White Riot: Doc Chronicles Vintage, Punk-Fuelled (And Oh So Timely) Anti-Racism Crusade

By Liam Lacey

Rating: B+

To be honest, “White Riot,” The Clash’s 1977 debut single, is a pretty naff declaration of anti-racism solidarity: “Black man got a lot of problems, but they don't mind throwing a brick/ White people go to school, where they teach you how to be thick.”

But the repurposed title provides a catchy hook for English filmmaker Rubika Shah’s lively documentary about early years of English punk rock and the Rock Against Racism (RAR) movement in the late 1970s. RAR was founded by London photographer and agitprop theatre director Red Saunders as a disgusted reaction to Eric Clapton’s drunken racist rant during a 1976 Birmingham concert.

Over the following six years, the RAR forged links between white and black musicians and fans and successfully campaigned against England’s white supremacist political party, the National Front.

For punk nostalgists, White Riot provides an archive of high-energy performances from once-young English bands, as well as interviews with now grandparent-aged performers. These include Pauline Black from The Selecter, Topper Headon of The Clash, Tom Robinson, and Mykaell Riley of Steel Pulse. The film culminates with the triumphant Carnival Against Racism in 1978, when an estimated 100,000 people marched from Trafalgar Square to Victoria Park to watch a concert featuring X-Ray Spex, Steel Pulse, The Clash and Tom Robinson.

The film employs a punk-inspired cut-and-paste collages, smashing together footage of police and protestor clashes, rock concerts, television shows and political marches, all annotated with animated handwritten letters, posters, newspaper clippings, and excerpts from RAR’s fanzine, Temporary Hoarding.

There are a surprising number of resonant connections between the 70’s English multicultural anti-racism movement and the Black Lives Matter protest. We see, for example, a clip of Jamaican-born sociologist Stuart Hall discussing the normalization of extreme racism in the media.

You want flag controversies? In another archival clip, RAR’s founder Saunders declares that RAR’s goal is to “peel away the Union Jack to reveal the swastika.” As for the contemporary call for white engagement, RAR activist “Irate” Kate Webb says, “We were trying to get people to understand racism as a white problem.”

There are some flaws to Shah’s never-mind-the-nuances momentum. The key members of Rock Against Racism interviewed here — founder Saunders, typesetter Roger Huddle, office manager “Irate” Kate Webb, and graphic designer Ruth Gregory — are identified only on first appearance.

Apart from the Santa Claus-like Saunders, they tend to get lost in the busy shuffle. Also, the film is short (80 minutes) and ends, abruptly, with a text crawl that reports that the National Front was defeated in the 1979 general election (they received just 1.3 percent of the total votes). A skeptic might suggest that Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party, which won the election and held power for the next 18 years, siphoned off National Front supporters with its right-wing agenda.

You embrace inspiration where you can find it these days. Following the Victoria Park event which concludes the film, Rock Against Racism lasted for another four years and expanded to other countries. As well as providing a model for white anti-racism, RAR created a template for the many “your cause here” rock events that have followed. It may be time for a RAR revival.

White Riot. Directed and edited by Rubika Shah. Available to purchase as a Virtual Cinema Ticket through participating theatres across Canada as of July 9. For the list of participating theatres, go here.