“It was the worst moment of my life,” Anderson told the Guardian in 1997. They told them they were going to kill them, after shouting S ieg heil in unison and telling the group they shouldn’t be seen together. Dean Anderson, a DJ from Newark, was at a service station in the 70s when a group of a dozen people confronted him, a mixed-race friend and their white associates. He along with the record collector Tim Ashibende, who supplied many of the scene’s DJs, was part of the underground network that powered northern soul.Ĭonfrontations with racists on the way to events were common. Watch the game, come back, shower and get ready for the Saturday all-nighter and if there was a Ritz Sunday all-dayer in Manchester, you’d do that as well.” Obeng ran the Night Owl Soul Club in Stockport for 25 years. “You’d do the Friday ‘oldies’ at Wigan, get back home, shower and then off to an away game with United. There was a camaraderie about the whole thing – people really believed in ‘keep the faith’ Steve Caesar He had been drawn into the scene after seeing northern soul dancing at his local youth club in Sale. Like Caesar, Obeng was a football fan, following Manchester United. Ian Obeng arrived in the UK from Ghana as a child, after his family had been advised to leave the country in the wake of independence because of their ties to the British colonial administration. “I remember going to Leeds Central and seeing white kids wearing one black glove, which came from the Mexico 68 Olympics black power protest.”Ī still from This England, directed by Tony Palmer, 1977. “There was a camaraderie about the whole thing – people really believed in ‘keep the faith’,” says Caesar, referring to the scene’s slogan. He remembers hearing black American music emanating from the radios of his neighbours in Saint Kitts on a Sunday as a child, and that interest in African American music would last a lifetime.

Steve Caesar, another recent arrival to Britain from the Caribbean, would go on to win the inaugural dance contest at Wigan Casino and write himself into northern soul lore.īorn in Saint Kitts, Caesar had joined his family in Chapeltown, Leeds, as a 13-year-old and thrown himself into British youth culture, first as an ardent Leeds United fan, and then through northern soul. “At that time I was very mixed up as a kid, and dancing was massive for me – it kept me sane.”įinlayson became well known on the northern soul scene after coming second at a dance contest at the Torch, and other black dancers were hugely influential on the scene. “I’ve got a song that I loved so much, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles – I Gotta Dance to Keep from Crying,” she says. There was something about the music’s energy and often raw, yet defiant, lyrics that worked as a balm for her as she tried to find her place in Britain. She would regularly hitchhike to nights around the north, meeting up with friends from other cities and using dance moves she had borrowed from her older brother. “It was like being in another world,” she says of the dancefloor at Wigan Casino.Įscapism and excitement drew Finlayson into the scene. Finlayson was like several northern soul fans, a young immigrant to the UK who was searching for somewhere she belonged, and she found it at the all-nighters. Born in Jamaica, she moved to Manchester with her family as a three-year-old and started going to all-nighters after attending the Twisted Wheel as a teenager. Rhonda Finlayson was one of the dozens of black teenagers who went to the Casino, and other venues, including the Torch in Stoke-on-Trent and the Catacombs in Wolverhampton.

They are mostly “blink and you’ll miss them” moments, but they offer an alternative to the perceived wisdom that northern soul was an exclusively white movement. Two mixed-race girls smile and wave at the camera before they jump on to a coach. A lad with an impeccable afro waits patiently at the bar. There’s Gideon Harding from Bolton in a bright yellow vest, spinning in slow motion as he moves balletically, almost frozen in time. Throughout the documentary, Palmer’s camera lingers on the faces of several black teenagers. Instead, he wanted to answer the central question: if Wigan Casino was an escape, what was it an escape from? And, as he painted the social backdrop for the phenomenon, he ended up highlighting something else about the scene. He wasn’t interested in finding a dark underbelly. Photograph: Idell Kamiliīut Palmer’s film was something different. ‘It was a predominately white scene, but for me it was about the music.’ Idell Kamili (right) and sister Viki at Rugby train station after a Stafford all-nighter.

Wigan young souls