I received an email from my friend Mark, who runs Iron Man Records. He forwarded me a petition that’s doing the rounds, and while I’m usually reluctant to play the ‘Forward this on’ game – this is pretty important:
The 696 Form compels licensees who wish to hold live music events in 21 London Boroughs to report to the police the names, addresses, aliases and telephone numbers of performers, and most worryingly, the likely ethnicity of their audience. Failure to comply could result in fines or imprisonment.
We believe this places unnecessary and frankly Orwellian powers in the hands of the Metropolitan Police, an institution which does not have the best record of racial fairness. The 696 form can only serve to deter the staging of live musical events – a positive form of activity in London and all cities – stifle free expression and quite possible penalise certain genres of music and ethnic audiences. It is an intrusion too far. Pass this on.
The petition is here
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Scrapthe696/
Names, addresses and genres of performers? Well, there goes the whole tradition of Open Mic nights in the London area. As if it’s not hard enough with over-zealous noise abatement enforcement and all the other disincentives for a thriving live culture in the inner city…
Go sign the petition, will you?
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19 Comments
Wow. Good time to be a musical citizen of the USA
Wowza. This sounds so crazy it’s hard to believe it’s true. I hope the citizens of Britain stand firm against this infringement of basic rights.
And please don’t give U. S. officials any friggin’ ideas!
Every now and again some really strange right wing bills get passed over there hey? Remember the introduction of the ‘poll tax’ and subsequent riots?
‘Likely ethnicity of the audience’…..shudder
God bless the USA!
But England has a better track record of amazing music…
Signed.
I find it rather ironic that the petition also askes for your full address as well as name…
Signed.
What possible motive can there be but to arrest an artist for free speech. Signed.
I often gripe about how bad things are here in Poland, but at times like these I feel glad no one here has thought up anything like that, yet.
The worst thing is that it probably seemed a pretty sensible idea to the law makers: music – especially live performance – has always had propaganda value, so someone must have thought “Hey, we should have some idea who’s playing where and for whom, just in case they’re stirring the youth to doing something wrong. We’re just taking names, who could posssibly have anything against that?”
Still, it’s best if to nip thinking of this sort in the bud, before anyone gets more silly ideas. Over here we’ve had things like gothic festivals being sabotaged by the local authorities under pressure from Christian groups that accused the music of propagating Satanism. Who knows what kind of music might be thought inappropriate in these troubled times?
I can’t sign the petition for obvious reasons, but you have my full support on this one.
This requirement is of course a step too far. Its instigators cite stabbings, shootings and general lawlessness at predominantly South London hip-hop gigs as motivation for such draconian police-state action. I suggest one traditionally English response when asked to fill in 696 between now and when some campaign group like Liberty picks up the ball and helps strangle it. (Hopefully they’ll eventually squirm like that clown that fronts the Internet Watch Foundation that wouldn’t say he’d now close down Amazon like he’d just shut off Wikipedia for displaying that dodgy Scorpions album cover earlier in the week.) State your “stage” name for that night, by way of first initial and surname of our famous American friend, the one with the big round ears who’s girlfriend is Minnie. As for genre, well, “alt.country” seems apt, and for audience ethnicity you could try “other” specifying ABC1. You’ll need a cheeky address too, so how about 10 Broadway, SW1A 2EU, London. Just a suggestion….
“and most worryingly, the likely ethnicity of their audience.”
Wow….
And just so you don’t think the UK has a monopoly on bigotry and idiocy… meet some of our American cousins.
The form is online here: http://www.met.police.uk/events/forms/form_696.doc
The request for artists’ names and addresses is there and I agree is intrusive. A request for the ethnic origin of the expected audience could, I suppose, be implied from a request for “the make up of the patrons” but it is not explicit, it’s not a required field and I’m pretty sure it would contravene the 1976 Race Relations Act and the EU 2000 Race Equality Directive if it were.
As a black man in the US i know full well the UK doesn’t have a monopoly. Ignorance is worldwide. But I’m also grateful for the people who can look beyond that and see a person for what they are and contrary to popular belief… there are a lot. :)
While I appreciate the link, I personally won’t click it because I just don’t need the negativity in my life. Things are hard enough.
i read about this recently, didn’t know there was a petition until today, signed!
Obviously this whole act is directed towards black urban music, specifically the whole garage/grime scene i would assume. Whether there is a lot of crime associated with these events is not the responsibility of the artist though. The government need to look at the police and how the system overall treats minorities in poor areas of London, but we all know that will never happen.
Music is pretty much the only decent release young people can have in this country that’s not illegal. Targeting the performers in this way is only going to anger kids more and, i fear, lead to more problems.
Don’t assume we’re safe from such idiocy in the US! We’ve been litigating with our local township since 2006 over whether house concerts are permitted in residential areas. The ostensible issue is that a house concert with 20 or 30 people at my house causes people to park on the street (where it’s legal and no one has ever received a citation of any sort), but the subtext is that that somehow our parties bring “undesirable strangers” into the neighborhood and they are afraid that their children might be endangered. No one has yet been able to explain why the friends who come to our parties are “undesirable strangers” but the parties that everyone else hosts don’t bring any such undesirables into the neighborhood.
And we’re not the only ones — it took Greg Ching in the Boulder, CO area nearly two years and a lot of sweat to convince Boulder County officials to leave him alone…
A Number 10 petition isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. Londoners should probably badger their MPs about it too.
The form looks like a big waste of time on everyones part. No one is going to fill out a form saying please send a load of police to my gig, and no-one is going to have the time to check all of the things (how many gigs happen in London *every night*!)
Does anyone know more about it other than what it looks like? London promoters don’t have to fill it out now do they? Wouldn’t it have to be a legal requirement then? What happens if you don’t fill one out?
I’m moving to London in April from the Toronto area.
How anal can they be?
Though I doubt it will do much good as online petitions are very rarely taken seriously, I’m signing.
Whilst I agree that this form is another chip at our freedoms/rights, it does not say any where on it “the likely ethnicity of their audience” – If you are going to protest against immoral corrupt authorities, then make sure your iinformation is correct.