http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/111565
Remember, remember the flames of police racism
Friday 04 November 2011
by Ann Czernik
Professor Max Farrar says that he rarely speaks of the bonfire night riot in 1975.
But it was then he narrowly missed a lengthy jail term when he was tried and acquitted for incitement to riot, affray and assaulting a police officer while the Leeds Chapeltown district descended into disorder.
"They said I led a mob of black youth into an attack on the police," he says. "It was 100 per cent fabrication."
The situation with the Leeds police reflected what was going on nationally, Farrar claims, where anyone perceived as a threat was attacked.
A white, middle-class college lecturer who worked with Chapeltown News, which continually criticised poilice racism and unjust behaviour, he was "a thorn in their flesh and they found this opportunity to teach me a lesson."
Farrar was taking a photo of the bonfire night celebrations when "a kid beside me suddenly stoned this passing car. I had no idea what he was doing. He said: 'It's a copper.' I remember thinking: 'I understand why you're stoning the car'."
Police piled into Chapeltown to make arrests and as a policeman ran past he bashed Farrar in the face.
"Being a completely naive middle-class uppity fool, I went to the next policeman and said: 'I want to make a complaint. I've been assaulted by an officer.' He grabbed me round the neck, banged my head against his panda car doors and took me up to the police station and arrested me for threatening behaviour. Some time later, when they realised who I was - part of the Chapeltown News Group - they said to themselves: 'We'll show this guy who's boss.'"
The prosecution "case" was to read Chapeltown News to Farrar, including everything it said which was "pretty radical and hostile towards the police" and Farrar had to say what he thought about each of these statements.
He stood by the paper's political line on race, class and police oppression. When the jury was asked why he'd been acquitted, the response was: "We thought you were the kind of person who could incite a riot but we didn't believe you did on this occasion."
Chapeltown News reported the experiences of the migrant working-class black communities that had settled in Chapetown, a run-down area of Leeds during the 1960s and 1970s. The paper was produced by a group of academics who wanted to challenge and engage with racism.
Farrar moved into Chapeltown in 1970. "I thought it was very exotic," he explains. "I thought that sociologists were supposed to identify with outsiders."
But he was told he was "just another missionary" and should "fuck off" as soon as possible. "I don't think people realise how deep this enmity or division goes," he says.
Farrar says during the 1970s the "orthodox" left thought that what he and others were doing in Chapeltown was "kind of barmy." But real black politics was not so much black youth being arrested, although that was part of it. It was a response to "the endemic racism in everyday life and every institution."
Farrar remembers when black parents in Chapeltown took their children out on strike because the education their kids was receiving was so inferior. They'd been arguing with the authorities for more than six months about how poor it was. They refused to listen and the parents set up a supplementary school with their own self-organised, self-educative work.
Within a week the authority had agreed to a new head and new programme of work, "so black direct action had more effect on the Leeds education system than anything on the left had ever done," Farrar asserts.
He emphasises the role that representation has in reducing violent urban protest. "Democratic participation for me is the key. It's the fundamental for creating a better, socially just society," he says.
He cites the politically astute and experienced trade unionist George Mudie as the turning point for representation. His union background meant he was genuinely committed to the view that there needs to be a consultation in which the aggrieved get their voices heard.
"I think he began to realise that there was a long history of political organising but the riots were a symptom of the failure of those legitimate modes of protest to be properly listened to," Farrar says.
Mudie set up the Harehill and Chapeltown Liaison Committee and dragged all the relevant council officers to monthly meetings where they would line up in front of anyone who wanted to say their piece.
These were "interesting experiments in democratic responsibility," Farrer says, because it was the first time they had been forced to come, the meetings were minuted and there was a "certain level of accountability."
But Farrar is at pains to point out that social inequality, which affects young people and particularly black youth disproportionately, is still a burning issue today. Unemployment among black 16 to 24-year-olds is 50 per cent, more than double the rate of their white counterparts. Poverty and poor housing is the default condition of black communities.
He considers that it takes years for violent urban protest to gain momentum and says that research into the cause of the riots support this assertion.
In a recent, moving newspaper interview following this year's nationwide riots, an unknown black youth says: "Why were people confronting the police if it was all about thievery? It wasn't all about thievery but there was thievery going on. It was about giving the police a taste of their own medicine."
Today young black men "have no communities, we don't have many businesses, we got nothing in this country. It's not that we're not part of society. It's that we're not part of the same culture that most people are living."
Black people are "big business" in Britain and "we need to build something for ourselves so that we don't need to keep our hands out swinging. We've been working in the UK for a long time driving the buses and stuff like that. We should have something by now."
Why is that so difficult to understand?
For further information about Professor Farrar, visit: www.maxfarrar.org.uk
Wednesday, 11 January 2012
Tuesday, 11 October 2011
Leeds Taking Soundings meting
The next meeting is on Wednesday October 26th at 6PM. The speaker is Jeremy Gilbert from the University of East London on the topic of 'Reclaiming Modernity: Why the Future isn't Conservative'. The location is Broadcasting Place A101.
Barry Winter on Tony Judt
Barry Winter recently did an excellent talk to the Leeds Taking Soundings group on the subject of Tony Judt and his book Ill Fares the Land. Barry has written up the talk and it available here on the ILP wweb-site.
Thursday, 16 June 2011
Leeds Young Authors at Soundings, June 22nd
The next Leeds Taking Soundings event is about Leeds Young Authors. You will see a film and meet the film directors, some of the young poets, and the people who organise the project. It's on Wednesday 22nd June at 6pm in Old Broadcasting House, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds.
Leeds Young Authors are in desperate need of funds if they are to compete in a forthcoming poetry competition in the USA. They get no public subsidy. if you can spare a few pounds, this is the way to make your donation.
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects?agent_desc=project&filter_text=Leeds+Young+Authors&commit=SEARCH
If you need to be convinced of what a good cause this is to support, read on . . .
The film about Leeds Young Authors, 'We are Poets' (described by Benjamin Zephaniah as poetry itself) won a prize at the prestigious Sheffield Documentary Film Festival last week.
Director(s):Alex Ramseyer-Bache, Daniel Lucchesi - Producer(s):Alex Ramseyer-Bache Co - Producer Khadijah Ibrahiim
Running time: 80 min
It might be the age of Facebook and Twitter, but a group of Leeds teenagers have chosen to define themselves through one of the most ancient forms of culture out there: the spoken word. But these aren’t any old poems but anguished, witty full-throated diatribes, voicing the concerns of a generation of British born teenagers. Brave New Voices, the most prestigious poetry slam competition in America, has chosen Leeds Young Authors to represent the UK at their upcoming competition in Washington DC (2009). Sheffield-based filmmakers Alex Ramseyer-Bache and Daniel Lucchesi, graduates of Leeds Met's Film School, follow the group as they prepare for a transformational journey of a lifetime. With a mix of cinematically crafted lyrical sequences with raw, intimate actuality documentary, 'We Are Poets' challenges our understanding of youth by giving them the stage, allowing them the chance to speak for themselves. Anyone tempted to dismiss today’s teenagers as politically apathetic layabouts better pay heed: here is electrifying evidence to the contrary.
More on Leeds Young Authors, founded by Khadija Ibrahim, here:
http://www.leedsyoungauthors.org.uk/about.html
Leeds Young Authors are in desperate need of funds if they are to compete in a forthcoming poetry competition in the USA. They get no public subsidy. if you can spare a few pounds, this is the way to make your donation.
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects?agent_desc=project&filter_text=Leeds+Young+Authors&commit=SEARCH
If you need to be convinced of what a good cause this is to support, read on . . .
The film about Leeds Young Authors, 'We are Poets' (described by Benjamin Zephaniah as poetry itself) won a prize at the prestigious Sheffield Documentary Film Festival last week.
Director(s):Alex Ramseyer-Bache, Daniel Lucchesi - Producer(s):Alex Ramseyer-Bache Co - Producer Khadijah Ibrahiim
Running time: 80 min
It might be the age of Facebook and Twitter, but a group of Leeds teenagers have chosen to define themselves through one of the most ancient forms of culture out there: the spoken word. But these aren’t any old poems but anguished, witty full-throated diatribes, voicing the concerns of a generation of British born teenagers. Brave New Voices, the most prestigious poetry slam competition in America, has chosen Leeds Young Authors to represent the UK at their upcoming competition in Washington DC (2009). Sheffield-based filmmakers Alex Ramseyer-Bache and Daniel Lucchesi, graduates of Leeds Met's Film School, follow the group as they prepare for a transformational journey of a lifetime. With a mix of cinematically crafted lyrical sequences with raw, intimate actuality documentary, 'We Are Poets' challenges our understanding of youth by giving them the stage, allowing them the chance to speak for themselves. Anyone tempted to dismiss today’s teenagers as politically apathetic layabouts better pay heed: here is electrifying evidence to the contrary.
More on Leeds Young Authors, founded by Khadija Ibrahim, here:
http://www.leedsyoungauthors.org.uk/about.html
Leeds Salon on Valuing the Arts
Forthcoming Leeds Salon debate, now part of the Emerge Leeds Festival 2011:
Valuing the Arts in an Age of Austerity
Wednesday 22 June 2011
The Millennium Room, The Carriageworks, Millennium Square, Leeds,
5:45pm (for a 6pm start) to 7:45pm.
£5 waged/£3 unwaged on the door.
With the current economic crisis and widespread cuts in public spending budgets, things are even more financially precarious for the arts than usual; and many in the arts have been forced to reappraise how they argue the case for funding.
The Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) is investigating techniques to assess the economic value of the arts, what it terms non-market goods, in terms of what people feel they would be willing to pay for things if they were not free.
And the February 2011 Royal Society for the Arts (RSA) pamphlet entitled Arts Funding, Austerity and the Big Society: Remaking the case for the arts states: "The Commission on 2020 Public Services at the RSA has called for more public investment to be evaluated in terms of a ‘social productivity test’: whether it builds individual and community engagement, resilience and reciprocity."
The pamphlet sets out to define a bold response to the challenge presented by the cuts in funding, but is there something wanting in the solutions offered?
This discussion aims to challenge the participation approach of chasing audiences, in favour of more compelling reasons why the arts should receive public funding, and ask some difficult questions such as: just how should we value the arts? Are the arts a luxury or a necessity? Do they have intrinsic value or are they best assessed in terms of outcome and impact? Does what the public think they want or like matter or should we fund the arts regardless? Do the arts even need or deserve public funding at all?
Speakers
Angus Kennedy is head of external relations for the Institute of Ideas, working principally to programme the annual Battle of Ideas festival in London and its international satellite events. He chairs the Institute’s Economy Forum and helps organise its discussions. He writes for spiked and Culture Wars, among other publications, with particular interests in the Holocaust, classics, culture and the arts, economics and moral philosophy.
Moira Innes, Director Leeds Met Gallery & Studio Theatre. Moira has a post-graduate qualification in sculpture from Edinburgh College of Art and has since worked continually in the art sector. As a founding Director for Situation Leeds, she co-organised festivals of art in public realm in 2005 & 2007 and is currently developing a series of interventions that utilise the fabric of the city. She is currently Chair of Leeds Visual Art Forum and works strategically to the profile of the visual arts across Leeds.
Councillor Adam Ogilvie represents Beeston and Holbeck ward in south Leeds where he also lives. Since May 2010, he has been the Executive Board Member for Leisure on Leeds City Council; a portfolio which includes arts, culture and creative industries, museums and galleries, events, parks and countryside, sport and recreation, libraries and cemeteries and crematoria. He is also on the Board of South Leeds Community Radio, Beeston Festival and Holbeck Gala Committees and Chair of Leeds Grand Theatre.
Andy Abbott is an artist, writer, musician and educator. He graduated from the LCAD Foundation course in 2001 and has worked and studied in Leeds since. Currently he is undertaking practice-led research for a PhD in Fine Art at University of Leeds. From 2003 Andy has worked as part of the artist collective Black Dogs and has exhibited nationally and internationally from self-organised public interventions in Leeds, to events at Tate Modern and presentations in Italy and Greece. He also teaches part-time in the Fine Art area of Foundation at LCA.
Background Discussion
Can the arts save the economy? , listen again to this Battle of Ideas 2009 session
Just what are the arts good for? , watch and listen again to this Battle of Ideas 2010 satellite
event
Arts Funding, Austerity and the Big Society: Remaking the case for the arts, RSA pamphlet,
February 2011
Using art to nudge the public, by Jan Bowman, Culture Wars, 20 May 2011
Melvin Bragg: why the arts have replaced heavy industry, The Telegraph, 12 May 2011
Crisis? The arts have rarely been in better health, Simon Jenkins, London Evening Standard, 23 February 2010
Culture Linked to Improved Health, BBC New, 24 May 2011
To let us know you’re coming please reply to this e-mail. If you’re not on it already, join our mailing list at: http://leedssalon.org.uk/index.php?page=contact, and join our group on Facebook.
This debate is part of the Emerge Leeds Festival 2011 being held at the Carriageworks Theatre from the 19th to 26th June.
This is also a back-to-back event with Manchester Salon. So if you can’t make 22 June join the discussion in Manchester on Tuesday 21 June.
Valuing the Arts in an Age of Austerity
Wednesday 22 June 2011
The Millennium Room, The Carriageworks, Millennium Square, Leeds,
5:45pm (for a 6pm start) to 7:45pm.
£5 waged/£3 unwaged on the door.
With the current economic crisis and widespread cuts in public spending budgets, things are even more financially precarious for the arts than usual; and many in the arts have been forced to reappraise how they argue the case for funding.
The Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) is investigating techniques to assess the economic value of the arts, what it terms non-market goods, in terms of what people feel they would be willing to pay for things if they were not free.
And the February 2011 Royal Society for the Arts (RSA) pamphlet entitled Arts Funding, Austerity and the Big Society: Remaking the case for the arts states: "The Commission on 2020 Public Services at the RSA has called for more public investment to be evaluated in terms of a ‘social productivity test’: whether it builds individual and community engagement, resilience and reciprocity."
The pamphlet sets out to define a bold response to the challenge presented by the cuts in funding, but is there something wanting in the solutions offered?
This discussion aims to challenge the participation approach of chasing audiences, in favour of more compelling reasons why the arts should receive public funding, and ask some difficult questions such as: just how should we value the arts? Are the arts a luxury or a necessity? Do they have intrinsic value or are they best assessed in terms of outcome and impact? Does what the public think they want or like matter or should we fund the arts regardless? Do the arts even need or deserve public funding at all?
Speakers
Angus Kennedy is head of external relations for the Institute of Ideas, working principally to programme the annual Battle of Ideas festival in London and its international satellite events. He chairs the Institute’s Economy Forum and helps organise its discussions. He writes for spiked and Culture Wars, among other publications, with particular interests in the Holocaust, classics, culture and the arts, economics and moral philosophy.
Moira Innes, Director Leeds Met Gallery & Studio Theatre. Moira has a post-graduate qualification in sculpture from Edinburgh College of Art and has since worked continually in the art sector. As a founding Director for Situation Leeds, she co-organised festivals of art in public realm in 2005 & 2007 and is currently developing a series of interventions that utilise the fabric of the city. She is currently Chair of Leeds Visual Art Forum and works strategically to the profile of the visual arts across Leeds.
Councillor Adam Ogilvie represents Beeston and Holbeck ward in south Leeds where he also lives. Since May 2010, he has been the Executive Board Member for Leisure on Leeds City Council; a portfolio which includes arts, culture and creative industries, museums and galleries, events, parks and countryside, sport and recreation, libraries and cemeteries and crematoria. He is also on the Board of South Leeds Community Radio, Beeston Festival and Holbeck Gala Committees and Chair of Leeds Grand Theatre.
Andy Abbott is an artist, writer, musician and educator. He graduated from the LCAD Foundation course in 2001 and has worked and studied in Leeds since. Currently he is undertaking practice-led research for a PhD in Fine Art at University of Leeds. From 2003 Andy has worked as part of the artist collective Black Dogs and has exhibited nationally and internationally from self-organised public interventions in Leeds, to events at Tate Modern and presentations in Italy and Greece. He also teaches part-time in the Fine Art area of Foundation at LCA.
Background Discussion
Can the arts save the economy? , listen again to this Battle of Ideas 2009 session
Just what are the arts good for? , watch and listen again to this Battle of Ideas 2010 satellite
event
Arts Funding, Austerity and the Big Society: Remaking the case for the arts, RSA pamphlet,
February 2011
Using art to nudge the public, by Jan Bowman, Culture Wars, 20 May 2011
Melvin Bragg: why the arts have replaced heavy industry, The Telegraph, 12 May 2011
Crisis? The arts have rarely been in better health, Simon Jenkins, London Evening Standard, 23 February 2010
Culture Linked to Improved Health, BBC New, 24 May 2011
To let us know you’re coming please reply to this e-mail. If you’re not on it already, join our mailing list at: http://leedssalon.org.uk/index.php?page=contact, and join our group on Facebook.
This debate is part of the Emerge Leeds Festival 2011 being held at the Carriageworks Theatre from the 19th to 26th June.
This is also a back-to-back event with Manchester Salon. So if you can’t make 22 June join the discussion in Manchester on Tuesday 21 June.
Sunday, 3 April 2011
Multiculturalism, Interculturalism, or Muscular Liberalism?
The next Leeds Taking Soundings meeting is on 'Multiculturalism, Interculturalism, or Muscular Liberalism?' Wednesday, May 18th at 6PM in Old Broadcasting House. Our speakers are Max Farrar (sociologist and Emeritus Professor of Community Engagement at Leeds Metropolitan University) and Franco Bianchini ( Professor of Cultural Policy and Planning at Leeds Metropolitan University) David Cameron has coat-tailed ten years of assaults on multiculturalism with his criticism of 'state multiculturalism'. He proposes a 'muscular liberal' assertion of core British values to which all minorities must sign up. Max Farrar will show that multiculturalism has always been a contested notion. Franco Bianchini will outline an alternative conception - interculturalism - which has the potential to overcome some of the inherent difficulties with multiculturalism.
Monday, 28 February 2011
Salon on Middle East
The Middle East Uprising: Why Now? What Next?
Wednesday 16 March
Old Broadcasting House
148 Woodhouse Lane
Leeds, LS2 9EN
6:45pm (for a 7pm start) to 8:30pm.
The events in Egypt have come as a surprise to most, with even President Obama questioning US intelligence agencies’ failure to predict the uprisings in the Arab world. The drive behind the January 25 revolt is a genuinely popular democratic movement, but its outcome is still unclear. Who are the main players determining events – the military, the Muslim Brotherhood, young protesters, workers, the elite? And how should we characterise what Twitter calls #Jan25 in the absence of obvious leadership of the movement?
The uprising seems also to put paid to the idea that democracy is exclusively Western, and not a universal aspiration. Yet the reaction from Western elites has been ambivalent at best: can Egyptians bring about a ‘stable democracy’? Fears about an Islamist takeover are voiced as much by Westerners as by President Mubarak. What do we make of calls from foreign ministries for an ‘orderly transition’, especially in light of Western powers’ history in the region? What does the revolt mean for the balance of power in the region, and for American hegemony?
The Speaker
Karl Sharro is an architect, writer and commentator on the Middle East. He previously taught at the American University of Beirut. Karl has written for a number of international publications, such as Springerin (Austria), Mark Magazine (Holland), Novo (Germany), Glass (UK) and Blueprint (UK), and he contributes regularly to the online publications Culture Wars and Muftah.org. He has spoken on a range of issues such as art, architecture, urbanism and politics. He blogs at Karl reMarks.
Readings
The Egyptian uprising: on the universal aspiration for freedom, by Karl Sharro, 4 February 2011
Why Tunis, Why Cairo?, by Issandr El Amrani, London Review of Books, February 2011
The Egyptian uprising: ‘why now?’ and ‘what next?’, by Brendan O’Neill, Spiked-online, 8 February 2011
Egypt’s Bumbling Brotherhood, by Scott Atran, The New York Times, 2 February 2011
Overdue End of the Old World Order, by Mick Hume, Spiked-Online, 23 February 2011.
This is a free event but a voluntary contribution to cover costs will be asked for on the night. To let us know you’re coming please reply to this e-mail. If you’re not on it already, join our mailing list at: http://leedssalon.org.uk/index.php?page=contact, and join our group on Facebook.
Wednesday 16 March
Old Broadcasting House
148 Woodhouse Lane
Leeds, LS2 9EN
6:45pm (for a 7pm start) to 8:30pm.
The events in Egypt have come as a surprise to most, with even President Obama questioning US intelligence agencies’ failure to predict the uprisings in the Arab world. The drive behind the January 25 revolt is a genuinely popular democratic movement, but its outcome is still unclear. Who are the main players determining events – the military, the Muslim Brotherhood, young protesters, workers, the elite? And how should we characterise what Twitter calls #Jan25 in the absence of obvious leadership of the movement?
The uprising seems also to put paid to the idea that democracy is exclusively Western, and not a universal aspiration. Yet the reaction from Western elites has been ambivalent at best: can Egyptians bring about a ‘stable democracy’? Fears about an Islamist takeover are voiced as much by Westerners as by President Mubarak. What do we make of calls from foreign ministries for an ‘orderly transition’, especially in light of Western powers’ history in the region? What does the revolt mean for the balance of power in the region, and for American hegemony?
The Speaker
Karl Sharro is an architect, writer and commentator on the Middle East. He previously taught at the American University of Beirut. Karl has written for a number of international publications, such as Springerin (Austria), Mark Magazine (Holland), Novo (Germany), Glass (UK) and Blueprint (UK), and he contributes regularly to the online publications Culture Wars and Muftah.org. He has spoken on a range of issues such as art, architecture, urbanism and politics. He blogs at Karl reMarks.
Readings
The Egyptian uprising: on the universal aspiration for freedom, by Karl Sharro, 4 February 2011
Why Tunis, Why Cairo?, by Issandr El Amrani, London Review of Books, February 2011
The Egyptian uprising: ‘why now?’ and ‘what next?’, by Brendan O’Neill, Spiked-online, 8 February 2011
Egypt’s Bumbling Brotherhood, by Scott Atran, The New York Times, 2 February 2011
Overdue End of the Old World Order, by Mick Hume, Spiked-Online, 23 February 2011.
This is a free event but a voluntary contribution to cover costs will be asked for on the night. To let us know you’re coming please reply to this e-mail. If you’re not on it already, join our mailing list at: http://leedssalon.org.uk/index.php?page=contact, and join our group on Facebook.
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