Tag: emi offices

Burning Morrissey Posters – Staging the Plaguing of the Raised Platform

Posted on by ringocortina99


Cornershop formed whilst me and Benedict were studying at Lancashire Polytechnic, & living in the same house. My brother Avtar and David (HB) C joined us.

Around September 1992, we were were compelled to burn posters of Morrissey at our gigs and also outside his EMI record label to stage against Morrissey’s flamboyant racist overtones. He himself was a fully formed 33 years of age, so we were surprised and disappointed at his quick succession of far right volleys – such as using Richard Allen skinhead imagery to being draped in a Union Jack, at a time when far right sentiment was on the rise & Blacks and Asians were being attacked and murdered.  He was such an influential artist that we needed to try and stamp it out, and it was further compounded because he never responded to discussion about far right wingism as he does today.

Our demonstrations were seen as quaint, people noted the points we were making, but most seemed happier that he was getting a backlash than anything akin to propagating racial hatred. Others simply carried on with their worshipping, slipping away over the years as his rhetoric got worse. It is good that we get more recognition for this anti-Morrissey stance now than we did last century.

We realise now more clearly, especially with the plethora of articles about this bolted horse that the term white privilege has allowed many to oversee such matters until one has a book or article to do.  Why else would such extreme expression have been tolerated for nearly 3 decades?

But times have moved on.  Morrissey has found favour with other twisted fruits like Farage, and Robinson & today the struggle is a general rise in international right-wingedness.  Austerity has broken the resolve of many an industry, times are more difficult for those that work hard and overall we have not had the time to puncture the illusion that Europe is to blame. Europe has really blessed the UK with funds, working standards, general protections and peace.  Without such guidelines the UK will be a tax haven for the few and enslavement for the many, and a great helipad for the US and Russia.  As we said in Staging the Plaguing of the Raised Platform: “The Presidents that you are against, & consequence that it may all go wrong Ananda.” We have it all to fight for and realise our own collective folly before it’s too late.

  

Photo by Pav Modelski.