Carnival Against the Nazis

Carnival Against the Nazis is a vintage pin badge for a joint campaign of three concerts that took place in 1978.

The badge is circular with a white background. ANTI-NAZI LEAGUE runs along the top in plain uppercase. Below it, a black cauldron dominates the centre, flames rising from it.

Inside the cauldron, at the top, sits a drawn illustration of a concert crowd — figures packed together, a stage and banner behind them. Below the crowd, still inside the cauldron, the word Carnival burns in heavy jagged lettering, yellow at the core and edged in red.

To the upper left, outside the cauldron, the RAR star — a yellow circle with a black star inside it — is held aloft by a drawn figure. Along the bottom, in plain black uppercase: CARNIVAL AGAINST THE NAZIS.

A cauldron is where things are transformed. The designers took the word carnival — a word that belongs to streets and procession and pleasure — and put it inside one, along with a crowd, and set the whole thing on fire. The National Front wanted to own the streets. This badge heats street culture until it changes state.

ANTI-NAZI LEAGUE at the top and CARNIVAL AGAINST THE NAZIS at the bottom are cold and factual. They frame the heat. The cauldron between them is the only thing on the badge that is alive. The RAR star outside the flames is held aloft by a figure who is also outside the cauldron. They are the ones doing the offering.

The poison in the grooves

Rock Against Racism was founded in 1976 after the photographer Red Saunders wrote an open letter to the music press. The Anti-Nazi League followed in November 1977, launched in the aftermath of the Battle of Lewisham. Together they organised three carnivals in 1978, each one bigger than the last.

The National Front was not a fringe concern. In the 1977 Greater London Council elections it won 119,000 votes, pushing the Liberals into fourth place across a third of London constituencies.

Punk, reggae, and a common enemy

The joint strategy of RAR and the ANL was built on a specific cultural argument. Punk and reggae were communities that the far right had tried to play off against one another. Putting The Clash and Steel Pulse on the same stage was not a gesture. It was a rebuttal.

The billing at each carnival made that argument physically. The music crossed racial lines that the National Front insisted were fixed. Dave Widgery, writing in the aftermath of Victoria Park, called it “a positive, joyous carnival against the No Fun, No Future philosophy of the NF.” The joyfulness was itself the point.

RAR's own slogan said it plainly: Love Music, Hate Racism.

March to the music

The first carnival took place on 30 April 1978, and was the largest of the three. Two further concerts followed later that year:

• Carnival Against the Nazis, Victoria Park, Hackney, 30 April 1978. Around 100,000 people marched from Trafalgar Square through Hackney to the park. The lineup included The Clash, Steel Pulse, X-Ray Spex and the Tom Robinson Band. The column took three and a half hours to clear Trafalgar Square.
• Northern Carnival, Alexandra Park, Manchester, 15 July 1978. A march from Strangeways prison to the park preceded the concert. The lineup included Buzzcocks, Steel Pulse, Exodus and China Street. Around 40,000 people attended.
• Carnival 2, Brockwell Park, Brixton, 24 September 1978. The final major event of the campaign, designed as a last push against the National Front. Elvis Costello, Stiff Little Fingers and Aswad headlined. Estimates put the attendance at between 50,000 and 100,000.

The word itself is on fire

The National Front stood 303 candidates at the 1979 general election and failed to win a single seat or reach 1% of the national vote. The carnivals did not do that alone. But 100,000 people in Victoria Park, 40,000 in Alexandra Park, and up to 100,000 in Brockwell Park had made something visible that the National Front could not answer: that the streets it claimed to own were full of people who disagreed.

Carnival Against the Nazis did not argue for tolerance. It put a carnival in a cauldron and held it up on a lapel. The word carnival has not cooled down.