“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.

In the Guardian recently, LMHR/Stand Up to Racism organiser Samir Ali warned: “The context is even more dangerous than when Rock Against Racism was launched in the 1970s. Then, we faced the National Front but didn’t have Reform in Parliament. We didn’t have fascism on the rise through Europe in the same way and Donald Trump running for the presidency in the US.”

Over its 1976-82 heyday, Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League put on hundreds of packed gigs with bands from all popular music genres, as well as five anti-Nazi carnivals in the 1970s.

Two London carnivals in 1978 (Hackney’s Victoria Park in April and Brixton’s Brockwell Park in September) attracted over 100,000 supporters apiece to see bands including The Clash, TRB, Steel Pulse, X-Ray Spex, Misty In Roots, Elvis Costello, Aswad and Stiff Little Fingers. 

Paloma Faith has signed on for the LMHR London gig this September and apparently a nationwide tour will follow, although other acts have yet to be announced.  

A Love Music Hate Racism statement condemning the riots was signed by artists including Fontaines DC, IDLES, Nova Twins, Nadine Shah, Frank Turner, Nubya Garcia, Enter Shikari, Asian Dub Foundation, while Billy Bragg, Nadine Shah, Garbage, Self Esteem and Tim Burgess have all publicly expressed solidarity with anti-fascist counter-protests.

All very good, but to pull the youngsters in, the likes of Harry Styles, Dua Lipa, Ed Sheeran, SZA and Charli XCX echoing the message may have greater heft.

What will Reform and pals counter LMHR with? I guess 79-year-old Eric Clapton, whose pro-Enoch Powell rants helped kick-start RAR in the first place, may be reluctant to revisit his drug/drink-addled racist screeds of 1976 (“Get the w*gs out. Get the c**ns out. Keep Britain white” etc), but with his recent unhinged anti-vax polemics with Van Morrison, who knows?

Tomorrow belongs to Lee?

So let’s turn to our old friend Lee Anderson, who shared via Twitter/X his views on the entertainment wing of Reform (Holly Valance excepted). After playing on the Skegness dodgems with his deputy leader, multimillionaire Richard Tice, Anderson and pals proceeded to cap a perfect day off, the Reform chief whip tweeting in a bizarrely infantile way:

“We then had fish chips before setting off to see our friend Jim Davidson perform at the Embassy Theatre. Jim was on top form and what struck me was that in the theatre it was a snowflake-free safe space for decent hardworking people to go and have a laugh. And laugh they did, nobody was offended, no-one left and everyone had a great time. We laughed so much that on the way back to Ashfield my mate Craig put Jethro on in the car and we laughed all the way home. Don’t ever let them stop you laughing. It’s the best medicine. We will get our country back.”

Anderson presumably labouring under the belief that those who actively dislike Davidson will spend their cash on tickets, turning up in order to deliberately take offence at his boorish onstage antics.

File that under “Life’s too short,” Lee.

Roger Huddle, an original 1976 RAR founder recently stated: “When Tommy Robinson’s supporters marched to Trafalgar Square they were singing Rule! Britannia. That is the most boring song ever written, full of awful Edwardian golden-age nationalism … This is a great help to our side.”

‘What is all this communist sh*t?’

And finally, with the puerile accusation of “Kamunism” launched against the Kamala Harris presidential campaign,a reminder when, half a century ago, one small part of US rock ’n’ roll was very briefly dyed a deep communist red. 

On the skids in 1974/5, the New York Dolls turned to friendly London acquaintance Malcolm McLaren for career advice; his suggestion?

Go full communist — image-wise at least; with red spandex and hammer & sickle backdrops.

The stratagem was unsurprisingly a  complete failure in the US and the Dolls soon split, guitarist Johnny Thunders citing McLaren’s wheeze as “the reason why we broke up.”

Quite a contrast with RAR.