Viva Lewes Issue #128 May 2017

ON THIS MONTH: LITERATURE
Daniel Rachel
Author, Walls Come Tumbling Down
“It hasn’t seemed to have crossed
into public knowledge,” says
Daniel Rachel, “which is amazing
seeing as what a massive
effect it ended up having.”
He’s talking about a string of
“appalling racist comments”
which Eric Clapton made during
a gig he was performing in
Birmingham, in August 1976.
The aftermath of Clapton’s outburst
is the starting point of Rachel’s
painstakingly researched
book Walls Come Tumbling Down,
subtitled ‘The Music and Politics
of Rock Against Racism, 2 Tone
and Red Wedge’.
Photographer Red Saunders reacted by publishing
an open letter, signed by various associates,
reflecting their disgust. “The crucial line,” says
Daniel, “was ‘We want to organise a rank-andfile
movement against the racist poison in rock
music’”. Those interested were urged to write in
to an address headed ‘Rock Against Racism’. A
movement was born.
RAR’s remit was to organise gigs with “black
and white bands on the same stage, performing
separately, then jamming together at the end of
the evening”. They also launched a magazine,
Temporary Hoarding, which espoused “[progressive]
political views stretching beyond the issue
of racism”.
The late seventies was a bleak period for young
Britons to be growing up in. “Margaret Thatcher
won leadership of the Conservative Party, then
the election, and the country started suffering
from the brutal savagery of her government’s
policies.” The National Front was on the rise. As
a release from all the political and racial tension,
“the first generation of black kids growing up as
British subjects and disenfranchised
white kids started looking
to reggae and punk music.”
These two musical styles came
together at RAR gigs with
pairings such as Hersham punks
Sham 69 and Southall reggae
band Misty in Roots.
“Over a sixteen-year period
politics were to the fore in a
way that had never happened
before in pop music,” continues
Rachel. Influenced by RAR, in
1978 Jerry Dammers formed the
Specials, a punk-influenced ska
band with both black and white
members, and the 2 Tone label, an umbrella for
other likeminded bands. In 1985 protest singer
Billy Bragg started up Red Wedge, joining with
Paul Weller and Jimmy Somerville to play gigs
in aid of the Labour Party. In 1986 Dammers
formed Artists Against Apartheid, in solidarity
with black South Africans.
Walls Come Tumbling Down, taking its title from
Paul Weller’s Style Council anthem, takes us
through this period through the eyes of over 100
interviewees Rachel has tracked down - anyone
who was anyone in the movement - including
Red Saunders, Neil Kinnock, Billy Bragg and
Jerry Dammers. At 560 pages it’s a hefty read,
but it’s beautifully structured, as a vivid picture
emerges of how Rock Against Racism not only
helped shape the politics of a generation; it also
influenced the sound of the music they were
listening to. Nice one, Eric. Alex Leith
Daniel Rachel speaks at the Phoenix Centre,
Lewes, 8pm, Mon 8th (Labour Party open meeting,
free) and Waterstones, Brighton, 7.30pm, Wed 10th
(with June Miles-Kingston and Juliet de Valera, a
Brighton Festival/City Reads event, £5.90)
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