THE 1985 HENLEY REGATTA

HOORAY HENLEY

Traveling down to Henley on a train full of Hooray Henrys prattling on about skiing in Switzerland and Lady Camilla's coining out ball.

How I managed to keep my gob shut and my hands from strangling the bastards is the 8th wonder of the world!.

This year there's a new topic of conversation though-the anarchists! Hooray Henriettas are assured by the Hooray Henrys that they'll be over a thousand police, some of them armed, there to protect them. They (but not me!) are reassured by the sight of a police helicopter and a hundred fat porkers sweltering in the sun in a school field just outside Henley.

At Ealing Broadway 20 kids many of them black, dive on to the train jeering the rich snobs and shoving them out the way. The considerable anxiety in the next carriage is further increased by the arrival of 10 casuals from Southall, well armed with special brew and seemingly not going to Henley to watch the rowing.

Arrive at Henley station, F####' hell there’s old bill everywhere! With our crafty disguises we slip through the police cordon but anyone not looking like an obvious rich bastard is turned back.

The black kids don't make it off the platform, on every street corner there’s a van load of pigs by the bridge to the royal enclosure there’s a control van, breakdown vehicle to remove any motors blocking the bridge, and van loads of back up police.

Police on the bridge are filtering people across stopping anyone they don't like the look of.

By now we've clocked a lot of class warriors from around the country blending in to the background-or at least trying to ! Some Welsh hooligans have spent the night on posh boats on the Thames and have a few souvenirs to take home. We dive into the nearest boozer-all the pubs have security on the doors to keep out potential trouble makers, but we manage to sneak through. More news comes through-there's riot police at the back of the police station and van load after van of pigs.

After a few pints its back onto the streets, a lot of punks have somehow got through. Let battle commence-we start harassing the stuck up toffs on the streets. Stand in their way, trip them up, spit on them, abuse them, open well shook up cans of larger as they pass by in their hundreds of pounds dresses. Knock their boaters off, smash their sunglasses, kick the bastards.

They start to look really scared – despite the fact that there’s a thousand police on duty they still can’t be protected. Others are walking along the river bank kicking hampers and champagne buckets there’s no resistance, they look petrified.

Gradually a sizable mob is assembling near the bridge-about 200 of us. We give up the low profile and stand hurling abuse, spit and the odd can and bottle the rich. the Hoorays stop coming down the road. The police seal off the bridge, more pigs come running down the road, we're surrounded. We keep up the abuse for about 15 minutes.

The police are getting fed up as we get into the second rendition of 'Harry Roberts is our friend", very soon they're going to move in and nick the lot of us. Time to move on and resume guerrilla warfare. We filter away in 2's and 3's-there is no mass arrest: Back to the guerrilla harassment of the bastards. We maraud all over the town. A BMW is turned over, the tory club window goes in, fists fly and some hoorays decide to sunbathe fully clothed on the streets. Bricks and bottles fly over the back lanes into the gardens of rich mansions and startled sunbathers flee inside.

Now a Mercedes has gone over, all it's windows caving in, posh cars are booted as their drivers try to speed past us down the road, pig vans are racing around trying to keep up with the action, there are some arrests. This goes on for a couple of hours till we gradually leave Henley. A trainload of Hoorays are plastered with their own strawberries as they leave, soaked in beer and anything else that comes to hand, their boaters and sunglasses end up on the tracks. They wish they'd never boarded this train to leave Henley but many rich bastards after Saturday wish they'd never gone there in the first place.

So what did Henley achieve For the first time ever the rich have had to have over a thousand police with helicopters, riot shields and armed units to protect them at one of their major social occasions. Many businesses, including

garages and posh shops, closed down for the weekend preferring to lose their expected large profits rather than risk being smashed up. The rich now know what it's like-to be under siege conditions, to be scared s###less every time they wandered more than a few hundred yards from a policeman.

The police are there to protect the rich and their wealth from the rest of us-well, from now on they’re going to have to work a lot harder at it.

This year there were a few hundred of us at Henley but next year there’ll be thousands and the police will have to turn the place into a virtual prison for the rich to stop us getting at them.

The police are trying to make places where the rich are at their leisure, or where they live, no go areas for working class people.

At Wilmslow in Cheshire the Chief Inspector has said that black people from Moss Side will be arrested if they go there since their only reasons for being there can be to burgle the rich houses. At Henley black kids and anyone who didn't look posh enough were denied entry to the town or harassed or arrested by the police. We will continue to take our fight in to the streets of the rich ghettos. There will be no no-go areas for us but we must make sure that working class areas become no-go areas for the rich- where they fear for their safety whenever they enter. We must continue to make them live under siege conditions.

Of course our sophisticated, intellectual revolutionary friends on the left will continue to deride us. From their well paid jobs as lecturers, social workers, probation officers and teachers propping up the system the allegedly despise, they will laugh patronisingly when we talk of jostling the rich in the streets. In Hampstead and Islington these w#####s will prattle on about Nicaragua, Marxism today, yesterday and every f#### way. Cosily insulated from the rising class anger on the streets, for them politics is a trendy hobby. For us class hatred is a daily reality and -one these w####s will find out about soon enough.

Henley is only part of our fight to build a working class movement designed to-get rid of the rich and the police and politicians who protect them once and for all

We made mistakes at Henley, there were 43 arrests, we must improve our organisation and increase our combativity every time. In September (21^st 1985) we are organising another Bash the Rich march to Britain’s richest borough.

Hampstead. We can make this the biggest demonstration of class hatred and anger we've had for years. If we organise to get the homeless, those pissed off with being f##### over by the DHSS by the new bed and breakfast regulations and all working class people, employed or unemployed to come along we can get thousands of us to march into Hampstead. We have no demands to make the rich, there are no reforms or concessions they can make to stop us. In September class war will rage in the leafy avenues of Hampstead.

Make sure you’re there!

BEHOLD YOUR FUTURE EXECUTIONER

Class War Henley Regatta 6th July 1985

From August 1985 Class War

NOTE:

The Class war action at Henley Regatta on July 6th, 1985 marked a high water mark for the avowed Anarchist organisation, The event unquestionably brought into stark focus the excesses of Thatchersim.

Thus, the event was generally well received on the Left, However, as the article states " our sophisticated, intellectual revolutionary friends on the left will continue to deride us". I have to state personally that violence against individuals, even Toffs is unacceptable (but maybe in defeating fascism). Oh and yes I blanked out the swear words in an unprovoked act of big brother censorship

Yet in the days of Cameron's new Tory Etonians and his Bullingdon Club mates it's good to remember its still Class War out there

And if you did have any sympathy for the Royal Henley Regatta, you should recall that up until 1937 the rules of the Henley Regatta explicitly excluded working men from participating, with a rule that stated, those "Who have been by trade or employment for wages a mechanic, artisan or labourer".

EXTRA NOTE
COMMUNIST ROWER ON THE MOSCOW SOVIET

Frank Bright
Frank Bright from Bideford, North Devon, born 20 February 1891, was an outstanding local athlete, rowing for Bideford Amateur Athletic Club, known as the `Blues”.

Bright went to Ynyshire in South Wales in 1911 to work in the Standard Pit. A member of the South Wales Miners’ Federation for 16 years, he became an active member of the Miners Unofficial Reform Movement and later a leading light of the Rhondda Communist Party.

During the run up to the General Strike, he stated that "far more important than the fight for wages is the struggle for power"; he was imprisoned during the course of that momentous year, one of several periods of imprisonment arising from his political activities.

In 1927, Bright became Manchester Communist Party organiser in and, in August 1930, went to the Lenin School in Moscow, becoming a member of the Moscow Soviet, later still Liverpool/Lancashire CP organiser helping International Brigadiers get to Spain to aid the republican cause.

He suffered from poor health caused by pneumoconiosis and returned to Bideford, Devon and, from 1942-1943, was the Party’s Organiser for Devon and Cornwall.
Died15th November 1944