So interesting that I will have to read it all over again properly later on today after I'm done with the small procedure I'm having a little later this morning. I remember those days so clearly, I mean, when Breaking Glass came out, that incredible song (Will You), but I didn't know anything else about her. I was also quite involved in the music scene, but in very beige and stayed Geneva in the early 80s; I wrote about it in my Rock Chick series on here. Killing Joke crashed my birthday party! and I was in Zurich at the recording of The Young Gods first album. Don't know if you know them, but they are still going strong, albeit without all of the initial members. Crazy days! Thanks for this! xx
Thank you, Francesca, and goodluck this morning. I cannot imagine a Killing Joke party crash being stayed and beige! lol I don't recall The Young Gods. I do know Geneva a bit. I had a friend who worked in Aiglon in the late 80s so I visited a few times and stayed in place somewhere near CERN. I remember Geneve to be very white and the mountain driving was, well, for a Brit a bit crazy!
Very interesting post, Nic. It's easy to see why Hazel had such a following and such a devoted group of friends. There is the undeniable talent and creativity, but she also just seems so full of life and has a lot of charisma. I can see why you enjoyed hanging out with and going on tour with her.
With regard to the legal stuff, overall I agree with your take except with regards to the Magoogan case. My own very personal view is that the sax solo was superfluous on "Will You?" and I would've preferred the song without it and focused on her singing, but that's just my own personal preference.
I also wonder, had the case been brought in the US rather than the UK, if she would have won. Coming up with musical solos seems to be part of what hired musicians are expected to do and not considered part of songwriting. But then I'm not sure that isn't the case in the UK as well.
I also wonder, did John Taylor provide evidence for Magoogan? (I note in the wiki entry on the song that he considered it the emotional peak of the show when playing in the band.)
And last, I wonder if there are class issues? What is Wesley's background? (I've read a lot about the impact of class issues in the UK and know what a big difference they can make, especially in the arts and the judicial system! Justice is definitely not blind with most of the judges coming from upper middle and upper class backgrounds.)
Hi Ellen. I'm glad you enjoyed the post and thank you for the comment.
Wow! Where to start?
About Magoogan and John Taylor, I don't know.
As much as possible I tried to do all of this from memory, without trawling through additional sources and dredging up additional, well, stuff!! I tried to get to the core, however it so difficult!
There are many possible lenses from which to view this situation. One obvious one, and very much on purpose I avoided this angle, is Hazel being a woman in a male dominated music industry. I avoided that whole narrative and that whole angle. Why? Simple. Never once did I personally hear Hazel frame her situation in that context, as a female victim. I think to frame the legal case with that narrative is the easy way out, it negates the necessity to have to look any deeper. But I am sure there are those who would jump on that bandwagon and say Hazel was a victim of misogyny within the music industry. It's an easy and obvious viewpoint.
With regards legal differences between the US and the UK, I think on these matters the two legal sytems are more or less identical. So, yes, it's baffling to me (and many others) how Magoogan won. Maybe one way to view it is that it was just that particular judge on that particular day, the side of bed he got out of that morning, just luck of the draw...
About looking through the lens of class... honestly, I never considsered that! In terms of looking at all of this through a lens of a class system, well, Hazel would be in a lower class, she would be working class, with an Irish father, so pretty low! Magoogan, I have no idea of his background, but just the surname also seems to be a lower class name (what a weird way to view things)! And I personally did not know anything about arts and class and the judical system in the UK! Can you give an example of how it impacted and when, what dates? Because I would be surprised if class was an issue in the UK in 1980s and 1990s. In the 1920s maybe, even up until the late 1960s, however after that it would surprse me. But I like being surprised, so please surprise me, I'm interested!
Agree, the gender issue in the music industry can be taken for granted, but we don't know how it played a role in the legal cases.
In terms of class, there is a professor at LSE, Sam Friedman, who has been doing a lot of research on that. I started looking into the issue when I was involved in the perforning arts sector in the UK for about ten years and older working class actors started talking publicly about how working class kids could no longer succeed in acting the way they could back in the 60s and 70s. The system was increasingly structured against them succeeding in quite a few different ways. I stumbled on his research on the "class ceiling" in the arts sector, but he has also looked at other sectors and found the same class ceiling in operation. For example, here's a case study on Channel 4 -- https://www.lse.ac.uk/Research/research-impact-case-studies/2021/the-class-ceiling
In terms of the legal profession, a study that just came out (2024!) said "It's a long held belief that the law sector is elitist, and this isn't without foundation. Traditionally, the cost of studying to become a solicitor or barrister has excluded all but the most advantaged." (https://www.prospects.ac.uk/jobs-and-work-experience/job-sectors/law-sector/diversity-in-the-legal-profession) Add on top of that Hazel having used legal aid, which has never had the resources of the established law firms in terms of time to devote to a single case, the support of a team of interns and junior lawyers, etc. I once had a legal aid lawyer in the US tell me that he got about 75% of his clients released on appeal, that if they had had a good lawyer they would never have been convicted in the first place. The prisons in the UK are bursting at the seams with people from the lower classes. I've heard cases of hungry people getting ridiculous sentences for stealing food, while as the Good Law Project has proved, people connected with ministers got enormous contracts to provide PPE during the pandemic, supplied unworkable crap, should have had the money clawed back, but still have fat bank accounts from their takings.
If you like reading books, you might enjoy "The Secret Barrister" about the legal system and how unfair it is, or "One of Them" by Musa Okwongo, about the class elitism and discrimination he found attending Eton.
These are just a few resources you could look at. I'm not saying she was subject to class discrimation, but what these resources suggest is that it could be a possibility. As you point out, she lost out on a great deal of money, and this is the kind of thing that can destroy livelihoods, careers, and life chances. I hate seeing this happen to musicians, and as you point out and I keep reading over and over again, so many have suffered from being exploited and abused and having their careers cut short. It's a travesty and I think we need to think about ways to restructure the system going forward to prevent this from continuing to happen. With the music streaming, it's a wonder any musician is surviving now!
Truth is I’m not sure it’s territory that I want to go into, especially not here, on my The Song’s the Thing! substack.
For this very reason, I set up a second substack, called Unleashed & Unlimited (https://nicbriscoe108.substack.com) in order to be able to broach topics that don’t necessarily link with simply loving music (in French they have a word for this ‘melomania’).
However, I want to respond to you. I really like what you write and how you write it, I think the subject matter is superb, and I admire and respect the amount of research you do. That said, I don’t expect you to agree with all my views, why should you? And vice versa. My observation of social media (and that’s what substack is) is that it divides people, viewpoints become polarised, and a ‘you’re either with us or you’re against us’ type of culture propagates. I’ve never understood this… I have friends that I like but don’t agree with on several things…!!!
I’m laying this all out because, when I read your last comment immediately for me there was a big red flag! The simplest way to explain this is that I don’t agree with your take on the class issue and LSE has a notorious reputation in the UK… it’s a big topic, and I’m not sure I can do it justice in a comment thread.
Also, I don’t agree about an all-pervasive (male)gender issue within the music industry. My own personal experience is that the issues within the music industry are 1. greed, 2. abuse of power, and 3. inhumanity (in terms of exploiting artists whilst they are in demand and dropping them when they are not, there is very little focus on developing an artist’s long-term career). None of these are exclusively linked to gender. That’s not to say that there are no issues within the music industry linked to gender, especially historically. But the fact remains that I have encountered several greedy, powerful, exploitative women within the music industry… and so it goes. It’s not territory I wish to explore. Endemic misogyny within the music industry is not a narrative I support, I think it’s divisive, and I don’t particularly want to expend energy debating this… nowadays everybody is frickin’ activist! lol
The point you raise about the law/ becoming a lawyer in the UK is an easier topic to debunk. Firstly, statistics can be manipulated and presented to achieve and support pretty much any narrative you want…
Experience is a totally different kettle of fish…
My maternal grandmother and grandfather were very low-working-class uneducated Scottish. After WW1 they moved from Scotland to England because they were so poor and there was more opportunity in England. They had five children, four survived. The oldest child, my aunt, was the most intelligent by far, very beautiful, and also very calm and kind. She didn’t go to university, nor did the second oldest, my uncle, he ran away from home and joined the Air Force during WW2 and ended up flying for the US Marine Corps in the Pacific. The other two children, my uncle and my mum, went to university. They were the first in our family to do so. My uncle became a surgeon, and my mother became a schoolteacher. Where is this going? Me and all my siblings all went to university. We all got state funding and bursaries to do so (because our family wasn’t rich), and my sister is a successful lawyer. I went to school with the now PM of England, Kier Starmer. I was in the same class as him for 6 years, we were in the same rugby team for years. He came from an incredibly low working-class background. He became the head of the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service), essentially the most powerful lawyer in the country. He’s now PM. So I don’t buy the statistics you present. They do not fit with my lived experience. (And BTW, Kier Starmer is, IMHO, a disaster waiting/just about to happen… but that’s another story…)
Now, the LSE. Where to start? Clearly, overnight, I have not read the subject matter you point to in your comment… so there is a big chance that what I am about to say is totally wrong, I recognise that, how can I comment on something I have not personally read?
The LSE has a reputation in the UK for two different but very linked topics.
Firstly, along with SOAS, it has provably been (and probably still is) a central London hotbed for radical Islamisation (read ‘The Islamist’ by Ed Husein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Islamist).
Secondly, again along with SOAS, it is provably one of the most Cultural Marxist universities in the whole of the UK! Forget about free speech at the LSE! Forget about the propagation of critical thought at the LSE. What they are famous for is WOKE dogma. And WOKE dogma is basically Communism V2, it’s Stalinist and Maoist Communism rebranded. They promote the like of intersectionality and critical race theory and critical gender theory. They focus on these 3 things: identity, race and gender. Their dogma is focused upon the dynamic of oppressor and oppressed, specifically "revealing and condemning concealed forms of domination" (Pierre-Henri Tavoillot). Students are presented all of this as an absolute truth, that cannot be refuted or questioned, essentially students are brainwashed. In this form of WOKE Cultural Marxism the ‘oppressors’ are not royalty, or aristocrats, or the superrich… no, the oppressors are straight white men… enter the narrative of the ‘White Patriarchy’… which has to be totally overthrown and destroyed…
You cannot be a professor at LSE unless you are 100% on board with this WOKE agenda. And it’s not just LSE… Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester, on and on… England has all but fallen, that’s the sad truth… like Canada…
That’s why I immediately saw a red flag with your comment, and most probably Sam Friedman and Mike Savage are totally on board with this WOKE agenda (otherwise their work would not get funding).
So although I have not read their works, I would wager that they are based upon intersectionality and are politically skewed towards the Cultural Marxist agenda just outlined.
I think that’s enough from me. I’m replying to you with the deepest respect. I do not wish to argue or debate this stuff too much. I respect your right to have your own opinions and views, it’s just I find it very difficult just to stay totally tight-lipped when red flags present themselves.
Thanks for laying out your views and your background, Nic, which helps me see where you are coming from and why you viewed this as a red flag. I was greatly surprised by that, as I didn't realize you would consider it controversial or suitable for your other stack but not this one.
Of course I can respect and honor that you want to separate your music stack from your other stack and keep your music stack completely about music and nothing else.
I just raised the question of whether a class issue might be involved -- and emphasized that I didn't know if it was -- as I know that that was a big issue in the performing arts community when I was in the UK, with a number of very prominent actors talking about it publicly -- especially now that uni costs are over £9k per year, kids are leaving uni with high debt, and quite a few internships for kids fresh out of school are now unpaid. So I wondered if there might be class issues in the music world. Just a question.
I still owe you that pint. Let me know if you have a coffee fund I can donate to!
Honestly, I’m not in any way offended, and I just decided to keep my music substack as free as possible from politics or activism. Personally I never encountered any problems in the UK related to class, and the point I tried to make is that my own family are, for want of a better term, first generation lower middle class, before that we were as poor as poor can be… and I never experienced ‘class’ related discrimination ever! I don’t say it doesn’t exist, I just say I don’t ever think in those terms, so it never occurred to me that this may have been key in Hazel’s situation. I do remember, in my v early 20s (so mid 1980s) going to a pub just outside central London and on the door it said (and this was not a joke) ‘No Dogs. No Blacks. No Irish. Women in Public Bar only.’ (The saloon bar was men only). So maybe Hazel’s problem was that she was half-Irish? What you say about the performance art community is very interesting, I just never heard of this.. I don’t say it doesn’t exist, just again it surprises me because a huge amount of 60s and 70s English film stars were working class! Anyway, thank you for the kind offer of the Guinness/coffee. I don’t have anything like that, just PayPal, could that work? No worries if no, just thank you for the offer, much appreciated.
So interesting that I will have to read it all over again properly later on today after I'm done with the small procedure I'm having a little later this morning. I remember those days so clearly, I mean, when Breaking Glass came out, that incredible song (Will You), but I didn't know anything else about her. I was also quite involved in the music scene, but in very beige and stayed Geneva in the early 80s; I wrote about it in my Rock Chick series on here. Killing Joke crashed my birthday party! and I was in Zurich at the recording of The Young Gods first album. Don't know if you know them, but they are still going strong, albeit without all of the initial members. Crazy days! Thanks for this! xx
Thank you, Francesca, and goodluck this morning. I cannot imagine a Killing Joke party crash being stayed and beige! lol I don't recall The Young Gods. I do know Geneva a bit. I had a friend who worked in Aiglon in the late 80s so I visited a few times and stayed in place somewhere near CERN. I remember Geneve to be very white and the mountain driving was, well, for a Brit a bit crazy!
Oh that party was anything but stayed and beige 😂😂 yikes! Go find my From Trad Wife to rock chick series, I think the KJ story is in part 2!
Thank you for the restack, Brad. Hopefully see you soon.
Very interesting post, Nic. It's easy to see why Hazel had such a following and such a devoted group of friends. There is the undeniable talent and creativity, but she also just seems so full of life and has a lot of charisma. I can see why you enjoyed hanging out with and going on tour with her.
With regard to the legal stuff, overall I agree with your take except with regards to the Magoogan case. My own very personal view is that the sax solo was superfluous on "Will You?" and I would've preferred the song without it and focused on her singing, but that's just my own personal preference.
I also wonder, had the case been brought in the US rather than the UK, if she would have won. Coming up with musical solos seems to be part of what hired musicians are expected to do and not considered part of songwriting. But then I'm not sure that isn't the case in the UK as well.
I also wonder, did John Taylor provide evidence for Magoogan? (I note in the wiki entry on the song that he considered it the emotional peak of the show when playing in the band.)
And last, I wonder if there are class issues? What is Wesley's background? (I've read a lot about the impact of class issues in the UK and know what a big difference they can make, especially in the arts and the judicial system! Justice is definitely not blind with most of the judges coming from upper middle and upper class backgrounds.)
Hi Ellen. I'm glad you enjoyed the post and thank you for the comment.
Wow! Where to start?
About Magoogan and John Taylor, I don't know.
As much as possible I tried to do all of this from memory, without trawling through additional sources and dredging up additional, well, stuff!! I tried to get to the core, however it so difficult!
There are many possible lenses from which to view this situation. One obvious one, and very much on purpose I avoided this angle, is Hazel being a woman in a male dominated music industry. I avoided that whole narrative and that whole angle. Why? Simple. Never once did I personally hear Hazel frame her situation in that context, as a female victim. I think to frame the legal case with that narrative is the easy way out, it negates the necessity to have to look any deeper. But I am sure there are those who would jump on that bandwagon and say Hazel was a victim of misogyny within the music industry. It's an easy and obvious viewpoint.
With regards legal differences between the US and the UK, I think on these matters the two legal sytems are more or less identical. So, yes, it's baffling to me (and many others) how Magoogan won. Maybe one way to view it is that it was just that particular judge on that particular day, the side of bed he got out of that morning, just luck of the draw...
About looking through the lens of class... honestly, I never considsered that! In terms of looking at all of this through a lens of a class system, well, Hazel would be in a lower class, she would be working class, with an Irish father, so pretty low! Magoogan, I have no idea of his background, but just the surname also seems to be a lower class name (what a weird way to view things)! And I personally did not know anything about arts and class and the judical system in the UK! Can you give an example of how it impacted and when, what dates? Because I would be surprised if class was an issue in the UK in 1980s and 1990s. In the 1920s maybe, even up until the late 1960s, however after that it would surprse me. But I like being surprised, so please surprise me, I'm interested!
Agree, the gender issue in the music industry can be taken for granted, but we don't know how it played a role in the legal cases.
In terms of class, there is a professor at LSE, Sam Friedman, who has been doing a lot of research on that. I started looking into the issue when I was involved in the perforning arts sector in the UK for about ten years and older working class actors started talking publicly about how working class kids could no longer succeed in acting the way they could back in the 60s and 70s. The system was increasingly structured against them succeeding in quite a few different ways. I stumbled on his research on the "class ceiling" in the arts sector, but he has also looked at other sectors and found the same class ceiling in operation. For example, here's a case study on Channel 4 -- https://www.lse.ac.uk/Research/research-impact-case-studies/2021/the-class-ceiling
Another professor at LSE, Mike Savage, has also done a large-scale survey and found distinct and increasingly embedded class differences -- https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/mike-savage-placeholder/
In terms of the legal profession, a study that just came out (2024!) said "It's a long held belief that the law sector is elitist, and this isn't without foundation. Traditionally, the cost of studying to become a solicitor or barrister has excluded all but the most advantaged." (https://www.prospects.ac.uk/jobs-and-work-experience/job-sectors/law-sector/diversity-in-the-legal-profession) Add on top of that Hazel having used legal aid, which has never had the resources of the established law firms in terms of time to devote to a single case, the support of a team of interns and junior lawyers, etc. I once had a legal aid lawyer in the US tell me that he got about 75% of his clients released on appeal, that if they had had a good lawyer they would never have been convicted in the first place. The prisons in the UK are bursting at the seams with people from the lower classes. I've heard cases of hungry people getting ridiculous sentences for stealing food, while as the Good Law Project has proved, people connected with ministers got enormous contracts to provide PPE during the pandemic, supplied unworkable crap, should have had the money clawed back, but still have fat bank accounts from their takings.
If you like reading books, you might enjoy "The Secret Barrister" about the legal system and how unfair it is, or "One of Them" by Musa Okwongo, about the class elitism and discrimination he found attending Eton.
These are just a few resources you could look at. I'm not saying she was subject to class discrimation, but what these resources suggest is that it could be a possibility. As you point out, she lost out on a great deal of money, and this is the kind of thing that can destroy livelihoods, careers, and life chances. I hate seeing this happen to musicians, and as you point out and I keep reading over and over again, so many have suffered from being exploited and abused and having their careers cut short. It's a travesty and I think we need to think about ways to restructure the system going forward to prevent this from continuing to happen. With the music streaming, it's a wonder any musician is surviving now!
Thank you, Ellen. Great info. I need a little time to digest and respond. I will. I want to.
Hi Ellen,
I needed to sleep on this before responding.
Truth is I’m not sure it’s territory that I want to go into, especially not here, on my The Song’s the Thing! substack.
For this very reason, I set up a second substack, called Unleashed & Unlimited (https://nicbriscoe108.substack.com) in order to be able to broach topics that don’t necessarily link with simply loving music (in French they have a word for this ‘melomania’).
However, I want to respond to you. I really like what you write and how you write it, I think the subject matter is superb, and I admire and respect the amount of research you do. That said, I don’t expect you to agree with all my views, why should you? And vice versa. My observation of social media (and that’s what substack is) is that it divides people, viewpoints become polarised, and a ‘you’re either with us or you’re against us’ type of culture propagates. I’ve never understood this… I have friends that I like but don’t agree with on several things…!!!
I’m laying this all out because, when I read your last comment immediately for me there was a big red flag! The simplest way to explain this is that I don’t agree with your take on the class issue and LSE has a notorious reputation in the UK… it’s a big topic, and I’m not sure I can do it justice in a comment thread.
Also, I don’t agree about an all-pervasive (male)gender issue within the music industry. My own personal experience is that the issues within the music industry are 1. greed, 2. abuse of power, and 3. inhumanity (in terms of exploiting artists whilst they are in demand and dropping them when they are not, there is very little focus on developing an artist’s long-term career). None of these are exclusively linked to gender. That’s not to say that there are no issues within the music industry linked to gender, especially historically. But the fact remains that I have encountered several greedy, powerful, exploitative women within the music industry… and so it goes. It’s not territory I wish to explore. Endemic misogyny within the music industry is not a narrative I support, I think it’s divisive, and I don’t particularly want to expend energy debating this… nowadays everybody is frickin’ activist! lol
The point you raise about the law/ becoming a lawyer in the UK is an easier topic to debunk. Firstly, statistics can be manipulated and presented to achieve and support pretty much any narrative you want…
Experience is a totally different kettle of fish…
My maternal grandmother and grandfather were very low-working-class uneducated Scottish. After WW1 they moved from Scotland to England because they were so poor and there was more opportunity in England. They had five children, four survived. The oldest child, my aunt, was the most intelligent by far, very beautiful, and also very calm and kind. She didn’t go to university, nor did the second oldest, my uncle, he ran away from home and joined the Air Force during WW2 and ended up flying for the US Marine Corps in the Pacific. The other two children, my uncle and my mum, went to university. They were the first in our family to do so. My uncle became a surgeon, and my mother became a schoolteacher. Where is this going? Me and all my siblings all went to university. We all got state funding and bursaries to do so (because our family wasn’t rich), and my sister is a successful lawyer. I went to school with the now PM of England, Kier Starmer. I was in the same class as him for 6 years, we were in the same rugby team for years. He came from an incredibly low working-class background. He became the head of the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service), essentially the most powerful lawyer in the country. He’s now PM. So I don’t buy the statistics you present. They do not fit with my lived experience. (And BTW, Kier Starmer is, IMHO, a disaster waiting/just about to happen… but that’s another story…)
Now, the LSE. Where to start? Clearly, overnight, I have not read the subject matter you point to in your comment… so there is a big chance that what I am about to say is totally wrong, I recognise that, how can I comment on something I have not personally read?
The LSE has a reputation in the UK for two different but very linked topics.
Firstly, along with SOAS, it has provably been (and probably still is) a central London hotbed for radical Islamisation (read ‘The Islamist’ by Ed Husein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Islamist).
Secondly, again along with SOAS, it is provably one of the most Cultural Marxist universities in the whole of the UK! Forget about free speech at the LSE! Forget about the propagation of critical thought at the LSE. What they are famous for is WOKE dogma. And WOKE dogma is basically Communism V2, it’s Stalinist and Maoist Communism rebranded. They promote the like of intersectionality and critical race theory and critical gender theory. They focus on these 3 things: identity, race and gender. Their dogma is focused upon the dynamic of oppressor and oppressed, specifically "revealing and condemning concealed forms of domination" (Pierre-Henri Tavoillot). Students are presented all of this as an absolute truth, that cannot be refuted or questioned, essentially students are brainwashed. In this form of WOKE Cultural Marxism the ‘oppressors’ are not royalty, or aristocrats, or the superrich… no, the oppressors are straight white men… enter the narrative of the ‘White Patriarchy’… which has to be totally overthrown and destroyed…
You cannot be a professor at LSE unless you are 100% on board with this WOKE agenda. And it’s not just LSE… Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester, on and on… England has all but fallen, that’s the sad truth… like Canada…
That’s why I immediately saw a red flag with your comment, and most probably Sam Friedman and Mike Savage are totally on board with this WOKE agenda (otherwise their work would not get funding).
So although I have not read their works, I would wager that they are based upon intersectionality and are politically skewed towards the Cultural Marxist agenda just outlined.
I think that’s enough from me. I’m replying to you with the deepest respect. I do not wish to argue or debate this stuff too much. I respect your right to have your own opinions and views, it’s just I find it very difficult just to stay totally tight-lipped when red flags present themselves.
All the best to you.
Thanks for laying out your views and your background, Nic, which helps me see where you are coming from and why you viewed this as a red flag. I was greatly surprised by that, as I didn't realize you would consider it controversial or suitable for your other stack but not this one.
Of course I can respect and honor that you want to separate your music stack from your other stack and keep your music stack completely about music and nothing else.
I just raised the question of whether a class issue might be involved -- and emphasized that I didn't know if it was -- as I know that that was a big issue in the performing arts community when I was in the UK, with a number of very prominent actors talking about it publicly -- especially now that uni costs are over £9k per year, kids are leaving uni with high debt, and quite a few internships for kids fresh out of school are now unpaid. So I wondered if there might be class issues in the music world. Just a question.
I still owe you that pint. Let me know if you have a coffee fund I can donate to!
And that's very interesting about Keir Starmer!
Honestly, I’m not in any way offended, and I just decided to keep my music substack as free as possible from politics or activism. Personally I never encountered any problems in the UK related to class, and the point I tried to make is that my own family are, for want of a better term, first generation lower middle class, before that we were as poor as poor can be… and I never experienced ‘class’ related discrimination ever! I don’t say it doesn’t exist, I just say I don’t ever think in those terms, so it never occurred to me that this may have been key in Hazel’s situation. I do remember, in my v early 20s (so mid 1980s) going to a pub just outside central London and on the door it said (and this was not a joke) ‘No Dogs. No Blacks. No Irish. Women in Public Bar only.’ (The saloon bar was men only). So maybe Hazel’s problem was that she was half-Irish? What you say about the performance art community is very interesting, I just never heard of this.. I don’t say it doesn’t exist, just again it surprises me because a huge amount of 60s and 70s English film stars were working class! Anyway, thank you for the kind offer of the Guinness/coffee. I don’t have anything like that, just PayPal, could that work? No worries if no, just thank you for the offer, much appreciated.
https://paypal.me/NicBriscoeMusic