a subject that has come under renewed scrutiny in the wake of the so-called windrush scandal in u.k. prime minister is a maze hostile environment which led to deportations of british people with africa or be in the street and one icon of caribbean cultural interchange celebrates half a century this year trojan records a label was promoted by a d.j. who did so much to fuse the rebellion of political music in global culture don let's we sat down with the celebrated director and clash videographer at the old camden palace now koko in camden town in north london john thanks for being on going underground here in a venue the old camden palace where the clash of course meaningful to me empty today unlike it was then we have to start of a trojan records half a century the anniversary tell me about its provenance and the what it shows about the jamaica u.k. connection the trojan records is a tremendously important label that started in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight when i was twelve years old and by the turn of sixty nine it was having an

unprecedented amount of chart hits a run that's never happened again in the last sixty years and this is very empowering to my generation i'm third generation british born black which kind of rolls off the tongue now but back then it was a very confusing concept and it was through the music of trojan that we began to find out what we're about to understand the whole jamaican culture and what was very interesting about the label is this is that emerged at the same time as the birth of a particular british subculture called skinheads now i have to be very clear about this especially for russia when i don't i'm talking about all around the world as i'm talking about the fashion version not the fascist version that it became in the late seventy's in the mid seventy's. and what was interesting about that whole thing was that the trojan soundtrack that movement and that can sort of acted as

a tool for social change because it kind of helped black and white youth to unite in the schools on the streets and in the clubs and you got to understand this is against a backdrop of serious racial tension and we're talking six sixty eight here when politicians like powell are doing the rivers of blood speech and really playing on the fears of the older generation but through the music the b.b.c. just recently played the entire rivers of blood speech ok and it really a grassroots level it was the music in the jamaican culture that was helping people to get on it was by understanding our differences that brought us closer together not by focusing on our differences because the only reason the caribbean people of caribbean provenance is in the news at the moment is the windrush whole when right thing i mean my god these are second generation people who were born in this country who were deported where did they go that they were so quietly living in britain without

a passport oh you're exaggerating somewhat i mean basically what happened is in the fifty's. the empire asked for the africa arabians to come and help rebuild the country after the second world war and there's been a lot of focus recently through when russia about them bringing their cheap labor which they did but just as important is that they brought their culture and it's that that's made the biggest impact on this country because it's changed the identity of what it means to be british you know if you check the kids on the street now the clothes the where they wear the way they speak their attitude and the music they listen to it's all coming from jamaica man but this is the twenty first century the trojan records they have number ones back then double barrel we do have dennis. a trio called bob marley and the wailers people probably haven't heard of them so long ago how could we possibly be still talking about identity. and the hostile environment against people who has parents maybe grandparents were born there well hey it's a popular theme around the world at the moment in the trump climate there's been

a lot of focusing on immigration and all the rest of it and it's really sidetracking from bigger problems is money don't trick divide and rule you know and it's a shame to see it being so easily rolled out decade after decade the whole brix it thing is playing on the fears of old white people who have been in this case you're talking about trojan record music about healing our working class white people and working class likely pool and today these are always the elite white people in government the one who create or environment the public at large waves or black or whatever color they are obviously responded to the wind or a scandal at all in they've been working things out on the street with the politicians to get you know to detract from the real problems they start blaming problems on him because it's an age old trick blaming the problems of the country on the illegal immigrants and the truth of the matter is this country couldn't operate without immigration and immigration built the nation now you

contend that music like that from george records directly then fed in to the punk music phenomenon absolutely because how did it well call from through yourself because you were the d.j. at the other offices i mean him this is what it is we would like minded rebels i mean in the late seventy's it was a time of social crisis economic political and as i said social and no change there exactly very similar to where we are today back but in those days i had a soundtrack to ease my pain which was reggae. the popular music in the late to middle age seventy's was totally removed from the feeling on the street so my white friends set about creating a soundtrack that was relevant to their situation of the people for the people by the people and this was punk rock and we kind of turned each other on through you know i like their guitar riffs and their d.i.y.

ethics which i think rocks greatest gift to itself and you know from the jamaican side they love the bass lines they loved the musical reports harsh quality of the lyrics you know it was all about love it was like how are we going to live and furthermore how are we going to do it together you know we were like minded rebels that kind of aligned ourselves and i guess that was sort of typified by that bob marley song punky reggae party because he recognized it as well you mentioned loving your grammy award winning documentary about the clash you have one of the clash saying that the original i'm so bored of the usa was actually i'm so bored of you and i was someone's ex-girlfriend or girlfriend of the day i think mick jones and written the song and he make more of an emotional kind of doing more than a romantic and he had a lyric i'm so bored of you and jerry came in was like never mind that rubbish will change it i'm so bored with the usa that was joe and you directed their videos of course do you think that their internationalism because they sang about u.s.

foreign policy in your liberal economics local government doing the internationalism spain catalonia it came from the internationalism provided by the base of the track from the caribbean as well i think that was one element but you have to understand that joe was the son of a diplomat and in these early years he lived in a lot of different places i think he lived in spain he lived in. morocco and he traveled a lot and joe was very empathetic to the downtrodden and the oppressed he was a man of the people very much in the spirit of bob marley's and guilts got herons and woody guthrie's and bob dylan's and john. well and he was one of them because you did hundreds of music videos but take advantage of filmmaking and what why you liked the film but jimmy cliff the heard it out of a count of just tell me about as i said first generation british born black a very confusing concept in the early seventy's knew what we sounded like because we had our soundtrack we had reggae but had no visual accompaniment other than

postcards from jamaica colonial images of a guy riding a donkey on a beach with a straw hat or people limbo dancing in the one nine hundred seventy one all changed when i saw this film the harder they come directed by perry handel jamaica's greatest film and i walked out of that cinema empowered because i knew so much more about my culture and it was then that i actually thought i wouldn't mind expressing myself in some kind of visual medium but in the early seventy's ridiculous idea for a black man it was an old school white man network. but then five or six years later punk comes along with the d.i.y. ethic do it yourself i'm looking around in all my white mixer picking up guitars and i'm not worried i better pick up something too i picked up a super eight camera and reinvented myself as don't let the filmmaker there's a lot of reinvention and punk rock and i think that's kind of why we're still talking about it because it worked just the soundtrack it was a complete subculture can you then see the lineage going from trojan records

through to punk and then to hip hop absolutely absolutely i mean what you're talking about here is a. music the x. is a tool for social change you know that's what it was about and in a lot of the twentieth century yes you could party to it but you can't spend your life on the dance floor you know venture the musical stop and you have to go out and face reality i think guess what there's some good tunes for that as well. and also you say about d.i.y. culture record executives can't censor like the way they used to try and sense of the data learn as you directed the videos of their lyrics in the first they don't try and censor anything as long as they can turn a buck. i mean they can deal with almost anything these days and i think they've learned that from punk rock how to package a rebellion and kind of castrate it and sell it to the people you know now punks about buying a ramones t. shirt or absurd vicious t.

shirt you know that's what punks been reduced to and it was never about any of that stuff it's about attitude and a spirit that can actually inform whatever you do man you know i don't even know if we need any more punk musicians we could do some more punk politicians and punk doctors and punk teachers you know i'm saying i think it's very important people understand the punk it's not this dead anomaly that began and ended in the late seventy's it has a lineage and a tradition and if you've got a good idea. and the bold you can be part of it that's something i recognize as a very young man you know listening to music that you know is about helping you to be all you could be about selling you a pair a pair of sneakers you understand what i'm getting at you know music had that potential back in the day now a lot of it not only is about entertainment. after the breakout thirty years of complacency led to over seventy people dying in the grenfell tower we hear more

from grammy award winning director and d.j. don't let all the support coming up in part two of going on the ground. john mccain and his republican cohorts like the bush family and others they will break cozy with ken lay financed the bush campaigns of the bush presidency and when they got caught committing massive fraud on the same scale as the savings along crisis the machinery was already in place thanks to john mccain as a bag man for wall street for decades yeah to bail those guys out and make them all at the expense of the democracy slash economy of the united states which is disintegrating. because as you know provision of my point i want to respond.

oh. you're so you'll hide away lost his boss because i just got the. resources you know. anybody on a month on those in person but the best honest i don't mean that has been any of the. choices you know what i was you're not. you know just i mean what i most wanted i'm already but it was sped up out of me just go to the media and even. we're going to go which i don't know if it up as well i must admit that really feels i just don't get off on getting noticed but those with the oh they're just beautiful sounds the people are going to respect i'm one of those but i was just this well is part of the. my family fussy equal credible my just but that's already yes equestrian he thought a thing of it calling with you you seem to mean think it is my thought aloud problem you just gotta go.

join me every thursday on the elec simon chill and i'll be speaking to guests of the world of politics school business i'm show business i'll see you then. welcome back the ground felt our tragedy britain's most lethal tower block fire will be remembered next week one year after over seventy people died in the poorest community of one of europe's richest a week into the trades are made back to inquiry into grand felt as too many blames everything from firefighters to class war for the atrocity and as the grandfather area prepares for europe's largest street festival the notting hill carnival some were outraged last year when tory m.p. and minister of state for international trade suggested moving the carnival away from the tower in part two of our interview with grammy award winning director and d.j. john let's we speak about what caused wren fell as well as the notting hill carnival which will again this summer be in the shadow of

a tragedy characterized by what shadow chancellor john mcdonald called social murder and you seen fears over europe's largest street festival the notting hill carnival in west london over year after year and the emphasis of politicians on drugs knife crime storms recently said that why is it the police presence in glastonbury seems so different to the way police act in furtherance of the knowing all gone of all the celebration of culture and its potential to unite the people is more important now than ever and i mean a lot we don't realise accountable is not really a big street party it was started in the late fifty's as a means to heal what was then a fractured community there was a lot of the riots in the fifty's not exactly and it was conceived as a way not even as a black candidate initially it was about all the local immigrants immigrants to get together irish dogs and blacks exactly pollie i mean everybody then and it was actually an indoor event initially it took place in the. the town who'll king's

cross town hall for a few years moved around various town halls they used to happen in january to mirror what was going on in trinidad if they have theirs in january anyway england far too cold and it moved to notting hill in the mid sixty's and it's there were it really started to grow and then the sort of afro caribbean community basically took it over for quite a while it was hijacked by the jamaican sound systems in the early seventy's but know all tribes are welcome everyone represented except techno techno don't work at a carnival man she says do you believe the music is becoming even more of an issue as regular. censorship by the authorities obviously the british police want to take down all these videos by a drill artists type of grown music one of them abracadabra so.