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The rebirth of Rock Against Racism
STEPHEN ARNELL hails the comeback of RAR for the 21st century in the form of Love Music Hate Racism
Rock band, Hard-Fi, perform at the Love Music Hate Racism festival in Victoria Park, London, April 2008

“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,” — Sir Isaac Newton.

WITH the recent Summer of Crypto-Fascist Riots, it’s perhaps heartening that far-right agitation prompted a swift, semi-spontaneous rebuttal in the form of mass anti-racist counter and pre-emptive demonstrations.

‘Oh Farage! Up Yours!’ 

After X-Ray Spex’s “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!”

And with this two-fingered salute to the Faragist tendency we can perhaps also welcome the return of 1970s British phenomenon Rock Against Racism, in the shape of Love Music Hate Racism (LMHR). I’m just about old enough to remember RAR and the galvanising effect the organisation had on some of the formerly apathetic youth in the 1970s and early ’80s.

Tomorrow belongs to Lee?

‘What is all this communist sh*t?’

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