CounterPunch.Org

Source: Found here

With a brand new major London tourist attraction opening soon in a network of World War Two tunnels, and with the second American revolution banging on in the background, I've been thinking about cultural undergrounds. Here invisible insurrectionists have long embraced not just London but Ireland, Russia, cross-channel Europe, the Americas, Africa. Only weeks ago an underground Sudanese group burst into action outside Chatham House where even a frog had its head bitten off. Even the 1820 Cato Street Conspiracy met on nearby Edgware Road. Soho was often the traditional nurturer of scenes underground.

In the 1950s Colin MacInnes wrote Absolute Beginners during the Notting Hill Riots, importantly romanticising the underground as a free and fair place in the process. Long before I visited London from Scotland, American legend Joe Boyd with Cambridge physicist Hoppy Hopkins had founded the underground psychedelic UFO Club where Pink Floyd (with Syd Barrett) played some of their early gigs. Anarchists, I am told, favoured the Arts Lab in Notting Hill, founded by another American—also via Edinburgh—Jim Haynes. The Mountain Grill famously hosted speed parties with Hawkwind and Lemmy. Future archbishops of Canterbury (Rowan Williams, certainly) listened to the Incredible String Band. Underground press publications International Times (IT) and Oz Magazine were already blowing what remained of mainstream narratives out of the water, its visuals alone by graphic artists Martin Sharp and Nigel Weymouth-English beyond illuminating. Years later, Felix Dennis, former editor of Oz, could still be seen, beard and all, in the half-light of Gerry's. Perhaps these people are ghosts now who meet in Soho every Thursday night or so. Then came Punk—SEX (Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood), The Roxy Club (The Clash, The Damned), Centro Iberico and nearby Meanwhile Gardens (Anarcho-Punk).

Some people today think of their phones as the new underground. Well, that won't last if the government has its way and gets Apple to hand over access to everyone's encrypted cloud data on iPhones or iPads: 'An unprecedented attack on privacy rights that has no place in any democracy,' warns Rebecca Vincent of Big Brother Watch. Mind you, most people here don't even know about the possibility of the Bank of England underground vaults being depleted of gold. At the end of the day, however, we should still have the incredible Windmill in Brixton and pop-up venues like Paper Dress Vintage in Hackney for underground fashion and music to conjoin. There is still from all accounts Electrowerkz in its late 19th century warehouse near Angel; the avant garde Corsica Studios in Elephant and Castle; marathon nights at FOLD between Canning Town and Bow. But—if dissenting voices really do define an underground scene—there may be trouble ahead with so-called rightist nights.