In a recently introduced piece of bureaucracy, the Metropolitan police have started requiring live event producers across London to fill in the innocuous sounding "Form 696".
Here's the catch: it requires four pages of information from event organisers 14 days before it takes place. If you need to make last-minute changes – tough luck, the event can't go ahead. The Met police not only want to know the type of music to be played, but also names, aliases, phone numbers and addresses of performers. It will not only make putting on live bands very difficult for small venues, but also spell the end of impromptu open mic sessions.
This latest incarnation of police bureaucracy hasn't come out of nowhere. It even asks event promoters to provide details of their target audience, a further sign of the way it's been racialising music across London for a while.
I was, until recently, a regular at a monthly club night before the police suddenly started strictly enforcing ID checks. This wasn't merely to ensure I was above the required 18 years of age. Not only was everyone required to provide visual identification, but they also had to be logged in a computer database – otherwise none of us could go in. Everyone's driving licences were scanned through a machine and recorded on a computer, with no indication of how long the police would store the information for.
When I objected, the (white) club promoter was quite frank with me. He said the police had said they were "concerned" that the venue played "black and Asian music" and hence wanted added security. Any sort of trouble is extremely rare at this night. Yet their reasoning was that if any fight broke out, they could track everyone at the event if necessary.
Form 696 explicitly singles out musical styles such as R&B, bashment, garage or styles including MCs/DJs as examples of genres that have to be stated if put on. It also required event producers to state the likely racial profile of people attending. When accusations of racial profiling were inevitably raised by the music industry, the Met changed the wording to ask who it was targeted at.
One London council has already invoked prevention of terrorism in its licensing guidelines for live events.
Will people speak out only when live event-goers are asked for fingerprints and retina scans – all maintained on a database for "their own security"?
UK Music chief Feargal Sharkey recently told a Commons select committee that this policy had already been used to pull the plug on an afternoon charity concert of school bands in a public park, organised by a local councillor: "Live music is now a threat to the prevention of terrorism."
As Martin Rawlings, director of the Pub and Beer Association, rightly told a newspaper a couple of months ago:
"I know of licensees faced with this saying they are just not going to put live music on. Form 696 is being used only in London so far, but there are similar things going on around the country, where the police are asking publicans to sign various protocols. It has gone too far, frankly."
It has. You can sign the No 10 petition; write to your MP about it; or join the Facebook group.
Save live events, oppose police authoritarianism! You know it makes sense.
The Convention on Modern Liberty will begin in London on Saturday 28 February at 9.45am at the Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way London WC1. Other sessions, with live screenings from London, will take place at Trinity Centre, Trinity Rd, Bristol; Student Council Chamber, Oxford Road, Manchester University; Cambridge Union, Bridge Street, Cambridge; Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Strathclyde, Montrose Street, Glasgow; Peter Froggatt Centre, Queen's University, Belfast.The venue in Cardiff is yet to be confirmed.
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