ESSAY REVIEW BILLY BRAGG REVOLUTION ROCK 2009 PUNK FICTION Portico Press
Bragg may be the best-known contributor to this anthology – he is one of the leading protest song folk scene voices of the Thatcher years that followed the punk revolution.
His contribution to the collection is a definite essay on the important influence punk had for the rising anti-fascist, and gay rights movements in the late 1970’s.
A major free concert was organized in 1978, to accompany a protest march against the then rising political impact of the National Front, a neo-Nazi thug movement who were gaining some seats in local council elections and pampering to fears of rising immigration. The NF eventually mutated into the present day British National Party (BNP).
Earlier marches had ended in violent confrontations between pro and anti-NF supporters, with the police heavily criticised for defending the right wing extremists at the expense of the liberal minded challengers.
The massive Rock Against Racism rally and free concert in Hyde Park, was a turning point – the number of anti-fascist supporters was on a grand scale. Pro-NF fans wisely stayed away and there was very little trouble.
Punk band, The Buzzcocks were the headliners for the concert and undoubtedly attracted large crowds of people who were there more for the music than the cause, and Bragg, as a witness to events, asserts that his own political awareness developed right there at the gig.
The Buzzcocks played well, though for Bragg the real influence there was Tom Robinson, who’s pro-Gay anthem, Sing If You’re Glad To Be Gay was Bragg’s first introduction to the gay rights movement too, with many in the audience proudly using the song as their own declaration of homosexuality and solidarity. Robinson’s song was later captured in the film of the Amnesty International concert known as The Secret Policeman’s Ball.
For Bragg, it was a sense of great awakening – a recognition that the revolutionary angry spirit of enough is enough and live & let live, and we are not taking any more of this, was alive and well in Britain.
As a witness to follow up Rock Against Racism concerts in Manchester in the next few years after that show, I see exactly where Bragg is coming from in such observations.
Arthur Chappell