Friday, December 19, 2014

The noise of history

'All around me there was an incredible rushing noise, which I knew was composed of shouting and screaming and firecrackers and stamping hoofs, but sounded to me like a great wind, like history'
(Hari Kunzru, My Revolutions, 2007)

Grosvenor Square, London, 1968

Kunzru's quote is from his novel of late 60s/early 70s radical politics, in which the narrator describes taking part in the anti-Vietnam War demonstration by the US Embassy in London's Grosvenor Square. But that exhilarating noise of history, the sound of the crowd in motion, has been heard in many times and places.

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Nine Funerals of the Citizen King - Henry Cow

Henry Cow's 'Nine funerals of the Citizen King' is a track on their 1973 debut album 'Legend' and signalled the radical critique which they carried forward until breaking up five years later. The lyrics reference Lewis Carroll ('the Snark was a Boojum' from his poem 'The Hunting of the Snark'), Gertrude Stein ('a rose is a rose is a rose') and Shakespeare ('O, gentlemen, the time of life is short!...An if we live, we live to tread on kings', Henry IV, Part 1).

The latter was also quoted in Guy Debord's 'The Society of the Spectacle' (1967), and as the song refers to the 'spectacle of free' I wonder whether Henry Cow had been reading Debord. If so they were ahead of their time - the first English translation of 'The Society of the Spectacle' was made by Black & Red (Detroit) in 1970, but it was certainly not widely known. The line 'we'll work to live to buy the things we multiply, until they fill the ordered universe' could have come straight out of Debord, or even an Angry Brigade communique from the same period.

Nine funerals of the Citizen King

Down beneath the spectacle of free
No one ever let you see
The Citizen King
Ruling the fantastic architecture of the burning cities
Where we buy and sell...

That the Snark was a Boojum all can tell
But a rose is a rose is a rose
Said the Mama of Dada as long ago as 1919

You make arrangements with the guard
Halfway round the exercise yard
To sugar the pill
Disguising the enormous double-time the king pays to Wordsworth
More than you or I could reasonably forfeit the while...
Double-time the king pays to Wordsworth
More than you or I could reasonably buy...

If we live, we live to tread on dead kings
Or else we'll work to live to buy the things we multiply
Until they fill the ordered universe

Once upon a time my punky self would have dismissed this as 'prog'. But I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.

Oh and they played a benefit for Brixton Socialist Club in 1978.

Monday, December 15, 2014

1984 Chronicle of a Year Foretold: February

A chronology of events in the UK

See previously: 

Welcome to 1984 
January 1984

Wed 1 February – print unions and News International agree deal to resume printing of The Times; Sogat 82 calls off blacking of Radio Times on day BBC takes them to court – union members had refused to distribute Radio Times as part of a dispute with Maxwell’s British Printing and Communications Corporation over redundances – as  a result BBC switched printing to Hunter Print in the North East, but the boycott continued (GH 2/2)

2 February: Gilbert & Page factory at Colney Heath, Hertfordshire, which makes snares and pens, set on fire by animal liberationists (I.2)

3 February: official unemployed figures reach almost 3.2 million

3 February: National Coal Board announces closure of Bogside pit in Fife blaming flooding, ten days after announcing closure of  Polmaise colliery near Stirling blaiming geological conditions  - workers rejected both reasons for closure (GH 4 Feb)

3 Feb  - Shop stewards at Scott Lithgow shipyard on the Clyde reject plans for 2500 job losses as part of potential privatisation and takeover by Traflagar House

Monday 6 February: management issue redundancy notices to 3000 staff at the Highland Fabricators oil platform construction yard at Nigg on the Cromarty  Firth, blaming lack of orders for new platforms (GH 7.2)

Monday 6 February: police visit offices of Friends of the Earth investigating the leak of a Government document about nuclear dumping at sea (GH 7 Feb)

Monday 6 February: Government announces reduction in scale of planned cuts in housing benefit ‘to head of a rebellion on his own back benches’ but remains criticised by pensioners and child poverty organisations (GH 7 Feb)

Monday 6 February: ‘9 people arrested outside London High Court during Animal Liberation Front protest at delay of appeal sentence for Steve Boulding jailed for 15 months last June, for conspiracy to cause damage at lab using animals in experiments’ (I.2)

Tues. 7 February: striking workers sacked at Phillips Rubber Ltd in Manchester.

Wed. 8 February: court orders workers to end occupation of the Sovereign Explorer oil rig in the Firth of Clyde off Largs. The rig was built at Cammell Laird in Birkenhead, but was damaged in gales during sea test. The CL workers  wanted it to be brought back there for repairs, but the company insisted it be taken to a yard in France (GH 9 Feb)

Wed. 8 February: workers a Scotts Bakery, Aintree, Liverpool told they must end four week strike and accept 120 redundances or face the sack (GH 9 Feb)

Thurs. 9 February One day walk out at Scott Lithgow shipyard in response to threatened takeover and loss of 2000 jobs

Thurs. 9 February: Yuri Andropov, General Secretary of Soviet Communist Party (1982-84) dies.

Thurs 9 February: police seize documents from investigative journalist Duncan Campbell and search his house after he is involved in a bike accident (GH 16 Feb)

February 10 February: Michael Hickey roof top protest continuing at Gartree prison after 79 days, protesting innocence in Carl Bridgwater case

Monday 13 February: NUM meeting for delegates from Scottish pits in Edinburgh decides to postpone for a week decision about whether to stage indefinite strike against closure of Polmaise and Bogside colliery, pending a series of pithead meetings. 100 Polmaise miners lobbied the meeting for an all out strike, and some angrily shouted ‘sell out’ at the NUM Scottish leaders (GH 14 Feb)

Monday 13 February: life models at Glasgow and Edinburgh art colleges refuse to pose nude in campaign for better pay and conditions. At the latter, ‘Classes went ahead, and students produced drawings of the clothed models’ (GH 14 Feb)

Monday 13 February: 2500 railway workers stage a 24 hour strike, causing cancellation of at least 75% of trains in Strathclyde area. The unofficial strike organised by the Strathclyde NUR action committee was against plans for driver only trains and automated stations. It was criticised by the NUR leadership as well as management. In a separate dispute, 4000 bus workers went on strike for two hours in protest against planned closure of three bus garages in Glasgow (GH 14 Feb 84)

Tuesday 14 February: a man accused of being a police informer is found shot dead by the IRA near Crossmaglen (GH 15 Feb)

15 February: miners walk out at Seafield colliery in Fife in dispute relating to disciplining of miner; strike at Killoch in Ayrshire in response to management action over overtime ban (GH 16 Feb)

16 February: 17 year old William McDonald found hanged in his cell at Glenochil detention centre near Alloa, the 4th death there in 18 months (GH 17 Feb)

17 Feb: employment secretary Tom King hit by an egg during a protest by Cammell Laird shipyard workers on a visit ot Birkenhead in Merseyside (GH 18 Feb)

Strikers at Cammell Laird in 1984 - they were later dismissed and jailed for 30 days 

Mon. 20 February: strike by miners in Doncaster area following merger of Goldthorpe and Highgate collieries (workers from two pits were not paidbeing the same). Miners also walk out at Manvers Collliery in South Yorkshire in dispute over meal breaks, supported by strikes at six other local pits over the next week.

Mon. 20 February: 16 arrests in clashes between hunt saboteurs and police at harecoursing meeting in Altcar, Lancashire (I.2)

Mon. 20 February: four Greenham women jailed after refusing to pay fines (Insurrection 2)

Mon 20 February: NUM delegates meeting in Edinburgh votes against strike against closure of Polmaise, despite support fro strike by NUM president Mick McGahey (GH 21 Feb) . By this time rumours of hit list of pit closures were rife, but Scottish miners were reluctant to strike on their own.

Mon 20 Feb: strike by scenery makers and shifters at BBC (GH 21 Feb)

20 -23 February: sacked strikers occupy Phillips Rubber Ltd, Manchester

Tues. 21 February: two members of the IRA and  British Army soldier killed in a gun battle between an undercover BA unit and the IRA at Dunloy, County Antrim.

Tues. 21 February: 100 protestors invade the Lothian council chamber in Edinburgh in an attempt to stop the Tory/Alliance cuts budget (GH 22 Feb)

Tues. 21 February: Michael Hickey ends his roof top protest at Gartree, started last November

Wed 22 February: NCB chairman Ian MacGregor knocked to the ground after fence gives away during a  protest by  miners and his car tyres let down in a visit to Ellington colliery in Northumberland (GH  23 Feb)

Wed 22 February: workers vote to continue their week long strike over working conditions at the BP chemical plant in Grangemouth, Stirlingshire (GH 23 Feb)

Wed 22 February: steelworkers strike at Clydesdale Tube Works, Bellshill, Lanarkshire (GH 23 Feb)

Thurs 23 February: student day of action in support of higher grants in Scotland. At least 4000 march in Glasgow; in Dundee 60 students briefly occupy local education department offices (GH 24 Feb)

Thursday 23 Feb: two Greenham women say they are shot at after cutting through fence. An American patrol fired two shots after the women refused to lie face down. They are arrested but unhurt (GH 28 Feb). Government denied shots were fired.

Friday 24 Feb: British ariways cabin crews stage 24 hour lightning strike against 4% pay offer. Some wear 'I am a flying picket' bibs.

Friday 24 Feb: Thatcher's car is hit by an egg during a demonstration by 500 students as she visits Warwick University. A Conservative students meeting with Cecil Parkinson (Trade & Industry Secretary) at Essex University after 'students threw missiles at him and blocked his way' (GH 25 Feb)

Friday 24 Feb: Police and troops saturate the funeral of IRA volunteer Henry Hogan in Dunloy, shot dead earlier in the week. There are scuffles as police block the mourners path - supposedly to prevent IRA firing shots over the coffin (GH 25 Feb).

Sunday 26 Feb: Strike at BP chemicals plant in Grangemouth ends after 11 days with new agreement on working practices (GH 27 Feb)

Tuesday 28 Feb: TUC day of action in support of GCHQ workers - walk outs (mostly half day strikes)  at hospitals, DHSS offices, the Yarrow warship yard, newspapers (leading to halting of all Fleet Street papers), North Sea oil rig at Methil, car factories,. 40,000 march in London from the Embankment to Jubilee Gardens.(GH 29 Feb). GCHQ workers had been given to the end of February to renounce union membership in return for one off £1000 payment - most did. 40 asked to be transferred to other Government departments

Tuesday 28 Feb: animal rights activists in white protective suits and gas masks hand in letter to Ministry of Defence against animal testing at Porton Down Chemical Defence establishment (GH 29 Feb)

Wednesday 29 February: seven Americans begin a world peace walk with a vigil at the Holy Lock US nuclear submarine base, followed by a torchlit procession with supporters to Greenock. They aim to walk to Moscow to arrive on Hiroshima Day (GH 1 March)

Wednesday 29 February: violence involving England supporters in Paris following friendly between England and France

February: Five women go on hunger strike at Durham prison in protest at harsh conditions in Control Unit

Sources: Glasgow Herald (GH), Times (T), Red Rag (RR - a Reading radical paper), Socialist Opportunist (SO - a chronology published at the time); Insurrection (I- anarchist paper);

Meanwhile back in the UK pop charts, these were the top twenty singles in February 1984:

1. Relax - Frankie Goes To Hollywood
2. Radio Ga Ga- Queen
3. Girls just want to have fun - Cyndi Lauper
4. Break my stride - Matthew Wilder
5. Doctor doctor - Thompson Twins
6. That's living (alright) - Joe Fagin
7. Holiday  - Madonna
8. New moon on Monday - Duran Duran
9. (Feels like) Heaven - Fiction Factory
10. 99 Red balloons - Nena
11. My ever changing moods - Style Council
12. Here comes the rain again - Eurythmics
13. The killing moon - Echo & the Bunnymen
14. What difference does it make - Smiths
15. Somebody's watching me - Rockwell
16.Love theme from "The thorn birds"- Juan Martin
17. Wouldn't it be good - Nik Kershaw
18. Wonderland - Big Country
19. Michael Caine - Madness
20. Pipes of peace - Paul McCartney


Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Athens Protest and Street Art - December 2014

Some pictures from Athens last weekend:

Demonstrators gather outside the university on 6 December, the 6th anniversary of the killing of 15 year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos by police. Thousands took to the streets to remember Alexis and to express solidarity with his friend Nikos Romanos,  on hunger strike in prison (the hunger strike has now ended).
Later there were clashes, with tear gas and petrol bombs (from BBC News)
Syrian refugees protesting at their camp in Syntagma Square, opposite the parliament building
'We faced death passing the sea, now we're sleeping at Greek streets'

Sunday December 7th - an art students banner on  protest outside Parliament against the setting of a new austerity budget
At least 5,000 (my estimate) took part in the Sunday evening protest
(image from here of a trade union contingent on demo)
Some street art from the Exarchia area:










Wednesday, November 19, 2014

'Death from Excessive Dancing' - Bermondsey 1903

From: South London Press, 3 January 1903:

'The Fatal Thirteen -Death from excessive dancing

Dr Waldo held an inquest at the Southwark Coroner's Court on Wednesday on the body of Mary Ann Cocklin, aged 35 years, the wife of a Bermondsey labourer.

John Cocklin, the husband, stated that he and the deceased went to a Christmas party at the house of a relative on Christmas Day, and kept on dancing until after midnight. Deceased then lay down to rest, but awoke in a fright, screaming that three men were after her.

Dr Waldo: Had she been drinking any spirits?

Witness: No, sir, only port wine. We had nothing but port wine, any of us.

Dr Waldo: What happened when she came to herself again?

Witness: She went down stairs and resumed dancing to the music of an automated piano organ we had in the house. I next heard she was very ill, and that she had again gone to rest, but had turned giddy and fallen down the stairs.

Dr Waldo: How many?

Witness: The fatal 13.

Susan Poore, a neighbour, stated that she heard the deceased fall. She was taken to Guys Hospital, where she died the same day.

The medical evidence showed that death was due to fracture of the thigh caused by the fall, which was the result of giddiness produced by dancing. A verdict was returned accordingly'.

Monday, September 15, 2014

Criminal Justice Act 20th Anniversary Event coming up at MayDay Rooms (London)

Daily Star, 10 October 1994 (from Datacide archive)

Revolt of the Ravers: The Movement Against the Criminal Justice Act, 1994

Sunday October 19th 2014, 2 pm –  7 pm,  at MayDay Rooms, 88 Fleet Street, London EC4Y 1DH
(Admission free)

Twenty years ago, on 9 October 1994, a huge demonstration against the Government's Criminal Justice Act ended in London's Hyde Park with riotous clashes, police horses charging, and people dancing to sound systems. The Act brought in new police powers against raves, squatters, protestors, travellers and others, and was passed amidst widespread opposition.

This event will include memories of this movement, its ways of organising and representing itself and will feature displays of its ‘material culture’ such as zines, flyers, cassettes and letters.

There will also be a panel discussion looking at the related radical/techno zines of the 1990s, in what was one of the last musical and social movements mediated primarily through print rather than digitally.

The talks and discussion will be followed by films and music from the period.

It is hoped that the day will be a catalyst for a process of archiving, circulating and discussing materials from the radical social/musical movements of the 1990s.

Supported by MayDay RoomsDatacide magazine, Cesura//Acceso journal, History is Made at Night.


Hyde Park, October 1994  - Copyright © 1994 Andrew Wiard
My Datacide article on this subject is here. If you were involved in the anti-CJA movement come along and contribute - we would be particularly interested in hearing from Michelle Poole from Advance Party or Debbie Staunton from United Systems, get in touch if you're out there! (transpontine@btinternet.com) Of course if you weren't there, or maybe weren't even born, come along  anyway and find out more.

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Panacea: 1990s Cardiff zine from 'techno underground'

Panacea was a mid-1990s zine from Cardiff ('Panacea West') and Southsea ('Panacea South').


Panacea 'future sounds collective' aimed 'to provide information distributed from the techno underground, bring quality music to your ears, and find ways of getting to best future sound parties'.


This issue (number 3) from 1995, includes articles on Jeff Mills and DJ Torah, and a round up of London techno nights, including Digital Nation at Bagleys, Kings Cross and of course Dead by Dawn: 'next Dead by Dawn will continue the party with cutting edge hardcore and hard experimental sounds to challenge the techno establishment. The next Dead by Dawn (121 Railton Road, Brixton) is on Nov 4, line up includes Torah'. I remember chatting to the Panacea crew at Dead by Dawn, nice people.


The front page mentions 'Insurrection in Hyde Park' and the issue includes a review of the pamphlet I wrote at the time about the October 1994 anti-Criminal Justice Act riotous demonstration in Hyde Park, 'The Battle for Hyde Park: ruffians, radicals, and ravers 1855-1994'.



With Datacide magazine we are planning an event at the May Day Rooms in Fleet Street, London,  on October 19th 2014 looking at the anti-CJA movement and also featuring a panel discussion on the radical/techno zine scene at that time. Put the date in your diary, it will start at 2 pm and carry on into the evening with films and music (further details here soon).  We would be interested in hearing from people involved in that movement/demonstration, if anyone from Panacea is out there (Arlene/Sian?) get in touch as we'd like to have you there too!

Monday, August 18, 2014

London Political Graffiti 1968

From the excellent Oz Magazine archive, here's some images of London graffiti from Oz number 13 (June 1968), photographs apparently from 'a series of postcards being prepared by JLTY, 49 Kensington Park Road, W11'

'Pop is Dead'
'Crime is the highest form of sensuality'
'Burn Baby Burn'
'A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear, A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief'
(Coleridge quote in Moorhouse Road W2)
'All you need is dynamite'
'Burn it all down'
'Cars are dead' (from Denbigh Terrace W11)

Saturday, May 31, 2014

History is Made at Night in The Wire

Back in December 2013, The Wire magazine featured this blog in its 'Unofficial Channels' column:

(from The Wire, December 2013 -
 nb John Eden is incorrectly described here as the publisher of Datacide, though he is a contributor to it)

The item was based on a short interview with me by Dan Barrow, which I've reproduced below as it sets out some of my thoughts on 'History is Made at Night' in a bit more detail:

How did you come to start the blog? What kind of interests fed into it?

I stated the blog in early 2007. The name came from a byline on a poster for ‘The Last Days of Disco’ - at the time I was unaware of the 1930s film, History is Made at Night.  The origins of it go back to the mid-1990s, when I first started writing about the history of dance music scenes – for a while I had a column in Mixmag on this called Back in the Day, and I also had stuff published in Eternity and Alien Underground zines. I guess every generation thinks they are the first to discover staying up all night dancing, but I was and am fascinated by how people have been doing this for centuries.

The blog also has its roots in the 1990s free party scene, in particular Dead By Dawn techno/speedcore night at the 121 Centre in Brixton. There was a scene of people around it who were thinking and writing about the political/social implications of electronic dance music, with zines like Technet and Alien Underground. So the blog is very much my expression of an ongoing collective project. I still write for Datacide, which also emerged from that same milieu.

The blog's described as being about "The Politics of Dancing and Musicking" - how do you feel dancing and (radical) politics intersect?

In a negative sense, dancing has always been subject to political regulation. As I said at the beginning of the blog there have been ‘rules about when, where and how they can move, rules about who is allowed to dance with who, rules about what dancers can wear and put inside their bodies…’.  Resistance to this regulation has been politically significant, from the 1969 Stonewall riots to the 1990s movement against the ‘anti-rave’ Criminal Justice Act and beyond.

In a positive/constitutive sense, dancing affirms community and can create new social relations between those involved. I took part in Reclaim the Streets, when the fusing of sound systems and protest was taken to a new level in the UK. In more recent movements, such as the student protests of 2010-11, we’ve also seen how sound systems can help fuse together isolated individuals into a social force.

What are your musical interests? I remember reading quite a lot of stuff on the blog about rave, jazz, UK reggae...

I suppose the focus of the blog is less on the music as such than on what happens when people come together around a music. So although I am not a massive jazz fan, I am very interested in the 1940s/50s London jazz scene as it prefigures later bohemian counter-cultures and indeed as far as I know gave birth to the word ‘ravers’! My personal musical involvements have ranged from anarcho-punk, to house and techno, to playing in pub folk sessions.

How do you keep blogging? I ask partly becuase a lot of the blogs from that era have more or less disappeared - Woebot, Beyond The Implode, Sit Down Man, The Impostume...

In starting HIMAN I was partly prompted by that wave of music blogs such as Blissblog and Uncarved (the latter’s John Eden is somebody else I first met through that Dead by Dawn scene). Obviously people’s focus shift sfor various reasons, some of that first generation of music bloggers used their profile to move on into publishing books and articles etc. It’s obviously true that the time I have spent blogging could have been put to use in writing several books, but maybe that desire to monumentalise your writing in an object that sits on your shelves is anachronistic – though I am not averse to it. Actually I have been talking to somebody about publishing a History is Made at Night book, but we shall see. What I still like about blogging is its immediacy - the ability to respond to things in real time. And the fact that unlike with Twitter, you have the space to do more than just express a quick opinion.

The blog goes up and down in terms of the time I can put into it, what keeps it going is that every so often something comes along that make its concerns seem particularly relevant – such as the Form 696 row about policing grime events. Also when people express an interest in it I feel guilty that I haven’t posted for a while and am stung into a burst of action!

I also wanted to ask about the Transpontine blog. What do you feel distinguishes South London as a place, especially musically?

If you start exploring the history of music scenes you can’t help but be struck how certain locations recur as important over the decades (e.g. Soho). As I live in South East London, I’ve tried to document this in relation to my own area at another blog, Transpontine. Deptford and New Cross for instance have been important at various times for reggae sound systems, punk and other scenes. I don’t think it’s necessary to fall back on a supernatural spirit of place to explain this, as Peter Ackroyd sometimes seems to – there are material processes at work. Partly it’s about the mix of people created by migration, location of colleges etc. Partly it’s about them having space to practice and perform – so you need a combination of plentiful/cheap rehearsal studios and pubs, clubs and other venues. As with art scenes, music is sometimes valorised for its contribution to creating a ‘buzz’ for regeneration, but the same process of rising property values threatens to undermine its infrastructure  as pubs and ex-industrial buildings get converted to flats.