On this date, 28 May, 1994, over 100,000 people gathered in south London to send a powerful message against racism and the far right. Anti Nazi League Carnival organizer Guy Smallman looks back…
In late 1993 the steering committee of the Anti Nazi league (ANL) announced that a carnival would happen the following year to coincide with what we hoped would be a victory against the Nazi BNP in the spring council elections. Similar events organised by Rock Against Racism in the 1970s had played a pivotal role in pushing back the ambitions of the Nazi National Front (NF) 15 years earlier.
But the now the BNP represented a new threat. They had set up a headquarters in south east London and four young black and asian men had been murdered in the vicinity. Shortly after the fourth killing, of Stephen Lawrence, the BNP had managed to get their local organiser Derek Beackon elected on a blatantly racist platform in Tower Hamlets. He was an overt neo-nazi and these were frightening times.
Planning a national event in this atmosphere had its challenges. We wanted something big that celebrated our multi-racial society while also sending a strong message against the nazis and their rightwing enablers.
Fortunately, the shock of Beackon’s election had triggered a universal wave of solidarity from the music business. We had already staged a successful benefit show at Brixton Academy with a new band from the US called Rage Against the Machine and ANL stalls were a regular feature at festivals and concerts.
There was of course one exception. Even back then Morrissey was being a massive pain in the neck, making childish and ambiguous remarks about race and fascism that drew universal condemnation. But he was a lone voice and there was a wealth of goodwill in the music industry towards organisations like ours, combined with feelings of disgust towards resurgent fascism.
In the spirit of unity we opted for an eclectic line up for the main stage in Brockwell Park. Folk-punks the Levellers and rock band the Manic Street Preachers were two of the biggest touring bands at the time and still are to this day. Joining them, the world of Jazz-funk was represented by Incognito, and hip-hop acts Urban Species and Credit to the Nation energised the park by rapping an intensely political message. Weighty bass lines were provided by dub reggae acts African Head Charge and the Manasseh Sound System with East London bhangra act Achanak completing the bill.
Nearby a smaller acoustic stage hosted dozens of comedians, poets and solo artists including Tom Robinson who had headlined the first ANL Carnival in 1977.
But this had to be just as much of a protest as it was a celebration. So the 700 coaches organised by the ANL from all over Britain dropped their passengers at Kennington Park for a rally where speeches were made by a range of people condemning the BNP, including Holocaust survivors Leon Greenman and Esther Brunstein. Then a noisy march brought our audience to us through the streets of Brixton, entertained by a moving stage with Billy Bragg and punk band SMASH who played a set that they had rehearsed together especially for the occasion.
The carnival procession was completed with a grotesque effigy of Derek Beackon in a butcher’s apron, specially designed for us by Fluck and Law, the creators of satirical puppet show Spitting Image, and worn by a performer on stilts. He deserved a medal for all the abuse he copped from the march that day.
Beackon himself had failed to get re-elected to his council seat and the breakthrough that the BNP had announced across east London had not happened. The Carnival was very much a celebration of all the hard, and sometimes dangerous, work done by volunteers and trade unionists in the weeks and months leading up to those crucial elections. For every hour spent on protests, hundreds more had been deployed knocking on doors canvassing against the BNP and NF to expose their true nature to people registered to vote in those battleground seats.
It would take several years and a change of leadership for the BNP to become any kind of electoral threat again. By then, Unite Against Fascism (UAF) were the main group to organise against them on the streets and Love Music Hate Racism (LMHR) had been launched to continue the cultural challenge to racism, which continues to this day.
Guy Smallman is a London based photojournalist and editor of www.finalhours.org.uk