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Love Music Hate Racism (LMHR) is being relaunched in the UK, more than 40 years after its predecessor, Rock Against Racism (RAR), first mixed pop music with politics. The move comes after violence flared across the UK fuelled by online misinformation and anti-immigration sentiment, which has angered Lynval Golding, founding member of The Specials. Golding sees the summer riots as “flashbacks” to his experiences of racist attacks in Coventry in the 1970s and 80s.
A Coventry event on Saturday, involving a concert with local bands, is taking place to highlight the city’s history of brutal racist killings and violent assaults. Organisers believe this will add poignancy to the event. The Specials were one of many bands, along with Birmingham reggae legends Steel Pulse, Aswad and The Clash to play RAR concerts, which emerged in 1976 in reaction to a rise in racist attacks.
During the late 1970s and early 80s, parts of the UK experienced increasing racial intolerance and violence. In just five months, Coventry saw two racist killings, one attempted murder, several petrol bombings and numerous attacks, all of which shocked the city. Golding asks how people could get “into the state where they would want to go and burn down a hotel with other human beings in it?”
Asians were particularly targeted in these acts of violence because they personified difference, according to Dr. Nirmal Puwar, of Goldsmiths University in London. She explains that growing up in Coventry, racism influenced the activities people did, when they went out, and who they went out with. Previously a prosperous city, Coventry had been hit “particularly hard” by the recession. Football crowds were particularly feared; match days would be almost a curfew-like situation, too dangerous even for families.
LMHR is now being revised to fight “a frightening expansion of the far-right across Europe”, said Clive Dixon, from Coventry LMHR. “We mustn’t be afraid to confront it again.”
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