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Okay,
I need some
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Welcome to Sputnik orbiting the world
with me George Galloway
and me Guyatri.
There are some guests who really don't
need an introduction and one of those is
Tuker Sulleman
star of the BBC jewel in the crown
dragon's den and himself a hugely
successful entrepreneur. Tuker sits in
judgment of the business ideas of others
with flashes of kindness and amusement
and blinding business wisdom.
St. George famously slew the dragon, but
I neither would nor could seek to slay
Sullean the magnificent Tuker. I'm just
glad that he's here and that I'm here to
talk to him. Tuker, thanks very much for
joining us. Let me pitch an idea to you.
Whoa. Britain is a member of a 500
million single market called the
European Union. I have an idea that we
might leave it. What would you say to
that as an idea?
The idea in principle
is great for the British people, but I
think you know there's expression
there's no pain without gain. So, we're
now going to enter that pain period
uh in in the UK and uh I think a lot of
the um British people were misled in
what it really meant.
Both ways really, don't you think?
Yes. Both ways. You know, I think there
are winners and there are losers
w within the British people.
Tell us about the winners. What parts of
the British economy can gain from going
it alone? Well, look, the biggest impact
that we've seen with the forthcoming
Brexit is the pound. The pound is
devalued against the dollar
approximately 20 odd percent.
Uh so those companies that are
manufacturing,
producing in this country, their exports
will become much cheaper and hopefully
their exports will grow. In theory,
that's what should happen and there
should be import substitution instead of
buying things from uh abroad. People
should start making them here now and
we'll buy them here.
Well, funny thing is um we used to buy
for one of my businesses called Horse
and Curtis. We used to buy packaging
from the Far East and an English company
came to me last week and he pitched
for the business and do you know
something?
He got it.
He got it. It was cheaper. Yeah,
cuz by the time you pay the increase in
the dollar
and the duty and the transportation,
it was very competitive. So, I think we
His plant was here.
His plant was in Cambridge, a big
packaging company, and they're now
supplying everybody in the UK.
Let me as it were then pitch another uh
idea at you. Should we go for the full
monty on the principle that we can take
advantage of a boom in homegrown
industries, a boom in exports and a fall
in the labor supply because if we go for
the full monte, there'll be no free
movement of labor and more and more
British people will be able to enter the
labor market. We've seen a boom
in the UK the last 10 years and that's
because we've had a big influx of good
labor. I mean we talk about good labor
the Polish people
fantastic labor
great workers you know the Indian people
the the people that bring at value
they've also kept down inflation because
they've done jobs which nobody else will
do. So, so, so in a way I I would say
this. I would say we shouldn't close our
doors to professional hardworking
people, but we should differentiate
between what what I would call people
that come here to abuse our national
health service as social services. But
that's the Tory government you're
talking about.
Look, whatever government, whatever
government, you know, it is what's right
for this country. And to me um that that
there's good things bad things. I mean
the one thing we haven't spoken about is
the effect on goods that are going to
arrive in this country from outside. So
the next time you go and buy a phone,
whether it's a iPhone or whatever,
you'll pay £60, 70 more. Next time you
buy a piece of clothing
because of the currency fluctuation
because the currency fluctuation all the
clothing you see and we've seen clothing
in the last 30 years
go down in price.
We're about to see the first inflation
in clothing in 30 years.
Yeah.
Clothing will go up anywhere between
8 and 12%.
Then again, we can get into the clothing
business then ourselves. Some of these
some of these sweat shops in the east
end might have to reopen. Let me pitch
another idea at you. I'm a knight of the
realm. I own one of the most historic
pieces of British retail uh uh
architecture. It has three initials.
Right. I know exactly where you've been.
And I'm thinking of selling it to a guy
I met on the corner and he's going to
look after everything including the
pensions uh uh liabilities of the
company. Should I sell it to him for a
pound or not?
Look, um I think
all I can tell you is
the person in question made a mistake.
And the fact is that if he couldn't turn
that business around, nobody could. So
when he sold that business, he was
already bankrupt.
Yeah, that has to be the case.
That has to be the case.
He should have closed it himself and
honored the uh commitments.
Well, I I I I cannot speak for himself,
but I think the fact really is is that
he's a very good retailer.
Um he's a he's a shrewd businessman and
he should have put his hand up and say I
made a mistake guys. This hasn't worked
you know and I I think it was what I
call the boomerang sale.
Yeah.
He sold it. It came back to haunt him.
Yeah. Yeah. And and may may yet further.
How did you get into television? You're
a very successful uh entrepreneur and
you've you've you've performed a miracle
really of being both a successful
entrepreneur and a very very engaging
and popular television figure. How does
that work? I'm asking because I'm maybe
coming out of my own business.
Well, let's see.
Well, one thing's for sure, I'm not a
celebrity, I'm an entrepreneur. So,
that's the first thing. But it was
sheerely the fact that um a good friend
of mine called James Henderson from Bel
Pottinger and he was approached. Does he
know anybody who who could be a dragon?
So I went up
for an interview and they said we'll
come back to you. And then they came
back to me said can you go to Manchester
to meet the the producer? I thought
Manchester on the train anyway. So when
I got there, sat down for lunch and
within five minutes, he said, "I I want
you." And I said, "I want you my show."
It took 5 minutes.
Wow.
Amazing.
She is your biggest fan and the show's
biggest fan. When I came home and told
her that we'd met in another television
studio, she was her knees were
because I Yeah, that was the one time
that I didn't go with him. The one time.
But here you are now.
Yeah. The show is phenomenally
successful even though no one can really
identify with the I mean there must be
billions of pounds worth of value
sitting on that panel. Uh you you and
your fellow dragons have at least made
if not still got billions and not many
of us come up with great ideas uh that
we could dream of pitching to you. Yet
millions of people uh watch it. a kind
of escapism or what?
Look, I think it is an escapism. It's
it's it's a realistic show. All of us
deep inside have this entrepreneurial
urge and and I always say this, you
know, you know, if you don't knock on
the door, they won't open it for you.
Yeah. But they have to do it on a public
door. But but look, there are some
genuine people who come on the show
who've got genuine ideas who just want
that helped taken to another level.
There are the others who come on the
show just for the PR.
Yeah.
So there are situations where you think
you've made an investment and then
afterwards they change their minds.
Oh, really?
Because they've had the PR.
See, I've I was going to ask you that
last question, unfortunately. Uh what
happens afterwards? How many of the
successful bids that you've made to back
or offers rather to to back somebody,
how many of them have gone on to be
profitable businesses?
Well, it's a bit early yet.
You know, I've got So, for instance,
I've I invested last year in timber
kits. Timber kits have now increased
their turnover, started to make a
profit, but they're not quite there yet.
The journey is not there. I invested in
something called liquor. They doubled
their turnover.
Um, so it takes about two or three
years.
We're not wizard. You wave magic wand
out it comes. Um, but I'll give you
another example outside the den.
A girl came to me with so-called
matchick monkey. It's a TV brush for
babies. That alone would be a
multi-million pound business. That's a
great idea
because because it's a TV brush that's
got scope to do other products,
books,
animated cartoons,
complete merchandise
merchandise. We've even got Mike
Chapman, the famous Mike Chapman
songwriter, right? That's a jingle.
And that's outside the den. So it's not
only in the den.
Yeah. I mean, I knew when I because I
was late, I knew that my wife would tell
you that she's got a vintage clothes.
would ask advice from you that you would
that would otherwise be worth a lot of
money uh at the time.
Uh is does that happen to you all the
time?
All the time. Especially taxi drivers
put them in the back of the taxi.
They've always got say they've got
they're a driver and they've got a small
business on the side.
Um going back to your wonderful wife,
beautiful wife, may I say is that she
did ask me and I think I gave her a few.
He did definitely I gave him some tuka
time. And you see that's not cheap. Took
her time. Have you as it were profited
profited or lost from becoming also
involved in television?
Look, I I don't do it for the profit. I
think in most cases I love to help
people.
Yeah. And you know,
I I love to help. Like this morning,
somebody came to me got a little
problem. I helped them that's over the
moon. And the problem I've got is time.
How much time? because everybody wants
your time, you know, and it's very
difficult, you know, I I get direct
messages and some of my I try to answer
back and it's difficult. I should really
um create a day when everybody can queue
up and come to me for 10 minutes
like Sullean the Magnificent.
You could have a majus and the people
could queue up and you could see as many
as you were able to see that day and if
not next week. Tuker, you are a real
star and it's a pleasure and a
privilege.
Thank you. It's been a pleasure for me.
Thanks for joining us.
Coming up next, have the walls of racism
come tumbling down? Before the trumpets
of rock and roll, we meet a man with the
answers after.
Welcome back to Sputnik. Rock against
racism was born in the 1970s out of the
struggle against the National Front. If
you don't know who they are, you will by
the end of this interview and other
far-right extremists as well as to stand
up to what its founders perceived was a
wider racist malaise in the rock scene.
Uniting pop, rock, punk, and reggae
artists. The campaign has gone down in
history of British anti-fascism and
protest music.
Who better to talk us through its legacy
than Daniel Rachel, author of Walls Come
Tumbling Down, the music and politics,
of rock against racism, two-tone and red
wedge. Daniel, thanks for joining us.
This book is the soundtrack of my life.
I became a political activist as it
happens in the early 1970s just before
the first rise of the national front and
moved to London in ' 83 got involved in
many of these movements. So I and I
think a lot of people are going to want
to get this book. Tell us why you wrote
it and why you were the best person to
write it.
Well, I was living in Birmingham in the
mid 80s and I went to see Billy Bragg uh
for the first time on the Jobs for
Industry tour
and I went expecting to pogo down the
front to Billy and his electric guitar
and the the cleansing rock of the
cleansing fire of punk rock as he calls
it. But when I stepped into the
auditorium at the Birmingham Powerhouse,
Cla Short was there. I wasn't certain
who Cla Short was, but I knew she was an
MP. And so there was a connection made
between politics and going in to see a
musician. And out of that came the idea
of Red Wedge a year later. And as a
person in my mid- teens, it was music
and politics were being brought together
by an artist I like. And it set me on on
a um a road I guess of exploration of
culture, politics.
This fusion of uh music, art, culture,
politics of course uh had happened
before. Uh we're uh in the anniversary
coming up to the uh to the Bolevik
revolution. There was a lot of uh such
fusion then, but in Britain it hadn't
actually happened before.
No.
uh and your book uh chronicles how it
happened and also why it happened. And
for younger viewers, whilst Britain has
no far right problem today in an
organized sense, at least as compared to
some other European countries.
There are plenty of racists around, of
course, but but there's not a big and
powerful fascist movement and
organizations in Britain now. But in the
70s and 80s there was first the national
front which as farright groups do
imploded and morphed became the BNP.
These were organizations with thousands
of members who marched and intimidated
and threatened people. And so the
artistic community rising up to meet it
was a really significant political
thing, wasn't it? Well, the significance
was that the the the talk of far-right
politics was very much within pop music
and rock music. Rod Stewart had made
comments about immigration in the early
'7s. David Bowie was talking about the
idea of Adolf Hitler being the first
rock and roll superstar. Uh Eric Clapton
then in 1976 at a gig in Birmingham m
made outrageous racist comments
continually throughout the evening
calling for non-white people to get out
of the country. Now that gig was
reviewed in the music papers and got an
immediate response by an activist called
Red Saunders and the he wrote a letter
that was printed in all the music papers
and right at the end he said we need a
rank and file movement against the
racist poison in rock music. And there
was a P.O. box address at the end of
this letter. And within weeks, hundreds
and hundreds of handwritten letters came
to what ostensibly became Rock Against
Racism. And out of that, a grassroots
movement that originated in London,
spread nationally. Um, groups popped up
all over the country that led to
carnivals, mass carnivals where tens and
tens of thousands of people came. And
the important thing was that it was
white people saying that racism is our
problem and we need to speak out against
it and crush it because as you rightly
say the National Front was scoring
incredibly high in local elections
around the country. They were
threatening at the next general election
which turned out to be as you know 1979
to put a candidate in every
constituency. the the need to crush
fascism or neofascism was immense and
and the answer came culturally which was
very very exciting. Um so that the the
and the core principle of rock against
racism was very very simple. It was
let's put on a white band let's put on a
black band on the same bill and at the
end they both have to come on stage and
jam together. So the vision of the
audience is black and white united on
stage which Jared Damas who would go on
to form two-tone and form the specials
in the image of rock against racism i.e.
black and white members. He took that a
step further and said, "Let's have a
band with black and white members." And
suddenly you have the two-tone movement
ex exploding across the nation where
singles went every single one of the
first 10 two-tone records went into the
top 10. They were selling hundreds of
thousands of records. The high streets
were full of people wearing black and
white clothing. And suddenly racism was
being flipped from this idea of the rock
gods to to core workingclass audiences
who were equally being uh lured by the
National Front and and and they were
being told you can go that way
or you can go this way which is the way
of the angels is how it's described by
Robert Elms in the book. the way of the
great records, the way of the musicians,
the way that the majority of the
audience are dancing and enjoying music
and politically saying there has to be a
social and there has to be a political
change in our country.
Well, if your writing is as good as your
talking, I'm going to uh start reading
this book uh this evening. Um, there was
an organized left-wing political core to
the movement. Uh, far-left parties like
the SWP, for example, were involved. I I
I think it's to their credit that they,
and I'm no fan of theirs, uh, that they
knew and organized on the principle that
they knew that this had to be much wider
and bigger than them. How wide and big
did it get?
It was absolutely enormous. And and the
crucial intervention was in a year after
the formation of Rock Against Racism was
the formation of the Anti-Nazi League
with people like Peter Hayne.
I was in it
and Neil Kinnick at the at the helm. And
you all know from being in Scotland that
that's the the mobilization that Rock
Against Racism needed culturally could
be brought to a mass audience because of
their ability to to feed out across the
whole of the United Kingdom. So you you
had the music first, you had exciting
concerts and before these events, you
then had political engagements and it's
a lesson that Red Wedge, which is the
last third of the story, very much uh
learned from where you would have a Red
Wedge concert in the evening. But in the
daytime they would fill church halls,
youth clubs and with disenfranchised
youth and they would bring them to meet
the pop stars of the day, number one
artist of the day, but also to bring in
the local politician and to bring in a
national politician. And Red Wedge said
to the politicians in the Labour Party,
"Your job is simply to listen. You're
you I want them they they were there to
listen to the grievances of people that
felt they didn't have a voice and
therefore didn't want to register on the
electoral role and therefore didn't even
want to vote and decide their own
future.
Where did it all go wrong?
Exactly. Uh this was a golden era and
especially listening to you talk,
looking back on it, thinking back on it,
a real golden era when
unimaginable almost
were at their best.
No, we don't have fascist organizations
of any size.
Not just the National Front, but the BNP
are also history. the EDL can't fill two
or three coaches to go and kick people
in uh various northern towns. Uh but
there is mass racism in the country.
Again, not as bad as it is in some other
countries, but still very bad. And most
of these cultural icons have kind of
faded from the scene. Some even changed
sides to some extent.
um when's where's the next wave coming
from of resistance to racism?
That's incredibly pertinent question.
And of course, when pop music involves
itself in politics, pop music invariably
only has a very limited lifespan. You
know, you're lucky if a band lasts two,
three years. You know, the Beatles
recorded lifespan is is barely seven
years. So for these artists they took
they seized their moment and incredibly
seized the moment where they were
becoming famous for the first time in
their lives. So where you could just
enjoy the the the you know the the the
rewards of success they chose to align
themselves politically and take the
journey as a as a hand a dualhanded uh
initiative if you like. So that takes a
lot of courage. Um but that was then
that was the 70s that was the 80s. It
was a different social political time.
Now we live in a new age. And I I I'm
not one for saying that movements should
be replicated. I think history and
reading perhaps books like this can
teach us what works and what doesn't
work and what youth movements want,
where they come from, and why people are
inspired to be part of them. But really,
they have to come from the grassroots.
And I think in many ways the grime
movement has been doing that for at
least 10 years. But there but do we know
about grime in a national way? Perhaps
not. And why is that? Then we we could
then look at media and and how does
media control um the outlets of
underground resistance groups. So
therefore, if it's being pushed out of
the mainstream, maybe therefore it's
online and and online offers incredible
uh opportunities for mass resistance.
And I think perhaps that's where the
answers will come.
Rachel, the very best of luck with this
book. You deserve every success. Thanks
for joining us on the split, Nicknick.
And now it's your turn to tell us what
you think through the portals of social
media. What's rattling? So we first
asked uh the audience um how they would
like to see Britain post Brexit and
Jennis Carr answers Krikey there so much
securing human rights employment
environmental protection encouraging
fair trade with third world and Agathlas
says as Mr. Galloway has said, "Let the
pound fall and encourage import
substitution." And in regards to music,
uh, combined with politics. Um, Echo
Marley says, "Reggae and Bruce Lee
films, music is my art of fighting
without fighting. I disrupt the corrupt.
I turn music into food."
Good for you, Mr. Marley.
That's all we've got time for,
which alas means that's the end of the
show. But you can stay in touch with us
on social media Twitter RT_Sputnik
or Facebook Sputnik onRussia today. It's
goodbye from meatri
and from me George Galloway. It's been
marvelous.
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