Drown out their discord

I rocked against racism 30 years ago. Now the far right is wooing voters we have to do it again

Three decades ago an unwelcome shock hit the London flat I shared with five people. The 1977 GLC elections were under way, and through the letterbox came - not three, but four manifestos. For the first time we had the choice of voting left, centre, right or Nazi.

Nowadays the punk era is seen as a raucous and faintly insanitary blip on the continuum of pop history, but I remember it as a time of flux and desperate uncertainty. There were riots, brutality and a government falling apart at the seams, while the disaffected, dispossessed and extremists of every hue were seizing their chance for a piece of the action. Just because things happened to pan out one particular way doesn't mean any of it was inevitable.

The National Front's bid for electoral respectability kicked us all up the arse sufficiently to demonstrate against it in Wood Green and Lewisham. It also galvanised tens of thousands of people to descend on London for Rock Against Racism's famous Carnival Against the Nazis in 1978.

Punk rock's biggest ally - and a key influence on Joe Strummer and John Lydon - had been roots reggae. Nowhere was this better reflected than at Rock Against Racism concerts where bands such as Misty In Roots, Matumbi and the Cinnamons would headline on the same bill as aspiring punk and new wave bands, including my own.

For those of us who grew up with the music of James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder and Bob Marley, the proposition of Rock Against Racism was blindingly obvious. It successfully squared the circle of appealing to a mass audience while remaining genuinely of the left. RAR's sharp visuals and focused message wouldn't be equalled again until Live Aid.

On April 30 1978 we marched from Trafalgar Square to Hackney, east London meeting only token opposition on the way. Behind the scaffolding stage in Victoria Park there was no VIP area, corporate hospitality or even a changing room. RAR had hired a big enough PA to reach 20,000 people; on the day, four times that number turned up.

Looking back, I'm proud my band shared a stage with the Clash but also with perhaps the finest British band of the late 70s, Steel Pulse. The precision rhythms and razorsweet vocals of their single Ku Klux Klan - performed in white robes and hoods - provided an iconic moment for the day.

It would be nice to think that the Anti-Nazi League and Victoria Park carnival played their part in the NF's dismal showing at the 1979 election and subsequent implosion. For whatever reasons, Britain has become a much more tolerant society - at least superficially - over the intervening decades.

But this week an unwelcome shock hit the London semi I share with my family. The 2008 elections for London mayor are under way, and through the letterbox came a 32-page booklet on this year's candidates and parties. Alongside Paddick, Livingstone and Johnson are an illiberal sprinkling of political chancers such as The English Democrats, Christian Choice and Ukip.

In pride of place at the front of the pamphlet is the British National party. "Remember London the way it used to be - clean, friendly and safe?" asks its candidate. Hmmm - when was that exactly? Certainly not the 1970s. Jefferson's aphorism about the price of freedom being eternal vigilance may be a truism, but it's never been truer.

And that's why the 30th anniversary of the Carnival Against the Nazis actually matters. Since 2002 the RAR mantle has been worn by Love Music Hate Racism, which is staging an enormous event spread over three stages tomorrow in Victoria Park.

Rock Against Racism lives on.

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