Fighting the Nazi Threat Today

Rock Against Racism

‘Come on Eric ... you’ve been taking too much of that Daily Express stuff and you know you can’t handle it. Own up. Half your music is black. You’re rock music’s biggest colonist. You’re a good musician but where would you be without the blues and R&B? You’ve got to fight the racist poison otherwise you degenerate into the sewer with the rats and all the money men who ripped off rock culture with their cheque books and plastic crap. We want to organise a rank and file movement against the racist poison in music. We urge support for Rock Against Racism. PS: Who shot the Sheriff, Eric? It sure as hell wasn’t you!’
Letter to NME from the founders of RAR

ROCK Against Racism was launched in September 1976, after rock star Eric Clapton suggested at a Birmingham concert that Enoch Powell was right, and Britain was ‘overcrowded’. RAR’s founders wrote to the New Musical Express announcing the launch of the organisation.

Rock Against Racism aimed at promoting racial harmony through music, and was one of the first organisations to mix black and white bands at gigs. It worked closely with the ANL and organised concerts and festivals all over Britain, attracting thousands of people to the biggest anti-racist events since the 1930s.

The Anti Nazi League’s activities and the propaganda it produced with Rock Against Racism were important in building support for anti-racism in schools, workplaces and the community, as well as in exposing the Nazis in the National Front. Of course this didn’t mean that institutionalised racism, for example discrimination in jobs, housing and education, was beaten, or that racial harassment stopped. It did, however, mean that organised fascism and the hatred and violence that went with it had been destroyed at this time, and this helped in creating a far more positive racial atmosphere in Britain in the 1980s.

‘Darcus Howe said he had fathered five children in Britain. The first four had grown up angry, fighting forever the racism around them. The fifth, he said, had grown up ‘black at ease’. Darcus attributed her space to the Anti Nazi League ... ’
Journalist PAUL FOOT on black TV presenter and journalist Darcus Howe

When the Anti Nazi League was relaunched in 1992 people began organising benefits and gigs all round the country. Large numbers of black and white bands played at these events, which culminated in the organisation of an Anti Nazi League Carnival in May 1994. Over 150,000 marched through South London to the Carnival in Brockwell Park, celebrating the defeat of the Nazis in the recent local elections, and affirming their belief in a multicultural society.

 

ANL Carnival, Brockwell Park, Brixton, May 1994