the floor. I thought, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen anything quite like this.’ There was this juxtaposition of the municipal surroundings and photographs of these Victorian councillors looking down on us, and the ultra-modern and something that had never been seen before.
RED SAUNDERS That was a motherfucker of a gig. Generation X with such sixteen-year-old energy. They were unbelievable. The town hall couldn’t believe it. They’d made a terrible mistake. The whole place was seething with punks and people pissed and stoned, and they turned the music off. But the jam at the end was fantastic.
ROGER HUDDLE When the bands did the ‘Black and White Unite’ at the end of the gig, Generation X’s guitar player could only play a Chuck Berry riff, so they did ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’. Billy Idol said it was ‘one of the greatest days of my life’.
KATE WEBB RAR was reggae, soul, rock ’n’ roll, jazz, funk and punk. But the majority of bands were punk and reggae and that tended to be white and black, and that was why there was always an End of Concert Jam.
RUTH GREGORY The idea of putting black and white bands on together came as soon as we realized that reggae and punk were coming from the same place. The Clash wrote ‘White Riot’ and then later ‘(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais’ because they saw the connection.
SYD SHELTON The theatrical statement of multiculturalism from the stage was our biggest message and that message was self-perpetuating. We were arguing with white people. They were the ones we had to convince to change their ideas. Putting together UK reggae and UK punk was in itself a political statement. We weren’t going on stage to preach to people. The theatre of the stage was a political act. That was absolutely central to Rock Against Racism.
NEIL SPENCER I got in a lot of trouble for putting black people on the cover of NME. The first cover I did as editor was Joseph Hill and Culture. The phrase that was used by members of the staff and people in IPC International Publishing Corporation was, ‘There’s too much ink on the cover this week, Neil.’
TRACEY THORN I’d got a lot of my political education through the NME. It was a starting point. I wouldn’t like to think that all someone knew about politics was what they got from songs, because that’s going to be a piecemeal approach, but it was a trigger. Like anything else, you’d hope that music has an inspirational quality for people and starts things off rather than being the end point.
NICKY SUMMERS NME was a way of communicating and finding out about who was playing or what was happening.
SHERYL GARRATT I was a mad NME fan. Our local newsagent only had six copies, so you had to get up really early to go to school so that you got a copy. It came out on Wednesday in London so one of the most thrilling things in the world was to be in London on a Wednesday and get it a day early. It was like the word of God from heaven.
ROBERT HOWARD Some of the writers were better than a lot of the bands. People like Nick Kent and Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill and Charles Shaar Murray, even Paul Morley. It was an education. They made all sorts of connections to political ideology and I would search those things out. Music politicized me and made me realize how my heart lay. It wasn’t just about pop music anymore. It had a social connection.
SYD SHELTON NME was the Bible. You had to have it. It was required thinking. That’s where you found out what was going on in the world. There were many unsung heroes like Caroline Coon and Vivien Goldman and to some extent Garry Bushell. They took on the idea of multiculturalism. It was part of putting forward that argument. Also Neil Spencer, who was a friend of David Widgery, would always make sure that he’d slip in, ‘There’s an RAR gig going on in Aberystwyth on Saturday night. Be there.’ Support came from all over the music industry, from journalists to musicians to photographers to fashion designers.
KATE WEBB The big RAR interview was with the NME. There was a photograph of all of us in the office looking completely bonkers, pointing at things. It was done by Angus MacKinnon and Charles Shaar Murray, who came down in his full hippy gear (see p.179). They asked us questions about our position on sexism and Rastafarianism and things like that. It was a double-page spread. Julie Burchill said to us, ‘You’ve got no Asian bands. That proves you’re racist.’ NME attacked us in the same breath for being too political and not political enough. Putting black bands and white bands together was political. The fact of doing that in a public space and bringing people together; it was a conscious act to break down the spread of fear and alienation and let people get to know each other through a shared love of music.
SYD SHELTON There was a Sham 69 gig at Central London Poly where a group of right-wing skinheads, who had adopted the band, tried to trash it, and a posse from Southall who came with the reggae band, Misty In Roots, protected the stage.
RED SAUNDERS The ‘Smash Race Hate’ gig in February 1978 was one of the real down moments. Once again, saving the day were the Royal Group of Docks shop stewards, who did the security. They arrived with old-fashioned leather tool bags and said, ‘We’re ready, Red. We’re tooled.’ It was like, ‘Fuck me.’ There was a club hammer with a hole drilled through the end of it with a big leather strap round it. I said [to one of them], ‘What’s that for?’ He said, ‘If you’re street fighting you need a strap round it because in the heat of the moment if you let go of your hammer your tool’s gone.’ This was a world where I was a complete innocent. It was like mortal combat. These were hard trade unionists who were quite prepared to stand their ground.
WILLIAM ‘SMOKES’ SIMON Not all skinheads necessarily came for a racist fight. You don’t have to go to a stage tooled up; there was always a mic stand.
RED SAUNDERS The British Movement [BM] turned up in force because of Sham’s fan base, which was majority working-class skinheads and West Ham supporters. That was in the days when people had glasses from the bar and I was terrified there was going to be mass glassing. It kicked off in a couple of spurts.
CHRIS BOLTON I saw one hand go up to Sieg-Heil but Smokes got to the guy first from the stage. I grabbed one of the punks and said, ‘They’re fucking up your show. Are you gonna let them do that?’ So all the punks turned on them and chased them out. Obviously the talk was that Jimmy Pursey had this attachment [of fascists] to him which he’d encouraged through his songs like ‘Hersham Boys’ and ‘Borstal Breakout’, so we’d brought a lot of people with us from Southall: a good contingent of Asian lads, Sikh boys. I thought we did Pursey a great favour because he was pretending the skinheads were nothing to do with him.
RUTH GREGORY There was a big fight that started in the audience and some NFers with shaved heads got in through the stage door and got onto the stage. They were there to see Sham and they didn’t want to see this black reggae band. They were picking up chairs and hurling them, until Misty saw them off. It was really scary. It was quite an important gig in the history of RAR because it made us realize you have to keep control of the stage.
SYD SHELTON That was one of our dogmas: you never lose control of the stage. The stage was sacrosanct.
RED SAUNDERS What I would always say as an organizer was, ‘If there’s fascists in the audience let’s make sure people don’t get backstage. Then if you lose that it’s like a military retreat, then whatever you do, protect the stage. Then if we lose the stage turn off the fucking power so they can’t use the mic to go “Sieg Heil”.’ Those were the three steps. But some of Sham’s roadies were clearly National Front supporters, so what was frightening was, backstage you had these NF-sympathizing road crew mixing with Misty, the full-on Rastas, with their road crew and their heavy boys.
JOHN DENNIS Pursey got out of his depth. He was at fault for not making a distinction between the kids that were his mates and those that were British Movement and, consequently, politically motivated; if they couldn’t have him, then no one else was going to have him. I remember going down to Reading and blagging my way backstage to talk to him. We couldn’t find him and I was almost attacked by a roadie, who was a Nazi sympathizer: ‘Where do you come from?’ I said, ‘I grew up in Dover.’ ‘There’s no blacks down there, are there?’ Sham’s audience was our target audience.
RED SAUNDERS The atmosphere was extraordinary. There I am on stage doing a bit of compèring, for lack of a better word, just shouting at the audience who were Sieg-Heiling. People were going, ‘Why have we let them in?’ I was going, ‘This is what we’re about. This is the fucking real world, mate. This is Rock Against Racism. Here’s the white working class and here’s a reggae band and we’ve brought them all together.’ The visual fact of seeing that was a fantastic political act.
ROGER HUDDLE The pull towards the right in the punk movement amongst the working class was definitely Sham. We had heavy duty on the door but then about thirty or forty young NF-following skins turned up with the uniform: Doc Martens, jeans, astrakhan mod jackets. They were only about sixteen or seventeen. But also a lot of skins were ska fans and RAR supporters. It was a tense night. The dockers were over the top, very scary, actually, and one of them went backstage and said, ‘Jimmy, these bloody lefties are stopping us from doing this and that.’ Luckily, he said, ‘Don’t get me involved.’ They tried to get on the stage once and we stopped them. But whatever happened during the gig, Pursey had to join Misty on stage to end the night and show unity.
RUTH GREGORY It ended up with them jamming doing ‘Israelites’ and Jimmy Pursey and the lead singer of Misty holding hands in the air.
ROGER HUDDLE A few weeks later, Sham made their debut on Top of the Pops performing ‘Angels With Dirty Faces’ and Jimmy shouted, ‘Look at this!’ and he had a pink and black RAR badge on the strap of his braces.
JOHN BAINE Violence was an endemic and everyday part of gigs; at my third gig someone threw a dart at me. But Jimmy started off thinking he was going to lead an army and that they’d listen to him. His message was ‘we’re all the same’ but he underestimated the contradictions in the social backgrounds of the people that came to see him: a lot of young working-class blokes with the baggage of racism. Sham supported the Clash at the Rainbow, and the Sham Army ripped off the seats.
LUCY WHITMAN The question of violence at many gigs was on a knife-edge. But I used to go on my own so I obviously felt perfectly safe. A lot of that aggro was a joke; it was put on.
RANKING ROGER The gigs were rough, big holes all through the audience and likkle fights breaking out. Jimmy said, ‘We tried to do bits of reggae influence in our tunes, so how could we be racist?’
LESLEY WOODS When the Au Pairs played with Sham 69, Jimmy Pursey came backstage to talk to me. He said, ‘Somebody’s just thrown a beer can at me.’ He was almost in tears. He was suffering from being the target of a lot of senseless violence from strangers. Having to stand up and have all that coming at him. It would get to anyone. It wasn’t a good place to be. Can you imagine being a lead singer in a band and all of a sudden you’re getting very popular and then you find that 75 per cent of your popularity is because NF skinheads think you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread? But then it’s like, what came first: the chicken or the egg? What kind of audience were you trying to attract? I mean, we played hard. We played thrashy. We played loud. But we didn’t get an NF following. The fact that Jimmy was going out with a classical ballet dancer kind of said it all. Ian Dury had the right sort of appeal to attract a right-wing audience, but he didn’t because he deflected it. What I’m trying to say is, would you get an NF following unless you were actually welcoming it?
KATE WEBB Those kids were people that reflected Jimmy. You can feel with him that great passion for the Sham Army. There was a massive loyalty. They were like a tribe. He then realized the problem about fascism amongst them. These situations are very complex and people’s politics develop and change over time. I went with Red and some of the guys from Misty to see Jimmy’s mum in Hersham. She made us tea. It was part of the attempt to woo Jimmy to RAR. It was important to get him because he was the person with the most connection to the NF-supporting skinheads. We wanted the kids being pulled towards the right to come over to us.
RED SAUNDERS Poor old Jimmy Pursey. He was absolutely articulate but nobody took any fucking notice of him. I did a whole series of photographs of him and his rabbits and his mum and dad in his back garden in front of the 69 bus. He was a lovely guy with his heart in the right place.
ROBERT ELMS Jimmy wasn’t a Nazi but Sham toyed too close to the edge of that. At Acklam Hall it all kicked off when suddenly all these Sieg-Heiling cropped-haired boys came from one side of the stage. We were in Ladbroke Grove, for fuck’s sake, the middle of the West Indian community, and there were just pitched battles and black kids from outside coming in to fight them. It was going off everywhere. But as much as I despised them I can sort of understand, with distance, some of those young working-class white kids feeling very disenfranchised, very scared, and trying to blame the wrong people and searching for some lost halcyon world.
TIM WELLS At the gigs you knew there’d be a fight. It was something to look forward to when you were young. But you had to be careful what you wore because it was going to get ripped, so it was Doc Martens and Harringtons.
PAUL HEATON My best friend Joe was black and he wouldn’t come to gigs because it was dangerous. People were scared of going out to enjoy the music. We’re talking the middle of football violence and it was safer going to a match. People were getting attacked at gigs and there was always far-right literature about. Jimmy Pursey was fighting a losing battle trying to be a man of the people. Every time you saw him there were skinheads crawling all over the stage and Sieg-Heiling. It was the same in Croydon when we went to see Siouxsie and the Banshees. Sham’s first single had a song called ‘Red London’ on the B-side: London’s streets are turning red / There’s no democracy, which is why they had the bonehead following.
GORDON OGILVIE I was there the night Sham 69’s Last Stand gig was broken up by skinheads at the Rainbow. They came on and there was obviously going to be trouble. There were organized blocks of people who were clearly intending to stop the gig. Sham managed to play three or four numbers and then fights broke out. Jimmy committed the cardinal and got down off the stage and went into the crowd. He gave up the advantage. There was a stage invasion and the whole thing had to be called off.
ROGER HUDDLE It was so necessary to win Sham. And we did. We showed we weren’t out to meet violence with violence. It was about mobilizing numbers. Marx said this wonderful quote: ‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.’
KATE WEBB It was an absolutely fertile movement. The rise of this nasty, aggressive, neo-fascist National Front, and there was not a lot else around. It was obvious what needed to be done: somebody was going to speak up in anger and fury. It came out of music.
