ROCK AGAINST RACISM

I suppose there's a certain irony that, at a time when Enoch Powell is being held up by the right as some sort of political Nostradamus rather than being recognised as a sad delusional political suicide who made up a story about a constituent of his and thereby gained overnight notoriety, we are approaching the thirtieth anniversary of an event which depending on your political and social outlook was either Year Zero for British multiculturalism or the end of the universe, the start of Britain's long march to hell.

On 30th April 1978 100,000 people marched the six miles from Trafalgar Square through London's East End - the heart of National Front territory - to a Rock Against Racism concert in Victoria Park. X-Ray Spex, The Clash, Steel Pulse, and the Tom Robinson Band were on the bill - a diverse selection of music for a diverse multi-cultural crowd. Rock Against Racism had been formed in September 1976, ironically, given the times we now live in, as a response to a 'speech' by Eric Clapton during one of his concerts at Birmingham that Enoch Powell was right and that Britain was overcrowded. 1976 hadn't been a good year for race relations in London, as anybody old enough to have been at Notting Hill or seen the pictures on television of the carnival that year.

In many ways Rock Against Racism meets all the requirements of the rights view of those on the political left as yoghurt knitting, tree hugging, misery guts - after all the very notion of promoting racial harmony through music is a hippy ideal isn't it. Under the simple slogan "Love Music Hate Racism" the RAR sought to breaks down people's fear and mistrust of one another, a fear that goes largely unnoticed until pointed out by those with vested interests. The RAR and the ANL organised concerts and festivals all over Britain, attracting thousands of people to the biggest anti-racist events since the 1930s.

Living a hundred or so miles away from London on an accountancy students wage I couldn't go to the Victoria Park concert but I bought the t-shirts, the badges and I put my money where my mouth was and sent money to both RAR and the ANL - I still have my ANL badge, although the current organisation of that name isn't the same one that I joined over thirty years ago. My Mum told me that joining the ANL was a bad career move, she also said the same thing when I joined the Labour Party - I'd be put on a list and blacklisted she said - not sure what was being put in the water back in the 70's!

Of course at the root of the Powell debate is how you see multiculturalism. Do you see it as an imposition in your life, are you forced to love your black neighbour or do you just get on with life. As Mr Edwards so brilliantly pointed out on the 5Live Messageboard recently, and he'll have to excuse me for paraphrasing here, class and occupation are more of a commonality than colour and race. I get on with people who have common interests, not because they are white, born in Britain or Bermuda, Muslim, Catholic or Atheist - we get on because we get on.

Rock Against Racism could of course be seen as just another left wing gimmick. The bringing together of different cultures under a single musical umbrella, ella, ella (sorry Rhianna seems to have slipped in) to force people into liking bands they wouldn't otherwise get into. That may be so but it also helped bring the wider threat of the National Front to people's attention and I'd like to think that most people would find listening to a Bob Marley track more preferable than making monkey noises at black people.

The sad thing of course is that thirty years on not a great deal has changed. Fifteen years after Victoria Park and, therefore fifteen years ago, Stephen Lawrence was killed just because he was black. A man was attacked in Bradford last week simply because he was white. Racism plays on people's fears, fears promoted on a daily basis by newspapers, the media, the internet - the fear of going without, the fear of special treatment for non-whites or the constant bombardment from the pro-multiculturalists that we must all live together in some sort of flavourless ethnic soup where all our differences are no longer to be celebrated but to whisked out by some sort of giant Kenwood blender.