UAF/LMHR NATIONAL CONFERENCE A BIG SUCCESS
Over 600 people attended the Unite Against Fascism national conference last weekend. Around 220 people attended the Love Music Hate Racism session at the conference - almost twice as many as the same event last year.
The LMHR session opened with speeches from the panel. The Specials’ songwriter Jerry Dammers urged modern-day bands to follow in the footsteps of the Rock Against Racism generation by backing the anti-fascist movement. He said he was fed up of hearing bands worried that being seen as “political” would damage their careers, saying “it certainly didn’t do our band any harm!”. Sam Duckworth aka rising star Get Cape Wear Cape Fly spoke about how he was getting LMHR’s anti-BNP message across to his fans - LMHR/UAF stalls at his gigs, putting the logo and myspace on his flyers and sleeves and also asking other musicians to get involved.
LMHR national organiser Lee Billingham discussed how LMHR is an important part of the anti-fascist struggle because of its role in defending and celebrating multiculturalism - currently under attack from the racists and fascists but also, mistakenly, by some claiming to be anti-racists. The cultural campaign though cannot stop the Nazis on its own - it has to be combined with and in support of a political campaign - UAF - that takes on the arguments about multiculturalism and united everyone possible in exposing the likes of the BNP as Nazis.
Sister Sukina from female Islamic hip-hop dup Poetic Pilgrimage talked about her experience of Islamophobia in recent years and how she felt music and hip-hop culture in particular has the potential to undermine such prejudice. Grime artist and actor Snakeyman described his role in LMHR and urged the campaign to hit inner-city areas as well as those areas with BNP activity. Drew McConnell from Babyshambles spoke about how the BNP are targeting young people and trying to use music to spread their poison with their “Great White Records” label. In response, Drew is compiling a CD of top acts for LMHR, which with the support of the NUT will be distributed for free in schools across the UK.
Martin Smith from LMHR was the final speaker - warning about the danger of BNP’s ideas becoming respectable by their using cultural figures to become normalised, giving the example of “BNP ballerina” Simone Clarke and pledging that LMHR with UAF will fight this process tooth and nail. He also used his speech to register a disagreement over the idea put out by those in the movement who say we have to “reclaim the flag” and posit a “progressive patriotism” in order to take on the BNP. Martin argued that the British flag remains a symbol of empire and racism to many British citizens and that instead we need to create new and international symbols of solidarity- like the RAR and ANL badges and lollipops that were the symbols of defeat for the Nazis in the past.
The audience contribution to the session was fantastic, with a noticably younger and more diverse crowd than in previous years. Many active LMHR groups from around the UK were represented, talking about the work they’d been doing in their areas, including many from Barking & Dagenham, a minibus-load from Stoke-on-Trent, people from Wakefield, Birmingham, Coventry, Liverpool, Brighton, Swansea, and Glasgow. Most impressive of all LMHR Belfast also made the trip, and spoke about the particular situation they faced in Northern Ireland, recently dubbed “the race-hate capital of Europe”.
Prior to the session, at lunchtime, the 20 or so musicians present had an informal meeting to set up the “LMHR Artists’ Group”, which will coordinate the efforts of artists involved in the campaign.
