Through Cable Street Beat, music became a potent antifascist weapon against the far right
In 1987, Skrewdriver’s frontman founded Blood & Honour, a music network that soon gained followers and branches throughout the US and Europe.
- In 1987, Skrewdriver’s frontman founded Blood & Honour, a music network that soon gained followers and branches throughout the US and Europe.
- Anti-Fascist Action (AFA), the dominant antifascist group of the time, struck back with their own musical network: Cable Street Beat (CSB).
- This is the story of how music became a battleground in the 1980s and 1990s, as antifascists fought fascism with guitars and microphones.
Cable Street Beat
Cable Street Beat was named after the antifascists’ celebrated victory over Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts. Before the second world war, British MP Oswald Mosley had commanded a growing fascist movement that had been fiercely resisted by antifascists.
- On October 4 1936, Mosley amassed his Blackshirts on Cable Street to march through the East End of London.
- However, around 100,000 militant antifascists gathered to oppose them, ultimately preventing the fascists’ march.
- Crucially, the audience also heard a powerful speech from Solly Kaye, an antifascist veteran of the actual Battle of Cable Street five decades earlier.
The power of punk
CSB drew energy from the UK’s frenetic punk scene. Bands such as the Angelic Upstarts, Snuff and Yr Anhrefn all enthusiastically took up CSB’s cause. They shared the stage with antifascist activists who gave rousing speeches.
- Punk, and in particular the working-class focused, aggressive Oi!
- subgenre and related skinhead subculture, was an area that the far right had long tried to colonise.
- Indeed, few skinheads had any interest in white power.
Unity Carnivals
- CSB’s most high-profile strategy was its Unity Carnivals.
- The first, held in Hackney Downs Park in 1991, attracted 10,000 attendees.
- It brought a really diverse crowd together in Hackney and really got the political messages across.” Two more carnivals followed: another in Hackney in 1992 and one in Newcastle in 1993, where The Shamen headlined with their chart-topping song Ebeneezer Goode.
Freedom of movement
- By the early 1990s, electronic dance music had taken off in the UK.
- Antifascists immediately saw the potential and in Manchester local DJs and AFA set up the Freedom of Movement campaign in 1993 to mobilise these ravers.
- AFA’s magazine, Fighting Talk, declared Freedom of Movement’s aim was to “politicise the previously apathetic dance club scene, raising issues of racism and fascism”.
- From 1993 to 1996, AFA put on a series of antifascist club nights in cities from Edinburgh to London.
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Alexander Carter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.