A vital film
Make sure you catch a wonderful new film about Rock Against Racism, the movement that helped transform Britain into the multicultural society it is today.
White Riot uses the Rock Against Racism (RAR) carnival in Victoria Park, east London, where The Clash performed to one of their biggest audiences, as the hook for a powerful look at how RAR and its partner the Anti Nazi League, turned the tide on a rising tide of violent racism and fascism that seemed to be engulfing Britain in the late 1970s.
For Rubika Shah, the film’s director, and for all of those at the first RAR carnival and in the day-to-day struggle racism and fascism, the parallels between the 1970s and the present day are all too apparent.
At the end of the 1970 we had the National Front combining right-wing populist racist propaganda with Nazi inspired street marches and murderous attacks on the black and Asian community. Today we face an equally dangerous rise in right wing racist populism, providing cover for, and fuelling the development of, a new generation of Nazi street fighters.
The Nazis were beaten back in the 1970s by a combination of hard anti-racist politics and propaganda, physical confrontation and community resistance and the mass cultural movement of RAR.
The Victoria Park, carnival in 1978 was not the start of that process. Two key physical confrontation with the Nazis in 1977, the battles of Wood Green and Lewisham kick started the process. But the carnival was the largest, most visible and most joyous example of the fightback to date and it served as a beacon to all those determined to resist racism.
Around 100,000 of us saw The Clash, Steel Pulse, Tom Robinson Band and X-Ray Spex that day – with most of the audience marching miles from Trafalgar Square through what the Nazis regarded as their core base in east London, to the gig. At the time, the National Front were polling up to 20 percent in local elections in Tower Hamlets, the borough which hosted the Carnival
The RAR movement was launched by Red Saunders and Roger Huddle after musician Eric Clapton used a concert in Birmingham to spew out racist bile and pledge his support for Enoch Powell, a former Tory cabinet minister and the most prominent racist figurehead in the country.
The film White Riot shows how the RAR developed from an angry letter to the music and socialist press, in response to Clapton, into a mass movement. It shows how Red, Roger and a small group of organisers pulled off the march and concert. But it does much more than that. You get a real sense of the grass roots movement, involving RAR, the Anti Nazi League and other anti-racist organisations, that was needed to bring the audience from round the country to the event.
That audience went back and took the fight to the racists and fascists in every town and city across the UK. It was a tough. The Nazis attacked RAR gigs. Musicians who played for RAR were under attack. Misty in Roots, a brilliant and brave reggae band who took the black and white unity message where other bands feared to tread, were particularly singled out.
Mykaell Riley of Steel Pulse, recalls being shot by Nazis at while on stage at a RAR gig. The Nazis first tried to claim the band Sham 69 as their own. Then, when lead singer Jimmy Pursey joined the Clash on Stage at the first Carnival, they tried to smash up every Sham gig they could- but it was a losing strategy.
Two RAR badges summed up the Nazi National Front’s offer to young people:
NF – No Future
NF – No Fun
The Nazis didn’t fade away, they still had to be driven from the streets and out of our communities and workplaces, but the tide turned with the Victoria Park Carnival. Racism didn’t go away either, though racist behaviour became less overt.
Today we are left fighting for the gains we made 40 years ago. Rubika Shah was inspired to make her film because she sees direct parallels between the racists and Nazis of the 1970s and what is happening today.
For those of us involved in the struggles of the 1970s and beyond, the film does us proud. More important, it serves as an inspiration to those fighting racism and fascism today through Love Music Hate Racism, Stand Up To Racism and Unite Against Fascism, the successor organisations to RAR and the ANL, whose banners flew at Victoria Park on 30 April 1978.