When Paul Furness read the letter in the NME he was working as a medical records clerk at Leeds General Infirmary. 'We had friends who were dockers who had become anti-racist after the Powell speech,' Roger Huddle recalls, 'and they provided the security for the gig because the NF were really active in the area.' Three months later, in November 1976, Rock Against Racism held its first ever gig, featuring Carol Grimes, in the Princess Alice pub in east London. Within a fortnight there were more than 600 replies. Who shot the Sheriff, Eric? It sure as hell wasn't you!' The letter urged those readers wanting to join Rock Against Racism to write to them. We want to organise a rank and file movement against the racist poison music. In the letter, published in the NME, Melody Maker, Sounds and the Socialist Worker, Saunders and other signatories including his friend Roger Huddle wrote: 'Come on Eric. 'I was a fan of the blues and had seen Clapton playing in the Sixties at the Marquee Club, I couldn't believe he could now be saying what he was.' Saunders decided to pen a letter of protest to the music press. When he heard Clapton's comments he felt compelled to register his opposition. Red Saunders was a rock photographer and political activist who had been inspired and radicalised by the events of 1968. is a right-wing totally dictatorial tyranny.' In that same interview Bowie claimed that 'Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock stars.' This was Britain then in the sweltering summer of 1976, and in that context Clapton's comments were potentially incendiary. The only way we can speed up the sort of liberalism that's hanging foul in the air. David Bowie, who three months earlier had been photographed apparently giving a Nazi salute in Victoria Station, told Cameron Crowe in the September 1976 edition of Playboy '. Sid Vicious and Siouxsie Sioux were sporting swastikas as fashion statements. 'One down - a million to go' was the response to the killing from John Kingsley Read of the National Front. One month earlier an Asian teenager, Gurdip Singh Chaggar, had been murdered by a gang of white youths in Southall. The National Front had won 40 per cent of the votes in the spring elections in Blackburn. In usual circumstances his comments would have been merely ill advised, but it was the social and political context which made Clapton's intervention so chilling. But if the coincidence was curious, the hypocrisy was breathtaking: Clapton's career was based on appropriating black music, and he had recently had a hit with Bob Marley's 'I Shot the Sheriff'. Although the irony was possibly lost on Clapton, the Odeon in Birmingham is on New Street, minutes from the Midland Hotel where eight years earlier Powell had made his infamous 'Rivers of Blood' speech. 'Enoch was right,' he told the audience, 'I think we should send them all back.' Britain was, he complained, in danger of becoming 'a black colony' and a vote for controversial Tory politician Enoch Powell whom he described as a prophet was needed to 'keep Britain white'. It was 5 August 1976 and Eric Clapton was drunk, angry and on stage at the Birmingham Odeon. It was the triumphant climax to a story that began two years earlier, following one hot August night in Birmingham. By demonstrating the power of music to effect change it inspired Live Aid and its supporters claim it helped destroy the National Front. Rock Against Racism radicalised a generation, it showed that music could do more than just entertain: it could make a difference. But for those who attended the original concert in 1978 it was a show that changed their lives and helped change Britain. Many of those who will gather in Victoria Park next Sunday to watch the Good, the Bad and the Queen, Hard-Fi, the View and the others on the bill were not even born 30 years ago. To mark the anniversary of the concert, as well as to highlight the continuing struggle against racism, another all-day music concert is being staged next week. The day had been organised by 'Rock Against Racism', a grassroots political movement that used music to campaign against the looming electoral threat of the National Front. They had come from all over the country - 42 coaches from Glasgow, 15 from Sheffield, an entire trainload from Manchester - marching across London from Trafalgar Square to attend a special all-day concert headlined by Tom Robinson and the Clash. ![]() ![]() On 30 April 1978, a crowd gathered in Victoria Park in London's East End.
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