Mr Brightside: Is There Light at the End of the Tunnel? 

 

“Oh, some people work very hard 

But still they never get it right” 

 

Two subjects have dominated the headlines of Labour’ early months in government; the blackhole in our finances left by the outgoing Tory government, and the race riots.  

 
Defending his record, Jeremy Hunt, the former chancellor, has denied there is any such blackhole, let alone a £22bn one, and, after last week’s stronger-than-expected growth figures, Hunt said they were “further proof that Labour have inherited a growing and resilient economy”. 

Jeremy, one swallow doesn’t make a summer. 

The Treasury seem to share my scepticism, pointing out that a stronger than expected recovery in the first half of 2024, when the UK was the fastest growing economy in the G7, had merely made up for the soft patch in the second half of 2023, when the economy contracted for two quarters and was technically in recession. 

Supporting the new chancellor, Rachel Reeves’, claims is data from the ONS which highlights that borrowing in July alone and in the first four months of the 2024-25 financial year has come in higher than the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) was expecting at the time of Hunt’s March budget. The July figure of £3.1bn was £3bn higher than the OBR’s forecast, while the cumulative deficit was £4.7bn higher. 

In addition, most of this additional borrowing was on the spending side of the equation. Tax revenues were not quite as strong as the OBR predicted in March but were still £1.7bn up on July 2023. Receipts could well be revised up next month owing to delayed payments of self-assessed income tax and are looking reasonably healthy. 

Public spending was £3.5bn higher last month than in July 2023. The ONS said this was partly owing to the impact of inflation and partly to higher pay awards. Reeves has added to that pressure by agreeing to meet the recommendations of public sector pay review bodies in full. Much of this year’s extra spending will recur in future years. 
 

‘Reeves has added to that pressure by agreeing to meet the recommendations of public sector pay review bodies in full’

 
Unsurprisingly, the Tories and their fawning media have seized upon these pay settlements as, Labour caving in to unions, painting pictures of a wage-price spiral as we return to the 1970s and a new winter of discontent.  

The press have referred to these settlement a step back into the “industrial anarchy” of the past and was eager to contrast the deal for the ASLEF union with Rachel Reeves’s decision to means test the winter fuel allowance for pensioners. The level of outrage was further ratcheted up on Friday when ASLEF announced plans for 22 days of strikes at weekends from late August to November on LNER trains. 

James Cleverly, the shadow home secretary said, “Labour has been played by its union paymasters,”. 

Now this is a classic example of James Cleverly living up to his “Jimmy Dimly” nickname, and getting everything wrong. Or, maybe he just isn’t telling the truth. 
 

‘a classic example of James Cleverly living up to his “Jimmy Dimly” nickname, and getting everything wrong’

 
Of the £21.5m in cash received by the party in 2023, just £5.9m came from the trade union movement, compared with £14.5m from companies and individuals. As trade union contributions have dipped slightly, from around £6.9m in 2020 and 2021 to £5.3m in 2022, donations from businesses and individuals have soared: they totalled £2.3m in 2020 and rose to £3m in 2021 and £7.6m in 2022 before nearly doubling last year. 

Source: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/labour-conservative-party-donations-2023-spending-analysis/ 
 

Then there is overall union membership, which, at its high point in 1969, represented 44% of all employees, this has steadily declined, and, in 2022, it was only 22.3%. 

These somewhat tired Tory claims are, once again, out-of-step with public opinion. There is sympathy – and respect – for unions seeking to protect the living standards of their members during the recent cost of living crisis. 

The Tories way of dealing with strikes in the health service was to simply turn a blind eye to them, meant that the waiting list for NHS treatments has risen to 7.6 million, resulting in more people being unfit for work.  

For many in the public sector the real level of wages is barely any higher now than it was 15-years ago, a period in which low-paid, insecure work has increased.  
 

‘in the public sector the real level of wages is barely any higher now than it was 15-years ago’

 
In addition, official figures suggest that risks of a wage-price spiral are overblown. Pay settlements have been falling back as inflation has fallen from a peak of 11.1% to 2.2%. Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, has dismissed Tory claims that awards to public sector workers will be inflationary and lead to higher interest rates. 

Finally, the public finances have further suffered due to Hunt’s decision to cut employee NIC in both last year’s autumn statement and this year’s budget. The reductions were the main reason why compulsory social contributions were £1.1bn lower at £13.8bn last month than a year earlier. 

Which leads us to October’s budget. Back in March, the OBR said Hunt was on course to meet the government’s main fiscal rule – that debt should be falling as a share of national income within five years – with just £9bn to spare. That margin for error is fast eroding. 

As a result, it is likely that the budget will include tax increases targeted, hopefully, at the better-off. And, despite voter demand for better public services, next year’s Treasury spending review is also expected to be prudent. 
 

‘despite voter demand for better public services, next year’s Treasury spending review is also expected to be prudent’

 
Chancellor Reeves announced last month that she was scrapping winter fuel payments for most pensioners, shelving plans for social care reform and axing road, rail and hospital investment as the first stage of a plan to reduce borrowing. 

Now the Treasury has made it clear that further hard choices would need to be made when Reeves delivers the first Labour budget since 2010. 

It will be interesting to see how the Tories seek to attack this with the added support of their biased media. 

Jeremy Hunt has already said that, “The chancellor’s attempt to blame her economic inheritance on her decision to raise taxes – tax rises she had always planned – will not wash with the public.” 

James Cleverly said Labour’s economic inheritance was very different from how ministers billed it; “The economy is growing, unemployment is down, inflation under control.” 

We now turn to the race riots which, whilst condemned by the Tories are, in-part the legacy of Brexit, their own attacks on immigrants and immigration, and their ongoing Islamophobia. 
 

‘the legacy of Brexit, their own attacks on immigrants and immigration, and their ongoing Islamophobia’

 
In the editorial to “Growth Pains” I talked about the impact of Rock Against Racism (“RAR”) in the 1970s-80s, and its revival as Love Music Hate Racism (“LMHR”). I well remember the gig in Victoria Park and decided to look back at those RAR times. 

RAR radicalised a generation, it showed that music could do more than just entertain: it could make a difference. By demonstrating the power of music to effect change it inspired Live Aid and its supporters claim it helped destroy the National Front (“NF”). It was the triumphant climax to a story that began two years earlier, following one hot August night in Birmingham. 

That night was the 5 August 1976, a drunk Eric Clapton on stage at the Birmingham Odeon told the audience,  “Enoch was right. 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.”  

This was the same Eric Clapton who made his fortune appropriating black music, and who had recently had a hit with Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff”. 
 

‘David Bowie, had been photographed appearing to giving a Nazi salute in Victoria Station’

 
Three months earlier, my idol, David Bowie, had been photographed appearing to giving a Nazi salute in Victoria Station. In September 1976 he said; “… yes I believe very strongly in fascism. The only way we can speed up the sort of liberalism that’s hanging foul in the air… is a right-wing totally dictatorial tyranny…”  

Against this back drop of coked-up rockstars, the NF had won 40% cent of the votes in the spring elections in Blackburn. One month earlier an Asian teenager, Gurdip Singh Chaggar, had been murdered by a gang of white youths in Southall. ‘One down – a million to go’ was the response to the killing from John Kingsley Read of the National Front.  

The summer of 1976 was swelteringly hot and potentially incendiary. 

Red Saunders was a rock photographer and political activist who had been inspired and radicalised by the events of 1968 reacted, was joined by Roger Huddle and, in response to Clapton’s comments penned a letter of protest to the music press and the Socialist Worker, saying: ‘Come on Eric… Own up. Half your music is black. You’re rock music’s biggest colonist… We want to organise a rank and file movement against the racist poison music… we urge support for Rock against Racism. P.S. Who shot the Sheriff, Eric? It sure as hell wasn’t you!”. 
 

‘Come on Eric… Own up. Half your music is black. You’re rock music’s biggest colonist…’

 
Three months later, in November 1976, RAR held its first ever gig in the Princess Alice pub in east London. “We had friends who were dockers who had become anti-racist after the Powell speech and they provided the security for the gig because the NF were really active in the area,” said Huddle. 

Buoyed by the enthusiastic response, RAR began organising concerts which would feature multiracial line-ups sharing the bill. The concerts would end with reggae bands like Aswad and Steel Pulse playing with punk bands such as the Ruts, the Slits and Generation X.  

By the following year RAR was publishing its own magazine, Temporary Hoarding. David Widgery’s editorial in its first issue was the organisation’s first manifesto. “We want Rebel music, street music,’ it declared, ‘music that breaks down people’s fear of one another. Crisis music. Now music. Music that knows who the real enemy is. Rock Against Racism. Love Music Hate Racism.”  

The Sex Pistols, although they were booked to play Wigan for RAR, never managed to make it on stage, but John Lydon was unequivocal in his opposition to the NF, telling one interviewer: “I despise them. No one should have the right to tell anyone they can’t live here because of the colour of their skin or their religion… How could anyone vote for something so ridiculously inhumane?” 

It was a message that resonated with Billy Bragg, then working as a bank messenger. “I had seen the Clash on the first night of the White Riot tour, and I remember thinking that the fascists were against anybody who wanted to be different – once they had dealt with the immigrants then they would move onto the gays and then the punks; before I knew it the music I loved would be repatriated.” 
 

‘the fascists were against anybody who wanted to be different – once they had dealt with the immigrants then they would move onto the gays and then the punks’

 
In the spring 1977 elections, the NF pushed the Liberals into fourth place in nearly 25% of constituencies. The Anti-Nazi League – which had formed in 1977 – were keen to hold a joint demonstration with RAR in the spring of 1978 to encourage supporters to vote against the NF in May’s council elections. The Greater London Council – then Conservative-led – gave permission to use Victoria Park, which had been the rallying ground of London’s Chartists in 1848. The date was set for Sunday 30 April and the plan was for a carnival in Trafalgar Square followed by an open-air concert in Victoria Park. By holding the concert in the East End, RAR was declaring its intention of taking the battle into the heart of where the NF was trying to build support. 

 

Three weeks before the carnival, two parcel bombs were delivered by the neo-Nazi organisation Column 88 to the headquarters of the Communist Party and the trade union Nupe. On 21 April, 9-days before the carnival, 10-year-old Kennith Singh was stabbed to death yards from his east London home. The killers – who were never found – left eight stab wounds in the back of his head. 

Film-maker Gurinder Chadha was living above her parents’ shop in Norbury, south London, recalls: “Being in a shop we were very vulnerable because the next person who walked in could beat you up. I was really into RAR. When I heard about the carnival I was determined to go, but my parents said there was no way.” 

Gurinder told her parents she was going shopping in Croydon but sneaked into the concert on her own. “The whole of the park was jumping up and down to the Clash. It was an incredibly emotional moment because for the first time I felt that I was surrounded by people who were on my side. That was the first time I thought that something had changed in Britain forever.” 

In the following week’s local elections the NF failed to secure any seats and its level of support fell.  

By the end of 1978 RAR had organised 300 local concerts and five carnivals. In the run up to the 1979 election it staged a ‘Militant Entertainment Tour’ featuring 40 bands at 23 concerts covering more than 2,000 miles on the road. 

In the 1979 general election the NF’s 303 candidates averaged just 0.6% of the overall vote, with people suggesting that the election of the Conservatives signalled the death knell for the NF.  

What is interesting is that the NF were strongest during the mid-Seventies, a time of great disillusionment with a Labour government seen as economically incompetent. This sounds frighteningly similar to today and the support that Reform is currently attracting.  
 

‘This sounds frighteningly similar to today and the support that Reform is currently attracting’

 
There is no doubt that Thatcher with her comments that Britain was being “swamped by people of a different culture”, was more acceptable to the less obvious racists who didn’t wear DMs and cropped hair. 

However, this is not the full explanation of the drop in NF support. 

Ian Goodyer, who authored a book on RAR said; “There is a danger in believing that politics is all top down, that Thatcher just pulled the rug from under the racists’ feet, but the truth is that by 1979 Rock Against Racism and the ANL had thoroughly discredited the NF.”  

Before RAR, the NF had staged intimidatory marches in areas with large immigrant communities, but once RAR began to demonstrate that they could put thousands on the street in opposition to them, the NF were forced to retreat. AS Huddle said, “We isolated them at work and we isolated them at the colleges,’ claims Roger Huddle, ‘and by the end of it they were a spent force mentally and politically. I don’t want to overstate what we did, but I am sick to death of understating it.” 

Following RAR, Jerry Dammers, Billy Bragg, Tom Robinson and Paul Weller to set up Red Wedge, an anti-Thatcher popular movement in the run up to the 1987 general election. Unlike RAR it was explicitly party political: it aimed to help defeat the Conservative government. But in the 1987 general election Labour’s youth vote decreased. 

And that, you might think, would be the end of the story. Except that the story of RAR, like the story of racism itself, is never over. On 4 May 1978, the week after the Victoria Park carnival and the same day as the NF were beaten in the local elections, a 25-year-old Asian man Altab Ali was murdered in London’s Whitechapel Road on his way home from a religious festival. The following month Ishaque Ali was murdered in Hackney. 

According to the Institute of Race Relations there have been more than 150 murders in Britain since 1991 with a suspected or known racial motive. And yet with notable exceptions – Stephen Lawrence, Anthony Walker – there is little attention paid to these killings. Meanwhile, as East Europeans and white Britons also face race attacks, racism itself has become less black and white. “I talk to my brothers and other black friends,” says film-maker and DJ Don Letts “and they are complaining about the Poles and I say to them, brethren – that was us 40 years ago.” 
 

‘The dark days of NF marches may be history but the threat from Reform and its acolytes might be even greater’

 
As the events of the last month highlight racism still thrives in the UK. The dark days of NF marches may be history but the threat from Reform and its acolytes might be even greater; Reform has a more acceptable gloss to its racism. As in the mid-Seventies there is economic uncertainty and scepticism about immigration, but today it is coupled with apprehension about multiculturalism and Reform has none of the  thuggish image of the NF. ‘In many ways Reform are much greater threat than any of their predecessors. They represent a bland fascism that is very dangerous and it’s creeping into the mainstream. 

The last word goes to  Gurinder Chadha; “Before Rock against Racism there was a sense that it was OK to be racist, but with RAR we got to see that there were others willing to speak out against racism and talk about a different kind of Britain.” 

The following link has some powerful images of the time: 

https://www.impressions-gallery.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/RAR_Exhibition-Guide_LARGE.pdf 

I have always believed in youth and the power of music. Clearly, RAR did much to defeat the NF, I would love to think that the youth of today, and “Love Music, Hate Racism” can have an equal impact.   
 

“White youth, black youth 

Better find another solution 

Why not phone up Robin Hood 

And ask him for some wealth distribution” 

 
 

 
 
As rioting returns to the streets, in a really evocative piece Philip takes us back to the heady days of the late 70s when Rock Against Racism used the unifying force of music to crush the National Front.

Worryingly, many of the factors that fuelled tensions nearly 50 years ago, are recognisable today.

Whether you believe the Tories left behind a £22bn ‘black hole’ or not, Rachel Reeves is going to have to work pretty hard to repair public finances; if the inevitable tax increases are not confined to the most wealthy, there could be considerable resistance from those that may now be just about managing, having been battered by the cost of living crisis.

There will be plenty waiting to pounce; the speed with which the winter fuel allowance was prised from the clutch of most pensioners, could be seen as acting with indecent haste.

Eyebrows were also raised when Starmer ignored the advice of the Climate Change Committee and nodded through expansion at London City airport; not only does it flip the bird to the increasing number of those concerned about the climate crisis, but it also adds to the inequality between wealthy revellers and some of the poorest in the country that will suffer the huge environmental and social damage it will cause. 

 So, what was Philip thinking:

‘Today we look at two specific subjects.

We start with the economy and what is expected to be a “tough” first budget for chancellor Reeves in October.

Despite claims to the opposite, The Tories left the economy in a mess. If you don’t believe me, look at what the ONS and OBR are saying.

Claims to the contrary by Messrs Hunt and Cleverly are simply wrong, although, needless to say, the Tory press is making much of them.

“Tax and spend”, “union barons running the country”, it’s just samo, samo, rather like the Tories themselves. Tired, out-of-date, out-of-touch, appealing only to the old and stupid!

Secondly, we look at racism. This never goes away, it’s always present, needing only the right moment and cynical politicians to exploit it.

The 1970s are being mirrored today; immigration is an issue, the economy is moribund, politicians are ridiculed. People are disillusioned.

Today’s NF is Reform. Bovver boots are replaced by brogues, Crombies by Barbours, and Levis by Cording cords in preposterous colours. But, a racist is a racist. The Nazi had smart uniforms but that didn’t change anything.

I have taken the opportunity to look back and see how music and youth came together. Black and white united under Rock Against Racism and defeated the NF.

Let’s hope something similar can be achieved today.

Lyrically, we start with “Beginning to See the Light” by the Velvet Underground. We finish with perhaps the greatest Rock Against Racism song; “Whiteman in the Hammersmith Palais” by The Clash, released in June 1978. The song addresses various themes, nearly all relating to the state of the UK at the time. The song first gives an anti-violence message, then addresses the state of “wealth distribution” in the UK, promotes unity between black and white youths of the country before moving on to address the state of the British punk rock scene in 1978 which was becoming more mainstream.

Enjoy!

Philip.

@coldwarsteve

        

Philip Gilbert is a city-based corporate financier, and former investment banker.

Philip is a great believer in meritocracy, and in the belief that if you want something enough you can make it happen. These beliefs were formed in his formative years, of the late 1970s and 80s

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