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I want to tell you about a place I know. It's one of my
favourite places on the planet. It's a club, but not a dancing
club. It's a Labour club.
The reason I love the dance scene so much is because it breaks
down barriers, because it creates a sense of community, because
it creates a sense of beauty and belonging. The reason why I
dislike it at times is because it is fashion-based and can be
shallow. It's based on youth and physical beauty, and sometimes
it fails to see the beauty of humanity as a whole.
Beauty is everywhere, if you look for it. So I was sitting down
the Labour Club one evening, with a pint of bitter in front of
me, and Billy began to sing. I don't know him all that well.
He's only been coming here for a month or two. He's retired, in
his late sixties, and he clearly loves his wife. She always get
crisps for my dog and feeds them to her one by one. She drinks
Martini and lemonade, and Billy is old-fashioned: he always goes
to the bar to buy them their drinks.
He sang: "You load sixteen tons and wha'd'ya get? Another day
older and deeper in debt. St. Peter don't ya call me, cos I
can't go: I owe my soul to the company store..." And - honestly
- his voice was the richest, deepest, clearest baritone I have
ever heard, like an angel of the deep.
He was in the Black and White Minstrels, he told me. Most of you
won't remember the Black and White Minstrels. They were white
singers who used to black up their faces with boot polish, and
paint white lines around their lips like Al Jolson. It was a
clearly offensive trade. They were left-overs from the hey-day
of theatre variety acts, and they were the bane of my youth,
cluttering up the airwaves with their baleful dirges and their
derogatory white interpretations of American Gospel music. They
wore striped jackets and white gloves and straw hats. They went
out of fashion, and a good thing too. But what I never realised
at the time - what I never understood until I heard Billy
singing that night - is what the qualities were that made them
so popular in the first place. Billy's voice sang it to me, as
clear as a bell. Perfect tone. Deep, deep resonance. And a power
that was so intense that it didn't need a microphone. Billy came
from the days before singers used microphones. His voice would
fill an auditorium. All the time he was singing his wife was
going "shhh - shhh." You could tell he was holding back. Even so
his voice was ringing in the rafters.
He was singing along with Mick. It was Mick who had chosen the
song. He's an ex-Miner. "You load sixteen tons": it obviously
brought back memories. He spent 20 years down the pits, risking
his life for the likes of you and me, digging up the coal in an
Industry that was once the back-bone of the British way of life.
He loved his Trade Union. The NUM was like his wife: a matter of
intense loyalty. These days he drinks a lot and puts his arms
around you. "All right Boy? How you doin' Boy?" Everyone is a
boy to Mick. He's sort of an old boy himself.
What I love about the Labour Club is what I also love about the
free party scene. It's that it belongs to the people who made
it, the people who put their hearts into it. OK, so the drugs
are different, and no one dances, (or not to house music anyway:
it's more likely to be a Buddy Holly song) but it really is like
a free party down there sometimes. And - in a sense - this
particular club did indeed spawn the free party scene in our
town. It helped to establish a number of local bands and the
town's main sound system. But it took work. It took commitment.
It took people who were willing to put their backs into
something they believed in. The success of the Club is a matter
of belief. It shows that if you believe in something and act
upon it, that you can really make things happen.
You see, if there is such a thing as Salvation, I don't want it.
I refuse to leave this planet until I can take my brothers and
sisters with me, all of them. Salvation isn't worth it unless
you're in good company. I can't think of a duller prospect than
having to spend Eternity with a bunch of sanctimonious
prayer-bashers. If there's a heaven, I want it to be like the
Labour Club: full of dumb jokes and pointless banter. Full of
friendship and human warmth. That's why I'm political rather
than religious. I believe that our purpose on this planet is to
care for each other. If I was offered Salvation tomorrow I
wouldn't take it. I'd go down the Labour Club instead.
Solidarity: it's an old-fashioned word. But it's one that
clubbers should find easy to understand. It means to be as one,
to be solid in a mass. It means to take part in something
greater than yourself. It's a word full of resonance and great
historical meaning, a word on which the history of Trade
Unionism was built, the key to the pride and the dignity (and
possibly the future) of humanity as a whole. It's not a word you
hear all that often these days. Solidarity. It means love.
Just then Billy started singing again: "I get weary, and sick of
tryin', I'm tired of livin', but scared of dyin', but Ol' Man
River he just keeps rollin' along..." And his voice was loud
enough and clear enough to cover up all the creaks and groans in
my own voice as I tried to join in.
http://www.whitstablelabourclub.org/.
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