It’s 1991 and my pop group, Soho, are on tour in the UK with a more successful but equally radical-sounding pop group. President George Herbert Walker Bush has just announced Operation Desert Storm, based on a United Nations resolution for a multinational military force to get Saddam Hussain out of Kuwait and he takes this opportunity to invade Iraq, with support from the United Kingdom.
I am arguing with the lead singer of the other group we are touring with. The conversation started with me suggesting that our hot, sold out pop tour package put together a Stop the War concert. He vehemently disagrees, in fact, telling me that the invasion is probably a good thing.
America invaded and between 100,000 and 200,000 mainly Iraqi civilians are estimated to have been killed as a result.
Now it’s 1994 and I have just been on the phone with Malcolm McLaren, the first manager of the Sex Pistols, famously, fabulously infamous, if tone deaf. He has just agreed to ‘narrate’ a record I am trying to put together to support the fight back against the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act which, among other things, criminalises attending a non-licensed rave, particularly, but not exclusively one in which ten or more persons attend to listen to “music” wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats.
Also on the album that eventually comes out and sells 1,000 copies are Radiohead, Duran Duran and EMF and other equally well known artists
Let’s play hopscotch and double back to 1988. On stage at Wembley are, at different times, Stevie Wonder, Dire Straits, Whitney Houston, Simple Minds and Sting. They are paying tribute to an imprisoned ‘terrorist’, Nelson Mandela, the leader of the African National Congress, the ANC, who have been engaged in a long fight against apartheid in South Africa, where a system of oppression and inequality was maintained by white supremacists who have invaded neighbouring countries, such as Namibia, Angola and Mozambique, bombing and destroying the villages and towns and the people in them who also supported liberation for the Black population of South Africa.
At this time, a long and well embedded cultural and economic boycott against apartheid South Africa was in place. This extended to pop music.
The concept of anti-racism would seem a natural fit with pop music - a musical and cultural phenomenon almost wholly based on the art of African-Americans, from the beats ,to the dancing to the chord progressions and attitude.
Despite this, not every pop artist agreed to the boycott. There was big money to be made by people like Status Quo, Queen and Frank Sinatra playing South Africa. In fact, it might surprise you to see the list of performers who ignored the series of UN resolutions calling for the world to take action to assist ‘the oppressed people of South Africa’, and who made millions, in some cases, playing in the faked ‘separate country’, or bantustan, of Bophuthatswana, the home of the notorious Sun City casino, where many boycott busting concerts took place.
It was understood, by the white South Africans, by their supporters in the west (Thatcher and Reagan, for instance) and by Jerry Dammers, chief architect of the Mandela concert, that culture was a crucial element in the struggle for and against apartheid.
It is now 2024 and we are watching, in real time and more graphically than we could imagine, the thousands and thousands of deaths and wounding of children in Palestine, and now Lebanon, in the name of ’self-defence’.
The Palestinians, in 2005, called for BDS: Boycott, Divest, Sanction, against Israel. The International Court of Justice in July, 2024 found that Israel is practising apartheid - that’s right, the same shit as South Africa - in the ‘occupied territories’.
Since then, many artists have played Israel. The money’s good and not all of them are aware of the BDS movement, or, they weren’t. In more recent years, since BDS has become common knowledge, the list includes people like Robbie Williams, Bruno Mars, Morrissey, Nick Cave, Jah Wobble…
There are many people who don’t agree with cultural boycotts. They think art should be separate from politics, from struggle, from human life. As if it is possible to elevate art, to float like the angels in the Sistine Chapel above our heads, unsullied by the dirt of death and suffering.
Of course, all art is in essence political. Made by people. Reflecting life. It’s a decision to ignore suffering, a decision to ignore how our collective decisions may cause a baby being blown to smithereens in Gaza.
None of us like to think that’s what we are, that we would let that kind of pain happen without doing, some little something. But, here we are.
There are famous people with huge platforms who actually support Israel’s latest ‘mowing of the lawn’. Or, even worse in a way, some just don’t want to get involved, for fear of the hugely powerful Israeli lobby or because, they think - art and politics shouldn’t ‘mix.’
Protest is seldom very successful. But. Boycotts work. When the call is from those most oppressed then we should heed that call. If the women of Saudi or Afghanistan call for a boycott, we should respond. If the gay community in Russia calls, we should respond. More than the largely useless and toothless limited economic sanctions imposed by governments on other governments, boycotts that start at the grass roots, that challenge support for sport and pop stars, that remove the illusion that a murderous regime is somehow part of a civilised world, these work.
How? By making the ordinary people who sanction oppression question their leaders and themselves and force the long and painful process towards equality..
The Palestinian people have called for help. This is actually something we can do.
Boycott Israel.
Essential Information
The Boycott, Divest, Sanction movement website is here
Download the No Thanks app from Apple here
Who played Sun City? (just some):
Beach Boys
Elton John
Rod Stewart
Paul Anka
Ray Charles
Chicago
Sha Na Na
Cher
Dolly Parton
Linda Ronstadt
Johnny Mathis
David Essex
Nana Maskouri
Andy Gibb
Curtis mayfield
Tina Turner
Malcolm McLaren
Black Sabbath
Commodores
