From the Archives: Punk Fanzines Temporary Hoarding & Drastic Measures
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Grace Healy is a musician, academic and historian who has contributed to Bishopsgate Institute’s learning programme through delivering a course on the history of London's punk scene. In this guest post she examines punk fanzines from our Special Collections, with specific focus on those connected to Rock Against Racism and Rock Against Sexism.
When punk exploded onto the music scene in the 1970s, the wider socio-political environment in Britain was one of resurgent fascism and racial tensions. In 1976 the National Front gained political ground winning 18.5% of the vote in Leicester and 10% in Bradford. Britain’s national press engaged in relentless attacks on immigrants, targeting, in particular, the arrival of Malawi Asian communities.
The racism pervading the music industry was gradually being exposed, culminating in Eric Clapton’s fateful address during a gig in Birmingham in 1976, which revealed not only intolerance and bigotry, but demonstrated a disregard for the contribution of black musicians to the creation and development of rock and roll. In response to Clapton’s statement, London-based photographer and political activist, Red Saunders wrote to the music press highlighting Clapton’s debt to black musicians (“Own up, half your music is black”) and called for the formation of an organised movement against “the racist poison in rock music”. Saunders struck a chord with the political left: over 600 replies were received, followed by hundreds more after the letter’s publication in Socialist Worker.
Rock Against Racism (RAR) was born, at the intersection between politics and popular culture. It was a largely successful campaign that used rock music to stand against the British far-right by disseminating anti-fascist and anti-racist ideas, bringing together different races, musical styles, and youth tribes. Popular new wave and reggae bands at the time, such as Tom Robinson, Steel Pulse, Aswad, X-Ray Spex, the Specials and the Clash, performed at RAR gigs between 1976 and 1981. The first gig took place at the Princess Alice pub in London’s East End in November 1976, and that same year RAR launched its revolutionary fanzine, Temporary Hoarding - issues of which can be found in Bishopsgate Institute archives.
By 1977, local RAR groups appeared all over the country, and on 30 April 1978 the organisation worked alongside the Anti-Nazi league to bring together thousands of protestors. Collectively, these protesters marched from Trafalgar Square to Victoria Park, where Britain’s favourite punk bands performed to around 100,000 people. Crowds came from all over the country - 42 coaches from Glasgow, 15 from Sheffield and an entire trainload from Manchester.
RAR played a pivotal role in defeating the neo-fascist threat in Britain during the late 1970s by crushing much of the National Front’s appeal to the electorate.
A lesser-known socio-political movement to emerge from punk that played an important role in putting anti-sexism on the agenda was Rock Against Sexism (RAS). RAS, galvanised by the success of RAR, formed in the UK in 1979 to tackle the sexism and misogyny that women face in both the music industry and society at large. Led by musicians, artists, and activists, RAS contributors emphasised collective action and intersectional feminism. They organised women-only gigs (ensuring that the music played between sets wasn’t sexist in tone, and committed to publishing access information for people with disabilities), encouraged readers to organise local gigs, held workshops for women interested in learning a musical instrument, hosted discussion groups on sexism, encouraged political action in support of women’s issues such as taking a stand against the ‘Campaign Against the Corrie Bill’ (an anti-abortion bill introduced by Conservative MP John Corrie in 1979), and showed solidarity with gay rights.
One of RAS’s most significant voices was Lucy Toothpaste (Lucy Whitman) who not only wrote extensively for Temporary Hoarding, but co-edited and wrote for the official RAS fanzine Drastic Measures and created her own feminist, anti-racist and anti-fascist fanzine Jolt, both of which can be found in Bishopsgate archives. Lucy then went on to write for pioneering feminist magazine Spare Rib, highlighting the central role that punk played for many women in developing a feminist consciousness.
*The images used in this piece show copies of 'Temporary Hoarding' and 'Drastic Measures' homed within our Special Collections and Archives.
Grace Healy
Grace Healy is a final-year PhD student at the University of Huddersfield. Grace’s research explores the relationship between 1970s punk-rock and Western philosophy, with a specific interest in The Sex Pistols and The Raincoats. Grace is also an experienced keyboard player and has written and performed with many punk-inspired bands based in the Midlands and London.
