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Rock Against Racism was a campaign set up by Red Saunders, Roger Huddle and others in winter 1976. It was founded in response to allegedly racist comments and gestures made by David Bowie and Eric Clapton.
Clapton had said at a concert that England had "become overcrowded," and implored the crowd to vote for Enoch Powell to stop Britain from becoming "a black colony." David Bowie caused controversy by stating "Britain is ready for a fascist leader" in an interview with the Playboy magazine, and by allegedly making a Nazi salute at one of his performances. Bowie later retracted the fascist comment, claiming it had been made as a result of substance abuse. He also denied making a Nazi salute, arguing that a photographer caught him in mid-wave.
RAR's first activity was a concert featuring Carol Grimes as lead artist. RAR also launched the fanzine Temporary Hoarding. In spring and autumn 1978, RAR organised two major music festivals with the Anti-Nazi League to fight the growing wave of racist attacks in the United Kingdom. First 80,000 — and then over 100,000 [citation needed] — people marched six miles from Trafalgar Square to East London (a National Front hotspot) for an open-air concert featuring The Clash (as seen in the film Rude Boy), The Buzzcocks, Steel Pulse, X-Ray Spex, The Ruts, Generation X and the Tom Robinson Band.
RAR was reborn as Love Music Hate Racism, with a concert at The Astoria in London, England featuring Mick Jones, The Buzzcocks, and The Libertines. Other acts involved in the campaign include Ms. Dynamite and The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster. With the goal of combatting the growing presence of far right political parties such as the British National Party, it has held high-profile concerts in Trafalgar Square.