110. Special AKA’s ‘(Free) Nelson Mandela’ front cover, March 1984.
ASHTAR ALKHIRSAN The 2 Tone concept was born out of Rock Against Racism and it radicalized a youth movement to address the evils of racism. But where Red Wedge looked to the ballot box, Artists Against Apartheid, with many of the same artists involved, ran a parallel campaign and almost single-handedly proved pop’s ability to provoke political change.
LUCY HOOBERMAN Can pop change politics or offer political solutions? ‘(Free) Nelson Mandela’ energized a campaign and galvanized a lot of people into thinking, but the solution was a political solution.
PAULINE BLACK I’d been aware of apartheid all through the seventies. It just seemed like an insoluble situation and then in the wake of ‘(Free) Nelson Mandela’ so much happened that you never thought was possible. The record is the perfect embodiment of pop music achieving extraordinary things. I always remember seeing a stadium full of people at a rally in South Africa before Mandela came out, singing Free Nelson Mandela. I thought, ‘Hats off to Jerry Dammers! He’s done what no one else has been able to do.’
JERRY DAMMERS Being anti-racist isn’t political. It’s just normal. Racism is a difficult truth that people don’t want to face. I had a very good friend who just persisted with these racist views and there came a point where I had to say enough is enough. That’s why I wrote ‘Racist Friend’ and then ‘(Free) Nelson Mandela’. It was painful. Obviously you try and persuade them first, but some people just refuse to change. Being friendly with a racist is supporting racism. I know it’s really tough but how is anything going to change if you don’t take a stand? ‘Racist Friend’ wasn’t supposed to be an easy listen. It was supposed to be disturbing, to make the listener think.
ROBERT HOWARD If you have a racist friend, now is the time for your friendship to end. A lot of people were really inspired by that song.
RHODA DAKAR In theory, I would say, ‘Absolutely. I don’t want to hang around with a person who hangs around with racists.’ But what if that’s your mum or your dad? What are you supposed to say? A hard-line ideology is all very well but it doesn’t necessarily allow for real life or things that you have to accommodate.
JERRY DAMMERS Racism always upset me. I remember when I was a kid and my parents had this Chinese man come to stay with us. We were walking down the street and these kids started racially abusing him. I was disgusted. I came to realize that racism and fascism are built on networks of family loyalties; that’s how they survive. So what do you do?
TRACEY THORN ‘Racist Friend’ was politically dogmatic. It’s not unproblematic having family members who you really don’t agree with. And I’m not sure what the answer is – really, you don’t ever speak with them again? Seriously, your mother? We’re talking about people who are of a different generation from you. They’ve got old-fashioned views. So what else: homophobic friend, sexist friend? Well, that’s my family out. The questioning it starts is good, but would you really stand by that forever? It’d be interesting to ask Jerry.
JERRY DAMMERS To be fair, the part in the song relating to your mother and father was put in the form of a question: Is it your husband or your father or your mother? If your family members are racists then maybe you should play the song to them, and show them the impossible position they are putting you in, and explain that if they really care about you, they should change. The point was to confront racism whoever it is.
PAVE WAKELING I disagreed with it entirely because if you have a racist friend you have to cling close to them and try and open their heart. The last thing you want to do is baptize another convinced racist by telling them you hate them. But as a public statement it was quite effective.
PETER HAIN The eighties was a period of great change: inside South Africa you had internal resistance building up to explosive, massive unrest in the townships, strikes and the economy starting to go sour. It’s hard to imagine now, but Mandela was a very isolated figure on Robben Island for a long time, and deliberately so. The South African government had deliberately put him there to make the world and South Africa forget about him.
JERRY DAMMERS I had got involved in Peter Hain’s anti-apartheid campaign against the South Africa rugby Springbok tour when I was about fifteen and put stickers all around school trying to persuade people to go and demonstrate against them. It was probably the first demo I ever went on. Then years later I bumped into an old school friend and he told me about an African Sounds festival concert at Alexandra Palace in July 1983 for Nelson Mandela’s sixty-fifth birthday, which was being organized by a South African exiled musician called Julian Bahula. I’d never heard of Nelson Mandela but Julian sang a song about him. I picked up lots of leaflets and started learning about Mandela. He’d been imprisoned for twenty-one years at that point and one leaflet said, ‘The shoes he had in jail were too small for his feet.’ At the same time, I was working on an instrumental tune so I had the idea to put lyrics about Mandela to it.
PETER HAIN ‘(Free) Nelson Mandela’ was absolutely crucial in Mandela’s breakthrough and in him becoming a global figure. It brought his brand and his identity from the political world into people’s living rooms; kids suddenly started wondering who it was and how to find out about the story. It was transformative. Jerry Dammers was a very important figure in this.
ANNAJOY DAVID Jerry was innately political. He stood up. His world view of justice and inequality was clearly framed and defined. And he had a clear perspective on race and class. ‘(Free) Nelson Mandela’ helped to bring the whole anti-apartheid agenda really mainstream into the arts and cultural broad left of the day. That record shifted the consciousness of a generation.
ASHTAR ALKHIRSAN When the song was on Top of The Pops it was incredible. Everybody got to hear that name. Youngsters, seven- or eight-year-olds, were suddenly exposed to who Nelson Mandela was and people were going round singing that really catchy tune.
PAUL HEATON Because it was a nagging chorus it became almost like a catchphrase. You could sing ‘(Free) Nelson Mandela’ at anybody who was dodgy. It became difficult to come out with racism because of that record.
TRACEY THORN The amount of information on the sleeve about Mandela and South Africa. And the lyrics. It was a political record as education: Shoes too small to fit his feet. It’s on details like that political lyric-writing turns. It humanizes a story and makes you go, ‘Really!’ It was so tiny set against years of imprisonment, but it’s what makes it vivid and brings it down to a little detail of human cruelty within what’s otherwise just a big political thing.
ROBERT HOWARD It is the greatest political pop song of all time. It’s got everything you would want: a fantastic lyric that says it in very simple terms, it’s righteous, and you can dance to it.
MYKAELL RILEY ‘(Free) Nelson Mandela’ was a brilliant track. It’s where British ska grows up and takes ownership of its cultural identity.
LINTON KWESI JOHNSON ‘(Free) Nelson Mandela’ made an incalculable cultural contribution to the anti-apartheid struggle. It should never be underestimated the impact it had, not only on the consciousness of people in this country but all over Europe.
ANGELA EAGLE It asked you to bloody well do something about it and helped to bring to the attention of people who weren’t political that this battle was raging and that it was a moral battle. It was an enormous megaphone which helped to get things going globally.
RANKING ROGER It might be one song in half a million that has that kind of impact on people. After that everybody started looking at South Africa.
JERRY DAMMERS At the request of Dali Tambo, the son of the president of the African National Congress [ANC], I set up Artists Against Apartheid. It was around the same time Little Steven did Artists United Against Apartheid in America and ‘Sun City’ to support the boycott. We were also campaigning for artists not to go to South Africa and not to sell records there as part of the cultural boycott. We had a clause that we distributed to artists to put into their recording contracts to stop their records being sold in South Africa.
ASHTAR ALKHIRSAN People of my parents’ generation thought Nelson Mandela was a terrorist. It’s incredible now but I remember having huge arguments with my parents about apartheid. It just seemed like the most grotesque injustice to see people being clubbed by white policemen.
PETER HAIN On a larger scale the song is about Mandela breaking through from a freedom fighter supported by politically knowledgeable people around the world to his poster starting to adorn anti-apartheid meetings. He started to become the symbol. You have to remember Thatcher had denounced Mandela as a terrorist. She was an ally of South Africa. I’m not saying she was racist or actually supported apartheid but she opposed all sanctions; she opposed all boycotts.
JERRY DAMMERS Dali also introduced me to Chandra Sekar and together we organized our first concert with the Potato 5 at the Brixton Fridge. Then we did bigger and bigger concerts under the AAA banner which included Lloyd Cole, Working Week, UB40, the Blow Monkeys supporting Rod Stewart at Wembley, the Smiths with Pete Shelley in Brixton, Madness and Gil Scott-Heron, Billy Bragg and New Order in Sheffield, the Pogues and Elvis Costello in Paris, the Communards, Terence Trent D’Arby and Smiley Culture at the Albert Hall, the Bhundu Boys and Salif Keïta, even Curtis Mayfield and Michelle Shocked in Edinburgh. I then put together the bill for a free concert on Clapham Common in June 1986. It was the biggest anti-apartheid demonstration in the world and the proudest day of my life.
ASHTAR ALKHIRSAN One of the most powerful events for sheer scale was the Clapham Common concert. It was fucking amazing. I’d been on loads of demos but nothing as big as that. It was colossal – something like a quarter of a million people came. The day felt very different and very grown-up because of the presence of people like Sting and Peter Gabriel. It wasn’t the normal ragtag bunch. It was heavyweight.
KEITH HARRIS Many of the artists involved in the Clapham concert were from Red Wedge – Bob Geldof had proved that if artists get together they can grab world attention – so it also came off the back of Live Aid.
ASHTAR ALKHIRSAN It was the hottest day of the year and the atmosphere was amazing. We were all saying, ‘This is unbelievable.’ You thought, ‘How can the situation in South Africa go on when it’s clearly the moral imperative to impose sanctions?’ I went on the march first and then when I got to the common I was roped in as a runner on the film that was being made. The director, Don Coutts, said to me, ‘Can you take these beers to the crew?’ There was a tower in the middle of the crowd and I had to wade through this vast crowd with an armful of beers and hand them to the cameramen. Then I went back and Don was in this covered area with a bank of screens and he said, ‘Now can you take these beers to so-and-so . . .’ I had to walk across the stage: I saw the crowd and my heart literally pounded in my chest. It was the most incredible experience. What it must have been like for the musicians, I don’t know.
LORNA GAYLE It was unreal. I was like, ‘Look at me!’ And all these thousands of people who want to get backstage and I’ve got a pass. I was so honoured to be a part of that. I was able to sing ‘Got To Find A Way’ and the audience were going crazy. It was really something.
JERRY DAMMERS That year the fashion, especially amongst the black community, was bright-green and pink and orange shirts and I remember looking out at the crowd and thinking of Poly Styrene’s song ‘The Day The World Turned Day-Glo’. It was as if she had prophesied the day.
PAUL HEATON: We turned up uninvited when we were at number three with ‘Happy Hour’. We said, ‘Can we play a few songs?’ ‘No, you’re not allowed to.’ ‘We can do a cappella.’ ‘No.’ ‘OK, fair enough.’ Later, our guitarist Stan said, ‘Look, Sting’s over there,’ because he was a massive fan. I said, ‘Go and say hello.’ Sting was with what my mum would describe as ‘a dolly bird’ on one arm and round his neck he had a big live snake. Stan said, ‘Excuse me,’ and Sting gave him the hand, ‘Go away.’ He was close to tears. So we knocked on Elvis Costello’s Winnebago and he invited us in and was dead nice to us. It was a real one–nil.
ANGELA BARTON Backstage, Peter Gabriel said, ‘Does anyone know the song “Biko”?’ I said ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘Do you mind doing a few vocals on it?’ I went, ‘Yeah, no problem.’ Of course, you then got on stage: ‘Oh my God!’
LUCY HOOBERMAN I was standing on the side of the stage when Peter Gabriel did ‘Biko’. The sun was going down and everybody did that thing with their lighters like little candles which I’d never seen before. And Gil Scott-Heron, who was sort of the godfather of anti-apartheid music in the west, sang his anthem ‘Johannesburg’.
JERRY DAMMERS I had made a concerted effort to involve the black community in the concert because the anti-apartheid movement had been accused of being a white middle-class organization. So we also had Hugh Masekela, Maxi Priest, David Grant, Sir Coxsone’s sound system, and also Elvis Costello, Boy George, Roddy Frame, Billy Bragg, and Gary Kemp, who funnily enough had been given his first guitar by Trevor Huddleston, the leader of the anti-apartheid movement. I had been working full-time unpaid in a very small office coordinating and approaching people and taking all this flak and abuse from the press for supporting the cultural boycott. So when everybody came together towards the end to perform ‘(Free) Nelson Mandela’ it was amazing.
KAREN WALTER When they all came and sang ‘(Free) Nelson Mandela’ it sounded like this huge cry. I remember just thinking, ‘He’s got to be freed now.’
JERRY DAMMERS Big Audio Dynamite were playing and the police came and told us to turn off the generator because we’d run over time, so we went through this ridiculous ritual: ‘Oh, the door to the power’s locked. Who’s got the key?’ We were running round pretending to find it and managed to buy about twenty minutes. After Clapham Common there were discussions with the anti-apartheid movement about what to do next. Because it had been a free gig production costs had run to something like £30,000, so the movement had lost a lot of funds. So it was decided the next one had to be a paid gig; Wembley Stadium was suggested and that was pencilled in for the following year. The biggest band in the world at the time was Dire Straits and I wrote to them to ask if they would do it. They responded positively but said they weren’t in touring mode that year. Then at the last minute Simple Minds said they were willing but by then it was too late. I asked Elephant House to produce the event and then got back to Dire Straits saying, ‘How about the following year [1988]?’ which also happened to be Nelson Mandela’s seventieth birthday. They talked to Simple Minds and all agreed to do it. It all tied in beautifully and the whole thing took off. Once it was up and running I handed over to the producers because it was getting much too big for our tiny little office, but it was still under the banner of Artists Against Apartheid.
NEIL KINNOCK I saved the first Wembley concert by getting Ron Todd who was the general secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union to write me a cheque for £25,000. The organizers had come to me on the Friday and said, ‘We’re going to have to cancel the concert because Wembley Stadium won’t allow us to perform unless we pay this insurance.’ There was a misunderstanding and they had thought the insurance was something like £12,000 – I’m not certain of the precise figure. I said, ‘Give me an hour.’ It took me two. But I did it.
JERRY DAMMERS Clapham Common had been the hard-core event where the music was in tune with the message, but Wembley was aimed at taking it to as wide an audience as possible. It turned out to be watched on TV by hundreds of millions around the world. It was an amazing experience. I kept pressurizing that they must have a major black artist to balance Dire Straits and give the event credibility, and for hip hop and reggae acts to be involved. When Whitney Houston came on board everybody could breathe a sigh of relief.
TINY FENNIMORE I was minding the VIP section at Wembley with all the dignitaries. Whitney Houston came on stage and said, ‘Happy Birthday, Nelson,’ and we were all thinking, ‘Has she got it?’ She was contracted to make advertisements for Coca-Cola and had a backdrop behind her instead of a picture of Nelson Mandela. She got a lot of stick for that. There was a lot of conflict about whether they were trying to make the concert anodyne for the Americans and in the process completely wipe out the fact that Nelson Mandela was still in prison.
BILLY BRAGG There was a direct link between Rock Against Racism and the Nelson Mandela concerts because Jerry had been inspired by the Victoria Park Carnival.
JERRY DAMMERS Eric Clapton played, I think mainly as a friend of Dire Straits. I asked him on the day if he would apologize from the stage for the comments which gave birth to Rock Against Racism. I thought it would be a fantastic opportunity for him given the occasion, but he just said, ‘Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.’
•
RANKING ROGER When Mandela was freed on 11 February 1990 I thought, ‘That’s what they do to people when they leave prison: they walk out and then they nab you and give you another six months. It’s on world camera; if that happens South Africa’s going to go up in flames.’
PETER HAIN The reason that South Africa negotiated Mandela’s freedom was to save the country and save them because the country was becoming ungovernable. The economy was about to topple over.
BRINSLEY FORDE We were in Jamaica recording our album and we pleaded and pleaded when they announced a second Wembley show in April 1990 under the title An International Tribute for a Free South Africa. We said, ‘We’ll pay our own fare.’ It meant so much to us. They gave us a slot before the actual gig started but luckily for us when the news coverage came on they had nothing to show and they ended up showing our little bit. We took on Sly and Robbie and Maxi Priest and lots of different acts who weren’t billed to play. After, Nelson Mandela said, ‘It was the music that seeped through from the West that we heard that made us know that people were listening to our plea.’ That was the moment that you went, ‘Oh, wow!’
JERRY DAMMERS Nelson Mandela used the second concert as the stage to address a global TV audience. I went down into the audience and he got the most amazing standing ovation. It lasted over ten minutes. I met him briefly with about 600 other people and I think somebody told him who I was. He said, ‘Ah, yes, very good.’ It was incredible. But, even then, apartheid wasn’t over and we still needed to campaign. The fact is, according to his memoirs, and completely unbeknown to any of us, by the time of the first Wembley concert Mandela was already in secret negotiations with P. W. Botha and F. W. de Klerk. But I think the concert helped keep the pressure on the regime and solidify worldwide knowledge and support, and when he did come out he was probably the most famous and popular man in the world; so all that hopefully helped back up making sure he could finally get rid of apartheid and become president.
TINY FENNIMORE I saw Mandela in the street in Camden two days after he arrived in London. He was going into a trade union building and had lots of his African supporters with him. They were all doing that ululating thing that they do. I stopped and cried because he was free and I felt I’d done my little bit to get him out of prison.
JERRY DAMMERS Many years later I was at Abbey Road and Paul McCartney came in a bit cross and said, ‘Why wasn’t I invited to play at Wembley?’ I said, ‘I’m really sorry. I don’t know why.’ He said, ‘You know the Beatles supported Mandela.’ I said, ‘Really?’ But I didn’t really know whether to believe him or not. And then at an event at South Africa House I told the story to this old sort of church lady who was one of the founders of the anti-apartheid movement and she said, ‘Oh yes, the Beatles did offer to do a benefit during the Rivonia Trial in 1963 but I’d never heard of them.’
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JOHN NEWBEGIN Nine months after Mandela was released Margaret Thatcher resigned on 23 November 1990. A year previously the Berlin Wall had fallen. But the real disappointment was when Labour didn’t win in 1992.
SARAH JANE MORRIS I got heavily involved in the ’92 campaign and I was booked to sing at the Labour Party Sheffield rally a week before the election.
LUCY HOOBERMAN Ironically, it was April Fool’s Day. And it was a disaster. You could tell straight away it was a no-no. Kinnock was so triumphalist for no reason: like a celebration rally. It was the wrong tone and it gave the media a lot of ammunition in the final week before the election. Here we are, the Labour Party, and this is what it’s all about.
TINY FENNIMORE Neil was introduced on stage as ‘the next prime minister’ and went, ‘We’re all right!’ Three times. It was really embarrassing. It was like he was a pop star. The Sun headline on election day was ‘If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.’
CATHAL SMYTH Kinnock stood up and repeatedly shouted, ‘Aw’ right.’ You look like a fucking geezer down the pub, you twerp.
RICHARD SWALES Tony Hancock said, ‘You’ve got the Conservatives there in your sights and then the bloody Labour Party gets up in the way.’
BILLY BRAGG It was a real body blow. And lots of people thought, ‘Now she’s gone at last we’re going to see the fruition of this,’ and then for John Major of all people to win with a twenty-one-seat majority.
NEIL KINNOCK The month after I lost the election I did the British Comedy Awards. Jonathan Ross introduced me. And when everybody cheered he leaned into the microphone and said, ‘I hope all you bastards voted for him a month ago.’ It was a sweet moment.
DOTUN ADEBAYO If somebody said to come to a dance run by the Labour Party or the Conservative Party I wouldn’t have gone. Music refuses to be captured in that way. Music is free: that ultimately leads to the demise of all these movements, whether it be Rock Against Racism, 2 Tone or Red Wedge; they catch a time and period precisely and either the audience moves on or the theme can’t sustain longevity.
CHRIS BOLTON You’re talking about moments in history when there’s a certain energy level, and that comes in waves. There’s not a French Revolution every week. There’s not an October Revolution every October. It only happens in certain very special moments.
TOM ROBINSON Bob Geldof said a tonic for the troops; preaching to the converted, which is the most common accusation made against political pop. But political change is affected by the individual members of those audiences. It’s individuals who went out after a Rock Against Racism or 2 Tone concert who picked up their dad or their classmate or their workmate or the bloke in the pub who made a racist remark because the night before they’d been in a room with 2,000 other people all singing the same songs. You could feel the energy of an audience singing along and we were empowering them to go out with a message.
NICKY SUMMERS Music can motivate a whole generation. Punk changed a generation. It opened a door for the future with music, with fashion, with art, with film. 2 Tone also did to a certain extent, in that we now take it for granted music of black origin is played and enjoyed by all sorts of people. A three-minute song can inspire people to put their hand into their pockets and say, ‘OK, we’re going to do this.’ Music can feed Africa.
COLIN BYRNE Whether political pop ultimately works in party politics, i.e. vote for this lot, as opposed to a consciousness-raising movement like Rock Against Racism or Live Aid . . . it can engage people in an issue. ‘I’ll think about voting because I like this band.’
RED SAUNDERS It’s all about music. The power of music in your life is extraordinary. Without music I wouldn’t have done any of these things. It was sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll and peace.
JAKE BURNS As a songwriter you can’t change the world but you can change a listener’s individual perception of the world. If I had solutions I’d be a politician. My job was to rabble-rouse and turn up and be Stiff Little Fingers for the night.
TIM WELLS I’m not going to look to any singer, whether it’s Paul Weller, Billy Bragg or Jerry Dammers, for political solutions. I’m going to look to them for some good music, and hopefully some of it tells me something I recognize and think about. The music papers and gigs were the forums where ideas were discussed. Music offers a culture where it’s OK to talk about things. It offers a medium where ideas can flow. Songs can be good rallying points for people but if I want a political answer I’m going to read a book.
PAULINE BLACK All you can do is put a song out there. It’s not what you do with it. It’s not what anyone does with it. It has a life of its own and that’s something that’s unquantifiable. It’s exactly the same when you perform: something intangible happens between you and an audience. People talk about metaphysical energy between people and I do believe that. You get energized by an audience and there’s a feeding off.
PETER JENNER Pop music can be an excuse for people to get together and make a difference to the atmosphere. But if pop music is all about just having fun and getting fucked and getting stoned then that will affect the society one way, but if popular people are about changing and improving the world then that will have an effect another way.
TOM WATSON I didn’t disaggregate music from politics. Robert Plant was born in my constituency and used to call my mate Trotsky. He said, ‘When you’ve got £50 million in your current account you tend not to think about politics very much.’
ANGELA EAGLE Pop music can reflect things that are going on and amplify them. It can help to organize. It can bring together people of like minds. Music gathers tribes and there is a symbiotic relationship between the tribes who gather and artists. You weren’t going to buy ‘Stand Down Margaret’ or ‘Tramp The Dirt Down’ if you were a Tory. You were going to buy it and sing along with it if you were fed up with what was going on in the eighties and Mrs Thatcher. Elvis Costello was writing about the sheer impudent hatred of what she was doing to the country. It was almost the sort of person at bay like King Lear on the blasted heath, raging but powerless: Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! We had our own ways and with the media being so controlled by the Tory narratives it was in between the spaces where you could actually communicate. Music was an outlet for alternative narratives. You could see resistance growing and portrayals of the UK as it really was, rather than Mrs Thatcher’s ideological intolerant and simplistic view of life. She was never shy of having bare-knuckle fights and using the state to prevent resistance and crush opponents. She wanted to destroy as many communities as possible; to destroy anything that might be a public good. She read Frederick Forsyth novels and hooked in poor old Cilla Black and Kenny Everett for conferences. And we had all the exciting, interesting, vibrant stuff that was creative and socially concerned. Music was a way of getting energy and political reaction.
ROBERT ELMS It was a brutal time. It was a time when you knew what side you were on. And to know that you were on the side of the angels, on the side of all the best bands, the best clothes and the best songs: you felt right. Thatcher might have won elections, but culturally we won. Look at Britain now: it’s a society where racism is absolutely frowned on; where gay marriage is accepted. It’s totally different from that Little England that Thatcher tried to hold on to. This period from the mid-seventies to the early nineties was the last time that pop and politics sat together and where pop music meant anything politically. I’m not sure we’ll ever see again such a combination of brilliant songwriting selling lots and lots of records and yet politically articulate, intelligent and meant. It didn’t win an election but it won hearts and minds as part of a wave of a new notion of what being young and British meant.
ANNAJOY DAVID This whole period put culture at the centre of politics and helped to define the language of politics in a way that the country hadn’t seen happen before. You had thousands of young people out on the streets with something to say who had taken politics into their lives. It helped to define a generation who brought together culture and politics to stand up and say something about the government of the day. Was it better to do nothing and let the fascists go unchallenged? Was it better to do nothing and let Margaret Thatcher go unchallenged? Should we have stayed silent? Of course we shouldn’t. We had a duty to stand up and call people to account. That’s what democracy is about. Walls did come tumbling down.
