Linton Kwesi Johnson is a man with a message. The Jamaica-born dub poet, musician and social activist is preparing to speak at the Albany in Lewisham next month, for a public Q&A about his five-decade-long career. He’s appearing as part of Rebel Music, an upcoming festival linked to the London Borough of Culture 2022, featuring the likes of Black Obsidian Sound System, Charles Hayward and CURL, which will celebrate the story of the area’s history of activism through music. Johnson’s music and poetry has been at the heart of Black activism in the UK for the last 50 years – and he’s still fighting now. “Racism is still very much at the heart of the DNA of the United Kingdom,” he tells me from his home in South London, as he reflects, aged 69, on the work that still needs to be done. “Our struggle is an ongoing one because racism permeates every aspect of British society.”
Johnson arrived in Brixton, aged 11, after travelling from his home in rural Jamaica to be with his mother. She was a part of the Windrush generation and Johnson recalls how colonialism still propagated the idea of Britain as Jamaica’s idyllic motherland. “I thought England was this splendid place, this wonderful place, the mother country with castles and palaces and all this sort of thing.” What did he find when he got here? “Disappointment,” he says with a sigh. “Racial hostility was pervasive everywhere you went. It was in the corner shop, in the chippy, in schools, on the buses. It was everywhere.”
Johnson would eventually explore the Black British experience via five collections of poetry and multiple studio and live albums. His verses are written phonetically in Jamaican-English, while his performances see him reciting lines in Jamaican patois over dub reggae. He became a powerful voice for Black Britain during the Eighties, his work charting key moments in the struggle for equality against the backdrop of events such as the devastating New Cross massacre — the suspected arson attack that killed 13 teenagers at a birthday party — as well as the Brixton riots, the rise of the National Front and the institutional racism of the Metropolitan Police, not least via their infamous “sus laws”. In 2002, he became the second living poet, and the only Black one, to have his work published in the Penguin Modern Classics series.
Now 69, his activism shows no signs of slowing. He says the manner in which those like his mother from the Windrush generation were treated – from the description itself (“I often avoid the term ‘Windrush generation’ because there’s been a Black presence in this country going back to Roman times,” Johnson explains) to the recent scandal that saw many facing wrongful deportations at the hands of the UK government – is a continuing source of anger. “The government’s response was disgraceful” he says, adding that “the vast majority” of those affected by the scandal “still haven’t been compensated”.
“The response has also been cynical,” he continues. “That Windrush Day thing that Theresa May did – I mean what the hell was that?” he says with contempt, referring to the former prime minister’s heavily criticised idea of an annual, national day of celebration for the Windrush generation while her own government was still busy executing policies that discriminated against that very generation daily.
Johnson says his mentor, the late social activist John La Rose who founded the influential New Beacon Books – the UK’s first Black publisher – referred to the Windrush arrivals instead as “the heroic generation” because “of what they had to put up with and how successful they were in establishing the basis for the generation that came after to move forward”.
He says the UK’s continuing, controversial immigration policies show how little has changed. “This country has always been a bit xenophobic,” he says. “Both political parties – I’m not saying this is just a Tory thing because Labour have done it [too] – have used anti-immigrant sentiments as a way of winning elections. That is very much a part of our political culture, and I don’t see that going away any time soon.”
As a teenager, Johnson was so disillusioned by the discrimination around him that he joined the Black Panther movement. “It was a crucial stage in my development,” he says. “I was young, I didn’t know anything, and I was able to place myself in the world through the activities of the Black Panthers. I got to learn a bit about my history, my culture, my roots and it did wonders for my sense of identity...in the Panthers, I discovered Black literature because, of course, I didn’t read any books written by Black authors when I was at school.” He says the curriculum was devoid of writers from other cultures.
Reggae music provided us with a subculture of resistance to racism
Johnson’s early formative literary education came largely via his mentors La Rose and Jamaican poet Andrew Salkey who introduced him “to a whole world of poetry” he “didn’t know anything about”. He discovered W. E. B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk, a life-changing book that got him “wanting to write verse, talking about my experiences, the experiences of my generation, of Black youth growing up in England”. He joined a small literature workshop where members from his Black community would swap texts and read each other’s work, and he later did a degree in sociology at Goldsmiths College. Away from his studies, he started to listen to reggae music at places including Moonshot Club in Lewisham.
“Reggae music provided us with a subculture of resistance to racism,” Johnson says. “A lot of the reggae tunes coming out of Jamaica were very militant and gave us the spiritual nourishment we needed to cope with the situation…it was a rude awakening [coming to the UK], but I found that a way of coping was to draw on our cultural roots, our language and especially as a youngster, our music. Our music gave us a sense of an independence of identity, which was also in tune with the fact we were young people who wanted to change things.”
Friends of Johnson, from long-term collaborator Dennis Bovell and his group Matumbi, to the bands Misty in Roots and Steel Pulse, provided further inspiration, especially via their Rock Against Racism movement. A film about that, White Riot, is being shown at the Rebel Music festival and explores how a group of artists organised concerts at places including The Albany in Lewisham to stand up to racism through music. The venue, which Johnson will be back in next month for the festival, was burned down in 1978 after a suspected racially motivated arson attack. It only strengthened their resolve to fight harder, he says.
“These events brought reggae music and punk together and it brought white kids into black culture,” he says, recalling how he started to perform his poetry to music, often at events where reggae and punk would be on the same bill. “It became a way of sharing our common dilemmas at that time because youth unemployment was even more devastating for Black kids than white kids — there was huge youth unemployment. We’re talking about the Thatcherite years and the cuts and all of that. I think [these gigs] did a lot in making young white people aware of racism and it was important in bringing about working-class solidarity between young Black people and young white people.”
Johnson had always “dreamed of putting [his] poetry to music” and soon enough, his music career took off after his literary one: he was signed to Virgin by Richard Branson initially, and then the pioneering reggae label, Island Records. Johnson met the Sex Pistols’ John Lydon through the latter and the pair ended up working together. “I found him to be nothing like his kind of outrageous image,” Johnson laughs. “That complete hype of who Johnny Rotten was. He was a very cool guy, very smart, very articulate and I could identify with him because we shared quite a few things in common. I think the thing we shared the most was our anti-establishment sentiments and I got along with him great.”
Johnson fought the establishment through his poetry, music and protests, as well as through daily battles. In 1972, for example, he saw three Black youths being manhandled by police in Brixton Market. He asked what was going on and soon found himself being attacked and arrested. “I was brutalised by three police officers from Brixton,” he says. “I was charged with ABH and assault. Of course, I won my case in the Crown Court, found not guilty, but that was just typical of the experiences of my generation. The sad thing is that the war the Metropolitan Police have declared against the Black youth of my generation has been a protracted war and it’s still being waged today by [them] and other police forces in this country against young Black people.”
Johnson’s poetry has explored this tension throughout his career, like in the emotive New Craas Massahkah, which recalled the community’s demand for answers in the wake of the New Cross fire. While the community believed it was racially motivated, the police did not, saying instead that a fight broke out at the party, causing the fire. “Plenty papers print pure lie”, Johnson wrote in the poem, “And the police dem plot and scheme.” It was movingly read by Johnson in Steve McQueen’s recent Small Axe series.
He thinks little has changed since The Macpherson Report, published in 1999 after the death of Stephen Lawrence six years earlier, the results of which found that the Met’s response to the killing was “institutionally racist”. “There’s absolutely no change in terms of policing and relations with the Black communities,” Johnson argues. “There’s been zero change. We have a few more police officers from ethnic minorities and a few token ones in senior positions but that’s about it, really. It’s superficial.”
Johnson played a pivotal role in organising the National Black People’s Day of Action following the New Cross Massacre. How does he feel about the government’s proposed new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which, if passed, would severely limit the right to protest in the UK? What if this had been in place during the 1980s? “It wouldn’t have stopped us,” Johnson says firmly. “We just did what we felt we had to do...we had to fight back. It was cultural resistance against oppression.” Of the bill, he adds: “This government is becoming increasingly authoritarian, and we have to be vigilant in our opposition to the direction in which it’s moving. This is not really simply a right-wing government [anymore],” he says. “It’s becoming more and more extreme.”
He says he can see hope in the new wave of Black Lives Matter protestors who came together across the globe in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. “I feel hopeful because a new generation of young people, Black and white, are becoming more aware of the injustices in the world in which they live, particularly this country, and they [feel the need] to do something about it.”
He draws parallels with his own generation. “I call my generation the rebel generation because we weren’t prepared to tolerate what our parents put up with. We rebelled and I think largely through our rebellion, our insurrections, or building of political organisations, our agitation and so on, we were able to integrate ourselves into British society. We had to resort to all those things to achieve integration, even though we were created by the British and our history is British. I’m hopeful for the future...the new generation have decided to take up the mantle and that’s encouraging.”
While Johnson may have stopped touring now – “after 40 years of it, I think it’s time to put my feet up – I think I deserve a break!” – he’s not stopped writing, and reveals he’s recently written some new poems after a long hiatus. “It means I’ve not dried up completely,” he laughs. He also runs his own independent record label, LKJ Records, out of his home, a “platform to promote things I feel are important”, he says, showcasing “other poets and musicians”.
He’s also still got his eyes firmly on the news and continuing activism. We talk about the recent Royal Tour to Jamaica. It’s a moment that caused him to reflect on the country’s “anomaly” that despite its independent status, it still has Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s recent visit was marked by protests opposing the monarchy’s continued role in the country.
“It’s a throwback to the days of colonialism,” Johnson says. “The Queen is a lovely lady, but I don’t see why she should be the head of state for Jamaica. After independence, we were more or less abandoned by the British… What are the benefits? There’s nothing.” He still cares deeply, he says, about the country of his birth – just as much as his home. “I’ve spent more than 50 years in this country, [but] I always look forward to going back to my roots. I love Jamaica,” he says. “Jamaica is my roots, Britain is my home.”
As the conversation draws to a close, Johnson is getting ready to head to The Albany, ahead of his appearance there next month. How does he feel now, as he prepares to reflect on his 50-year career? “I feel very lucky,” he smiles. “I got a chance to put my poetry to music...and equally important, it provided me with a platform to talk about the injustices in society that we had to struggle against.” He says he will always continue to draw attention to these injustices. “Racism is still a part of British society,” he repeats. “Our struggle is always ongoing.”
