A new book and podcast tell the story of a 1 in 12, a venue that used community and artistic passion as bulwarks against poverty and grim politics. Its founders and key acts recall gigs, plays and pranks on the NME
“Things were getting grim,” says Gary Cavanagh, reflecting on Bradford in the early 1980s. “There was a hell of a lot of unemployment, and people were thrown on the scrap heap.”
Cavanagh was working for Bradford’s claimants union in 1981, helping the city’s poor and unemployed get benefits, when a government report stated that one in 12 dole recipients were defrauding the state. So he and some friends reclaimed this statistic – which they thought was ludicrous – as an identity. “We became the 1 in 12 Club,” he says.
Initially it was a nomadic club, putting on gigs and leftwing political meetings in the upstairs rooms of pubs. Unemployed people could see bands such as New Model Army cheaply, form camaraderie and support the club’s anarchist principles of self-management, co-operation and mutual aid. The club was built around the words liberty, equality and solidarity, and 45 years on, they remain painted on a mural on the building it has called home since 1988 – a space that took two years of voluntary work to convert.
