More Writing

Yesterday I did more writing on the chapter on Oh Bondage! Up Yours. There is so much to say- and a lot of it has already been said. There is also a lot to read, and a lot to disagree with.
One of the books has a chapter that derides writing on punks for essentially, fake anti-racism.
This is very difficult to read, because it is untrue. The racists punks were completely blatant about it and this is one of the reasons why other punks decisively played gigs with reggae bands, and in solidarity with gay and lesbian bands, and so on. The writer castigates punks for focusing on 'British Afro-Caribbeans' instead of British Asians who were bearing the brunt of white racism.
There was a Dean here at the University of the East who made an appointment for me to see him about two years ago, just as he was leaving to go to a job at the UN. I couldn't understand why he'd done this.
At the meeting, he said that he had invited me there because I used to be a punk, and he wanted to talk to a person like me on behalf of his family. He had been brought up in west London, and Skinheads had regularly posted turds though his family's letterbox on Friday nights and harassed them by banging on their front door. He told me that the worst thing was the Fridays that they didn't do this; it was the stress of wondering if, and when, they were going to come.
His older brother had started attending a Youth Club and had met a bunch of punks, and he told them what was happening. The punks had immediately started supporting him and his family, against the grain of what the Skinheads were doing. He had wanted to say thank you to a person who had been involved in punk ever since.
For young people at that time, it was actually very difficult to go against the grain of what TV, the newspapers and some of the older generation wanted us to think, and who they wanted us to associate with. They were violent times, and sticking up for what you believed in could put you into frightening situations; it was moving to hear that some of our generation had been so supportive to a family that needed to feel safe and protected against racist Skinheads.
And now I have to go back to reading the book.
Just needed a rant.