Test Dept:Redux - Return to New Cross

Test Dept are surely one of the most influential bands to emerge from the local area, starting out in New Cross in the early 1980s (some band members lived at 8 Nettleton Road) and pioneering a politically committed industrial sound. 

In the last couple of years members of the band, who have remained active across musical and other cultural fields, have been involved in a number of events commemorating the  30th anniversary of the miners strike in which the band were very involved - during the strike they played benefits at the Albany in Deptford among other places.  I went to a great event at the Ritzy in Brixton last April which included the band presenting and discussing the film  DS30, a collage documenting that period.

This Saturday September 10th at the Amersham Arms sees a rare live performance:

'An intimate immersion into the Test Dept machine on our return to New Cross, South London with support from Feral Five and DJs providing an eclectic mix of Dub Sub Punk Noise Electro Industrial.

Live:
Test Dept:Redux
Feral Five

DJ
Elena Colombi (NTS Radio)
Amélie Ravalec and Travis Collins (Industrial Soundtrack For The Urban Decay)
Satellitic (Test Dept)
GrayC (Test Dept)

Roof Terrace BBQ Tickets £10 + booking fee available in advance from Eventbrite; £10 or £8 Concession on the door' (facebook details here)

A little while ago I played a set of music from the miners strike at am Agitdisco benefit for Housmans bookshop, and met Paul Jamrozy from Test Dept who was also playing. Here's my mix which of course includes some Test Dept.

Feminist Disco at Lewisham Arthouse

Artist Rachael House is bringing her 'Feminist Disco' to Lewisham Arthouse  in New Cross next Friday, 20 June 2014 (6 pm to 9 pm). As well lots of women's music classics, the event will also feature performance artist Silvia Ziranek and a film about women and the miners strike. Admision Free at 140 Lewisham Way SE14.

Music Monday: Test Dept and the Miners Strike

Continuing the series of posts on the 1984/85 miners strike and South London, we turn to Test Dept. As discussed several times here before, the influential industrial band started out in New Cross, specifically at 8 Nettleton Road where some of the band were living.

Many bands played benefit gigs for the miners, but Test Dept went further and put out a joint album with the South Wales Striking Miners Choir. The choir and the band played gigs together around the country, as well as putting out the album to raise funds for the strike. One of the gigs was at the Albany in Deptford on 18 September 1984, recalled by Neil Stoker: 'We did a huge benefit at the Albany Empire in London with a Welsh male-voice choir, and a band called Test Department. I can only describe Test Department as a band which filled plastic drums with water and sand and banged them in a rhythmic way. It was a bizarre night--these Welsh miners came down in a coach and were stuck in the middle of Deptford with these punks banging plastic drums--but there were a thousand people there!'

The album. Shoulder to Shoulder,  was recorded at various venues including Crynant Rugby Club (South Wales), Snowdon Colliery Welfare Club (in Kent coalfield), and Cold Storage studio in  Brixton. Some tracks featured the choir, and some Test Dept, but on what track - Comrades - they performed together.

From the back of album - note that at this time the contact address for Test Dept was 41 Billington Rd SE14

Last month Test Dept founders founders Graham Cunnington and Paul Jamrozy put on installation commemorating the strike at the AV Festival on Tyneside.  Paul told the Quietus: 'for the people who took part in it and lived through it, it's certainly not forgotten, and bringing up the 30 years of the strike brings it to the fore. People are still very bitter, there's a lot of anger. I think it's important to engage with that. Seumas Milne is bringing out the new Enemy Within book, and there's some stuff coming out with the Freedom Of Information Act, there are people still looking for some truth and justice to come out of it, with Orgreave and how the strike was policed... It was also the first signs of the militarisation of the police force in a way that is now just accepted: whether you're a pensioner or a student you're going to come across against people in full riot gear ready to attack you at the slightest excuse. That all became normalised during the Miners' Strike'.

Shoulder to Shoulder - the label

Housmans benefit this week

As it happens, Paul Jamrozy and myself are both DJing this Thursday 10th April at a benefit for Housmans, the long established radical bookshop at Kings Cross. The event, at Surya on Pentonville Road, is themed around the Agit Disco project, with people playing tunes they define as political. I'm actually going to be playing a short set of tracks linked to the miners strike, and had already decided to include Test Dept when I heard that Paul is playing too. Others taking part include Stewart Home and John Eden - full details at Facebook

See previously:

Lewisham Miners Support Group/Women Against Pit Closures

Supporting the Miners at Goldsmiths

Lewisham Miners Support 1984/5

 During the miners strike of 1984/5, which started 30 years ago this month, there were support groups set up across the country. Previously here we have mentioned support at Goldsmiths in New Cross. Another local group was Lewisham Women Against Pit Closures. This flyer from January 1985 tells us that:

1. The group held planning meetings at Lewisham Labour Club, Limes Grove SE13.

2. They 'invited women from the mining community of Shirebrook to Lewisham to speak to local people about the dispute'.

3. One of the women from Shirebrook was due to speak to a Lewisham Miners Support Group meeting at the Albany in Deptford on 24 January 1985.

4. There was a 'Women's Party' planned to take place at Women's Employment Project, 28 Deptford High Street, to raise funds for Shirebrook Women's Action Group (Shirebrook Colliery was in Derbyshire)

Neil Stoker wrote a little about Lewisham Miners' Support Group on the 20th anniversary of the strike in 1984:

'My father is from the Caribbean and my mother's Irish. The black community in south east London at that time was under constant abuse from the whole structures of society--the police, the government, the executive. The 'sus' laws had gone, but in terms of police brutality, mental health issues, housing, no one really cared what was going on. What struck me was the huge collective nature of the struggle. We got a collective spirit from a part of society that I didn't know and that was completely alien to me. There was a great sense of these people getting to know and understand what we suffered in terms of oppression, and vice versa. In a sense, we were somewhat cocooned by Thatcherism: we'd not had the same levels of redundancies, etc, in London as they had in the north of England. I got an understanding of what was really happening north of the Watford Gap.

Small events had a big impact: a miner from Dennington colliery came to stay with me and my family while he was in London collecting money. He came down to breakfast one morning and said, 'I've got to apologise.' My parents looked at each other--we thought maybe he'd broken a vase or something--and said, 'What for?' He said, 'I worked in a mine in South Africa in the early 1970s, and I feel really guilty about it now.' Things like that politicised people. There's a culture that miners and miners' support groups and Women Against Pit Closures hadn't been aware of before, and there's a culture that we took on as well.

We did a huge benefit at the Albany Empire in London with a Welsh male-voice choir, and a band called Test Department. I can only describe Test Department as a band which filled plastic drums with water and sand and banged them in a rhythmic way. It was a bizarre night--these Welsh miners came down in a coach and were stuck in the middle of Deptford with these punks banging plastic drums--but there were a thousand people there!

The miners' strike created this level of cultural understanding in a way nothing else could have. I remember going to the Notting Hill Carnival the year of the strike, and one of the most popular badges was 'Black people support the miners--oppose police violence'. (Socialist Review, March 2004)

Supporting the Miners Strike at Goldsmiths in 1984/5

It's thirty years ago this week since the start of the miners strike, a long and bitter dispute that defined the mid-1980s in Britain. Ultimately the miners lost, and their claim that there was a secret Government plan to close down coal mines en masse was soon to proved correct. Miners support groups were set up all over the country, and there were all kinds of expressions of solidarity including countless benefit gigs. I was actually living in Kent at the start of the strike and was involved in supporting miners at local pits. There were many support groups in London, and the latest issue of Goldsmiths' student paper The Leopard includes an interesting article by Colin Fancy recalling support for the miners at Goldsmiths in New Cross. Here's a few extracts:

'the first meeting of the Goldsmiths’ Miners Support Group. We rattle buckets all around college crying: “Dig deep for the miners!” We propose a solidarity motion that is debated and passed at a packed Students’ Union meeting. We paste up posters saying ‘VICTORY TO THE MINERS’ all along Lewisham Way and down Deptford High Street.

My department, Media and Communications, announces that lecturers are to be cut from the small staff team. The Student Untion calls a meeting on the College Green to begin action. Some people suggest letters to the College Dean whilst we call for an occupation. The anti-cuts campaign begins with petitions, motions and lobbying the governors but soon picks up speed. Before we know it we are occupying the Administration building (which would later be renamed Whitehead building). James Curran, the recently appointed Head of the Communications department, is known for his book, Power Without Responsibility – and with the addition of a question mark this phrase is emblazoned on a huge banner hung across the occupied building...

Richard Hoggart, the College Dean, is reaching retirement and plays a waiting game rather than call the police – not that we do much to provoke him. With summer holidays approaching we end the occupation after eight days and sit our exams. The cuts to staff are postponed and we cautiously celebrate...

Goldsmiths College Student Union banner on a miners march in Whitehall in 1985

Women from the mining communities are playing a more and more crucial role as the strike fights to sustain itself. Two women from the Shirebrook Colliery in Derbyshire come to our Union meeting. Though nervous and reluctant to speak they tell moving tales of hardship, solidarity and resilience...

.... Surprisingly, Goldsmiths has its own local coalfield  – there are five pits less than an hour away in Kent [think there were only three left at this point  - Betteshanger, Snowdon and Tilmanstone]. One Sunday afternoon in December a coach load of students head down to Betteshanger Colliery with some Christmas presents. We have an evening in the Miners’ Social Club and are put up in miners’ family homes. We rise before dawn to join the other miners and students marching down the dark country lanes to the pit, singing: “I’d rather be a picket than a scab.” Not a single miner has crossed their picket line, but neither have they persuaded the foremen at the pit to join the strike, so the picket is a dignified but frustrating affair and we’re soon back to the social club for sausage sandwiches'.

Read the full article here. If you have any stories of the miners strike, especially as it was supported in South London, please leave a comment.

See also: Lewisham Miners Support Group/Lewisham Women Against Pit Closures 1984/85