Vidal Sassoon: anti-fascist street fighter

May 9, 2012 at 10:05 pm (anti-fascism, anti-semitism, BBC, good people, Jim D, wireless, zionism)

Above:Vidal Sassoon, cutting Mary Quant’s hair, fought pitched battles with fascists (the Telegraph)

 

Above: the “43 Group“

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Sassoon, dubbed the “anti-fascist warrior hairdresser” by the Telegraph joined the East End-based 43 Group as a 17-year-old trainee hairdresser.

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The 43 Group was formed by Jewish ex-servicemen in the wake of World War II who returned home to the UK to see Nazis in Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF) organising openly, and resolved to continue their fight against fascism.The organisation fought pitched battles, often armed with knives and razor blades, with the BUF and eventually smashed them off London’s streets. Sassoon’s weapon of choice? Fittingly, a pair of scissors.In an interview with the Jewish Chronicle he recounted his involvement in the group: 

 

“It was a rather strange situation because the war was over. Before the war there was quite a strong fascist party led by Oswald Mosley and he and his cohorts were put in detention (jail) during the war by Churchill. After the war they came out and immediately started up again with their anti-Semitism and running through the streets and having meetings, it was quite ridiculous. Many truly brave Jewish ex-servicemen started the “43 Group” because there were 43 people at the first meeting they had. These were tough men who had been through the war. Of course volunteers were needed, I was 16 or 17 at the time, most of my friends joined the 43 Group and there were quite a few hundred of us. Truly the fascists were smashed in the streets and yes if you were scared at times [it was] because it was scary. But after we saw the pictures that came out and the whole story of the Holocaust, there was actually no way we could allow fascists to run through the streets. I was arrested one night and put in jail, the following day the judge told me ‘to be a good boy’ and let me go. That was our life in those days, we decided that we were absolutely not going to allow what happened pre-war when Jews were just beat up indiscriminately in the streets. It worked beautifully because of mainly the tough Jewish characters that were in the British armed forces during the war, they were the people that did it. But also there were quite a few gentiles who had seen the camps, the horror of Europe and fought with us.”

In a recent BBC documentary he told how he once turned up to work with a black eye after a night of fighting.

“I’ll never forget one morning I walked in and I had a hell of a bruise – it had been a difficult night the night before – and a client said to me, ‘Good God, Vidal, what happened to your face?’ And I said, ‘Oh, nothing, madam, I just fell over a hairpin’.”

Later in life, Sassoon helped revolutionise hairdressing in the 1960s as his geometric, sharp hairstyles overtook the high maintenance, heavily hair-sprayed styles of the 50s.

(Later Sassoon and others in the 43 Group fought for the creation of Israel, which of course I and many other anarchists/communists would have serious issues with, but nobody’s perfect… For information about the 43 Group I recommend reading Morris Beckman’s excellent book, The 43 Group, to which Sassoon wrote the foreword)

(From libcom.org, not me – JD)

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From 9 October 2011: well worth a listen (he had good taste in music as well).

Kirsty Young’s castaway is the veteran hairdresser Vidal Sassoon.

He developed the architecturally precise bobs and cropped styles that were a defining look of the 1960s. Mary Quant, Mia Farrow and Twiggy were among the glamorous clients who came to his salons in London and Beverly Hills.

His scissors and ambition lifted him out of the grinding poverty of his childhood – he spent six years in an orphanage because his mother could not afford to keep him at home. Now aged 83, he says:” I’ve had the best adventure you could possible have, for a kid that started from nowhere.”

Record: Mahler’s 8th Symphony Book: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Luxury: A dozen bottles of Vidal Sassoon hair shampoo

Producer: Isabel Sargent.

Music played

1. Dinah Washington— What a Difference a Day Makes

   Composer: Adams/Grever

   Label:  EMI

2. Billy Eckstine— Everything I have is yours

   Composer: Lane/Adamson

   Billy Eckstine Greatest Hits, Polydor

3. Anton Bruckner— Part of the first movement from the 9th symphony

   Artist: The London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Colin Davis

   LSO LIVE

4. Charles Aznavour— What Makes a  Man

   Composer: Aznavour/Aznavour/Craig

   The Best of Charles Aznavour, Premier

5. Giacomo Puccini— Un bel di – One beautiful day – from  Madame Butterfly

   Artist: Kiri Te Kanawa

   Arias by Puccini, ERATO

6. Bryan Ferry— The Way You Look Tonight

   Composer: Fields and Kern

   As Time Goes By, Virgin

7. Gustav Mahler— Part of Symphony No.8

   Artist: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra  – with Jon Villars, The City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus and Youth Chorus. With the London Symphony Chorus & the Toronto Children’s Chorus all conducted by Sir Simon Rattle

   Symphony No.8/Gustav Mahler, EMI

8. The Count Basie Orchestra— April in Paris

   Composer: Vernon Duke

   Count Basie and His Orchestra April in Paris, Verve