Sounds Like Freedom - celebrate the Arab Spring

Sounds Like Freedom is this year's Philosophy Football Christmas Party. The evening is a celebration of protest song, verse, street art and football in the year of the Arab Spring. 

Featuring the brilliant poetry of Lemn Sissay, songs from Grace Petrie and Robb Johnson, with a headline performance by the sensational Palestinian artist Reem Kelani. With contributions from photographer Jess Hurd, music writer Dorian Lynskey (author of 33 Revolutions per Minute) and photo-journalist William Parry (author of Against the Wall).

A fundraiser for Palestine Solidarity, the night is generously supported by the trade union PCS and Thompsons solicitors.

Friday 16 December at one of North London's premier theatre pubs, The New Red Lion, 271 City Road, London EC1. Tickets are just £9.99 from HERE or call 01273 471 721 to book your place.

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The Struggle Continues!

Bethnal Green, London, 1978

A Luta Continua! (The Struggle Continues!)

Side Gallery, 9 Side, Newcastle, NE1 3JE (until 28 May)
11am-5pm, Tuesday-Saturday.
See http://www.amber-online.com/

From the Jarrow Crusade to the Arab Revolutions and 26 March - Mark Tyers reviews this timely exhibition of resistance.

Newcastle's Side Gallery has recently had its Arts Council funding axed, so what better time to host an exhibition of classic and contemporary photographs, documenting acts of resistance from the streets of Newcastle, London and around the world?

A miners' support group banner leads a mass of people across the Wearmouth bridge - Anti-racists block the route of the National Front in Lewisham 1977 - A temporary standoff in Trafalgar Square between the poll tax rioters and a line of police separated by a no-mans-land of tarmac littered with placards.

A timeline of resistance, starting with black and white stills, eventually winds its way into a contemporary display of digital images. The focus is largely on street demonstrations, displaying a huge array of demonstrations covering issues from racism and poverty to unfair taxes and public sector cutbacks. The diversity of issus highlighted is a strength of this inspiring photographic exhbition.

'Resistance happens - and will be celebrated', seems to be the main message.

In the later section entitled 'get involved', the student revolts of late 2010 are pictured among other protests which have happened in the last decade. These include a series of images from an anti-war protest in New Mexico in 2003, a backlit 'Globalise Resistance' banner being marched down a London street, and a section of stunning images from the Egpytian and Tunisian revolutions.

It is in this section that the exhibition makes its only jarring note. Amidst a sea of protesting students, anti-war campaigners and other progressives, an aggressive nationalistic flottilla of EDL images sprawls into view. Waving an Osama Bin Laden figure around, draping St George's flags on a portacabin, flashing to the camera - they've been taken by a photographer who has clearly gained the racists' trust.

The lack of any accomapanying critical commentary, combined with a sparse number of images documenting the anti-racist counter demonstrations, could suggest that regressive racist protests against Muslims are no diferent from demonstrations against nuclear wepaons.

The exhibition concludes, however, with 26 March 2011: a woman, post-demo, leaning against a wall reading a Coalition of Resistance broadsheet.

There's something for everyone who has ever been on, or been inspired by, a demonstration. As an added bonus, local protestors will also enjoy trying to spot people they know in some of the images - I know I did!

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They destroy, we create: join Artists of the Resistance

This letter is published in today's Guardian:

'Len McCluskey calls for a "broad strike movement" to stop the coalition's "explicitly ideological" programme of cuts. Government cuts are decimating education, welfare, health, sports and the arts. We are told that they are inevitable; that the only choice we have is between music classes for our kids or care for our elderly.

We do not accept that jobs, services and the quality of life have to be jettisoned for the greed of those who are asked to sacrifice nothing. Everything that is not immediately of use to the corporate agenda is to be placed on a pay-as-you-go principle. Meanwhile funding for theatre, film, music and other arts projects is to return to the Victorian notion of finding patrons, drawn from the people who have their own agendas.

In the face of those who exercise their power to destroy, we need to create. We urge all those who work in the arts to join us at "Artists of the Resistance" in opposing the cuts.'


Iain Banks, writer
Peter Kennard, visual artist
AL Kennedy, writer
Miriam Margolyes, actor
Michael Rosen, author and poet
Martin Rowson, cartoonist
Janet Suzman, actor
Timberlake Wertenbaker, playwright
Andy de la Tour, actor
Alan Gibbons, children's author
Susie Meszaros, musician
Cat Picton Phillipps, visual artist
Leon Rosselson, singer, songwriter & author
Helen Simpson, writer
Sue Ahmet, actor
Shaun Askew, animator
Shabina Aslam, theatre director
Anne Aylor, writer & ballet teacher
Vanessa Badham, writer
Jordan Baseman, video artist
Elizabeth Beech, artistic director,The Phoenix Project
William Bell
Maria Birmingham, animator
Annie Bishop
Cecily Bomberg, writer
Sean Bonney, poet
Phil Branston
Stephen Carley, AV artist
Florence Curtis
Tony Dowling, TUC
Zack Dowson
Chris Easton, North East Unison
Karl Benjamin Frankson, artist
Jill Gibbon, artist
Yaron Golan, music producer
Marilyn Halpin
Joseph Healy, disability worker
Simone Hodgson
Matt Houlihan, actor
Camilla Howalt, artist
Diane Jones
Angela Jane Kennedy, artist
Fin Kennedy, playwright
Rachel Kirk
Ol'ga Kretz, film-maker
Lucy Lepchani, writer & poet
Michael Lowe, artist
Fiona MacDonald, opera singer
Mel McCree, writer & artist
Carol Meredith
Sue Mitchell
Carol Mottershead, dancer
Hugh Nicholson
Conor O'Kane, artist and dancer
Jane Park
Lynne Parker, Funny Women
Romayne Phoenix, visual artist
Ben Ponton, amino artist and arts producer
Konstantina Ritsou-Zavolia, author & director
Derek Robertson
Dee Shaw
Patricia Shrigley, video artist
Patrick Simons, artist
Patrick Snape
Georgie Stagg, Museum Association
Rebecca Thorn, musician
Geoff Tibbs
Tabitha Troughton, writer
Charlotte Turton, artist
Elizia Volkmann, writer and artist
Michael Walling, artistic director, Border Crossings
Joanne Walker, CoR Tyne & Wear
Debra Watson
David Wilson, publisher
Jan Woolf, writer
Tom Wood

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Artists of the Resistance

From this report of last night's launch of Artists of the Resistance:

'The cuts are ideological and we need to counter the view that the ‘deficit’ and the ‘debt’ are absolutes and ‘God-Givens’; that jobs, services and the quality of life are to be sacrificed for a problem created by the bankers and not by the people.

A fightback against cuts is an opportunity to reach out to the wider community and create a different and better society.

If the present cuts continue the arts will become more not less exclusive with access limited to those who have the money to pay. The closing of public libraries is the most obvious example. They are where literature, art and culture are available to everyone without charge. Some authorities are selling them off, others offering them to the ‘consumer’ on the principle of ‘if you want them buy them’.

The public are told that the cuts are as inevitable as rain and that their only choice is to prioritise services when we must fight to keep all services and refuse to take part in this ‘choice’. It’s not a matter of libraries or care for the elderly, but libraries and care for the elderly. Indeed more and better libraries and better care for the elderly!

The arts are integrated with the wider economy so that any cuts negatively affects that economy. This was well put by two animators who had learned their skills as a result of receiving the soon to be abolished Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA). They now work in the animation industry (games and video production) which would now be starved of future talent.'

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Philosophy Football's 'Hopemas' party

From Philosophy Football:

'Why Hopemas? Because the defeat of the BNP in Barking and the humiliation of their hateful leader, Nick Griffin, was one of the great signs of hope in 2010.

Philosophy Football's Hopemas Christmas party is on Friday 17 December and is generously sponsored by the PCS trade union. It's a fantastic line-up!

Featuring the superb poetry of Lemn Sissay . Performing a special version of her hit Edinburgh show 'Afroblighty' (on nationwide tour in 2011) the supremely talented comic Andi Osho. Rap mixed with comedy from Doc Brown opens the night. And filling the dancefloor into the early hours, music from the Melstars sound system.

With a review of the year from Clive Bloom, author of the hugely topical Violent London : 2000 Years of Riots, Rebels and Revolts , PCS National Executive Member Zita Holbourne, Zaiba Malik (author of the August R4 book of the week We are a Muslim,Please), Owen Hatherley (author of the recently published book A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain), and Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty.

Just a few handfuls of tickets left, just £8.99 and each ticket is a £5 OFF voucher on Philosophy Football shirts on the night, so if you combine the evening with your Christmas shopping the night costs less than a fiver.

At the brilliant theatre-pub The New Red Lion, 271 City Road London EC1V 1LA in Islington. Show starts 7pm.

Book either HERE or call 020 8802 3499.'
 
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Captain SKA's 'Liar Liar' for XMAS number one - available now!

Released 12th December for XMAS no 1. On I-tunes - download HERE - and all other digital shops.

Proceeds to: Crisis, Disability Alliance, FalseEconomy and Women's Health Matters.

Launch gig for "Liar Liar" and FalseEconomy website 13th December, Vibe Bar Featuring Captain SKA, comedian Josie Long, Hackney Colliery band and DJ Jamie Renton (Chilli Fried)




Facebook page HERE
13 Dec launch event: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/100780
False Economy website: http://www.falseeconomy.org.uk/

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30th anniversary of John Lennon's death

It is 30 years today since John Lennon was killed. On the eve of what is set to be a historic youth revolt, it seems appropriate to highlight and celebrate Lennon's radical streak.

Philosophy Football has a new shirt in honour:

A working class hero is still something to be
John Lennon 1940-80

'John Lennon's classic tribute to where he came from, roots he remained proud of, and loyal to, come what may. Special offer - buy the shirt and 'I'm not the only one' mug is half-price.'

Check out the shirt and mug, and order yours, HERE

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Artists Against Austerity

Age of Austerity - A Revue

Friday 26 November · 6-11pm

Hyem Bar, 224 Chillingham Road, Newcastle 

Organised by Coalition of Resistance (Tyne and Wear), on the eve of the National Conference

Musicians, artists, writers and performers review the Age of Austerity, a free multi-media art event, featuring:

• Hayley Hare
• Anvil Springsteen
• GMC
• Dee Shaw
• Angela Kennedy
• The Unstable Tables

plus a poetry slam

Exhibition opens 6pm, performances 7.30-11pm

Invite people via the Facebook Event (click on 'Select Guests to Invite' below the flyer image).

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Stop cuts to arts funding, say 19 former Turner Prize winners

'More than 100 of the UK's leading artists, including almost every winner of the Turner prize, have warned that government cuts risk destroying the country's "remarkable and fertile landscape of culture and creativity".

Their extraordinary open letter to the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, also sent to the Guardian, has among its many signatories David Hockney, Antony Gormley, Tracey Emin, Sam Taylor-Wood, Anish Kapoor, Damien Hirst, Grayson Perry, Steve McQueen, Bridget Riley, Wolfgang Tillmans, the Chapman brothers and Marc Quinn. It warns that proposed cuts to arts and museum funding could obliterate decades of work done creating a British cultural scene "that is the envy of the world".

"It enriches the lives of millions of Britons and attracts millions more visitors from other countries. It does all this at a cost that is no more than a tiny fraction of the national budget," says the letter. It is the latest salvo in a wider campaign that includes a series of new artworks by those involved.

The artists, among them 19 Turner prize winners and a further 28 previous nominees, say: "We appeal to the government not to slash funding to the arts and heritage. It risks destroying this remarkable and fertile landscape of culture and creativity, and the social and economic benefits it brings to all. We recognise that cuts and efficiencies are necessary, but the 25% or more funding cuts being considered will sabotage Britain's unparalleled achievements in this area."

Most at risk, they warn, will be smaller regional museums and art galleries, many of which gave them and others early inspiration. The proposed deep cuts could mean hundreds of institutions either close or radically cut back their operations.'

Via The Guardian - read the rest HERE.

I've previously blogged about this HERE.

Image: Mark Wallinger, Reckless

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When Nicky Wire met Tony Benn

I've just watched a rather strange (in a nice way) video. Three people in a room: Tony Benn, Nicky Wire of the Manic Street Preachers, music writer (and Manics biographer) Simon Price.

This is like a very far-fetched dream I might have had in my teenage years. I've been a socialist activist since the age of 14 and Benn has been a prominent and inspirational figure on the left throughout the years since then, one who I have heard speak many times. The politically engaged Manics were once my favourite band, while Price was the music journalist I read most devotedly (I was a music press obsessive in the mid and late-90s, with inky fingers every Wednesday as I devoured Melody Maker and NME, so this is no light praise). 

Seeing them together has an unreal quality, but the conversation gets going after a rather awkward start. It's very good after around 10 minutes, with Benn insightful about the Labour Party, democracy, political movements and more. It's also interesting - as Price notes in his introduction - for the often politically gloomy and pessimistic Nicky Wire to interact with someone as determinedly optimistic as Tony Benn (it ends with the latter urging a much younger man, "Keep going, don't give up").

Watch the video (and read Simon Price's intro) HERE.

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Save the Arts: over 100 artists launch campaign to stop funding cuts

'Over 100 leading artists – among them David Hockney, Damien Hirst, Anish Kapoor, Jeremy Deller and Antony Gormley – have joined together to fight government cuts in one area where Britain still leads the world: culture.'

The campaign launches today, with a brilliant new animation by David Shrigley, An Important Message About the Arts, that ponders such weighty matters as public subsidy and public service – oh, and asks whether Tracey Emin is worth as much as a fire engine.'

Via the Coalition of Resistance website.

You can see who supports the campaign and sign the petition, which will be submitted to Culture Secretary Jeremy 'Rhyming Slang' Hunt (pictured, with David Cameron), HERE.

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Eminem/Rihanna: glamorising domestic violence?

I'm a little late with this one, but here are three perspectives on the contentious single 'Love the Way You Lie', all of them interesting and thought-provoking. (By featuring just excerpts I don't do any of the writers proper justice, so I recommend clicking the links and reading more).

The first two views, from Jenny McCartney and Laurie Penny, both suggest the latest Eminem song, featuring Rihanna, glamorises violence against women. Their articles aren't principally focused on reviewing the song: the former is writing (in last Sunday's Observer) about the issue of 'sexualisation' of girls through the influence of pop culture, and the latter is critiquing (in the Telegraph) the new 'brutality chic'.

Reviewing the song and video, Elly Badcock and Jo Gough are far more sympathetic to the controversial track, arguing it is more complex than it might first seem.

Jenny McCartney in the Telegraph:

Eminem's voice describes how he has hit his girlfriend, and feels ashamed: he woos her back with promises of change, but remarks to himself that "if she ever tries to f---ing leave again, I'm gonna tie her to the bed and set this house on fire."

At which point, the lip-glossed Rihanna (who has herself been the victim of domestic violence) sings the languorous chorus: "Just gonna stand there and watch me burn / But that's all right because I like the way it hurts." Given the specificity of the Eminem persona's plans, the burning doesn't sound too metaphorical to me.

The reception has been split between those who have criticised Eminem for romanticising domestic violence, and those who applaud him for raising the "difficult issue" at all. I don't get the latter argument. Of course he's raising it: the problem is what he does with it. The rather brutal love glamorised here is intensely passionate and fated to end in destruction: specifically, that of the woman.






Laurie Penny in the Observer:

'Suggesting that women are sexual beings is not problematic, particularly in pop, which has always commodified desire, but suggesting that women are submissive sexual objects who invite abuse and violence is deeply problematic. That narrative is central to the language of pop music today.

Last week, Eminem and Rihanna's video for their latest single, "Love the Way You Lie", was seen by millions of young people; the song appears to glamorise abusive relationships, with Rihanna, who is well-known as a victim of domestic violence and has been celebrated for dumping the boyfriend who assaulted her, singing about a lover who likes to "stand there and watch me burn/But that's alright because I like the way it hurts".

Yes, we can see almost all of Rihanna's legs in the video, but the type of passive, meekly brutalised sexuality being represented here is infinitely more troubling than its extent.'

Elly Badcock and Jo Gough at Counterfire:

Eminem and Rihanna’s recent chart-topper, Love the Way You Lie, tackles the painful and prominent issue of domestic violence without resorting to shallow stereotypes. The song follows the story of a violent relationship, narrated by the abuser. We are privy to the twists and turns in logic that run through the abuser's mind as he attempts to justify his behaviour – “but your temper’s just as bad as mine is”, he pleads.

Interestingly though, we also glimpse the moments of clarity – the shame and the galling realisation of what it means to be a woman-beater. And it is this that makes Love the Way You Lie both fascinating and instinctively repulsive – this is not the ramblings of a deluded maniac but of a troubled man struggling to draw lines between love, fear, hate and anger.

Rihanna is noticeably absent for the majority of this track, coming in only for the chorus: “Just gonna stand there and watch me burn; well that’s alright, because I love the way it hurts. Just gonna stand there and hear me cry, well that's all right because I love the way you lie."

This is, to say the least, uncomfortable – a song about domestic violence in which the only female voice is reduced to painfully affirming, over and over, how much she loves the beatings...

The idea of the loving relationship is why so many victims return, and through the chorus repeating that she loves the hurt and lies it highlights the psychological hold within violent relationships. Love is used as a reason for both the violence and for staying together.

There is a quiet strength to Rihanna's singing, and coupled with the ironic undertone of the lyrics, the chorus could also be reaching out to perpetrators. Of course the woman doesn't love it, and no matter how much he excuses or gets her to excuse the violence, it is not justified...

The song and video leaves you with a haunting insight into the cycle of domestic violence and where it can end up- and gives the message to leave the situation before it is too late. The song's message is for both the victim and perpetrator, sung by a victim and perpetrator who are no longer in abusive relationships. It sends out the message that there is a way out.'

And my own view?

Although I admire the subtlety of Elly and Jo's review, and think they make interesting points, I'm ultimately not convinced. I think the video is deeply problematic - it makes a violent relationship appear sexy, blurring distinctions between erotic role-play and domestic abuse - but even if you ignore that and focus only on the song, there are serious problems.

The male voice is dominant - and it's not a terribly self-questioning one. Rihanna's voice does indeed have a certain strength - and her sections are musically seductive - but there's no avoiding the problems with her lyrics.

Crucially, the whole thing is framed in terms of love: this is a love duet (a twisted and unusual one, yes, but that's still what it is). And that's a problem, because domestic violence is ultimately about power rather than love.

It's correct, admittedly, that 'love' is a major psychological factor in why many women in such situations will cling on to the relationship. This track gives eloquent expression to that, I agree, and artistically that gives it a lift.

The difficulty is that it's framed in a way that is far too uncritical - the lyrics are reinforcing that impulse ('stay because I'm in love') rather than challenging it. It also obscures the other, less sentimental, factors involved in women remaining in abusive relationships - a point well made by McCartney elsewhere in her article.

Finally, I'm unconvinced there is any kind of journey to enlightenment in the lyrics. I can't detect some new self-knowledge on the abuser's part by the end - just more self-justification, which leaves any 'message' at best ambiguous.


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Revolution on film

I'm currently listening to Arcade Fire's new album, 'The Suburbs'. Today is the 70th anniversary of the death of Trotsky, who in 1905 was chair of the Petrograd soviet (workers' council).

That's two very good excuses for posting this popular YouTube classic, which combines an Arcade Fire track with highlights from Sergei Eisenstein's film 'Battleship Potemkin', a montage of memorable moments depicting the mutinous multitude of 1905 (sorry, no excuse for excessive alliteration).





One other thing: as tributes to Trotsky go, nothing quite compares to THIS.


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Michael Rosen on the books that made him

Michael Rosen has selected several books which have been especially important to him. In a fascinating, and rather enchanting, podcast for The Guardian's Books site, he talks about these books and how they have influenced him and his life.

It's a kind of Desert Island Discs for literary lefties, with all sorts of insights into literature, Marxist political traditions and Rosen's own experiences. The intro to the Guardian's 'The Books That Made Me' feature notes:

'He also explains why, in terms of the books he loves, he's "a rootless cosmopolitian", who gets as much pleasure from German expressionist plays and books of French history as from English Victorian novels. He tells how his favourite character from German children's literature, Till Eulenspiegel, inspired him to plunder folk stories for some of his own most famous books. And he describes how a recent encounter with a snake took him straight back to the old school poetry anthology in which he discovered the writing of DH Lawrence.'

More importantly than all that political stuff, however, Rosen reveals the creative process behind his hugely popular 'We're Going On a Bear Hunt' (I can't help thinking the Guardian has missed a chance for a prominent 'world exclusive' story here). I also liked his coining of the phrase "rooted cosmopolitan" and was pleased to learn he shares with me a "sacriligeous" approach to books, scribbling all over their pages (except poetry). Listen and enjoy.



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Mutiny puts the fashion industry on trial

'Fashion faces trial by the kangaroo court which is Mutiny as the revolutionary collective examines how the rag trade makes its riches.

Fashion on Trial is a fancy dress event and will open at 6pm on Wednesday, September 29 at the avant garde Resistance Gallery in east London's Bethnal Green with speed debating followed by discussion, entertainment and general mayhem.

The bi-monthly "on trial" events are organised by a rag-tag of socialists, anarchists, environmentalists, LGBT campaigners including trade unionists, students, campaigners and general troublemakers.

Mutiny is a mutlimedia event with film showings, art exhibitions and live streaming. Footage of the most recent event, The Media on Trial is now online. A 5-minute short introducing the Mutiny project is now in production.'

Read more at The Sauce

Click HERE to book your tickets online

Join the Facebook group
Follow on Twitter
Read the Mutiny website

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Stop cuts to arts funding in the North East

The Guardian reports on opposition to arts funding cuts in the North East:

'Artists and arts chiefs from north-east England joined forces yesterday to warn of the dangerous impact of "deep or hasty" funding cuts.

The north-east has been a cultural success story over the past decade, from the arrival of the Baltic for contemporary art and the Sage for music to theatrical success at Northern Stage and Live Theatre.

Yesterday playwright Lee Hall, who wrote Billy Elliot and the Broadway-bound The Pitmen Painters, said huge cuts for arts organisations would be "economically and culturally disastrous". He said arts investment returns much more to the economy than it takes out.

"Theatre in Britain is an economic powerhouse and the VAT on the West End alone brings in more than the subsidy – it's simply crazy and short-sighted to cut off the blood supply. Nearly every commercial cultural project providing jobs for thousands of people was in some way initially funded by government subsidy. This is a cultural disaster and economic insanity. I strongly urge Jeremy Hunt and the coalition government to think again."'

It's entirely understandable that Lee Hall and others quoted in the article focus mainly (if not exclusively) on economic arguments, rather than musing on the artistic, emotional and spiritual worth of culture, to make the case against the cuts. They know that government ministers couldn't give a damn about anything other than the 'bottom line' of what's good for business.

They are of course correct: cultural investment in this region has reaped financial rewards. But it's also worth remembering there are other, less measurable but very good, reasons for sustaining arts funding. Lee Hall, writer of Billy Elliott and Pitmen Painters (both celebrations of working class creativity and cultural participation), certainly knows this.

I hope this co-ordinated appeal is merely a first step and the writers, artists, theatre practitioners and others behind it continue to campaign against arts cuts. The theatres, galleries and music venues they represent are valued and well-loved around here.

Normally the case for the arts - seen as a frivolous extra, compared to health and education - can seem tricky to make. But it's a vital case to argue, for economic reasons and because of the broader benefits. The defence of arts funding should be viewed as part of a larger campaign in defence of the public sphere.

State funding of arts is, lest we forget, profoundly egalitarian, enabling the majority to access what could otherwise be limited to a privileged minority. Preserving that support is crucial for more than just those directly dependent upon it for their jobs.

Image: The Pitmen Painters, local playwright Lee Hall's wonderful play about the Northumberland miners who became acclaimed painters, was first performed at Newcastle's Live Theatre.


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Pixies cancel concert in Israel after Gaza Flotilla killings

The national demo in London was great yesterday. Estimated at 20,000 people, it had a powerful atmosphere: vibrant, diverse and hopeful. We commemorated those killed and determined to ensure they didn't die in vain, with a tremendous sense of purpose to build a bigger solidarity movement.

After yesterday's global day of protest, comes welcome news today that the Pixies join Gil Scott Heron and Elvis Costello in cancelling a gig in Israel. This is another boost to all of us promoting boycott, divestment and sanctions targeted at Israel.

Associated Press reports:

JERUSALEM — The U.S. rock band Pixies has canceled a concert in Tel Aviv this week in the wake of Israel's deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.

The group's Tel Aviv promoter, Shuki Weiss, relayed a statement from the band announcing the cancellation "with great regret."

The band did not specify why it was pulling out of the gig, but organizers say the decision was related to last week's naval raid, which killed nine pro-Palestinian activists.

Various artists have recently come under heavy pressure from activists to boycott Israel because of its treatment of the Palestinians. Elvis Costello recently canceled a planned concert to protest Israeli policies.

Others, such as Elton John and Rod Stewart, are still planning to play Israel this summer.


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A little light relief

On Sunday, Phil BC was mischievously music meme-ing again. Prompted by this I couldn't resist looking up what was number one when I was born. At first I was disappointed, thinking it was some obscure track I'd never even heard of, but it turns out to be that reggae-ish one that goes 'I don't like cricket'. Ah, that one...



Just days after I entered this world, 10cc were knocked off the top spot by Olivia Newton John and John Travolta. I once upset someone by saying Grease in reply to them asking for my favourite film musical. I think you're supposed to choose something more grown up or sophisticated, but I still reckon Grease is the perfect musical and a high point in the history of Western civilisation. Anyhow, here's the number one single from just after I was born - and in this version you can freshen up on your French at the same time!




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Angry Young Men? 1956 and all that

The death of writer Alan Sillitoe, aged 82, has prompted a flurry of references to the 'Angry Young Men' generation of British playwrights and novelists. Over half a century ago a wave of new, young writers, some of them from working class backgrounds, challenged the stuffy conventions of postwar British theatre and literature. Sillitoe, who never felt comfortable with being labelled an 'Angry Young Man' (to put it politely), was one of the most prominent.

1956 is the year most critics and historians refer to as the landmark in the emergence of this generation, primarily because of the premiere of John Osborne's play 'Look Back in Anger'. It seems very tame now - and in my view 'The Entertainer', which followed soon after, is Osborne's real classic from this period - but at the time it generated much excitable comment. Kenneth Tynan, the most influential theatre critic of the age, famously said he couldn't love anyone who didn't want to go and see it.

Sillitoe's novel Saturday Night, Sunday Morning was part of what followed: published in 1958, and adapted into a film soon after, it was incredibly distinctive because it presented the experiences of an ordinary young factory worker.

In the areas of film, theatre and literature it was a shock to see not only working class people being represented prominently, but taken seriously and given complex characterisations which evoked the tensions of the time. In the 1950s Tynan had penned a very witty and mocking piece about what he called 'Loamshire' plays, in which the setting is always a genteel drawing room of a large country house, everyone speaks in a terribly stilted way, and working class people only appear as servants in the background. The new, post-'56 generation shattered the cosy complacency of that priveleged world.

Perhaps it is significant that 1956 was also of historic importance politically. The Suez crisis exposed the terminal decline of an exhausted British Empire, captured poetically in Osborne's 'The Entertainer', and there was widespread disillusionment with official Communism after the Soviet tanks crushed uprisings in Hungary.

In this country the New Left was born, influenced by those who left the Communist Party (disillusioned by the repression in Hungary) but also involving radicalised young people, who in the late 50s and early 60s would march with CND and question many of the assumptions of the postwar consensus.

The Angry Young Men were quickly joined, as the 60s got underway, by the Bright Young Satirists, poking fun at the powerful. One of the most famous sketches from 'Beyond the Fringe', the pathbreaking early 60s revue, was Peter Cook's mocking impersonation of Harold Macmillan, then Prime Minister, as a doddering old Tory duffer. This was regarded, when deference to those with power and privilege was still taken for granted, as remarkable.

That Was The Week That Was (TW3 for short), presented by that beacon of youthful subversiveness David Frost, broadcast weekly satire to millions in the early 60s. This innovative TV show signposted a shift in attitudes, most markedly amongst the young, which prefigured the cultural and political rebellions of the 1960s.

Sillitoe played his part in the cultural changes of the CND and New Left generation. He wasn't one of the most overtly political (like John Arden or, a little later, the Marxist playwright Edward Bond) and he largely ignored the rich and powerful who others were cocking a snook at. Neither was he artistically innovative to the same extent as Harold Pinter - but then, to be fair, very few people were.

He concentrated, instead, on dramatising the lives of those who had traditionally remained unseen. The frustrated young Arthur Seaton in Saturday Night, Sunday Morning is one example - and Albert Finney's embodiment of him in the 1960 film came to be viewed as representing a whole social phenomenon. Sillitoe was giving a voice to those he'd grown up with, but whose voices had rarely been heard in literary, theatrical or cinematic culture.

There was The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, again more famous as a film, which depicted a rebellious borstal boy. In fact Sillitoe, primarily because of these two films, was one of the writers principally responsible for the emergence in the 60s of British cinema which - in radically new ways - represented working class life.

Sillitoe was, alongside a number of other writers of his generation, almost unprecedented as a successful writer in having come from a working class background. He left school at 14 and, in his teenage years, was a keen reader alongside working in a factory. He had a tough time in his twenties: after getting tuberculosis while in the RAF, he spent several years recovering.

He went on to write many novels, but was also a poet and a writer of non-fiction and memoir. I suspect his dislike of the 'Angry Young Man' label was influenced by discomfort with the notion of being pigeonholed, when in fact his talents and subject matter were wide-ranging.

The Angry Young Man phenomenon was always politically complex. As the name suggests, it was still largely assumed that women would remain on the margins, although in theatre Joan Littlewood was as simultaneously artistically gifted and politically radical as any man. A number of writers, including Osborne, became more conservative; Kingsley Amis was sometimes seen as part of this wave, but he became a distinctly Grumpy Old Man of the Right. And it's undoubtedly true that what once seemed rebellious can now appear perfectly safe.

Despite all this, there are good reasons why I became so interested in the post-1956 era (especially in theatre) when I was a drama undergraduate a decade or so ago. What I found so intriguing and inspiring was the combination of political engagement and creativity: the passion for exploring our world - not merely individual lives as if they are floating free of society - so that human stories and dramas are bound up with big political themes.

There's still a lot we can take from that generation's search for a vocabulary - through theatre, literature, film - which is capable of achieving such ambitious aims.

This is also published at Counterfire.

Trotsky for a new generation... sort of

Via the Canadian movie industry:



I'm not sure what to say, but if you want to know more (and I know you do) see HERE.