Reviewed by Piers Mostyn

Jamaican Reggae burst onto the international scene in the mid-1970s, popularised by groups like Bob Marley and the Wailers, Burning Spear, Culture and The Gladiators, singers like Dennis Brown and Gregory Isaacs and “toasting” MCs like Big Youth, I-Roy, Tapper Zukie and Doctor Alimontado.

The British reggae scene – a small but vibrant corner of the genre – soon emerged. It was best known by Aswad, Misty-in-Roots, Steel Pulse and Dennis Bovell’s Matumbi. Largely centred in the West Midlands and West London it was the fruit of the post-Windrush generation of migrants from Jamaica and their children beginning to find a political and cultural voice.

But it wasn’t simply a replication of Caribbean source material. It was moulded by the circumstances that young black British people were growing up in: political polarisation, police repression, racism and the growing austerity of the mid-to-late 1970s. The rise of the fascist National Front was met by mass street protests organised by the Anti-Nazi League. The first big audiences of these reggae bands were often gained by performances from the back of flat bed trucks at Notting Hill Carnival in London alongside throbbing sound systems. From 1976 the major riots that erupted as the police sought to control these youth had the music as it’s soundtrack.

The flowering of British reggae happened in tandem with the explosion of punk – fuelled by alienation, anti-authoritarianism and a desire to take control of popular culture. The two came together in Rock against Racism and finally fused in the early years of the Thatcher Tory government after 1979 in the form of “Two Tone” with the emergence of The Beat, The Specials, The Selector and such like.

So much is fairly well known, even if it’s context and political significance is under-appreciated. Less well known is the existence of a Bristol reggae scene at the time.

Bristol Archive Records have made a vital contribution to this story, the cultural history of the city and its black community with the release of this marvellous CD.

Packed with 14 tracks from 7 different bands and singers like Black Roots, Talisman, The Radicals and Restriction – this allows us to celebrate this vibrant scene afresh and ensure it is not forgotten.

When I bought this CD, I was listening to the music again for the first time in 3 decades and did so with some trepidation. The rocking sounds I heard as a teenager at venues like the Trinity and Rock Against Racism gigs – might not make the grade after all this time. But it has stood the test of time. These bands stand tall alongside the Misty’s and Aswads – a taut delivery of that heady mix of socially and politically aware roots music.

The CD comes with an attractive 16 page colour guide to the bands and the era and sleeve notes by Martin Langford providing potted histories with photos of the groups and singers.

The St Paul’s carnival provided a key platform every year until the scene’s demise, in part due to a lack of venues, although it never completely went away. Far from it, these reggae groups fed directly into the hip-hop and grafitti scene of the mid 1980s and after. And there is a direct continuity in personnel and influence to the world-famous “Bristol sound” of massive Attack, Portishead, Tricky and Roni Size – with it’s dub-influenced sound patterns and radical edge.

Missing perhaps from this otherwise very informative booklet is any of the wider political and social context. Bristol’s reggae scene didn’t come from nowhere. Alongside the national context outlined above, was the specific local history. Perhaps more could have been said about the black community that produced these bands. Not just Carnival, going since 1967, but the clubs, like The Bamboo set up around the same time, hosting the Wailers in 1973 but sadly closing after a fire at the end of the decade; the Blue Lagoon and a host of unlicensed “blues” venues.

The St Paul’s uprising in 1980 – which was a direct product of the same political, cultural and social forces that had created the reggae scene – was a vanguard action for a wave of inner city rebellions that swept the nation the following year and seemed to herald the arrival of the sharp social conflicts of the Thatcher years. It put Bristol’s black community on the map both locally and nationally. This pride, social consciousness and self-awareness is surely beaming out of every one of these songs on this CD. A vital charting post for Bristol’s recent radical cultural history.

For more on the general context see http://www.red-lines.co.uk/reading/TheWireOctober2007.htm

Down with the Gaddafi regime!
Stop the imperialist intervention now!
Support the Libyan revolution!

The intervention of the western powers in Libya constitutes a turning point in the situation in the Arab region. Since the beginning of the social and political shock wave which covers almost all the countries of the Arab region, the Fourth International has stood on the side of the democratic and social interests of the Arab people against their tyrants. This has led us to full support for the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions alongside the revolutionary socialist militants of these countries. This is why we supported all the democratic demands – right to free expression, trade-union and political organization, pluralism, freedom of the press; and social ones such as job creation, wage increases, fight against high cost of living – of these popular mobilizations, supported the overthrowing of the dictatorships, and the demand for a real break with the former regimes in a democratic and socialist perspective.
In Libya, this policy led us, from the beginning, to support the mobilizations and then the popular insurrection to overthrow the Gaddafi dictatorship. In Libya, solidarity with the popular mobilizations means doing everything to help the people against Gaddafi: total embargo on arms sales to the dictatorship, freezing the assets of the Libyan regime abroad, organization of medical, food and humane aid for the hundreds of thousands of Libyans persecuted by the regime… Supporting the Libyan people and protecting the civilians, means giving them the means to defend themselves against the massacres by Gaddafi’s mercenaries freeing themselves from the dictatorship. The Arab peoples and armies, starting with the Tunisians and Egyptians, can play a decisive part in this military aid.
The French, English and American bombardments do not aim to “protect the civil populations”, as is claimed in the UN Resolution Security Council 1973 establishing a « no-fly zone » on Libya. As the hours and the days pass, the goals of this UN resolution of appear more and more “vague”. Is it really a question of protecting the civil populations? Then why risk bombarding other civilians? Is it rather a question of finishing with Gaddafi or of imposing an agreement on his regime, even a partition of Libya? The risk of escalation that could lead to one or more ground interventions cannot be ignored, contrary to what the resolution says. In fact, for the imperialist coalition it is a question of re-establishing itself in the area, trying to confiscate the revolutionary process in progress by installing governments in its pay, or by putting pressure on the processes underway. And their strategic oil interests should not be forgotten. Lastly, how can anyone believe these hypocritical governments, who are occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and say they want “to protect the civil populations” but leave the populations, in Bahrain, in Yemen, in Syria or in Gaza to be massacred.

Support for the Libyan revolution and overthrowing the Gaddafi dictatorship means today humanitarian and military aid to the insurrectionists and an end to the imperialist intervention. The Libyan people are not alone. Their fight is part of the current revolutionary rise that is shaking the Arab world. It is more than ever for the Arab peoples to take control over their destiny without neocolonialist intervention by the western powers.

Secretariat of the Fourth International Bureau
March 23rd, 2011

Other commitments mean that I won’t be able to post to this blog as often as I would like, but I’ll try to keep it up and running. Thanks to the merry (and small!) band of regular readers out there who make it all worthwhile

Dear Mr Desmond,

You probably don’t know me, but I know you. For the last two years I’ve been a reporter at the Daily Star, and for two years I’ve felt the weight of your ownership rest heavy on the shoulders of everyone, from the editor to the bloke who empties the bins.

Wait! I know you’re probably reaching for your phone to have me marched out of the building. But please, save on your bill. I quit.

The decision came inside my local newsstand, whilst picking up the morning papers. As I chatted with Mohammed, the Muslim owner, his blinking eyes settled on my pile of print, and then, slowly, rose to meet my face.

“English Defence League to become a political party” growled out from the countertop.

Squirming, I abandoned the change in my pocket and flung a note in his direction, the clatter of the till a welcome relief from the silence that had engulfed us. I slunk off toward the tube.

If he was hurt that my 25p had funded such hate-mongering, he’d be rightly appalled that I’d sat in the war cabinet itself as this incendiary tale was twisted and bent to fit an agenda seemingly decided before the EDL’s leader Tommy Robinson had even been interviewed.

Asked if his group were to become a political party I was told the ex-BNP goon had replied: “Not for now.”

But further up the newsprint chain it appears a story, too good to allow the mere spectre of reality to restrain, was spotted. It almost never came to this. I nearly walked out last summer when the Daily Star got all flushed about taxpayer-funded Muslim-only loos.

A newsworthy tale were said toilets Muslim-only. Or taxpayer-funded. Undeterred by the nuisance of truth, we omitted a few facts, plucked a couple of quotes, and suddenly anyone would think a Rochdale shopping centre had hired Osama Bin Laden to stand by the taps, handing out paper towels.

I was personally tasked with writing a gloating follow-up declaring our postmodern victory in “blocking” the non-existent Islamic cisterns of evil.

Not that my involvement in stirring up a bit of light-hearted Islamaphobia stopped there. Many a morning I’ve hit my speed dial button to Muslim rent-a-rant Anjem Choudary to see if he fancied pulling together a few lines about whipping drunks or stoning homosexuals.

Our caustic “us and them” narrative needs nailing home every day or two, and when asked to wield the hammer I was too scared for my career, and my bank account, to refuse.

“If you won’t write it, we’ll get someone who will,” was the sneer du jour, my eyes directed toward a teetering pile of CVs. I won’t claim I’ve simply been coshed into submission; I’ve necked the celeb party champagne and pocketed all the freebies, relying on hangovers to block out the rest.

Neither can I erase that as a young hack keen to prove his worth I threw myself into working at the Daily Star with gusto. On order I dressed up as a John Lennon, a vampire, a Mexican, Noel Gallagher, Saint George (twice), Santa Claus, Aleksandr the Meerkat, the Stig, and a transvestite Alex Reid.

I’ve been spraytanned, waxed, and in a kilt clutching roses trawled a Glasgow council estate trying to propose to Susan Boyle (I did. She said no).

When I was ordered to wear a burkha in public for the day, I asked: “Just a head scarf or full veil?” Even after being ambushed by anti-terror cops when panicked Londoners reported “a bloke pretending to be a Muslim woman”, I didn’t complain. Mercifully, I’d discovered some backbone by the time I was told to find some burkha-clad shoppers (spot the trend?) to pose with for a picture – dressed in just a pair of skintight M&S underpants.

Forget journalistic merit, I heard this was just an ill-conceived ploy to land an advertising contract with the chain. Admittedly, that was unusual. Often we hacks write vacuous puff pieces about things you own. Few would deny there’s one hell of an incestuous orgy of cross-promotion to leer at down at Northern & Shell HQ.

Never mind that it insults the intelligence of amoebas when your readers are breathlessly informed the week’s telly highlights include OK! TV and the Vanessa Feltz Show.

I suspect you see a perfect circle. I see a downward spiral. I see a cascade of shit pirouetting from your penthouse office, caking each layer of management, splattering all in between.

Daily Star favourite Kelly Brook recently said in an interview: “I do Google myself. Not that often, though, and the stories are always rubbish. “There was a story that I’d seen a hypnotherapist to help me cut down on the time I take to get ready to go out. Where do they get it from?”

Maybe I should answer that one. I made it up. Not that it was my choice; I was told to. At 6pm and staring at a blank page I simply plucked it from my arse. Not that it was all bad. I pocketed a £150 bonus. You may have read some of my other earth-shattering exclusives.

‘Michael Jackson to attend Jade Goody’s funeral’. (He didn’t.) ‘Robbie pops ‘pill at heroes concert’. (He didn’t either.) ‘Matt Lucas on suicide watch’. (He wasn’t.) ‘Jordan turns to Buddha.’ (She might have, but I doubt it.)

I know showbiz is the sand on which your readership is built. And while I didn’t write tittle-tattle dreaming of Pulitzers, I never knew I’d fear a Booker Prize nomination instead.

You own the Daily Star, and it’s your right to assign whatever news values to it you choose. On the awe-inspiring day millions took to the streets of Egypt to demand freedom, your paper splashed on “Jordan … the movie.”

A snub to history? Certainly. An affront to journalism? Most definitely. Your undeniable right? Yes, sir.

But what brings me here today is those times you dispense with those skewed news values entirely by printing stories which couldn’t stand up to a gnat’s fart.

It’s those times when you morph from being a newspaper owner into the inventor of a handy product for lining rabbit hutches. While the Daily Star isn’t the only paper with a case to answer, I reckon it’s certainly the ugliest duckling of an unsightly flock.

Its endemic lack of self-perception really is something to behold. It only takes a comedian to make an ironic gag about racism and your red top is on hand to whip up a storm, demanding the culprit commit hara-kiri beside Stephen Lawrence’s shrine.

Yet turn the page and Muslims are branded “beardies” or “fanatics”, and black-on-black killings (“Bob-slayings”, as I’ve cringingly heard them called in your newsroom) can be resigned to a handful of words, shoehorned beneath a garish advert.

Outraged, we brand other celebrities sexist, demanding such dinosaurs be castrated on the steps of the Natural History Museum.

Then with our anger sated it’s back to task, arranging the day’s news based on the size of the subjects’ breasts.

Were this the behaviour of an actual person they would be diagnosed schizophrenic and bundled into the nearest white van. But because the mouthpiece is a newspaper, it’s all supposed to be ok. Well, here’s some breaking news – it’s far, far worse. When looking for the source of this hypocritical behaviour, I didn’t have to go far.

The Daily Star seems to set out its editorial stall as a newspaper written for, and fighting for, the (preferably white) working class.

Yet as a proprietor you recently dropped out of the Press Complaints Commission, leaving those self-same people with no viable recourse if they find themselves libelled or defamed on your pages.

Your red top drones on about British jobs for British workers, yet your own reporters’ pay has been on ice so long it was last seen living in an igloo and hunting seals.

A great swathe of your readership lives in the north of England, yet you employ just one staff reporter outside London. One. I guess it makes the same sense to you up there in your ivory tower as it does to me down here on my high horse. I get it, I do.

Because no one has time for subtlety of language, of thought, when they’re scrabbling to pump out a national newspaper with fewer staff hacks than it takes to man a yacht.

When you assign budgets thinner than your employee-issue loo roll there’s little option but for Daily Star editors to build a newspaper from cut-and-paste-jobs off the Daily Mail website, all tied together with gormless press releases. But when that cheap-and-cheerful journalism gives the oxygen of publicity to corrosive groups like the EDL – safe in the knowledge it’s free news about which they’ll never complain – it’s time to lay down my pen.

You may have heard the phrase, “The flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil sets off a tornado in Texas.” Well, try this: “The lies of a newspaper in London can get a bloke’s head caved in down an alley in Bradford.”

If you can’t see that words matter, you should go back to running porn magazines. But if you do, yet still allow your editors to use inciteful over insightful language, then far from standing up for Britain, you’re a menace against all things that make it great.

I may have been just a lowly hack in your business empire, void of the power to make you change your ways, but there is still one thing that I can do; that I was trained to do; that I love to do: write about it.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Peppiatt

This article is reproduced from the Collective Resistance website:

Here’s a funny and welcome thing. Irish Stalinism has been wiped out as an electoral force and the United Left Alliance (ULA), which for practical purposes is currently an electoral coalition between two organisations of Trotskyist heritage, gets five TDs elected as the economy melts down.

Ireland has come late to this process of broad left electoral formations. There have two or three attempts in England, the Scottish Socialist Party has declined from its high water mark, Germany has had Die Linke, Italy Rifondazione Comunista, France the NPA and so on. Some of these projects have been less successful than others but it is possible to draw some conclusions from their experiences. Of particular importance is the way organisations with a strong insistence on members agreeing with each other in public behave in non-revolutionary formations.

To put it another way – just how much “democratic centralism” do you insist on? “Not very much” should be the answer. Here’s why.

The ULA’s result has shown that a small vanguard in the Irish working class has drawn the conclusion that it needs a political expression which offers a radical anti-capitalist solution to the crisis. It has rejected the Labour Party as part of that solution. There is a case to be made that Sinn Fein’s vote is part of the same trend but even on a foggy night you can’t really confuse the Shinners with a left organisation if you have a serious approach to class politics.

The other thing the ULA result shows is that if the left moves beyond a conception of politics which involves selling a view papers, recruiting a handful of members and seeing other socialist organisations as more significant threats than the ruling class that it has a chance of becoming a material factor in the political arena. This is something that a propagandist orientation can never achieve. It offers the chance of having a real impact on mass struggles and big mobilisations. A high point of this approach was Rifondzione Comunista’s participation in the Genoa demonstrations when it was able to bring tens of thousands of class conscious and organised workers.

In the comments section on this site it’s reported by someone in a position to know that both the Socialist Party and the SWP are “advocating moving towards a party”. Self-evidently a new situation and new forces requires a different form of organisation. Irish workers have had quite a long time to decide whether or not they wanted to join either of these organisation as currently constituted and while both are certain to grow in the coming months neither is in a position to offer anything approaching the potential influence of a bigger and broader ULA.

There is a negative experience to learn from. During its time in Respect the SWP effectively ran it as a wholly owned subsidiary in which it made all the major decisions. All SWP members always voted the same way at meeting and arguments were won by organisational rather than political means, usually by packing meetings. It was a way of working which strangled Respect’s development and should be avoided like a Hugh Grant film on a Saturday night. Members of the broad party have to be confident that views won’t be imposed and that what they say can change the outcome of debates.

For the organised revolutionary currents that means breaking with the shibboleth that they all have to vote the same way and sing the same song all the time. On all but issues of principle such as voting for cuts individuals should be free to vote according to how they are persuaded by the arguments. This may be something of a break from tradition but it’s a tradition the early Trotskyist movement learned from Stalinists so it’s well worth shattering.

The crisis has presented the Irish left with a chance to create a new model of a militant, anti-capitalist party. One of the keys to its success will be the extent to which it creates one which is pluralistic and democratic.

MONDAY 7th MARCH
7.00pm
BROADMEAD BAPTIST CHURCH
UNION STREET,
BROADMEAD, BRISTOL

Broadmead Baptist Church is in a row of shops at the bottom of Union St, just before the junction with The Horsefair by Primark. We are in the Meeting Room on the first floor which is not a place of worship. There is full disabled access by lift and disabled parking bays around the corner in The Horsefair.

Agenda

1. Apologies
2. Reports on activities and future activities (including TUC demonstration, 26 March)
3. Themed discussion (to be arranged, probably on the attacks on the NHS
4. AOB

Events, week beginning 28 February

Tuesday 1 March – BADACA Health Group meeting -6.00pm, Brsitol County Sports Club, Colston St.
Friday 4 March -    BADACA Steering Committee meeting – 5.30pm, Hamilton House, Stokes Croft
Saturday 5 March – Bristol Older People’s Forum – leafletting in Fishponds. Meet 11.00am in park by church.
Demonstration Against the Cuts in Cardiff. See BADACA website – Events – for details

BADACA Social, Sat 5th March – 8.00pm onwards, the Grain Barge, Mardyke Wharf, Hotwells Road.
Please come along – it’s a chance to meet and talk to other people involved in the campaign. Tickets from Mike Wheeler mikeyw45@hotmail.com or pay on door.

Sunday 6 March BADACA Sponsored Walk around Bristol city centre and the harbour.
We need the money. Information from Pete McGahan petermcgahan@tiscali.co.uk