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For more information, please contact the WRAP Team at: [email protected] warwick.ac.uk/lib-publications Culture is a Weapon: Popular Music, Protest and Opposition to Apartheid in Britain David Toulson A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History University of Warwick Department of History January 2016 Table of Contents Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………...iv Declaration………………………………………………………………………….v Abstract…………………………………………………………………………….vi Introduction………………………………………………………………………..1 ‘A rock concert with a cause’……………………………………………………….1 Come Together……………………………………………………………………...7 Methodology………………………………………………………………………13 Research Questions and Structure…………………………………………………22 1)“Culture is a weapon that we can use against the apartheid regime”……...25 The Cultural Boycott and the Anti-Apartheid Movement…………………………25 ‘The Times They Are A Changing’………………………………………………..34 ‘Culture is a weapon of struggle’………………………………………………….47 Rock Against Racism……………………………………………………………...54 ‘We need less airy fairy freedom music and more action.’………………………..72 2) ‘The Myth of Fingerprints’.…………………………………………………..80 World Music From Above and Below……………………………………………..80 African music in Britain…………………………………………………………...89 ‘Local Music From Out There’……………………………………………………95 ‘This is all around the world’…………………………………………………….102 3) “The guys with the guitars don't stand a chance”…………………………105 Paul Simon's Graceland as a Product of Apartheid……………………………...105 “Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts”……………………………..110 South African Music……………………………………………………………...112 “Culture Flows Like Water”……………………………………………………...121 ii All Around the World…………………………………………………………….128 Collaborators……………………………………………………………………..130 Apartheid context………………………………………………………………...136 ‘Think hard please’………………………………………………………………144 ‘A Global Pop Masterpiece’……………………………………………………..148 4) “Today Brent South, Tomorrow Soweto”…………………………………..152 ‘The protest music par excellence’………………………………………………152 ‘War Ina Babylon’………………………………………………………………..157 Reggae in Britain…………………………………………………………………166 ‘London’s Burning’………………………………………………………………176 Reggae in South Africa…………………………………………………………..186 ‘Why Must the Youth Fight Against Themselves?’……………………………...188 Labour of Love…………………………………………………………………..194 Beyond The 16th Parallel…………………………………………………………211 5) 'The Biggest Political Pop Show in History'………………………………..213 Concerts as Political Events…...………………………………………………....213 The Pre-History of the Political Concert…………………………………………215 The ‘Activist’ Concert……………………………………………………………221 Charity Concerts………………………………………………………………….228 Rock Against the Tories………………………………………………………….237 1988 Mandela Concert…………………………………………………………...252 The Last Political Concert………………………………………………………..258 6) Epilogue: ‘Worker’s Playtime’……………………………………………...264 “Mixing pop and Politics/They ask me what the use is”………………………...264 ‘Da Struggle Kontinues’…………………………………………………………274 Things Can Only Get Better………………………………………………….…..278 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………….…281 iii ‘History had vindicated the AAM’………………………………………………284 ‘By the Strength of our Common Endeavour’…………………………………...288 The Role of Popular Music………………………………………………………293 Come Together (reprise)…………………………………………………………299 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………….307 iv Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisors Dan Branch and Roger Fagge for their good humour and even better advice. I would also like to thank my long suffering family and friends for their support throughout the course of the last three and a half years. v Declaration This thesis is submitted to the University of Warwick in support of my application for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. It has been composed by myself and has not been submitted in any previous application for any degree. vi Abstract This thesis explores the relationship between popular politics and popular music through the context of the international campaign against apartheid South Africa. In particular the thesis focuses on the ways in which the British Anti-Apartheid Movement, arguably the best organised and best established anti-apartheid solidarity organisation, interacted with popular music. This was a relationship that had been well established by the AAM’s attempts to enforce a wide ranging cultural boycott against South Africa. Growing challenges to the status and the logic of the boycott throughout the period, demonstrate well the shifting nature of popular politics. This link between popular music and protest against apartheid would also be embraced by musicians outside of the traditional constituencies of groups such as the AAM. In particular the growing market for reggae and what would later be termed world music demonstrated a wider interest for the subject beyond traditional activist circles. In both these genres the themes of pan-Africanism and anti-apartheid solidarity played an important role in the imagery and packaging of many artists. Yet the distance between these musicians and fans and established campaigning groups could also be a source of conflict. This was an issue that is highlighted best by the controversy surrounding Paul Simon’s 1987 Graceland album. This desire to use popular music as a campaigning tool in and of itself would later also be embraced by campaigns such as the AAM. In particular this manifested itself in a number of increasingly high profile awareness raising concerts including a 1990 concert at Wembley Stadium. Yet the complex negotiations and politics of the event also revealed something of the limitations of the relationship between popular music and popular politics and the extent to which more nuanced messages could be lost in a larger spectacle. vii Introduction ‘A rock concert with a cause’ The appearance of Nelson Mandela on the stage of Wembley Stadium on April 16th 1990, encapsulated the growing sense of optimism about the future. On the same stage that had hosted Live Aid and concerts by huge acts such as the Rolling Stones, Queen and Michael Jackson, Mandela made something of an unlikely headliner. Yet the rapturous response he received from the crowd of 75,000 inside the stadium, made Mandela the undoubted star of the concert. In a front page story on the day following the concert, the Independent went as far as to claim that ‘Not even Soweto gave Nelson Mandela the volume of noise that greeted him when he stepped on to a Wembley Stadium platform last night’.1 The concert dubbed, An International Tribute for a Free South Africa, marked Mandela’s first visit to Britain since his release from Pollsmoor prison in South Africa just over two months previously. Significantly, this was a visit to Britain that included no formal meeting with the British government. Instead it would be a visit underlined by Mandela’s speech to the crowds at Wembley in which he gave thanks to those involved in the international campaign against apartheid, noting that. We are here today because for almost three decades you sustained a campaign for the unconditional release of all South African political prisoners. We are here because you took the humane decision that you could not ignore the inhumanity represented by the apartheid system.2 1Richard Dowden and David Lister, ‘Ecstatic Crowd Hails Mandela at Wembley’, Independent, 17 April 1990. 2 Nelson Mandela, ‘Speech to Wembley Stadium’, 16 April 1990. 2 That this was a statement made at the close of a pop concert, speaks volumes about the way in which popular music had played a key role in the wider campaign against apartheid. The event was viewed by some as a bizarre juxtaposition of the glamour of popular music and the reality of the long and often arduous campaign against apartheid. Meeting Mandela in Zimbabwe shortly after the Wembley concert, the BBC DJ, Andy Kershaw offered the almost apologetic observation that, ‘You spend twenty-seven years in prison, and they let you out and give you a Simple Minds concert, eh?’3 What the 1990 Mandela concert at Wembley demonstrates is just how much the relationship between popular music and politics had shifted over the course of the long campaign against apartheid. Whereas the previous decade had seen many musicians become involved with politics both globally and closer to home, Mandela’s first visit to Britain seemingly reversed that trend, taking politics to the realm of popular music. Viewed in isolation or even alongside the earlier 1988 Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute concert, also held at Wembley and broadcast across the world, appear to be outliers. The 1990 concert at Wembley would be described by the Independent as an ‘intoxicating combination of a rock concert with a cause’.4 In this approach it was not alone, Dylan Jones has argued that the two Mandela concerts, along with other popular music campaigning events, were cast in the mould of Live Aid and a model of ‘event pop’ that saw the value of popular music as a campaigning tool.5 Yet even alongside other massive popular music campaigns 3 Andy Kershaw, No Off Switch: An Autobiography (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2011),