Peace House, home of Housmans Bookshop and Peace News, celebrated 50 years at 5 Caledonian Road with an eclectic mix of music politics and comedy at the Cross Kings last night.
We arrived in time to catch most of Leon Rosselson’s set upstairs, which was followed by a slightly stumbling presentation from Dave Morris and Helen Steel of London Greenpeace (a former Peace House tenant organisation and the only one of the original greenpeace groups not to take part in the 1977 merger which created the environmental behemoth that is “imperial greenpeace”).
London Greenpeace produced the original “what’s wrong with McDonalds?” leaflet which led to Dave and Helen becoming defendants in the McLibel case (the longest trial in British legal history – which was the subject of a film by Franny Armstrong back in the days before her making The Age of Stupid and being rescued by Boris).
My partner has an almost physical aversion to Seize the Day (and I’ve seen them enough times not to mind missing them) so we headed downstairs where the wonderful Robin Ince was hosting the comedy. I can’t remember all the acts, but two bits stuck in the memory.
First was the revelation that following complaints about an article by Melanie Phillips the PCC made the Orwellian ruling that when Ms Phillips uses the phrase “the fact is”, her readers would know that what followed was “comment rather than unarguable fact”.
And second was Andrew O’Neill’s attempts to reclaim the phrase, “I’m not being racist, but…” from those who use it to preface a racist remark by using it and then not being racist. As in “I’m not being racist, but is that the train to Reading.” (I’m not sure that re-telling jokes on a blog the morning after conveys the humour – but Andrew is definitely worth catching.)
When the comedy wound up we caught the end of the Freylekh Klezmer Dance Band (with my old CND colleague Ilana Cravitz on fiddle), before a bus home to catch The Thick of It via the magic of iPlayer.
onewordreview :: eclectic
