![]() I was also writing about reggae and in my lunchtime buying punk 7’s and fanzines at Rock On’s stall, in a market behind Charing Cross Rd. ![]() For my part I was involved with the Communist Party and the Young Communist League. Sham 69 – RAR Brockwell ParkSyd Shelton’s photograph expose the ferocity of cultural difference being hammered out on Britain’s streets throughout the late 1970s. Out of that came Rock Against Racism (RAR) and between ’76 and ’81, the movement confronted racist ideology in the streets, parks and town halls of Britain. Punk had created a moral panic across the nation as banning orders prevented them from playing. They’d had enough of the harassment and ‘SUS’ laws. In 1976 Notting Hill carnival exploded as the youth took on police. Hoxton was home to the NF and not a safe place if you were Asian or Afro-Caribbean. ![]() As a Hackney resident, I recall the NF standing at the top of Ridley Road market, where the Mosleyites stood before them, selling their papers. It’s therefore timely that ABP has announced the first major exhibition of Syd Shelton’s photographs which capture in Black & White one of the most volatile periods in British post war history. The ground rules might have shifted with Islam painted as the enemy within but the relentless issue of immigration guarantees a racist undertow in Britain that is persistently fuelled by fear and topped up by the media, the arrival of UKIP and a complicit Tory government. L ast night, after watching Mona Chalabi’s ‘Is Britain Racist’ I had to wonder how far we’d come since the rise and demise of the National Front (NF) in the Seventies and early Eighties. Paul Simenon – The Clash : RAR Victorian Park
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