Rock

British rock's fight against racism and the Right

JSTOR on a group of musicians who battled violence and bigotry in the British music scene during the 70s.

Good article from JSTOR about British rock and their fight against the far right:

[…] In Britain, for example, the growth of the right led to the creation of Rock Against Racism (RAR), a movement against the rising tide of white supremacist violence, in 1976.

The fires had been stoked for years. British politician Enoch Powell, for example, had been steadily adding to the fuel with speeches warning of invading immigrants and a growing nonwhite population. In a 1968 speech, as historian Amy Whipple writes, he warned that “the postwar influx of immigrants from the former colonies in the West Indies, Southeast Asia, and Africa made the native English ‘strangers in their own land.’” This address, popularly known as the “rivers of blood” speech, “elicited both acclaim and criticism across Britain.”

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