Chuck Berry – like Jimmy Hendrix – experienced the UK that I was brought-up in. A left-leaning, worker-controlled utopia – liberal and accepting to the point of absurdity (from a rightwing, capitalist perspective). The reactionaries were always knocking on the door seeking to destroy the Unions and dismantle the Welfare State. This process would begin in 1979 with the election of Thatcher. The late 1970s would also see the last “real” Labour Party. Yes – an ageing and almost ridiculous Churchill had re-gained power in the 1950s, but the only reaction he could get away with was “Prescription Charges” – knowing that many of the UK (White) poor could not afford to pay this small fee. It was also Churchill that triggered mass immigration from the colonies – in an attempt to weaken the Unions through outside means – this is how the Chinese-side of my family got here (swings and roundabouts). After-all, the (White) British middle-class had been dictating their rule in Hong Kong for over a hundred-years by that time. It seems odd today that many have this weird idea that it was a looney-left-wing Labour Party that was responsible for mass immigration. No – if Labour had done this then – they would have automatically lost the support of the once very strong Unions (the Unions used to fund the Labour Party – without the Unions there could not have been a Labour Party). Dockers are as about as leftwing as you can get – often openly quoting Marx at public meetings – but in the 1960s they took to the streets in support of Enoch Powell – because their Shop-Stewards knew that mass immigration equalled cheap labour (mass immigration was not permitted in the USSR exactly because of this). I doubt any Dockers actually related to Tory ideology. Still, I digress. Above is Chuck Berry performing a song “banned” in many US States on the grounds that a Black man was a) openly discussing sex – and b) suggesting that the races should “mix”. This is the shorter “re-mastered” version in London – and you can clearly here the English accent. Whilst below is the longer version which contextualises exactly what Chuck Berry was doing:
Chuck Berry was advised that the only place he might get away with singing this song – which discusses “sex”, “race-mixing”, and “homosexuality” – was the UK. Obviously this advice was correct. Now, all was not rosy in the flower garden as we possessed a character named “Mary Whitehouse” who apparently attended a number of Chuck Berry concerts – sat at the front raising and dropping her knee to the music and openly singing the lyrics. As a middle-aged and sexually frustrated lady – an ardent Christian – she felt that she had a god-given duty to campaign to have this track “banned”. I was “5” in 1972 and had just started school in deepest, darkest Devon – and I remember all the young kids singing and humming this tune – thinking it was about the hand-bells we were taught to use in music lessons. Apparently, Ms Whitehouse (ironically, “Whiitehouse” was also the name of a prominent pornographic magazine at the time) stated “There is only a one-letter difference between the word ‘singing’ and “sinning’ and I have made this point clear to the representatives of Mr Berry!” Chuck Berry seems to have had a great time in our People’s Republic!
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 