Rebel Britannia
December 17th 1964:
Dusty Springfield flew into London on this day, having been deported from South Africa for singing to black people. One newspaper headline read "Showbiz vs. Apartheid."
Although the Musicians Union in the UK had long had a policy opposing racial segregation, British performers routinely appeared in South Africa without offending the apartheid laws. But Dusty was having none of that; she said at the time: "I’ve got a special clause written into the contract which stipulates that I shall play only to non-segregated audiences. That’s my little bit to help the coloured people there. I think I’m the first British artist to do this."
In the mid-60s, the singer born Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien was a big star as well as being critically admired. One of the faces of the decade, she was well known for covers like I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself and original hits such as I Only Want To Be With You.
Her first two shows in South Africa, in front of racially mixed audiences, went without incident. It was only when she and her band arrived in Cape Town for the next gig that the police intervened. The Springfield party were detained in their hotel - prevented from using the phone, their passports seized - for three days.
At the end of that time they were told they could stay, and play to segregated crowds, or they could get out. They got out. The black ground staff at the airport made their own courageous protest, forming a guard of honour for Dusty as she boarded the plane home.
Back in the UK, her expulsion from South Africa was big news and her arrival was met by swarms of journalists. She said of the apartheid authorities, "If they want to sling mud around they've picked the wrong person because I have a far more deadly aim." She announced that she didn't want to touch "a penny" of her tour fee and was donating it to South African orphan charities.
Dusty's stand, and her treatment, led to entertainment unions adopting policies of boycotting segregated shows, to the annoyance of many senior stars in the show business establishment such as Max Bygraves, Jimmy "Whacko" Edwards and Derek Nimmo ("A prat" - D. Springfield), who attacked Dusty for "getting involved in politics." It never seems to occur to such people that going along with apartheid would be "getting involved with politics" every bit as much as would opposing it. Dusty was either naive, unhinged, a crank, a publicity-seeker or a left-wing extremist, depending on taste. (As usually happens, yesterday's left-wing extremism is today's goes-without-saying, reminding us that moderates are always on the wrong side of history.) Today, Springfield's talent is still celebrated. Max Bygraves', not so much.
A little while later, another British singing star, Adam Faith, had to escape from South Africa after effectively being arrested at gunpoint for refusing to play segregated gigs, in an extraordinary story that sounds like the plot of a 1960s spy flick. Other acts from the UK began to pull out of SA tours.
It wasn't until December 1980 that the United Nations voted in favour of a cultural boycott of apartheid, so you could certainly call Dusty Springfield a pioneer. But actually, she wasn't the first one.
If Dusty was a star, then George Formby was a megastar. In case you don't know (he's not quite as famous today as he was in the 1930s and 40s), Formby was a daft-looking, toothy-faced runt who made a living singing saucy songs full of double entendres in a Wigan accent, while gurning and accompanying himself on a ukulele, banjolele or banjo. His most successful numbers included When I'm Cleaning Windows and With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock. He was arguably Britain's first home-grown cinema star. At the time we're talking about he was the UK's highest-paid entertainer, and one of the top five in the world. The royal family adored him, the industrial working-classes of the English-speaking world adored him, the middle classes loathed and censored him, and The Beatles later cited him as an influence on their oeuvre.
Formby spent the war entertaining troops - an estimated three million of them in total - and he was given the OBE for this tireless work.
In 1946, accompanied as always by his wife/manager Beryl, he went to tour South Africa. They made it clear that they would not play to segregated crowds, and although they were specifically ordered not to perform to black audiences they went ahead and did so. Beryl and George had been raised to know right from wrong, and besides they didn't much care to be told what they could and couldn't do by jumped up little Hitlers or toffee-nosed gits.
After one concert, rapturously received as ever, a little black girl presented Beryl with a box of chocolates. Both she and George responded by giving the child a hug and a kiss. This was too much for the authorities - a white kissing a black! In public! The leader of the dominant National Party, Daniel Malan, rang Beryl in person to order her and her husband out of the country and to tell them "Never come back here."
And it was then that Beryl Formby, speaking on behalf of herself and her world-famous husband, uttered the remark for which she is still remembered and admired. She told the most powerful politician in South Africa: "Why don't you piss off, you horrible little man?"
*
Sources:
www.heraldscotland.com/news/11931105.1964-1988-pop-in-protest/
http://justbackdated.blogspot.com/2015/04/adam-faiths-brush-with-apartheid-book.html
http://justbackdated.blogspot.com/2015/04/adam-faiths-brush-with-apartheid-part-2.html
Catching tadpoles by Ronnie Kasrils (Jacana Media, 2019)
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-8aa6-betty-of-buck-house-loved-his-little-stick-of-blackpool-rock-1