Case Study 1: Crackers Nightclub

Post-War Britain saw public spaces become racialised as members of the Commonwealth, who were actively encouraged to migrate to England by the British government in the late 1940s to help with the labour shortage following the Second World War began to settle and form communities, particularly in London.[1] In the face of economic and housing marginalisation from white Britons, migrants ‘clustered’ together, forming communities that provided relief from the racism that was faced outside of these communities.[2] By the 1970s, these communities had grown and areas such as Hackney and Notting Hill had become established communities for first and second generations of settlers from the Commonwealth. Over-policing within these areas alongside prejudicial governing, resulted in a racially hostile and polarised environment in Britain as Black Londoners were racially stereotyped and marginalised. As a result, many typical leisure activities, such as going to the pub or youth activities, became ‘off limits to Black Londoners’ forcing Black people to form alternative spheres of leisure.[3]

[caption: Protest for the ‘Mangrove Nine’ in Notting Hill 1971][4]

Transatlantic imports of American Soul music to England in the 1970s, however, sparked the formation of multicultural musical communities that challenged the racially polarised environment in Britain at the time. The ‘apolitical lyrics about love’ in American Soul music and its ‘accommodation of the rhetoric of assimilation’ appealed to young working-class white men in the Mod subculture, and provided an alternative source of Black music for those who didn’t relate to the ‘hegemonic Jamaican identity’ within Reggae.[5] This enabled American Soul to function as an outlet for both white and Black working-class youth.

[caption: George McCrae, an example of one of Mark Roman's go to songs for his club nights]

It is common, however, for the London Soul scene to be remembered nostalgically, with accounts of racism to often be dismissed. Soul nights were often headed by white DJs, who had to persuade club owners to allow Black people into the clubs, demonstrating the racial divisions within England at the time and also the ‘willed multiculturalism’ of the soul scene.[6] Despite this, clubs that held Soul nights commonly acted as cultural gatekeepers: club owners alongside white DJs commonly formed quotas of how many Black people were allowed to enter the club, and routinely rejected Black DJs from playing inside the clubs.[7]

Crackers, a nightclub in Soho, however, provided an alternate experience to Soul nights in clubs across England, as Mark Roman DJed there six nights a week on the condition that ‘door staff relax their quotas on Black clubbers.’[8] Roman’s choice of music created an environment that put dance at the heart of the club, attracting Black, white, gay and straight people to attend.[9] By putting dance at the heart of the club, the social and racial divisions that occurred outside of the Soul nights were replaced with a hierarchy based on who could dance the best.[10] Roman here explains the democratic principles behind his popular Tuesday night dance competitions:

"We used to do a competition day, I started a dancing competition on a Tuesday night […] I never voted, the crowd voted for who they thought was the best – you know, they would pick who they thought had won the competition. You know they had their own types of records they loved, and I knew each dancer – what they liked, they were absolutely amazing!" [11]

Roman dedicated Tuesday nights to American Soul imports only – which quickly resulted in it becoming the most popular night of the week, sometimes having over 1000 attendees.[12] The dancefloor, however, was only accessible to the best dancers, the majority of whom were Black:

For many Black clubbers, Crackers was the first time they had found a central London venue where Black expertise of the music was matched by the Black expertise of the dancers: ‘It showed that young working-class black kids could be the best at something’ (Norman Jay cited in Brewster and Farley 2017).[13]

The video below captures some of the dancers that were routinely on the dance floor at Crackers, giving an example of what the environment would have sometimes been like. For reflections on their time dancing in the 1970s check out this Red Bull Academy Article.

Presenting Crackers in this way signals its alignment with Brown's definition of Utopia: it provided Black youth within the south of England an alternative to the systemic and institutional racism they faced at the time. Through American Soul and dance, Crackers provided an alternative, more optimistic social sphere which countered its racially polarised surroundings. The anti-violent ethos within American Soul music was channeled and reflected in the club, subverting typically violent attitudes of many pubs in England at the time.[14] Instead, dance, fashion and musical cultures and trends emerged through the club, Paul Gilroy 's concept of 'conviviality' can be seen to be at work here, as he claims that informal interaction between different cultures - especially youth cultures in vibrant cities such as London, can form 'spontaneous tolerance and openness'.[15] This, however, isn't to say that Crackers created a Utopia, but rather it provided a glimpse into a utopian framework that coincides with Brown's optimistic approach to analysing utopian impulse.[16]

The next blog post will transport us to 1970s America, where similar disco nights provided refuge from the capitalist infrastructures.

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[1] Caspar Melville, It's a London Thing: How Rare Groove, Acid House and Jungle Remapped the City, (Manchester University Press: Manchester, 2020), 25. [2] Ibid., 51. [3] Ibid., 51-53. [4] Ashley John-Baptiste, 'The Mangrove Nine: Echoes of Black Lives MAtter From 50 Years Ago', BBC, n.d., https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/jGD9WJrVXf/the-mangrove-nine-black-lives-matter, (12 May 2021). [5] Melville, It's a London Thing, 66-67. [6] Ibid., 71. [7] Ibid., 72. [8] Ibid., 74. [9] Stephen Titmus, 'Nightclubbing: Crackers', Redbull Music Academy, (2013), https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2013/03/nightclubbing-crackers, (12 May 2021). [10] Melville, It's a London Thing, 75-76. [11] Six Million Steps, Mark Roman, 'Mark Roman's Cracker's Story - Part One', online audio, Six Million Steps, http://www.sixmillionsteps.com/ams/6MS-MarkRoman-CrackersStory-1.mp3, March 2020, (16th May 2021), unpublished sound file, (14:12 – 14:37). [12] Terry Farley, Roual Galloway, 'The Dancers: In Their Own Words', Redbull Music Academy, 17 September 2015, https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2015/09/the-dancers-in-their-own-words, (12 May 2021). [13] Melville, It's a London Thing, 76.

[14] Ibid., 74.

[15] Paul Gilroy, After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture?, (Routledge: Abingdon, 2004), 144.

[16] Jayna Brown, 'Buzz and Rumble: Global Pop Music and Utopian Pulse', Social Text, 28/1, (2010), 125 - 146, 128.