Billy Bragg: Music Needs to Get Political Again

How ironic that The Clash should be on the cover of the NME in the week that London was burning, that their faces should be staring out from the shelves as newsagents were ransacked and robbed by looters intent on anarchy in the UK. Touching too, that the picture should be from very early in their career – Joe with curly blond hair – for The Clash were formed in the wake of a London riot: the disturbances that broke out at the end of the Notting Hill Carnival of 1976.

At the time, the press reported it as the mindless violence of black youth intent on causing trouble; now we look back and recognise that it was the stirrings of what became our multicultural society – the moment when the first generation of black Britons declared that these streets belonged to them too.

The Notting Hill Riots of 35 years ago created a genuine ‘What The Fuck?’ moment – the first in Britain since the violent clashes between mods and rockers in the early 60s. While west London burned, the rest of society recoiled in terror at the anger they saw manifested on the streets of England. In the aftermath, severe jail sentences were handed down and police patrols stepped up in areas where there was a large immigrant population. Sound familiar?

But something else happened too – in the months that followed, bands appeared that sought to make sense of what went down on that hot August night. Aswad, Steel Pulse and Misty in Roots were among the reggae bands that stepped forward to speak for the black community.

Punk was galvanised into action by The Clash, whose debut album featured a picture of police charging towards black youth under the Westway on the back cover. Their first single, ‘White Riot’, was an explicit attempt to make a connection between the frustration faced by unemployed white youth and their black counterparts whose employment prospects were blighted by racism.

In the Clash interview from 1976 that was reprinted in the NME ‘riot issue’, Joe Strummer boldly said “We’re hoping to educate any kid who comes to listen us, just to keep them from joining the National Front”. That certainly worked in my case. When Notting Hill went up in smoke, I didn’t get it, yet, a year or so later, the first political activism that I ever took part in was the first Rock Against Racism Carnival in London. I’d been drawn by the fact that the Clash were top of the bill.

That event brought me into contact with some of the aforementioned British reggae bands, acts that had previously struggled to find white audiences. This coming together led directly to Two-Tone and to Artists Against Apartheid. These bands, black and white, didn’t end racism in Britain, but they helped me to understand why it had to be confronted...

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