Love Music, Hate Racism, Patronise Teenagers, Vote Ken!
Way back when (Saturday April 30th 1978 to be precise), the slim, red-faced, sixteen year old me was among the many hoards who met at Trafalgar Square for the original Rock Against Racism Carnival, the first major political demonstration that I ever attended. I walked the six miles from the centre of
For most of the journey I walked behind an open lorry from which the band Charge played a loud and cheery set (twice if I remember correctly, what with them having run out of songs fairly quickly and the walk taking so long). For the life of me I cannot remember who I was with and whether it was this event which politicised me or if I was already a member of Redbridge Rock Against Racism at the time and had walked with the equally young and punky friends I had made in recent months during those Wednesday evening meetings above the Communist Bookshop in Ley Street, Ilford (Matt Davies, Antony Duffy, Trout and Neil Spearpoint among them) or if it was this event which provoked me into joining them. Either way it was a memorable day and a key one in my journey from school-avoiding Dagenham punk wannabe into Left-wing Activist and twangy gyrating bass player.
It was therefore with a somewhat rosy-eyed view of things that I found myself walking back into Victoria park thirty years later as that very event was celebrated under the banner of ‘Love Music, Hate Racism’. Once again the same curious mix of teenagers in eyeliner with Day-Glo accessories and trade union hardliners mingled together as a succession of ardent socialists regaled the masses from the stages (two this time) in an attempt to motivate the youth of today. So why was the whole thing so bloody miserable!!!
Well, firstly there was the music. Admittedly the Wing-Commander and I didn’t arrived until over half-way through proceedings so we cannot pass comment on those who were on earlier but when we did arrive we were aurally greeted by Roll Deep who may be the current kings of hippity-hoppity, dancey rap music but crikey, what a noise. They may appeal to the teenager Wiggers in attendance (of which there were only a few) but for the rest of us, eek! They were followed by a band that were populated predominantly by members of Babyshambles and who were joined by a succession of third-rate singers, the majority of which seemed incapable of holding a tune, ambled to the microphones to delivery their mediocre, uninspiring, derivative tunes. These are the people who I see in my daughter’s NME, lauded by the once authoritative music paper that these days seems to be written almost exclusive by writers whose command of English would make them more fitted to ‘Now’ magazine. Headlining was Damon Albarn’s latest post-Blur project The Good, the Bad and the Queen, whose sombre meanderings are regularly lauded as inspiring but, quite frankly, I found them to be as dull as dishwater. [There was, he confesses, better fare to be had on the second stage: the Paddingtons gave us their spirited identikit indie guitar indie stuff, including a game version of The Clash’s ‘1977’; Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly were earnest but tuneful, whilst Patrick Wolf delivered the day’s musical highlight as threw himself into the crowd in his Union Jack suit and beamed cheerily at the young girls in the audience who, clearly, loved every camp inch of him].
No, the music was not the reason for my thinking this event was so dire. It was the politics.
Now I know that the trade unions still have many thousands of members in this country, and I would never knock the need for the working classes to have a voice and representation with which to challenge exploitation and stand-up for the rights of the individual. However, union member numbers today are considerably smaller than thirty years ago for a whole host of social and political reasons but listening to the succession of Union leaders who were paraded on stage today you could see why. All of them were my age or older, and each of which delivered the exact same message (vote at the Mayoral elections on Thursday to prevent the BNP from winning any seats) in the same, shouting, patronising style. Well, is it any wonder that the young folk feel politically disenfranchised? Many of them began their speeches by advising the masses that they, like me, had been here thirty before. They then reminded us that the seventies we had battled against fascism and that we had fought the Nazis (fought? It was hardly the Maginot line) and that once again the same threat was present.
How true was this though? Were the British public en masse really that stupid thirty years ago to have allowed the far right to gain anything other than the most trivial of political positions? Did the SWP-backed ANL and RAR really do anything other than create a bit of a noise and organise a few great gigs? There’s an argument to be made for both sides of that one, however what about in 2008? We are truly a multi-cultural, multi-racial society. Our children have grown-up in a world where their schools contained people of all colours and all religions; it is not like the sixties where term racial minority really meant ‘minority’. The Muslim community may now be the focus of our racial unease and I know that in the right-wing pocket of Barking they have a number of BNP councillors, but I couldn’t but help that those on the stage were just attempting to make things seem far worse than they were in order to cajole the young into becoming active. However, the youth of today aren’t that simple and just weren’t buying it. So the whole thing had an over-whelming air of sadness to it: Unionists trying hard as can be to pretend that people still thought in the same way they did several decades ago, as if society hasn’t had massive changes in that time – and to do this to a some of the dreariest music I’ve seen live in a while just added to the grimness of the event.
Better to be an armchair socialist in 2008. At least that way people even those who share your views won’t think you are a wanker!
posted by My Life of Woe @ 8:13 PM
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