Charlie Angus

DOUG MILLER 00:00

So good morning, Charlie Angus. How are you?

CHARLIE ANGUS 00:07

Thank you so much for having me to talk about this important issue.

DOUG MILLER 00:12

Sure. So before we begin, I neglected to send you the consent form. I don't know if you saw it.

CHARLIE ANGUS 00:18

Absolutely, I'm. I fully consent. Whatever I say, I stand by. It's on the record. So, well,

DOUG MILLER 00:25

That's, that's great. Thank you so much. How about, Charlie, just telling us that your name, where you are, and then could you just give us a little brief introduction to your, your history, your background, and, and what might have, when at what point you sort of learned about racism and South African apartheid, for that matter?

CHARLIE ANGUS 00:43

Well, my name is Charlie Angus. I was member of Parliament for the region of Timmins–James Bay for 21 years, but I also was the founding member of the punk band L’Étranger, and I am the lead singer of the band Grievous Angels. We just released our 10th album. The album is called Revolution. So you can see that I haven't really strayed far from my roots. I run the Charlie Angus Resistance Network and the Meidas Canada Network, so I remain very active in the grassroots level.

My introduction to apartheid, I think, came because it was generally all over the news. I was a kid when the Soweto riots happened. I remember reading all the articles about Stephen Biko's murder, and punk rock was starting out right about that time, and it was heavily political. It could have actually gone both ways in the punk realm, it could have gone reactionary, and parts of it did, but there was another element that was very anti-racist, and that was the, the movement that I was part of. I think I was also influenced coming out of the Catholic community at that time was very, very moving on issues of the liberation theology. We were learning, you know, in school about the boycotts against grapes and that defending the Mexican and Filipino farmworkers, the issues in El Salvador. These were all big things in my teen years, and apartheid just it was like the wall that had to be smashed and broken, and so it seemed like it was an all hands on deck moment in culturally and politically.

DOUG MILLER 02:27

That's interesting. A punk band, two punk bands for that matter. So, so did you find other ways within that? Did you find ways to express your opposition to apartheid?

CHARLIE ANGUS 02:42

Well, there was a much larger movement, obviously with activists, organizations that you know we were young, we were 17, 18, then into maybe 19 at the time, and we didn't really know how to engage in those the larger political movements. We used to see posters on all the downtown streets in Toronto for big organizing meetings at places like Bloor Street United Church. I think we went to meetings, but you know we felt you know in our leather jackets and our combat boots and older people and the sort of the hippie progressive movement were looking at what are the kids doing here, so I think we were a bit on the outside, but we really saw music as a means to change.

We organized and set up Rock Against Racism in Toronto based on the movement in the in the UK to stop the, the movement of fascism in the in the punk community, and so there was a lot of this awareness of the need for cross-racial activism, but I think what we saw also that the early '80s there was this huge movement politically in the music community to take a stand, and we were really influenced by that. We, you know, Peter Gabriel's “Biko”, The Specials singing about Mandela, Miami Steve Van Zandt's “Sun City” was a huge, huge breakthrough moment. It was basically you're either on one side or the other in this fight, so pick a side, and then if you're on the other side, we will call you out. So that seemed to be the the, the tenor of the times, and so our band L’Étranger very much fell, fell into that, and, and we became activists. We, we sang about it, and I think in the end it probably definitely affected our career. But that that was the moment, and that was the times you had to take a stand.

GWEN SCHULMAN 04:40

How do you mean it affected your career?

CHARLIE ANGUS 04:44

Well, there was at the time the sort of the commercial industry in Canada paid no attention to the to the to the new music coming out the punk rock and also the political element. We were that was considered very marginal. Played on major radio and that, so our band, our second EP, we didn't have money for full albums then. They were so expensive to record. So our second EP was doing super well on college radio across Eastern Canada, and then CFNY was the breakthrough radio station that played new music. This wasn't being played on the other rock station, so we were getting a lot of play on CFNY.

They were really promoting our band, and then we were nominated for an award. They called it the U-Know Awards, which was sort of a takeoff on the Junos because the Junos again represented the the cultural, the commercial pop industry that a band like us would never even be noticed by, and we were up for artist, I think new artist of the year, which would have been a big breakthrough for us. And then we found out that one of the sponsors for the event had ties to South Africa, and for us again, it was like the line in the sand. You're on one side or the other. So we had this big, big, big band debate and struggle about whether or not to go accept that award. And in the end, we didn't accept that award.

And I think the message that it sent to the industry was that our band were troublesome. Our band weren't grateful. Our band were the kind who were trying to make you know a statement on, on and undermining the work of other people who are trying to build community, which wasn't true. We were supportive of this effort by the radio station and supportive of the the, the industry that was trying to create you know room for bands like us, but we decided we just could not go and accept an award. After speaking up about South Africa, we had a song called “One People”, which was our, our big anthem about anti-apartheid and our responsibility. So, yeah, we, we didn't accept the award, even though.

GWEN SCHULMAN 06:59

So you just didn't show up. You just didn't show to the awards.

CHARLIE ANGUS 07:02

Yeah, we decided that we weren't even going to issue a statement because we thought if we, we were so we were we were so hung up on this. We thought if we made some kind of big statement, we didn't want to make the, the like the people who were putting this on we really respected. They really helped us. We didn't want to make them look bad, so but we just said to them we can't come to an award ceremony where your sponsorship is South African, so we decided not to go. And yeah, I don't I don't know how big of an impact it had, but I think it that was sort of kind of the, the watermark where we didn't go above that after that,

GWEN SCHULMAN 07:42

Can you tell us a little bit about the song? Like, what what's what story is it? What's its message?

CHARLIE ANGUS 07:50

Well, you know, I, every now and then One People comes up in some playlist that somebody has, and there's things I really like about it. There's things I really cringe. We were very super idealistic, which I think you know. Okay, cringe-worthy. That's, that's okay to be idealistic. I'm still very idealistic, but we were trying to really connect for people that what was happening in South Africa was a sense the injustice that was there was not something far away. It wasn't something that you know we had no say in, and we were trying to connect it to the anti-racism fight that was happening in Toronto at the time.

Toronto, you know, was really becoming more and more multicultural. But there was a lot of racist violence at the time in the early '80s. There was certainly against South Asians, the, the Ku Klux Klan set up a chapter. The neo-Nazis were moving, and we saw in Europe the rise of the the neo Nazi skinheads, and we'd seen that happening in the United States, and it was starting to happen in Toronto. So we had formed Rock Against Racism. So One People talked about South Africa and the fight there, but it also then tied it back to our obligation in the city that we loved and the communities that we loved to, to stand up against the racist hate there.

And you know, one of the big actions I remember was that the neo-Nazis set up a, a clubhouse in Riverdale at the time, and we loved Riverdale in Toronto. And we, we had a huge march. We marched through that neighbourhood and demanded Nazis out, and we put the run on them. So that was the politics of the time, and that was what One People was trying to sing about. So when we sang those songs at our, our gigs, we were really trying to get young people organized and give them a frame to see the state of what people could do to resist the movement of hate.

GWEN SCHULMAN 09:49

Did you tour with that song?

CHARLIE ANGUS 09:51

Yeah, we we toured. I mean, touring for punk bands was very difficult back in in the earlier part of in the. Earlier '80s, by the late '80s, it had changed. But yeah, we played Montreal, played out to the East Coast. We played every punk bar in every blue-collar town across the sort of the punk belt. From it was basically from Windsor to Montreal. So One People was a pretty well-known song in our that people knew that song who came up to see our band.

GWEN SCHULMAN 10:22

Can you maybe reflect a little bit on the role of culture in? You've spoken to it already, but just the role of culture in the anti-apartheid movement. Its importance. Do you feel like the song helped to mobilize and educate people?

CHARLIE ANGUS 10:41

Well, I think the culture played an incredible role. I think of it now, and I again you you see the horrific violence in Gaza, and how artists then like the 70th birthday for Nelson Mandela held at Wembley Stadium. It was it was recorded and shown around the world. 600 million people watched that anti-apartheid rally. I mean, you had groups like the Eurythmics and Dire Straits and Whitney Houston. These were the top pop acts in the world standing up against apartheid, and they did that because of the work of so many lesser groups to push this issue, the Sun City release by Miami Steve, it we we thought that was mind-blowing because number one, it was a real kick-ass song, but it also exposed for a lot of white kids to Black culture for the first like the new, like that was Grandmaster Flash was on that, Run-DMC, the new Black sound that was coming out that was very considered, I think, alien to the white pop kids, these cross-cultural moments were really important and they were political.

And again the thing about Sun City, that song, it was calling out. I mean, Queen went to Sun City. You know, Linda Ronstadt went to Sun City. Rod Stewart went to Sun City because they paid you staggering amounts of money to justify the apartheid regime, and the boycott was like, no, you do not go play there. And if you play there, you are on the wrong side of history. So it was a shaming moment that started with I think a lot of smaller acts and people being activists, and then it ended up at Wembley Stadium with 600 million people saying Nelson Mandela is not a terrorist. Nelson Mandela represents freedom and a better world, and and we were right, and that's and in the end, apartheid fell without violence. I think culture did play a role in that.

DOUG MILLER 12:46

Wow, powerful stuff! So, so from, from there, did did you see this activism and punk rock activism and so on shaping part of your life in the future from there?

CHARLIE ANGUS 13:01

Punk. Punk rock was my university that I went to. I think it was the DIY element of the punk movement. I mean, there's such a stereotype of punk rock that was shown in TV and, and movies of the mohawks and kids beating on each other and in the mosh pits and being dumb. It wasn't. It was a very complex and inter. It was a place where all the, the strange kids who didn't fit in anywhere else ended up together. It was a really fascinating hybrid of people trying things out that they didn't necessarily know where it was going to lead.

So, I think what was made the punk rock scene really exciting in Canada was it was at a time when rents were cheap, you know you, you weren't burdened in student debt. If you got a job as a dishwasher like I was, you could do your day shifts and then go play practice in a rehearsal space that you could rent and try things. So there was a lot of people trying things. They were trying things in in I know people who are trying things in fashion, trying things in theatre, trying things in writing, and it was all possible because there was a sense of this political, that somehow it was political. Even though we were just out to have a fun time and probably drink a lot and dance a lot, we felt we were we were, we were an alternative to the, the world view that said we had to go along and be well behaved.

And for me, my whole political life from that was that notion of DIY. You just get up and you do it. You don't have to be the greatest singer in the world. You have to have passion. You don't have to know all the jazz chords. You can do it with three chords. But if you have passion and you have belief, you can change the world, and that was that was what Joe Strummer taught us, and that was that's what I tell people all the time. If you've got the passion, get up and do it. Get yourself organized. And for us, we were 17 years old. We got a '69 Econoline van. We learned how to play our instruments just barely, and we got better and better. And better every single time we played, even though sometimes people threw bottles at us, it didn't matter. That was our education, and that's, that's the education I brought in everything I've done since.

GWEN SCHULMAN 15:11

I want to step back for a second when you were talking about one world and building these connections between what was going on in South Africa, what was going on in the states, the growing neo-Nazi movement in Canada, at the time, were you also drawing parallels with the situation of Indigenous people in Canada?

CHARLIE ANGUS 15:30

That's a really good question because it was really outside our realm. Like we sang about it in One People, but we didn't know about it. The apartheid regime in Canada was still very, very strong, and it was it was an apartheid regime in terms of the silence that was coming out in terms of how the media covered Indigenous issues.

It was, I think it was Oka was the big wake-up call, and it scared the shit out of everybody. It was like what the hell's going on here, and it was something that I really learned when I got more activist in the north, working with the Algonquin Nation, starting to go into reserves, and then also in the work that I did in politics. In my first years in in political life, we took on these enormous battles of injustice, and we, the fight to get a school in Attawapiskat. These kids were being educated on a toxic site where kids were getting cancers in at age six and seven. Nobody was stepping up. Nobody seemed to care. And I remember I used the phrase that this was Canada's educational apartheid. And I, when I put that word out there in the national media, I expected major blowback because people were like, "What do you mean apartheid? This is not fair. Canada is doing its best”.

Well, I, mean, apartheid. They learned a lot of their lessons of apartheid from the, the reserve system in Canada, and now we see how much it's changed, how many of the voices are coming forward, but when we were 17 and 18, we didn't have that. We didn't. We knew nothing about the residential schools. We knew nothing about the mass injustice that was faced. So that's a very important transition that I've seen in my lifetime. We knew more about what was happening in South Africa than we did in than what was happening in places like Treaty 9.

GWEN SCHULMAN 17:26

Absolutely, exactly. Yeah, that was our experience too, for sure. Doug, sorry I cut you off there.

DOUG MILLER 17:34

No, I, I, I very powerful statement, and it's something we've observed in a number of the interviews is how that evolution has occurred, and, and of course you are have been a big part of that too in your political career. I'm, I'm not quite sure, Gwen, where, where we take it from here.

GWEN SCHULMAN 17:52

Well, I mean, you, you Charlie, you referred to what's going on in Gaza right now, and so what's your reflection on the legacy of the anti-apartheid movement?

CHARLIE ANGUS 18:07

I think the real lesson that needs to be talked about today, you know, to me it's not glory days for activism in another era. Is that the time? Those times were very, very intense because the odds against making change seemed so overwhelming, and people took to the streets because they literally didn't know what else to do. We, we were dealing with the nuclear arms race with Reagan was getting more and more dangerous. I mean, the world almost blew up a couple of times in 1983 from close misfires as the Russians in the U.S. were staring each other down. You had the apartheid regime was such a symbol of inequity, and nobody, or and the Berlin Wall.

I mean, I never thought in my lifetime the Berlin Wall would fall, and I never thought that apartheid would fall, without some kind of mass violence. But people took to the streets, and they took to the streets in the tens, and then the twenties, and then the hundreds, then in the thousands, and then in the millions, and then people were watching, you know, the call for the freedom of Nelson Mandela from concerts at Wembley Stadium.

What I think we need to think about today is we are in the same situation. We watch what's happening in Gaza. We watch what's happening with the United States. We watch what's happening in Ukraine, and we seem feel so overwhelmed. But that sense of being overwhelmed — the only way to change that is to get out and do something, is to get active, is to go to a meeting.

And before there were there were lots of meetings, and you can't change the world on Zoom. You've got to get out. You've got to meet people. You've got to get your hands dirty. You've got to put up some posters. You've got to stand out on the, even if people think you're a lunatic, but that's what draws other people because they're waiting for you to do something.

And I think that that's the lesson to me of apartheid. We were just a bunch of punk kids, and we did our part because so many others were doing their part, and because we did our part, other people thought, well, I can do it too, and that's how the change came, and that's the way changes always happened, and it's the only way we're going to get through this in this time, is to think of those the enormous, enormous cross-cultural, cross-political, cross-national alliances that formed, and we took down evil.

GWEN SCHULMAN 20:35

I'm going to redirect a little bit. Do you remember sort of your thoughts and feelings when Mandela was released from prison?

CHARLIE ANGUS 20:45

I, I think, I mean, we didn't know who Nelson Mandela was. We only knew this black and white poster. We didn't know what was possible, and I don't think I I, I, think in my heart or my, my fear was that when he got out? Maybe he'd just be a shadow of a man. He wouldn't be able to be the man who could lead us. But he was a symbol. And when he was released, I mean, there was so much pressure for the release. It built and built and built, and you know, it was such a transformative moment. I I remember we watched the movie with my, my daughters about when that that that rugby movie with Matt Damon and you know Milton and and

GWEN SCHULMAN 21:33

Morgan Freeman

CHARLIE ANGUS 21:34

Yeah, I was gonna say Milton Friedman, Freeman I'm getting screwed up with the 80s here. I remember watching that film on on Mandela. I was getting so emotional, like I was crying, and I was saying to my daughters, "You don't, you don't know how important it was. What a symbol he, he was when, when this when he was released”. Everything changed, and again, nobody thought that that was going to happen in his lifetime or ours, and it did. So yeah, it was super emotional.

GWEN SCHULMAN 22:02

A couple of times you refer you have referred to how the, the change came about in South Africa without violence, and I know what you mean in the sense that it didn't become a civil war, but certainly in the, the period up to the elections, there were assassinations and attempt to really undermine more progressive forces within South Africa. Do you recall at all, you know, the assassination of Chris Hani or the assassination of Dulcie September in Paris? Do you have any recollection of that period and your thoughts around wow, where is this going?

CHARLIE ANGUS 22:38

Well, I think, I mean, we had been told again and again by sort of the mainstream political voices that my God, if, if the, you know the white hand is taken off the control of the you know of the lever, it's gonna it's just it's gonna be a bloodbath. I mean, this was this thing we grew up hearing all our lives. So you know, when I say that it was done without violence. I mean that these apocalyptic scenarios that were used to justify the apartheid state didn't come true. But there was a lot of violence throughout. I mean it was a violent regime. It was a, it was a murderous regime. So when we saw people being assassinated and we saw we saw these examples. This was to us a reflection of, of the evil that we were fighting. But we just people just kept going. I think that was a sense. It's like you know we just got to keep going. We've got to keep pushing and, and kicking at it until that wall falls, and then the wall fell.

GWEN SCHULMAN 23:40

But. Before we were talking about the legacy of the movement, does it have a personal legacy for you? Do you think that you, having been born at that time in history and engaged in the movement, had an impact on who you are today?

CHARLIE ANGUS 23:58

I am completely, my whole worldview is defined by that realization that the only way to stop evil is to speak up. And one voice isn't enough, but many one voice becomes two, and two become four, and four become eight, and eight becomes 16, and that's that's the change.

And I saw that. I saw how it was possible, and I I watch people today feeling so overwhelmed by the hate and the violence. But I see these voices speaking up, and I see people doing things in the face of what seems to be crazy odds. And I say, this is this is the change. I think sometimes now we, we think that if, if we if we tweet it and we get you know a viral response, it'll change. It won't change. You know we think if we elect a proper politician, it'll change. It won't change. It'll only change if we are out doing our part. Against such massive inequity and evil, and so that's, that's how I see the world.

It's why I remain hopeful. I'm not optimistic. I would say I'm not very optimistic of optimistic about the state of the world today, but I remain hopeful because I saw us come up against massive, incredible odds. And I was young. I wasn't one of the big organizers then, but in every battle I've ever fought since then, I remembered those lessons of what it means to get one and then two and then four and then eight, and that's that to me.

I've seen that in the fights on the Indigenous battles we fought. I've seen it in so many other ways of bringing change, and so that's I was I was, I think I'm a definitely a graduate of that school, of putting the posters up on the street and hoping that people will come out. And when people come out, let's get some more and let's do this.

GWEN SCHULMAN 25:55

Do you have any of those posters anymore, or T-shirts, or buttons from the anti-apartheid era? Did you hold on to any of that stuff?

CHARLIE ANGUS 26:02

No, I was looking through. I mean, Rock Against Racism had done a number of posters. A lot of at that point, we also got really involved in the peace movement. So these things all sort of blurred together. It was about getting people out. So we would have people talking about apartheid and the peace movement and everything else. It was, it was like again, it was all happening at the same time.

But I don't, I don't think other than the only thing we have left is the song “One People”, and like I said, every now and then it comes on, and I'm like, "Oh my God, yeah, that's, that's funny”, and and you know it's weird. And the song, the song begins with they're fighting the Boer War in South Africa, and I was thinking about why I had that, but you know, my grandmother was a Scottish mining widow who had a massive hate on for the British Empire and injustice, and I think I got a lot of my brass knuckle politics from her.

But I remember, like the, the, the weird thing about the story of South Africa was that for a lot on the left in the late 19th century, the, the, the creation of the concentration camps and that was a real anti-colonial, anti-British awareness. And this, you know, my grandmother used to talk about the Boers fighting against the, the British, as she saw it as anti-colonial, and so I I remembered those stories as a kid, and then of course, the Boer nation became the ultimate oppressors. Maybe it's kind of like the story of where we are with Israel and Gaza, right? The the, the ones who were, were seen as the the plucky underdogs.

Well, we had to learn lessons from, but that's why I think I put the word "the Boer War in South Africa”. If I wrote the song now, I'd never have that in there. Talk about the fight in South Africa, but again, we didn't know a lot about the politics. We just knew something was wrong.

GWEN SCHULMAN 27:52

Yeah, I think we can all agree that that it was a very special movement, but we also want to be careful to not glorify it beyond what it merits. So, do you have any reflections on weaknesses or contradictions within the movement that you know would have been nice to fill those gaps or avoid those mistakes?

CHARLIE ANGUS 28:18

You know, we were we were very much outside of the, the debates, we were like I don't think I don't think the movement even noticed us. The people who were the, the big anti-apartheid activists they were they were they were dealing on a whole other level. We were dealing we were pretty much feral kids doing our own things. So we were not. I don't think they noticed us, and we didn't know how to even contact. We never even would have thought. We just — I think we went to some of the meetings and stood at the back and thought, "Oh God, these guys are arguing about some really strange things. What are they arguing about? We got to go up and put posters up”.

So, I mean, there's lessons to be learned. I think in every in every action, and so you know, I've learned lessons from a lot of the other ones, but in those days I was on the outs on the outside, so I had no. I'm kind of glad. It's kind of what I try and do now is just do it, get out and put the posters up and let other people fight about who sits where.

GWEN SCHULMAN 29:19

Doug, I don't. Do you have any other questions? Well,

DOUG MILLER 29:23

no. I I, I, think this has been a a sort of great overview of of of your role, Charlie, and and fine statement on the period and the time and the the the subcultures that were going on that were actually making huge change. So it's a. I'm very happy to have had the chance to listen to this and hear this from you,

GWEN SCHULMAN 29:42

But Charlie, do you have any final thoughts or anything you'd like to say that we didn't cover?

CHARLIE ANGUS 29:47

Well, I, I think the for me, you know, we were looking at it from our little piece of the world, which were young people who were making choices, and our concern at the time was, we saw the danger of being reactionary, and we saw some of the punk bands at the time were reactionary. There were bands like the Battered Wives who were in-your-face misogynist, and young women saying, "Screw you! You're not playing shows”. We're, anybody who likes you. We're the first cancel culture, I ever, cancel culture I ever saw, and I learned lessons from that.

And I think there was a moment in that movement that could have gone dark, and it did go dark in certain places with certain skinhead violence in that, showing people that there was a way to make change and that there were bigger issues. I don't know how much we changed the minds of so many young people, but they came out, and so it was about saying to people, we don't have to be cynical, we don't have to be reactionary, we can make change.

And again, the larger movement probably didn't notice this, but I think that that was, to me, was really an important thing to do: was to keep that movement from becoming reactionary and hateful, and maybe in some small ways, songs like “One People” and our rallies for Rock Against Racism, and our, our sense of trying to encourage people to make change. I think it for, for a lot of people I meet now say, yeah, that was a defining moment in my life. So I'm meeting a lot of people with grey hair who came through that punk movement at the same time, and they, they seem to remember it the same way. That yeah, this changed our lives for the better, and we, we went into the world believing we had a responsibility. So, if that's what that did with three chords, I'm I'd be happy to, to have that as my as as a legacy.

GWEN SCHULMAN 31:41

Amazing! Thank you so much.

SPEAKER 3 31:43

Thank you.

DOUG MILLER 31:43

Wonderful summary. Thank you so much, Charlie. I really appreciate this, and I wish you a very good day. Okay, you guys take care.

GWEN SCHULMAN 31:52

We'll keep you in the loop about the production and all the rest of it. So we're planning on launching the radio, the audio documentary, probably the first week.