45 Years Of Forces Of Victory

Tiggerlion on Forces Of Victory by Linton Kwesi Johnson (6/4/1979)

Linton Kwesi Johnson is often described an intellectual, implying someone rational rather than emotional, more interested in logic than feelings. However, his work is full of rage directed against the oppression, racism and violence he and his community continue to be subject to. He sees poetry as a cultural weapon in the black liberation struggle. His experience is first hand. He was born in rural Jamaica, his mother moved to Britain on Windrush and he and his father followed when Johnson was eleven, settling in Brixton. He attended Tulse Hill School where he joined The British Black Panther Movement and started a poetry group with Rasta Love, creating pieces to be performed aloud, backed by a percussive rhythm. He went on to study sociology at Goldsmiths College, qualifying in 1973.

Johnson’s passion is derived from his cultural background and his purpose is political. He uses Jamaican Patois because it is his authentic language and because its cadence and rhythm has a natural musicality. Its origins in slavery gives it an edge, derived from mainly Creole speakers picking up English from their masters. He worked in a library and wrote articles for the NME and reggae biographies for Virgin Records. His poems could be read on the page before being heard on record. They first appeared in the journal, Race Today, then as a collection, Voices Of The Living And The Dead, in 1974. He wasn’t the first. Claude McKay published his book, Songs Of Jamaica, in 1912. Louise ‘Miss Lou’ Bennett’s subversive Patois verse monologues were the highlight of Kingston’s pantomime season in the forties. Count Ossie And The Mystic Revelation Of Rastafari recited spiritual and politically-charged chants and rhymes over African drums and Jazz rhythms in the Fifties. Johnson was inspired by the “sprung” rhythm of Gerald Manley Hopkins’ spoken word poems, the frank depiction of the Black experience in the work of Derek Walcott and Kamau Brathwaite and, of course, the Bible. Nevertheless, Johnson was a trailblazer. He became the first black and only third living poet to be published by Penguin Classics.

The seventies Johnson wrote about were a bleak time for Afro-Carribean people living in England. Enoch Powell’s 1968 ‘rivers of blood’ speech had galvanised the right wing. The National Front made brutal progress throughout the decade until Thatcher captured their vote in May 1979. To them, immigrants were easily identifiable by the colour of their skin, even though those from British colonies, up until independence, were British citizens as much as people from, say, Gibraltra or anywhere in the UK. Racism in the police was institutional. The economy went into a deep recession and unemployment rose, affecting the less well-off and, therefore, black people disproportionately. Inflation was high, peaking at thirty per cent, and wages failed to keep pace. Unions gained in strength and there were multiple strikes, culminating in ‘the winter of discontent’ in 1978/9 when teachers, refuse disposal, health workers and grave diggers all went on strike. Clubs closed because of financial problems or had licences revoked because of drugs or fighting. Young black people were at risk of having their heads broken by fascists, the police or themselves. Black youth faced a dispiriting future with little hope.

Johnson was deeply involved with local reggae musicians, many of whom had attended school with him. One day, writing copy for Virgin Frontline in a studio, he asked if he could set his poetry to music. Richard Branson put up £300 for a demo. The collective that gathered around him was called Roots and Dennis Bovell was a crucial part of it. Bovell, born in Barbados and resident in London, a supremely versatile artist, effectively brought the music. He loved The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix as much as Jimmy Cliff and The Pioneers, not forgetting the Soul of Otis Redding and Booker T and the MGs. He had a sweet tooth, too, loving the pure pop of the 1910 Fruit Gum Company. His early seventies band was the first to play live Reggae in the UK. Visiting Jamaican artists, such as Pat Kelly, Johnny Clarke, I-Roy and Ken Boothe recruited him as backing. His band, Matumbi, fashioned its own, distinctly British sound and he was instrumental in creating Lovers Rock, whilst running his own sound system and making dub records as Blackbeard. His fingerprints are all over almost any British Reggae activity of the seventies and beyond.

The two first met when Johnson was on music journalist duty and interviewed Bovell for the BBC. They have a lot in common: a similar heritage, a love of Reggae in all its aspects, a belief in justice, fairness and equity for everyone and bitter experience at the hands of law enforcement. In 1972, Johnson saw three black youths being roughly arrested. As a Black Panther, he handed them cards with contact details should they need assistance and proceeded to note down the officers’ numbers. For his trouble, he was bundled into the back of a van and given a beating. In October 1974, the Carib Club hosted a ‘sounds clash’ between three systems: Count Nick’s on the stage, Lord Koos at the end of the hall and Bovell’s Sufferer near the toilets. The police emerged from the toilets with a prisoner and members of the crowd confronted them and released him. Chaos ensued and in the melee a policeman was stabbed. Backup arrived and multiple arrests were made. Bovell was charged with causing an affray. Twelve others, described as his gang, none of whom he’d ever met, were charged with violence. A majority verdict from the jury was accepted and the judge sentenced him to three years. Bovell sat in jail for six months bitterly awaiting his appeal against conviction, which he won with ease.

The first album, Dread, Beat An’ Blood, uses mainly poems from Johnson’s second book. His delivery is monotone and gruff, though the words are strident and direct. The music is a dense reggae with its characteristic ‘chop’. Two tracks protest the wrongful arrest of George Lindo and his editor of Race Today, Darcus Howe. Another describes the febrile atmosphere that the led up to the fatal black-on-black stabbing of Leroy Brown at a sounds clash. Violence, or the threat of it, is everywhere. Rastafari is nowhere to be seen. It’s also a very long way from the spontaneity and braggadocio of toasting, in which a DJ talks over the record to show off his verbal dexterity and encourage the crowd to dance with more vigour. A new term was coined to describe it, Dub Poetry.

Forces Of Victory is in another league altogether. The poems were largely written with melody in mind as much as rhythm. Johnson had learnt how to make the words carry a heavier punch. He wastes less energy skipping around being shrill, plants his feet firmly on the floor and lets the weight of the Earth flow through his body. His phrasing is more concise, intense and precise. He also worked on his delivery, with greater inflection and a wider range of tone. The threat is less directly confrontational but just as assertive and combative. The change in the music is even more innovative. It remains recognisably Reggae and has more elements of Dub, especially a prominent bass and echo, but this music swings. It’s complex and claustrophobic, reminiscent of Lee Perry’s Black Ark, yet with a light touch. Lloyd ‘Jah Bunny’ Donaldson and Winston ‘Crab’ Curniffe share the drumming, Vivian Weathers plays most of the bass and Everald Forrest is on percussion. Bovell and Webster Johnson provide the keyboards. The addition of a rich, unusual horn section is inspired, especially when it’s the quality of Rico on trombone and Dick Cuthell fugelhorn. Rico was a veteran Jamaican musician who had worked with Count Ossie back in the sixties. The secret ingredient, however, is John Kpiaye’s sizzling guitar, the tinderbox that sets the music alight.

The album opens with a jaunty rhythm, its pork-pie hat at such an outrageous angle, it cocks a snook. Johnson reports dispassionately and without judgement on three young men who are determined to enjoy life despite straightened circumstances with no job and no money. The first is homeless and has to sign in at the police station, the second ran a little racket until he was collared and the third resorts to pick-pocketing. All three Mi Want Fi Go Rave. They want to dance, encouraged by Kpiaye’s proud and defiant licks and bolstered by Rico’s muted trombone, but the dancehall has been closed down. Johnson is far more defensive of the youth of the day on It Noh Funny. His point is that every generation of young people needs the space to experiment, explore and make their own mistakes, without the finger of blame pointing at them for all of society’s ills. The music seethes with belligerence, Jah Bunny’s skittering percussion a highlight, especially when treated with reverb during the dub section. Johnson, dressed in a sharp suit with a neat beard and metal glasses, struck a professorial demeanour but he was only twenty-six and more than capable of empathising with the young people he wrote about.

Sonny’s Lettah (Anti-SUS Poem) may be the most important British song of the seventies. It helped change the world of the people depicted in it, at least temporarily. SUS is short for suspicion. There was a section in the hundred year old Vagrancy Act that allowed the police to use their discretion and question suspected vagrants. The Metropolitan Police exploited the outdated law to stop, question and search anyone they regarded as suspicious. Many other city police services followed suit. Inevitably, simply being in a high crime area soon qualified as suspicious and aggressive tactics were used to acost those who lived in deprived communities, predominantly Black youth. The song is a fiction but tells its story powerfully, each step an inevitable consequence of the one that precedes it. Sonny’s Lettah taps into the Afro-Caribbean traditions of the Blues, as exemplified by Julio Finn’s lonesome harmonica, and the literary device of the letter sent back home. The musicians are polite, allowing the words to carry the drama, accelerating when the violence gets out of hand and pausing for the decisive moment. The Ruts released their own incendiary protest, S.U.S., at around the same time and, not far down the line, Margaret Thatcher was forced to repeal the act in 1981.

Independent Intavenshan is depressing. The situation for British Caribbean citizens in London came about under several governments led by different parties. Johnson lists a number of political organisations, including those on the left, who have been no help. He is withering in his criticism of writers who seem to support the cause without actually achieving anything. The horns chatter among themselves throughout the poem until Rico, legs astride, leads the instrumental break with sweeping trombone notes. Jah Bunny’s cymbals crash forcefully, reinforcing Johnson’s assertion that British Caribbeans can speak and stand up for themselves. In fact, they have little choice because there is no white knight on a charger coming to the rescue.

Side One sets the scene, Side Two is the militant response. Fite Dem Back is a two-step, a call to arms that begins with a meat-head chorus. The white supremacists are in town and wreaking terror and the police are tacitly on their side. Crab is on the drumstool this time, his snare as taught as a sinew distorted with hate. Webster’s piano is relentless, unstoppable. Johnson leans towards the Malcolm X approach rather than Martin Luther King’s. There is no point trying to reason with these bigots. The only language they understand is that of physical violence. By contrast, Reality Poem is very beautiful, featuring a lovely melody and a prolonged, lyrical guitar solo. It’s an oasis of calm on a turbulent LP. Johnson calls for rational thinking, a measured appraisal of evidence and a greater reliance on science rather than religion or magical thinking. He associates a refusal to face reality with vanity and being stuck in the past. He makes a very persuasive case.

The title track, stylised Forces Of Viktry, is a triumphant parade. The horns mimic the Roman sound of battle, Crab’s trills are upright, shoulders back and military. The bass and trombone are especially powerful. At the halfway point, Johnson sits back, smokes a cigar and admires the band as they cook up a storm. The finale, Time Come, is the song with the most dread. Johnson sounds weary and resigned. Cuthell’s fugelhorn is plaintive and Kpiaye’s guitar contemplates a dark future. Johnson’s warning is stark. It’s already too late. The wrongs suffered by people like David Oluwale and Joshua Francis have a price to be settled.

Forces Of Victory landed in a fraught political landscape. The subsequent Bass Culture and Making History consolidated its reputation and linked it to Thatcher’s first term. There were some successes but none that lasted. Forces Of Victory could be released today and still sound as fresh and as relevant. The SUS law has been replaced by Stop & Search, which is even more disproportionately applied to Black youth. Knife crime is worse now than in the seventies. Drugs remain rife. The police may be less aggressive with the Afro-Caribbean community but racism is still a huge problem. The Windrush generation has been treated appallingly. The hostile environment against immigrants has been damaging. White supremacy may not be the force it was but Brexit has allowed an unsavoury racism to show its face more brazenly. David Oluwale’s commemorative blue plaque, sited close to where he drowned after being chased by police, has been stolen in an act that is described as a hate crime. Sonny’s Lettah could be written today. The youth are as disaffected as in Me Want Fi Go Rave and It Noh Funny. Reality Poem could be about QAnon and conspiracy theories being spread on social media.

Linton Kwesi Johnson has a unique voice in British popular music. He is still politically active, bristling with a fighting spirit, but little he has done since has been as incendiary or as potent as Forces Of Victory. Dennis Bovell, whose music matches Johnson’s character with style, felt that his words were so brazen and anti-establishment that dark forces would have him disappeared. Listening to Forces Of Victory is an education but, sadly, its lessons have not yet been learnt. It uses the syntax of Reggae and the language of ordinary Jamaicans but it is so very different to anything made in Kingston. It’s a masterclass of dread, beat ‘n blood that could only have been created in Britain by a man with the eyes to see and the ears to hear. Forces Of Victory isn’t simply an LP, it’s a historical document.

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