6/7/2023 0 Comments Sham 69 naziThe most notorious omission is the band's first single on the Step Forward label, "I Don't Wanna"/"Rip Off," though awesome live versions of those songs from 1979 are on disc three. While the title here, Complete Collection, is somewhat misleading because it doesn't contain everything they recorded, it really is almost everything (and more) you'd ever want. Everyone from the great leftist working-class bands like the Angelic Upstarts and Newtown Neurotics to Nazi punks Skrewdriver and the 4-Skins claimed Sham 69 as an influence. White Riot is a great celebration of that ethos.As reviled as they were celebrated, Jimmy Pursey and company were the original boot boys from London's notorious East End, the true Cockney kids, and the lot who inadvertently inspired the loads of Oi! and skinhead punk bands that followed. One of the central RAR slogans was “Black and white unite and fight”. White Riot climaxes with the highly successful 1978 Victoria Park concert, when 100,000 people marched 11 kilometres from Trafalgar Square to East London, demonstrating their rejection of Nazism in a carnival of unity. There were many more gigs and street clashes before the NF were finally smashed. Together with other anti-Nazis, they participated in the spectacular August 1977 street battle in Lewisham, when the NF staged a provocative march under police protection. The ANL provided security for RAR events and RAR provided entertainment for mass demonstrations. The political evolution of Sham 69’s singer, Jimmy Pursey, is a narrative thread in the film.Īlong the way, RAR coordinated activities with the Anti-Nazi League (ANL). The film includes many of the era’s top bands: The Clash, Steel Pulse, Misty in Roots, X Ray Specs, Tom Robinson Band and Sham 69. ![]() Another strand was the popularity of Jamaican reggae and ska music, even among right-wing youth. RAR intersected perfectly with the rising punk music scene that articulated youth alienation. Concerts with Black and white bands sharing the stage gave working class youth the experience of sharing the love of music together. ![]() RAR was organised around the fanzine Temporary Hoarding, which combined punk imagery, music reporting and political education. Simple instructions were sent out telling activists how to pull together concerts, how to get council permission, how to attract bands, how to assemble a PA system and how to protect a stage against Nazi attack. People asking if there was an RAR group in their area were simply told that they were now the organiser of it. The nationwide music magazine New Musical Express (NME) published the letter and the group was overwhelmed by the response. They penned a letter protesting Clapton’s statement and calling for an anti-racist musical movement. Other loud pro-Nazis were David Bowie and Rod Stewart.Ī small group of left-wing cultural activists - Red Saunders, Roger Huddle, Jo Wreford and Pete Bruno - took action. "Get the foreigners out, get the wogs out, get the coons out,” he said. There is plenty of archival footage in White Riot showing just how scary the period was.Īll this was bad enough, but then in August 1976, Eric Clapton told a concert audience that he supported Powell and wanted to “keep Britain white”. In an era of mass unemployment with no hope in sight, the NF started staging colourful marches and attracting youthful members, mostly skinheads. That shock to the national psyche, combined with Labour’s betrayal of its traditional program, gave an opening for fascists to get a hearing.įascist ideology was infamously fanned in 1968 by ultra-right Tory MP Enoch Powell in his “River of Blood” speech, attacking the presence of Black immigrants. In the midst of a powerful wave of strikes in 1976, the Labour government was forced to beg the International Monetary Fund to bail out the economy. This was a political/cultural, people-power mass movement that changed British society.īritain hit the economic skids in the early 1970s, as part of the international economic crisis resulting from the declining post-WWII profit boom colliding with US deficit spending that financed its Vietnam War adventure. ![]() It was by no means an easy struggle, nor was it clear from the beginning what the outcome would be. White Riot is the story of how, in the 1970s, a ramshackle group of do-it-yourself British leftists organised the Rock Against Racism (RAR) movement, took on the fascist National Front (NF) and defeated it.
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