From anti-fascist demonstrations in Leicester and West Bromwich to Blair Peach’s funeral, the Right to Work campaign and the Chix Sweets strike, Virginia Turbett’s photographs document a year of political conflict and collective action.
Virginia Turbett’s photographs document seven months in 1979 which saw the National Front confronted on the streets, the death of Blair Peach and workers standing up against closures and exploitation.
Taken in Leicester, West Bromwich, London, Blackpool and Slough, the photographs switch between large demonstrations and smaller groups. Turbett stayed close to the people involved.
Together, the pictures document several distinct struggles. They also show how opposition to racism, unemployment and industrial decline often drew upon the same networks of activists, trade unionists and local communities.
Photograph © Virginia Turbett. All rights reserved.
Born in West Sussex in 1957, Virginia Turbett began her photographic career in 1977. Her first assignment was photographing the Sex Pistols while they made the video for “Pretty Vacant”. Within a year she was working for the left-wing press and travelling around Britain to cover political and social stories.
Turbett would become widely known for her music photography. She worked for publications including Sounds, Smash Hits, The Face and Record Mirror, photographing musicians as well as the audiences and cultures around them. At the same time, she covered demonstrations, industrial disputes and communities facing unemployment.
The two areas of work were closely connected. Rock Against Racism brought music and anti-racist politics together, while punk and 2 Tone gave political expression to the anger felt by many young people. Turbett photographed that culture at gigs and on the street. Her work sits alongside the photography made within campaigns such as Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League, but also extends into labour disputes and the effects of industrial decline.
Looking back on the period, Turbett recalled:
“I photographed among communities whose existence was threatened by closures, job cuts, poor housing, and racism.”
Her photographs were made as reportage. Their wider value as social history has become clearer with time.
The National Front entered the 1979 general election attempting to establish itself as both an electoral organisation and a force on Britain’s streets. Its activity met sustained opposition from anti-racist groups, trade unions and local communities.
On 21st April, the National Front marched through Leicester. The East Midlands Oral History Archive records that around 5,000 police officers were deployed. Confrontations followed between the National Front, anti-fascist demonstrators and the police.
Turbett photographed within the disorder. Rather than an unexplained scene of “rioting”, the photograph shows the large opposition to a National Front march through one of Britain’s most culturally diverse cities.
Photograph © Virginia Turbett. All rights reserved.
One week later, anti-fascist demonstrators gathered in West Bromwich to oppose a National Front meeting. The town had particular significance for the far right. In a parliamentary by-election there in 1973, the National Front had secured more than 16 per cent of the vote.
Photograph © Virginia Turbett. All rights reserved.
Between the Leicester and West Bromwich demonstrations came the events in Southall.
On 23rd April 1979, the National Front held an election meeting at Southall Town Hall. Its decision to meet in an area with a large South Asian population was opposed by local residents, the Anti-Nazi League and other anti-racist campaigners. Almost 3,000 police officers were deployed, including members of the Metropolitan Police Special Patrol Group.
Blair Peach, a New Zealand-born teacher and Anti-Nazi League campaigner, suffered a fatal head injury during the police operation. He died in hospital shortly after midnight on 24th April.
An internal Metropolitan Police investigation led by Commander John Cass concluded that Peach had almost certainly been struck by an officer from the Special Patrol Group. The report remained secret for three decades and no officer was prosecuted. The Metropolitan Police investigation papers were finally released in 2010.
Peach’s body lay at the Dominion Cinema in Southall on 12th June. The following day, thousands joined the funeral procession to East London Cemetery.
Turbett’s photograph records the scale of that public response. The funeral was an act of mourning, but it was also a demonstration of the support Peach and the wider anti-racist movement had gained.
Photograph © Virginia Turbett. All rights reserved.
The campaign for accountability continued for decades, led by Peach’s partner Celia Stubbs and supported by family, friends and political organisations. Their papers now form the Blair Peach Archive at Bishopsgate Institute.
By September 1979, Turbett was photographing another strand of political activity.
The Right to Work campaign had emerged in response to rising unemployment, particularly among young people. It organised marches, demonstrations and lobbies intended to connect those without work to the wider trade union movement.
Between 1st and 5th September, campaigners marched from Liverpool to Blackpool, where the Trades Union Congress was holding its annual conference. Turbett photographed the lobby on its final day.
One picture shows campaigners chanting together. The second identifies wives and workers from the Shotton and Corby steelworks, where the threat of closure was already hanging over entire communities.
Photograph © Virginia Turbett. All rights reserved.
The Blackpool photographs were taken before the full terms of the closures were announced. The danger was nevertheless understood. During a House of Commons debate in July 1979, MPs spoke of the “sword of closure” hanging over Shotton and Corby.
Steelmaking at Shotton ended in 1980, with thousands of jobs lost. Corby suffered a similar loss when its steelworks closed. In both places, the effects extended far beyond those directly employed by British Steel.
Turbett’s photographs show that the resistance began before the final closures. Workers and their families were already travelling to national demonstrations and pressing the trade union movement to act.
Photograph © Virginia Turbett. All rights reserved.
The final photograph was taken in Slough on 2nd November 1979.
The workforce at the Chix confectionery factory was predominantly South Asian and female. In October, workers walked out over the refusal of the company’s managing director to recognise their trade union.
The strike received support from the wider South Asian community. It formed part of a longer history of industrial action in which South Asian women challenged poor treatment at work and the assumption that they would be unwilling to organise.
Turbett photographed the women early in the dispute. She worked close to the picket line, allowing the people involved to remain recognisable as individuals rather than becoming an anonymous symbol of industrial unrest.
Photograph © Virginia Turbett. All rights reserved.
The Chix dispute lasted for eight months. Unlike the better-known Grunwick strike, it ended with the workers securing their central demand for union recognition. Its history has since been documented by the South Asian Britain project, which places the strike within a wider record of South Asian women’s political and workplace activism.
Turbett’s photograph provides important visual evidence of that history. It shows the women during the dispute itself, before the outcome was known and before the strike had acquired its later historical significance.
These seven photographs do not offer a complete history of protest in 1979. They record particular events seen by one photographer working for the political press.
Their importance lies partly in that directness. She was present while people gathered against the National Front, followed Blair Peach’s funeral procession and defended jobs that were about to disappear.
The photographs also resist a tidy separation between race, work and politics. Anti-fascist organisations drew support from trade unions. Right to Work campaigners moved between unemployment marches and anti-racist activity. At Chix Sweets, workplace organisation was inseparable from the experience of South Asian women in Britain.
Turbett later described revisiting her early negatives and recognising their value as social history. Seen together, the photographs provide a concentrated record of one year in which political conflict was fought in streets, workplaces and public meetings across Britain.
They preserve the banners and faces of people who decided to take part.
First published by British Culture Archive on 16th October 2023. Revised and expanded as an editorial feature on 27th July 2026.
