On this day, 26 January 1986, former The Jam frontman Paul Weller’s band The Style Council played Cardiff’s St David’s Hall on the Red Wedge tour.
Red Wedge was a collective of musicians formed in the UK in 1985 who attempted to educate youth with the policies of the Labour Party leading up to the 1987 general election in the hope of ousting the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher.
The group was launched on 21 November 1985, when Bragg, Weller, Strawberry Switchblade and Kirsty MacColl were invited to a reception at the Palace of Westminster hosted by Labour Member of Parliament (MP) Robin Cook.
Review - South Wales Echo
The collective took its name from a 1919 poster by Russian constructivist artist El Lissitzky titled Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge. Despite this echo of the Russian Civil War, Red Wedge was not a communist organisation, nor was it an officially arm of the Labour Party, but it did initially occupy office space at Labour's headquarters. The group's logo, also inspired by the Lissitzky poster, was designed by Neville Brody.
Red Wedge organised a number of major tours. The first, in January and February 1986, featured Bragg, Weller's band the Style Council, the Communards, Junior Giscombe, Lorna Gee and Jerry Dammers, with guest appearances by Madness, The The, Heaven 17, Bananarama, Prefab Sprout, Elvis Costello, Gary Kemp, Tom Robinson, Sade, the Beat, Lloyd Cole, the Blow Monkeys, Joolz and the Smiths.
At the Labour Party Annual Conference in 1986, Red Wedge's support of the party was praised, in a speech on a motion concerning the arms trade, by a conference delegate (Steve Hoyland) who referred particularly to the lyrics of the Billy Bragg song "Island of No Return" which critically references British involvement in the Falklands War.
