Fight the fascists and win

| Thursday, 25 October 2007 Source: Romford Recorder

Anti-fascist campaign Love Music Hate Racism (LMHR) launched its biggest initiative to date - an exciting 29-track double CD featuring some of the biggest names in modern music - in Barking last week.

And you can join the fight against hatred through the Recorder.

The LMHR CD project was initiated following reports of record levels of racism in UK schools and reports of the far right British National Party trying to recruit schoolchildren.

The double album features a unique and diverse group of artists, ranging from punk legends, indie heroes and tabloid rockers to grime and hip-hop stars, many of whom have contributed rare or specially written tracks and exclusive remixes.

The album was launched by veteran rocker Billy Bragg, pictured, at his old school, Barking Abbey.

The singer/songwriter, whose track The Big Lie is on side two of the album, said: "The politics of the BNP are based on lies - that one race is inferior to another, that people of different ethnicities cannot live together, the list goes on and on."

East London grime king Lethal Bizzle, who has given up his blistering version of The Ruts' Babylon's Burning The Ghetto, said: "It is important to let people know about the prejudices going on in our society today so we can try and change things.

"A lot of prejudice comes from lack of awareness. LMHR brings these issues to our attention... there's a lot of racism happening every day in our society and if we can bring attention to this, then we can move closer to stopping the threat of racist attacks."

East London has always been proud to stand strong against fascism. Mick Jones, who played at the first Rock Against Racism gig with The Clash in Victoria Park, Hackney in 1978, and whose new band Carbon/Silicon is featured on the album, said: "The fascists are still around, but so are we. Maybe younger people aren't aware of what the BNP really stand for. They should be."Babyshambles frontman Pete Doherty said: "I don't think you have to be a particularly developed human being intellectually or spiritually to despise racism. It may be easy to be complacent, but we need to encourage people to fight racism whether with words or actions. Count me in - I'll fight!"

In conjunction with music magazine the NME, the double CD is available as a free download from www.nme.com/lovemusichateracism, but here at the Review, we have 10 copies to give away.

See this week's Recorder for details.

To enable people to download the music and create their own CDs, LMHR have produced 500,000 empty CD sleeves to be distributed in schools, colleges, youth clubs, universities and workplaces across the country via the NUT.