‘The fascists threatened us but we always faced them’: anarchist Bradford club still fighting after 45 years | music

“Things were getting darker,” says Gary Kavanagh, reflecting on Bradford in the early 1980s. “There was a lot of unemployment, and people were thrown on the scrap heap.”

Kavanagh was working for the Bradford Claimants Union in 1981, helping the city’s poor and unemployed get benefits, when a government report said one in 12 benefit recipients was defrauding the state. So he and some friends reclaimed this statistic—which they thought was ludicrous—as an identity. “We became the first club out of 12,” he says.

Initially it was a nomadic club, holding parties and left-wing political meetings in the upstairs rooms of the pubs. The unemployed could see bands like the New Model Army inexpensively, form a camaraderie and support the club’s anarchist principles of self-management, cooperation and mutual aid. The club was built around the words freedom, equality and solidarity, and 45 years later, those words are still painted on a mural on the building he has called home since 1988 – a space that took two years of volunteer work to transform.

As part of Bradford’s year as UK City of Culture 2025, and in collaboration with cultural history organization Home of Metal, a new book and three-part podcast tells the story of 1 in 12, with contributions from members and bands including Lankum, Chumbawamba, Therapy? And neurosis. “Some of the concerts were really exciting and silly, with eight of us on that little stage,” Alice Nutter of Chumbawamba tells me. “You’ll get drenched in black, sweaty water, but it was great.”

E, one of the trustees, has been coming to the club for 15 years, since he was a young teenager. “I had never seen a place like this before,” he recalls his first visit. “I remember a group of teenagers – along with punks, hippies and all sorts – all pouring into the street. I come from a traveler background but no one looked at you the wrong way or assumed anything about you. It quickly became home to me and I wanted to return to a place that always gave me space.”

On its three floors – each plastered with left-wing posters and posters – there is a café, a members’ bar, a games room and an extensive library. The 90-person capacity party room has welcomed countless shows and thriving concerts, with everyone from Pulp to Bikini Kill having played there over the years.

1 of 12 He fought enemies in the early days when the National Front was prominent. “We were always fighting fascists,” Kavanagh says. “We were threatened but we always confronted these people.” However, the policy is not imposed on the people in the club. “We are not a summer school for Marxists,” Kavanagh adds. “We don’t intimidate people with political dogma. We just encourage people to think for themselves.” “Not everyone here identifies as anarchist,” E says, describing it simply as “an intersectional or left-wing space — just a place you can go to be yourself.”

Inclusivity and equality are key to the club’s ethos, but it also responds playfully to outsiders. When Canadian post-hardcore band Fucked Up arrived to play the club in 2008 with NME, the members walked out with a giant cardboard box shell of a Trojan horse labeled “NME Out of Our Scene.” Then they smashed it into small pieces.

1 in 12 are completely independent and volunteer-led, with income from the pub – along with the individual grant – keeping the wheels in motion, and they have many co-operatives within them. “It’s always been more of a place,” says Nutter, who, in addition to being in Chumbawamba, has been a television writer and playwright. “I was part of the reading groups there, the peasant collective [which provides free communal meals with food from the club’s allotments] My partner played on the soccer team. The pub is great too – it’s a place where there’s always someone to have a pint with who’s not into it.”

Nutter’s first play was performed there. “There was always an opportunity to use the space,” she says. “If you have the creativity, they’ll facilitate it. No one said no. If you’re willing to put in the work, you can use the building — and they’ll give you the keys.” She soon realized how “special” it was as her writing career evolved into traditional theatres: “I realized it cost thousands to put on a play. The first play we did, everyone did it now.”

Despite the celebratory event, book and podcast, it was also a sad time, with the club recently losing its “vital” and “influential” founding member, Tony Grogan. Kavanagh, the only remaining founder, still attends and attends parties, and his daughter is now a member. “Part of the longevity is that we are still needed,” he says, as the St. George flag-waving far-right becomes bolder again in the city. “It bothers me that we’re still fighting the same battles, but we have a strong cultural resistance in Bradford and we’re part of that. Freedom, equality, solidarity. That’s what we started with and that’s what we’re still trying to do.”