In 1976, Red Saunders wrote a letter that helped begin one of the most significant anti-racist movements in modern British culture. Sent to the music press after Eric Clapton delivered a racist speech at a concert in Birmingham, the letter called for a campaign against racism in music. It was signed by Saunders, Roger Huddle and members of the political theatre group Kartoon Klowns, including Jo Wreford and Pete Bruno.
The response provided the beginnings of Rock Against Racism. Over the following six years, RAR developed from a postal address and a small group of activists into a national network of organisers, musicians, designers, photographers and music fans. It staged benefit gigs, clubs, tours and large outdoor carnivals, published the poster-magazine Temporary Hoarding and worked with the Anti-Nazi League against the National Front.
Red was central to this history. He helped initiate the campaign, organised events, contributed to its publications and pushed for the large demonstrations that brought RAR to a national audience. At the same time, he photographed the work taking place around it: bands at soundchecks, friends backstage, local organisers, record shops, campaign groups and audiences.
These photographs were produced as part of the movement’s activity. They show Rock Against Racism from the position of someone helping to build it.
By 1976, Red was established as an editorial photographer, working for publications including The Sunday Times Magazine. His career in photography ran alongside a much longer involvement in political culture.
He had worked with political theatre groups since the mid-1960s, performing work concerned with racism, apartheid and war. Through this activity, and through relationships with trade unionists and political organisers, he gained experience of campaigns that combined performance, printed material and public meetings.
Music was equally important. Red had been a Mod in London, attending all-nighters and listening to blues, R&B and soul. As a teenager, he worked at the Marquee Club, collecting glasses and staying after hours to hear visiting musicians. He understood how heavily British rock depended upon Black American music, and the contradiction at the centre of Clapton’s remarks was impossible to miss.
This background helps to explain the form RAR took. Red and the other early organisers did not treat music as decoration for a political meeting. Gigs, photographs, posters, badges, banners and writing were part of the campaign itself. The intention was to reach people through the culture in which they already participated.
Red’s knowledge of all-night music culture can also be seen in his photographs of Wigan Casino, taken for The Sunday Times Magazine earlier in 1976.
Photo © Red Saunders, all rights reserved.
Rock Against Racism emerged during a period of rising unemployment, economic uncertainty and increasingly visible far-right activity. The National Front was contesting elections and attempting to build support by blaming Black and Asian communities for wider social and economic problems. Racist attacks were a persistent part of life in Britain, while anti-immigration arguments were repeated across politics and the national press.
The immediate catalyst came on 5th August 1976. During a concert at Birmingham Odeon, Eric Clapton declared his support for Enoch Powell and used racist language while calling for immigrants to leave Britain. He also repeated the National Front slogan “Keep Britain White”.
Clapton had built his reputation through the blues and had recorded Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff”. For Red and those around him, the speech exposed a wider failure within rock music to acknowledge its debt to Black musicians while racism was becoming more prominent in British public life.
Red wrote a response. The letter challenged Clapton’s remarks, identified the Black foundations of the music from which he had benefited and proposed a new campaign: Rock Against Racism. It was sent to Black Echoes, NME, Melody Maker, Sounds and the socialist press. A postal address was included for anyone who wanted to become involved.
Hundreds of replies arrived.
“Don’t ever think writing letters is a waste of time. Rock Against Racism wouldn’t have happened without that.”— Red Saunders
The letter is often remembered for the pointed question it directed at Clapton over “I Shot the Sheriff”. Its greater importance lies in what followed. It turned anger at one musician’s words into an invitation to organise.
The first Rock Against Racism concert took place at the Princess Alice pub in Forest Gate, east London, on 12th November 1976. Carol Grimes and the London Boogie Band appeared, while local trade union contacts helped with security at a time when the National Front was active in the area.
The early organisers did not yet know whether RAR would develop beyond a few London benefit gigs. What they already had was a clear method: bring musicians and audiences together, make the anti-racist purpose explicit, and put Black and white performers on the same bills.
The events were organised with limited money and volunteers. Venues, sound equipment, design, printing, transport and security were found through personal and political contacts. The campaign did not wait for the established music industry to approve it.
Local groups soon appeared across Britain, organising their own gigs and clubs within a shared anti-racist position. This decentralised structure allowed RAR to respond to local campaigns while remaining recognisable as a national movement.
Photo © Red Saunders, all rights reserved.
RAR’s dedicated zine, Temporary Hoarding, gave the growing network a common visual and political identity. Its title referred to the temporary wooden structures on which posters were pasted in the street. The publication followed the same principle: it could be read as a magazine, opened out and displayed on a wall, or passed between organisers at gigs, colleges, record shops and campaign meetings.
Its pages combined photographs, cartoons, political writing, interviews, reports from local groups, gig listings and posters. The design drew upon agitprop, Dada, Pop Art, underground publishing and the direct visual language of punk fanzines.
The first issue put reggae, soul, rock and roll, jazz, funk and punk within the same broad tradition of music. “Love Music Hate Racism” reduced that position to four words that could work on a badge, poster, banner or stage.
Red’s editorial photography and political theatre experience were particularly useful. Published in Temporary Hoardingand circulated through RAR, his photographs gave the campaign material with which to represent its activities and reach new audiences.
The magazine was produced collectively. Designers, writers, photographers and organisers worked across different roles, often without payment and around other jobs. Its combination of information, argument and visual material reflected the wider structure of RAR, in which publishing and political organisation were closely connected.
RAR is closely associated with punk and reggae because the meeting of those audiences gave the campaign much of its public character. The Clash, X-Ray Spex, Steel Pulse, Misty in Roots, Aswad, the Tom Robinson Band, Buzzcocks, The Ruts and many other artists appeared at RAR events. Local bills were broader still, drawing upon soul, funk, jazz, pub rock and performance poetry.
The combination was political as well as musical. Reggae artists were addressing racism, policing and the experience of Black British communities directly. Punk brought a young audience, an independent network of venues and publications, and a willingness to organise beyond the established music business.
Red’s photographs reflect this range. His surviving work includes the punk band 999 at the Royal College of Art, the People Unite community group in Southall, backstage groups, soundchecks, audiences, local campaigners and record shops in Moss Side. Performers appear alongside the people responsible for the organisation around them.
The Moss Side photographs are particularly valuable to BCA’s account of RAR. They place the campaign within Manchester’s Black community and independent music scene, extending its history beyond the better known London carnivals. A photograph of Paul Marsh Record Shop, for example, documents one of the local spaces where music, information and political culture circulated.
Photo © Red Saunders, all rights reserved.
Photo © Red Saunders, all rights reserved.
Photo © Red Saunders, all rights reserved.
Photo © Red Saunders, all rights reserved.
Red’s position makes his RAR archive distinct. He was an established professional photographer, but he was not attending these events solely on assignment. The people in front of his camera were often fellow organisers, musicians and campaigners with whom he was already working.
This familiarity gave him access to the times around the performances: preparation, soundchecks, backstage conversations and the quieter parts of events.
Some of the best-known RAR photographs concentrate on the enormous crowds at Victoria Park. Red’s surviving work is often more intimate: friends waiting backstage, a band during a soundcheck, a record shop in Moss Side or campaigners gathered together in Southall.
The photographs also had an immediate purpose. They could be printed in Temporary Hoarding, turned into posters, supplied to the press or exchanged between local groups. Red understood publication as part of the life of a photograph. The work was intended to be circulated.
His RAR archive must therefore be understood across his work as a photographer, activist, organiser and publishing contributor. Each role informed the others.
Photo © Red Saunders, all rights reserved.
Photo © Red Saunders, all rights reserved.
Rock Against Racism operated from 1976 to 1982. It did not bring racism in Britain to an end, and its history includes debates about organisation, gender, representation and the relationship between cultural and party politics. Its achievement was more specific: it established an anti-racist position within popular music at a time when the National Front was attempting to recruit among young people.
RAR worked through the existing habits of youth culture: buying records, reading the music press, forming bands, producing fanzines, going to clubs and travelling to gigs. It gave local organisers a shared name and a practical model while allowing them considerable independence.
The movement also changed what a gig could represent. The choice of performers, the audience, the promo material and the organisation around a venue together made a public statement against racism.
Its surviving publications and photographs are now held and exhibited by archives and museums, but their original purpose was immediate. They were produced to help people organise against racism in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
In 1993, an arson attack on Four Walls studio in Stoke Newington destroyed a substantial part of Red Saunders’ photographic archive. Material dating back to the 1960s was lost. The surviving Rock Against Racism photographs represent part of a much larger body of work that can no longer be reconstructed in full.
British Culture Archive presents these pictures as both photographic works and records of political activity. They show Red’s contribution beyond the familiar description of co-founder: he helped turn the original letter into gigs, publications, local networks and national carnivals, then used photography to give that work a public form.
Further archival material relating to the movement is held in the Rock Against Racism collection at Bishopsgate Institute.
Photo © Red Saunders, all rights reserved.
Roger Huddle and Red Saunders, eds., Reminiscences of RAR: Rock Against Racism 1976–1982, Redwords, extended edition, 2021.
Unite Against Fascism / Rock Against Racism archive, Bishopsgate Institute.
From the Archives: Punk Fanzines, Temporary Hoarding and Drastic Measures, Bishopsgate Institute, 21st October 2022.
The 80s: Photographing Britain, Tate Britain exhibition guide, 2024.
Northern Carnival Against the Nazis, 1978, British Culture Archive.
