Gig 059 Carnival Against the Nazis

Carnival Against The Nazis – X-Ray Spex, The Clash, Steel Pulse, TRB
Victoria Park, Hackney, London
30 April 1978

Let’s talk about racism, because you really need an old white bloke spouting off about this important issue. Actually someone should have talked to me about racism back in the 70s but no one did, not really, I had to figure it out for myself and to be honest I didn’t really know what racism was, which is strange because I was a witness to it almost every day. At the time of this event the National Front were gaining in acceptance and influence, the Black & White Minstrel Show was still on prime time tv, racist epithets were common currency: it was no big deal to hear such language, on television, at work, on the street and among some members of my family. If I had a pound for every time I heard the expression ‘Enoch was right’, well I wouldn’t be rich but could certainly have afforded a better motorbike. (I should stress that, while they were hardly campaigners against racism, my parents didn’t share this tendency – I now think this was due to dad having served for several years alongside Indian troops during the war, while mum would have felt such sentiments to be unchristian. Dad hated confrontation of any kind but I remember him patiently explaining to family members why Muhammad Ali had every right to discard his given ‘slave’ name of Cassius Clay.) There had been maybe five or so black kids in my school; I don’t remember any racial antagonism towards them but that’s meaningless, since it’s not me who would remember it. And there were a couple of Asian lads at the print factory who were well-liked and put up with ‘banter’ as best they could.

By this time I was hanging out much more in Oxford, specifically at the Oranges & Lemons, and after hours at the Caribbean Club. Sound Systems would arrive from the Blackbird Leys estate or sometimes Reading, speakers big enough to accommodate a bed and ensuite shower, bass grooves making the roof tiles on the Victorian building rattle and sometimes fall off, the rhythm punctuated by what sounded like firecrackers but was in fact old Jamaican guys playing dominoes in the back room. There wasn’t a bar, Red Stripe lager and Jamaica patties were served from a formica table, and the air was thick not with ganja but cigarette smoke, drugs being strictly forbidden since the police would have closed the place in a flash. I’d like to say that it was a convivial Benetton-ad vision of an integrated society but it wasn’t really like that; the youth were to some degree there under sufferance at what was the only black club in town, run by middle-aged West Indian people who worked hard all week in the NHS, in school canteens, at the Cowley car plant. It wasn’t our space, yet it was accepting and laid back, and I had some great nights there. All the same, I didn’t think too much about racism; post-colonial theory hadn’t yet crossed my radar. It was just obvious that anyone who would make that sort of judgement must be bitter and twisted, or just an idiot. That stuff was for shite tv shows and shite comedians and sad old men trying to rationalise a life of failure and disappointment, probably still living with their mum and a big pile of porno mags.

So on the last day of April 1978 there’s an event scheduled in London, the Carnival Against the Nazis, and I’m dead keen to go because a) J, a girl I like, has offered me a lift and b) the Clash are playing. I’m beginning to understand what racism is and that it should be opposed, but would I have gone without these motivating factors? Probably not, to be honest. My moped now being scrap metal, I get up early on Sunday morning and cycle into town, to J’s parents’ house in posh North Oxford, then we pick up my new best friend Mark from bohemian intellectual East Oxford, hit the M40 and we’re in Hackney by midday. I would have gone on the march from Trafalgar Square but I’m not driving, so we fetch up at a skanky house near Victoria Park and drink tea out of those earthenware mugs that scrape against your teeth and make the tea somehow taste dry – none of your bone china round here.

It’s been raining for days but miraculously the sun appears as we wander into the park, bumping into a few pals from Oxford. The marchers are arriving and it looks like it will be a decent turnout. Make that a good-size attendance. No, actually make that a massive crowd, way bigger than the organisers or the police had anticipated, all banners, placards, megaphones, multi-coloured hair, dreads, mohawks, no hair at all. It’s crazy, intoxicating, feels dangerous as X-Ray Spex take the stage and we can’t move forwards or backwards, just lurch and sway with the crowd. Oh Bondage Up Yours! never sounded so right, even if the crush is getting scary. Feeling woozy from the adrenalin, the early start and a couple of lunchtime ciders, we eventually drift out of the throng and watch from a safer distance, sat on a rather quaint bandstand. Steel Pulse from Handsworth, Birmingham are such an excellent group, unbelievably tight yet chilled, their righteous skank works a treat in taking the temperature down after the artfully manic thrash of Poly’s gang. Since the Sex Pistols’ demise the Clash are numero uno punks, it’s their appearance which makes this a really big event, and when they launch into London’s Burning the crowd goes proper mental. This was the first time I’d seen the Clash and from the bandstand they look great, Joe Strummer’s crazily pumping left leg and Brigate Rosse t-shirt, coolest-man-in-rock Paul Simonon throwing shapes, Mick Jones a skinny bandito in black. Shame the sound is awful at this distance, though not surprising as these days the PA would be barely be considered fit to announce the winner of the raffle at a village fete. The set starts to drag a little, and towards the end Jimmy Pursey is wheeled out to sing White Riot, or rather to drag it behind the wheely bins and give it a good kicking. Anyone know what the point of Jimmy Pursey is? Me neither, though his group Sham 69 were known to have a neanderthal neo-nazi skinhead following and I’d admit it was brave – some would say opportunistic – of him to make a stand at this event. By the time the Tom Robinson Band rounded off the day I was too knackered and hungry to make much of it. I remember there was an ‘all-star jam’ at the end featuring members of Steel Pulse and the Clash, and Pursey turned up again. We went for a Chinese takeaway.

I wouldn’t want to undersell it, despite the inevitable flaws it had been exhilarating to be in the East End of London, with my friends, at such a significant event. Aged 18 it was almost too much to take in. If as a gig it certainly had its limitations, 80,000-plus people making a stand against racism was something to be part of, and looking back I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

Back in Oxford we stayed up all night, as is the custom for May Day, gathering in the drizzle at 6pm the next morning to hear the choirboys sing from the top of Magdalen College tower, vaguely looking up towards the celestial chorus, around us to steer clear of drunk toffs and nutters, and downwards to avoid steppig in random pools of vomit on the street. The following day I was back at work, listening to blokes talking about football, tv sitcoms and gameshows. The last ever Black & White Minstrel Show was broadcast a couple of months later. Progress is incremental.