When 2 Tone Ska & Punk Defeated UK's National Front - w/ Specials, Beat, Ruts Etc

submitted by 1976 on 02/09/17 1

The documentary film, "Who Shot the Sheriff?" about the Rock Against Racism movement in Great Britain from 1976-1981 is a truly vital document of a momentous time that must not be forgotten in this age of continued contentious cultural and class disparity. While this third and final segment YouTube edit must leave out some of the reggae & Two-Tone label soundtrack music due to copyright restrictions, it still depicts the historical and cultural tale of the original version that debuted at the East End Film Festival in 2005. The director Miles' fully explored how the rise of racism and the pre Brexit beliefs of the waning white working class and their National Front heroes were confronted by artists and activists. Director Alan Miles gets interviews with Special AKA's Jerry Dammers, Big Audio Dynamite's Don Letts, photographer Syd Shelton and other key participants in the events of that era to depict how ordinary black, brown and white folks united to fight back against powerful political foes, the police and a throwback Nazi threat. In this segment, there's rare live concert footage of The Beat and The Specials plus newsreel clips of the historic protests and racist marches confronted by the Anti Nazi League. Specials co-founder and musical mastermind Jerry Dammers gives a rare interview about the final Specials concert that took place at the final Rock Against Racism gig in Leeds in 1981. Said the filmmaker Alan Miles of the unique project's origin "I wanted to make this film for two reasons. Firstly, it's over 30 years since Eric Clapton got on stage in Birmingham and burbled this racist rubbish about how Enoch Powell was 'our man' and that Britain was overcrowded. Secondly, far right groups like the BNP are still present, and I want to let the new generation of anti-fascists know how important music is to counterblast the creeping curse of fascism. I want to stress how important it is to mix musical genres and cultures so we begin to really understand each other. We’ve started to forget those times. But we can’t forget them, it would be like forgetting the Holocaust. You have to remember and say “never again”. And the fascists are on the rise again with the BNP, though they’re now in suits and aren’t on the streets anymore. So I decided to start researching it, and started by reading Beating Time by David Widgery. It’s a very “punky” book and it really works. I wanted to make sure that imagery was in the film." - Alan Miles, filmmaker

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