Andrew O'Hagan's novel 'Mayflies' (2020) is his well-observed take on the theme of a group of young friends meeting up again in later life, in this case music and film-obsessed Scottish teenagers in the mid-1980s who bond over a weekend in Manchester and whose later lives aren't quite the adventures they hoped for.

I can only assume there is something of O'Hagan's own youth in this, and it is centred around some real events - the main one being the Factory records 'Festival of the Tenth Summer' held on 19 July 1986 at the Greater Manchester Exhibition (GMEX) Centre to mark the anniversary of the two famous Sex Pistols gigs at the city's Lesser Free Trade Hall in June and July 1976. 

The bands playing at the 1986 event included several founded by people who had been at one or both of the Pistols gigs, including The Smiths, The Fall and New Order (one of the characters in 'Mayflies' mistakenly mentions Magazine playing, they had split up by this point, but Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks was on the bill). O'Hagan describes the Fall's Mark E Smith as 'the Fine Fare Baudelaire... sloping about the stage. He didn't sing the words, he inebriated them'. He also enthuses over peak era Smiths, 'romantic and wronged and fierce and sublime, with haircuts like agendas'.

On the night before, the Shop Assistants played at the International in Anson Road, Manchester and O'Hagan gives a good account of the indie-pop vibe: 'She swayed with composed embarrassment, the sort of embarrassment all members of small independent bands had then, a form of shyness, or stage absence, that seemed to go well with their accidentally perfect tunes'

There is also a visit to the pre-acid house Hacienda with dancing to 'Candyskin' by the Fire Engines.

Thirty years later, dancing at a wedding, narrator James is less enthusiastic: 'It used to be so natural, dancing. Because the music defined you and the heart was in step. Then it leaves you. Or does it? Saturday night changes and your body forgets the old compliance. You're not part of it any more and your feet hesitate and your arms stay close to your sides. It's there somewhere, the easy rhythm from other rooms and other occasions, and you're half convinced it will soon come back. It's not the moves - the moves are there - but your connection to the music has become nostalgic, so the body is responding not to a discovery but to an old, dear echo'.

I'm not sure that it is inevitable that music becomes less exciting as you get older - you can discover whole new genres that you previously overlooked - but perhaps it is true that much music becomes part of your past and can never be heard for the first time again.

From 'Luton Street Press' (December 1975), an alternative take on the 12 days of Christmas:

More Luton stuff:

Marsh House Luton - from punk to henge

How it all began (for me): a School Kid against the Nazis in Luton 1979/80

Irish Artists for Palestine have issued a powerful statement in solidarity with the pro-Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike in Britain. It is signed by most of the great Irish musicians active today (Kneecap, Fontaines DC, Mary Wallopers, Christy Moore, The Pogues, Kevin Rowland, David Holmes), as well as writers and other cultural figures (including Sally Rooney, Annie Mac and Aisling Bea):

'We, Irish Artists for Palestine,  write to express our solidarity with the political prisoners currently engaged in hunger strike within British prisons. Their decision to place their bodies on the line is a profound act of resistance — one that echoes the long histories of both Irish and Palestinian political prisoners who have used hunger strike as a non-violent act of sacrifice to assert their dignity in the face of state violence and repression. This collective protest is the largest hunger strike in British prisons since the 1981 hunger strikes, and it demands urgent public attention. 

The prisoners — Qesser Zuhrah, Teuta Hoxha, Heba Muraisi and Kamran Ahmed (the Filton 24), Amu Gib, Jon Cink, Umer Khalid and Lewie Chiaramello (Brize Norton 5) - have been incarcerated by the state without trial for allegedly protesting Israel's genocide in Gaza, in which the British government has been actively complicit. Some individuals have been imprisoned for over a year without trial and it will be up to two years before they are heard. This is a grotesque violation of the UK's standard pre-trial custody time limit of six months. 

Prisoners have now entered their fifth week without food. Their bodies are deteriorating, with five hospitalisatjons so far and, the risks to their lives are escalating rapidly. Throughout this period. their basic rights have been heavily restricted and their demands have gone unanswered. Mainstream media outlets remain silent on the issue and there has been little to no coverage of this protest or of their demands. 

The hunger strikers have five demands:

1. End to all prison censorship and withholding of all letters, phone calls and books 

2. Immediate bail for an Palestine Action prisoners currently held in UK prisons 

3. Right to a fair trial for all Palestine Action prisoners held in UK prisons 

4. Deproscription of Palestine Action and the removal of its terror classification 

5. Shutdown of all Elbit Systems sites and subsidiaries in the UK 

We, the undersigned, call on the Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Justice Secretary David Lammy. MPs and public representatives across Britain and Ireland to take immediate action, using all parliamentary and civic channels available to ensure these demands are addressed with urgency and transparency. 

We  demand that media organisations uphold their duty to the public by reporting the hunger strike, as well as the demands of the hunger strikers, to the public at this critical stage.

We believe this state repression is unfolding within a wider global crackdown and criminalisation of the Palestine solidarity movement. Increasingly, artists, activists and other dissenting voices are being censored, silenced, or smeared with baseless 'terror' allegations as a means of suppressing political  expression. These systemic and structural efforts to marginalise dissent affect all of us — not only those targeted at the moment. 

Our solidarity with the hunger strikers is rooted in our broader commitment to freedom and justice for the Palestinian people who have faced seventy eight years of occupation and over two years of genocide in Gaza. There are currently 3,368 Palestinian prisoners being held hostage in Israeli prisons under administrative detention, without a trial. 

We stand with the hunger strikers, Palestinian hostages and with all those who continue to struggle for freedom and justice in Palestine. 

In Solidarity, 

Irish Artists for Palestine 

I went to see Luton punk band UK Decay at a rare hometown gig at the Luton Hat Factory arts centre last Saturday (8/11/2025).  As expected a peak of their set was their 1980 song 'For my country' with its chorus 'for the honour, I don't ask why, it's my pleasure, my honour to die, for my country.'

The song riffs on Wilfred Owen's First World War poem 'Dulce et Decorum Est' which contrasts the reality of soldiers 'guttering, choking, drowning' in a gas attack with 'The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori' ('It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country').

The poetry of Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and other First World War poets had a big impact on the first punk generation. Penny Rimbaud of Crass has credited Benjamin Britten's War Requiem (1962), which set Owen's poems to music, as a key influence on his pacifism. But I think most of us probably encountered these poems in school and/or through Brian Gardner's anthology 'Up The Line To Death: The War Poets 1914-1918', first published in 1964 and reissued in a 1976 paperback edition. A lot of punk anti-war sentiments were expressed through an imagery from this time, and UK Decay's song is a good example from its lyrics to its sleeve.

More Luton stuff:

Marsh House Luton - from punk to henge

How it all began (for me): a School Kid against the Nazis in Luton 1979/80

Sorry to hear of the passing today of D'Angelo. Quite a lot of obituaries focusing quite rightly on his sexy neo-soul, but some tough politics in there too. His 2010 album 'Black Messiah' is a classic of radical black liberation theology, the track '1000 deaths' including a sample from murdered Chicago Black Panthers leader Fred Hampton:

'Because the people that we're asking for peace

They′re a bunch of megalomaniac war-mongers and they don't even understand what peace means

But we′ve got to fight 'em, we've got to struggle with them

To make them understand what peace means'

Aaron Trinder's 'Free Party: a folk history'  is a documentary telling the story - or at least some of the stories - of the 1980s/90s free party scene. There is a particular focus on the crossover with the earlier free festival /traveller movement,  cross pollinated at Glastonbury and giving rise to Castlemorton in 1992 and much more besides. Interesting interviews feature with people involved at the time with sound systems including Spiral Tribe, Circus Warp, Bedlam and Nottingham's DiY. These help us to see free parties in a longer term historical context - for instance people involved with DiY had previously been involved in hunt sabbing and anarchist activism; Steve Bedlam remains active today with Refugee Community Kitchen.

A recent online fundraiser for the film, with the aim of securing a wider release, featured some additional material including a discussion between Aaron and artist Jeremy Deller. The latter mentions going to Reclaim the Streets parties and reflects on the wider politics of free parties and raves:

'that's what's dangerous when things get joined up. Which never really happened with punk, punk was burnt out so quickly, like two years - gone. Then it was just like bands with Top of the Pops. Dance music affected the whole country, it linked up  with other people, so it was massively political. The songs weren't necessarily but it was the context of what you were doing, and who you were meeting and how you got there. In a way they were more scary, they weren't protest songs but protest behaviour... it's what the state really really  fears, it's people meeting up, forming groups, then those people form bigger groups, it's something you can't really control',

Luton Henge Festival last month (29 July 2025) marked the opening of  Luton Henge, a landscaped space featuring a circle of eight chalk stones that will serve as an outdoor venue for social and cultural events. The festival included music and dance, with Laura Misch playing her saxophone in the sunset. While I was there Bird Rave were doing their thing, dancing in feathered headdresses to classic rave tunes like  'Voodoo Ray' in bird inspired moves that they call 'dancefloor ornithology'. Anyway it was great fun.

The location by Marsh House at the Leagrave end of town is significant, located as it is near to the source of the River Lea and the ancient earthwork of Waulud's Bank. It is also a place linked to Luton's subcultural history. The green barn just about still stands where Crass, Poison Girls and Luton punk band UK Decay played in 1979, and where people also put on jazz funk dances in that period (as recalled by Fahim  Qureshi, see below).

I missed Crass, but it was here around the same time that I saw my first punk gig. From 1977 to at least 1984 there was an annual late summer one day Marsh House Festival. 16 year old me cycled over in 1979 and saw UK Decay and Pneu Mania, as well as 'Stevie's band', a scratch band made up of members of both bands who did a version of YMCA. Also on the bill were local rock band Toad the Wet Sprocket, Arcadaz (jazz/funk band), and acoustic singers Clive Pig and Heinrich Steiner.

Marsh House was originally a farm house for Marsh Farm - the land on which the Marsh Farm council estate was built in the 1960s. In the 1990s, Luton free party collective Exodus started off on this estate and Glenn Jenkins and other people who had been involved in Exodus helped save Marsh House after it was boarded up and threatened with demolition in the 2000s. It now acts as a hub for various community projects, including a music studio.

For me, Marsh House was primarily a place where I went to summer holiday open access playschemes as a kid, charging around the ramshackle adventure playground (getting temporarily banned for stone throwing), bouncing on inflatables and playing softball by the river.  I now know that some of the people who ran those playschemes were part of the local radical/alternative art scene some of whom had previously been involved with Luton Arts Lab and Reflex collective and went on to found the 33 arts centre which gave me a later education in experimental film and theatre-  but that's another story.

Revoluton Arts  who put on the Henge festival and are based at Marsh House are a descendent of these multi-faceted efforts to make things happen in my home town. They have done some interviews with people involved in some of these past projects, interesting to hear Fahim Qureshi (who I remember from the anti-racist movement of that time), Glenn Jenkins and Linda 'Muddie' Farrell (who worked on playschemes and helped set up 33) talk about the River Lea and its wildlife. Guess I followed that river down to London but never stop Luton.

As for the stone circle, I used to be cynical about contemporary efforts to recreate ancient looking monuments but I have seen the Brockley stone circle on Hilly Fields near where I live now become a focus in the south london park where it dates back only to 2000. At the end of the day the combination of stone, sky and people is as real today as it ever was. Build it they will come. 

More Luton stuff:

How it all began (for me): a School Kid against the Nazis in Luton 1979/80

I really enjoyed 'Out to the Dancers', a conversation between  Emma Warren and Ezra Collective's Femi Koleoso at the South Bank Centre's Purcell Room, centred around what dancing means to them in different ways (8 August 2025).

A key theme was around inclusivity - who gets to dance, how and where? In answer to the opening question, 'What makes a great time on the dance floor?', Femi expanded on Emma's ingredients of space and sound by adding inclusivity - 'I think dancing is like almost a human expression of feeling welcomed. And it's very difficult to dance, if you don't feel welcome somewhere....  I think if you can make people feel included, they dance'.

As a young black man growing up in London Femi has of course had a particular experience of what welcome means. As he recalled, planning for a night out was always accompanied by the nagging worry of whether he and all his friends would actually get in.  There was an interesting discussion about doors, Emma talking of the excitement of the bass rattling of the door as you approach it, 'the door as a kind of holder of the sound' promising how you will soon be feeling the music inside. Femi said that he hated that very moment, carrying with it the threat of rejection at the final hurdle after all the queuing. No wonder he said he preferred dancing outside with one less door to negotiate.

Interesting to see how this perspective plays out in Ezra Collective's approach to performance - 'the party starts on stage and everyone's invited' with a conscious effort to make people in the audience feel included, something I really felt when I saw them.

The talk was part of the South Bank's summer programme 'Dance your way home', inspired by Emma's book of the same name and featuring a month of dance-themed events. In fact while the talk was going on hundreds of people were dancing on the riverside terrace outside to Deptford Northern Soul Club.

Looking forward to reading Emma's new book on youth clubs, out soon.

(thank to Jools for photo of Emma and Femi)

Jordan Uncovered is a small exhibition of personal photos of first wave punk icon Jordan (Pamela Rooke, 1955-2022), put together by Andrew James and Darren Coffield. Working at Sex in the Kings Road, starring in Derek Jarman's Jubilee, and managing Adam and the Ants, Jordan was one of the people who in effect created the punk look, at least in its 1970s London incarnation. Sometimes its not the people in the bands who are the most influential in defining a subcultural aesthetic, it's also the faces in the scene and that was certainly the case with Jordan.  Later in life she returned to her love of animals and became a veterinary nurse on the south coast.

In the past few weeks many 'Stop Starving Gaza' pots and pans protests called by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign have been held around the UK:

'Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are starving to death due to Israel's blockade - a blockade designed specifically to use starvation as a weapon of war and of genocide. We've all seen the haunting images of Palestinian adults and children reduced to skeletons, the exhausted people holding empty pots and pans waiting for any small amount of food aid available, and cruelly, often meeting their deaths this way. Nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been shot to death by Israeli soldiers whilst queuing for food' (PSC)

I took part in one in Lewisham, South London where a 200+ people turned out and banged pans in solidarity with Gaza. On the same day (1 August 2025), Georgina Cook took part in a similar event in Hastings, and at her substack she has reflected on this kind of public gathering:

'It sounds the alarm. Turn's pots and pans, the very tools that should prepare nourishment, into instruments of protest against weaponised hunger. It alerts our neighbours and community that plenty of people oppose this weaponisation of hunger, as they do the wider genocide that it's part of, despite the involvement and/or complicity of our governments and media [...]

'The simple act of showing up with a saucepan might not stop a genocide, but it reminds us that we're not as alone or as powerless as so many of us feel. It creates a moment where the silence around atrocity gets punctured by the clatter of kitchen utensils'

As Georgina mentions, historian Matthew Kerry has written of the radical history of this practice which in its modern form he traces back to 1970s Chile:

'Pots and pans are some of the least offensive objects in the kitchen, yet their very mundanity and the ease with which they can be employed by anyone to contribute to a deafening wall of noise make them a media-friendly, uncomfortable reminder of the collective conscience and a challenge to the voice of the state. Pot-banging is malleable to different political contexts, from dictatorships to democracies, as well as spatial performances, including refuge or confinement in the home [...]  Despite attempts to quash noisy protests, the history of pot-banging and its radical mundanity suggests the clanging discordant beat of pots and pans will echo on. (Radical Objects: the Pot and Pan, History Workshop, 2024)

Banging pots has also been a feature of protests in Myanmar against the military government that took power in a coup in 2021 where punks formed a collective named Cacerolazo after the Spanish name for this kind of protest (the name derived from Spanish word for "casserole").  As a form of protest it is particularly associated with women in  Latin America and women. A 2002 manifesto of the Housewives Union in Argentina (Sindicato de Amas de Casa de Santa Fe) argued at a time of economic crisis and austerity:

'Although women have always been involved in the popular struggle, from the Indigenous and slave rebellions at the time of the Conquest, to the movement of the mothers during the dictatorship, to today's "cacerolazo," we have not been listened to and our demands have been postponed in the name of "more urgent"  needs. Other women in Latin America and in the world are banging their pots not only in support of the Argentinian people but on their own behalf, because beyond national realities, we women have needs and demands which bring us together as sisters'. 

Commenting on this manifesto, Krista Lynes remarks 'The cacerolazo is thus a special drumbeat—a beat that announces through the mundane materiality of kitchen tools the publicity of the private in the face of the privatization of the public sphere' (quoted in Feminist Manifestos: a Global Documentary Reader, edited by Penny A. Weiss, 2018).  In the case of Palestine today today though we have to raise noise against something more - the extinction of both the private and the public sphere through starvation, slaughter and destruction.

(photos from Stop Starving Gaza protest at Lewisham Clock Tower, 1 August 2025)

London Life was a mid-1960s what's on magazine that for a little while replaced the Tatler to reflect a shift away from conservative posho style guide towards a more socially democratic swingin' London - tellingly by the end of the 1960s it had reverted to its former name and to being a conservative posho etc.

'Discotheques' were included in the listings, still quite a new phenomenon in UK so with the helpful explanation that these were 'Informal nightclubs and restaurants with dancing, usually to gramophone records. Some discothèques feature musicians from time to time'. Most of these don't sound too appetising, a lot of gambling and no doubt overpriced drinks (overpriced for the time - a goldfinger cocktail at the Hilton for 35p sounds very reasonable now!). Still wouldn't mind a time machine to check out the Flamingo or to see Francoise Hardy at the Savoy in January 1966.

And what of Samantha's in New Burlington Street, described in 1966 as 'London's first psychedelic club' promising to 'create atmosphere with machines' for people who 'want to be taken out of their minds as if they had taken LSD'. All with a talking dummy called Samantha and a dancefloor with 'powerful strobe lighting, which throws malevolent screens of speckled rays over the dancers' while 'a projector in the ceiling imprints vivid coloured slides over the contorted bodies of the music seekers'. 

An antifascist prisoner in pre-trial detention in Hungary has begun a hunger strike. Maja T. was extradited from Germany in June 2024 accused of taking part in an alleged attack on neo-Nazis at the far-right 'Day of Honour' commemoration in Budapest in 2023.  They have been held in solitary confinement ever since - seemingly due to them identifying as non-binary. 

Budapest Antifascist Solidarity Committee has published Maja's statement:

'My name is Maja. Almost a year ago, I was unlawfully extradited to Hungary. Since then I have been held here in inhumane prolonged solitary confinement. Yesterday, on 4 June 2025, a decision was to be made on my application to be transferred to house arrest. This decision was postponed. The last applications for transfer to house arrest were rejected. I am no longer prepared to endure this intolerable situation and wait for decisions from a justice system that has systematically violated my rights over the last few months. I am therefore starting a hunger strike today, 5 June 2025. I demand that I be transferred back to Germany, that I can return to my family and that I can take part in the trial in Hungary from home.

I can no longer endure the prison conditions in Hungary. My cell was under video surveillance 24/7 for over three months. I had to wear handcuffs outside my cell at all times for over seven months, sometimes even in my cell, whether I was shopping, making Skype calls or during visits.

The prison guards inspect my cell every hour, even at night, and they always switch on the lights. I have to endure intimate body searches, during which I have to undress completely. Visits took place in separate rooms, where I was separated from my family, lawyers and official representatives by a glass partition. During cell checks, the prison guards left a complete mess behind. The structural conditions prevent me from seeing enough daylight. The tiny courtyard is made of concrete and is spanned by a grid. The temperature of the shower water cannot be regulated. My cell is permanently infested with bedbugs and cockroaches. There is no adequate supply of balanced and fresh food.

I am also in prolonged solitary confinement. I had no contact with any other prisoners for almost six months. To this day, I see or hear other people for less than an hour a day. This permanent deprivation of human contact is deliberately intended to cause psychological and physical harm. That is why the European Prison Rules of the Council of Europe provide for 'at least two hours of meaningful human contact per day'. That is why 'prolonged solitary confinement', the confinement of a prisoner for at least 22 hours a day for more than 15 days, is considered inhumane treatment or torture according to the United Nations' Nelson Mandela Rules. Here in Hungary I am buried alive in a prison cell and this pre-trial detention can last up to three years in Hungary.

I should never have been extradited to Hungary for these reasons. The Berlin Court of Appeal and the LINX special commission of the State Criminal Police of Saxony planned and carried out the extradition, deliberately bypassing my lawyers and the Federal Constitutional Court. On 28 June 2024, a few hours after my extradition, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that I could not be extradited for the time being. On 6 February 2025, it ruled that my extradition was unlawful. Since then, none of those responsible have been held accountable. There has been no justice for me so far.

With my hunger strike, I also want to draw attention to the fact that no more people should be extradited to Hungary. Zaid from Nuremberg, who is acutely threatened with extradition to Hungary, is currently in particular need of this attention. I declare my solidarity with all anti-fascists who are being persecuted in the Budapest case'.

Sorry to hear about death of Colin Jerwood, lead singer with Conflict. I saw them at various places in the 1980s including Thames Poly, the Ambulance station (Old Kent Road) and Bowes Lyon House in Stevenage. A band of contradictions sometimes to be sure (what was that about using the SAS 'Who dares wins' logo never mind some later stupid remarks) but in those 1980s days nobody else could express our rage against the machine quite like them and they played countless benefits. As Crass slowed down there was a period in which they were the leading band in the anarcho-punk scene as it headed from pacifism to class war,  giving lots of bands their first releases on their Mortarhate label including several great compilations.

I think it's fair to say that Colin wasn't all talk either, I believe he was active in the Animal Liberation Front at one time and not averse to getting stuck in to fascists. In Ian Glasper's anarcho punk book there's an account of what happened at the seminal 1982 gig at the Zig Zag squat in Westbourne Park, where Crass, The Mob and other bands played. According to Andy Martin from The Apostles, who also played that day, a group of right wing skinheads turned up with the result that; "this Asian lad - he was probably the only audience member not of white Caucasian origin - was being brutally kicked and punched by all these fascist thugs… that's right five onto one. And what were the other members of the 500-strong audience doing while this was happening? They had formed a wide circle around the scene and watched in play out… that's right, these anarchist pacifist rat-bags stood and watched five fascists beat up a 15-year-old Asian boy… In case you're wondering what happened next, yes, we did surge forward to come to the lad's aid, but before we could involve ourselves, both Penny and Andy (yes, from Crass) had jumped between us and grabbed the two biggest skinheads, and shoved them to one side of the hall. Colin Jerwood of Conflict confronted the others with less reasonable force, and threatened to put them all in hospital. Those three fascists virtually wet their knickers at the prospect' (The Day the Country Died: a history of anarcho-punk 1980-1984).

This flyer is from what may have been last time I saw them, at Clarendon Ballroom in Hammersmith playing for anti-apartheid in 1986, others mentioned on the flyer include Icons of Filth, Exit Stance and Liberty

'For Peace!' is an interesting exhibition at Four Corners gallery in Bethnal Green, based around material from the archive at MayDay Rooms. The focus is very much on the more radical end of peace and anti-militarist movements - not simply calling for an absence of conflict but challenging the existence of the military and the state's weapons of mass destruction which tick along beneath the radar of mainstream political discourse. Was anybody ever asked for instance whether we wanted a continuing massive US military base at Lakenheath in Suffolk? 

From this perspective the efforts of the Greenham Common and Faslane peace camps set up in the 1980s are seen as central, installing themselves at what is perhaps the real heart of the state - less  Whitehall than the fenced off compounds behind which it accumulates its missiles.

There is archive material from the direct action end of the 1950s/60s movement against the bomb (Committee of 100 and Spies for Peace) and from some less well known 1980s/90s activists such as those who opposed the 'nuclear colonialism' of testing sites and weapons bases.

There is also an emphasis     on solidarity movements such as the Troops Out Movement who campaigned for British withdrawal from Ireland from the 1970s to the 1990s