Few people have done more to transform nightlife in Britain than DJ Danny Rampling.
It is now part of dance music legend that he went to Ibiza in the summer of 1987 with Paul Oakenfold, Nicky Holloway, Pete Tong, Trevor Fung and Johnny Walker. After they heard DJ Alfredo, father of the Balearic beat, they brought the sound back home, adding a very British twist. Since then, Rampling has spent almost four decades playing dance music to adoring crowds all over the world.
Until now, that is. Because cancel culture has come for him.
On 18 February, Rampling was booked to DJ at an event called D’ARC, an unofficial afterparty for the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in London, which was convened by Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and featured conservative figures from UK Tory leader Kemi Badenoch to Reform UK’s Nigel Farage.
An environmentalist organisation called Fossil Free London protested against the conference and then tried to get the afterparty cancelled, too. This was quickly picked up by online music magazine Resident Advisor, which uncritically reported Fossil Fuel Free’s claims that Rampling had been palling about with ‘far-right agitators’.
Omeara, the planned venue for D’ARC in London Bridge, then cancelled its booking just hours before the event was due to take place. However, the party did eventually go ahead at an alternative venue in central London, albeit without Rampling, and none of the Fossil Free London contingent turned up as threatened.
The story doesn’t end there, however. The activists’ accusations against Rampling led to him losing multiple gigs. These smears have been repeated in the music press, such as in Mixmag, and by those piling in on him on social media. His praise for ARC, and its opposition to ‘globalism’, has also been hung around his neck.
Some of the veteran DJ’s contemporaries have been supportive of him, but many younger clubgoers – who I dare say don’t really know him at all – have declared him persona non grata.
What this sorry situation reflects is that cancel culture – the vindictive, censorious trend of silencing wrongthinkers – has now become a part of Britain’s club scene. There is a vocal and thoroughly anti-democratic minority that is hellbent on preventing those with opposing views from performing in clubs or having anything to do with nightlife.
In Rampling’s case, he stands accused of associating with the ‘far right’. But the far-right label is used so cavalierly now that in recent years it has been attached to just about every group outside the mainstream – from anti-ULEZ protesters to anti-lockdown campaigners to free-speech advocates. Fossil Free London seems to have determined that the ARC conference was ‘far right’ because it contains people with views it opposes. One of its Instagram posts notes that Farage was in attendance, as if that is enough to place the event beyond the pale, even though Reform UK is topping many British polls right now.
In any case, why would someone holding views you dislike be a reason to shut down a party? Why do those who are targeting Danny Rampling think it is acceptable to try to destroy his livelihood?
The reaction from venues is, to some extent, more understandable, although still unacceptable. Licensed premises like nightclubs already face huge financial challenges and difficulties with the authorities, and so they never want to attract undue attention. It is those who are on the warpath to cancel Rampling who are doing the most damage. As ever, it is the activists who claim they are into ‘diversity’ who are most viciously opposed to any thinking that questions or challenges their own narrow worldview.
As with many other institutions, parts of the music press and the club industry have allowed a niche set of political ideas to take over. But these views do not represent the majority of the public. The people who go out to bars, clubs and festivals across Britain are as politically varied as it’s possible to be. If Fossil Free London activists think they speak for the masses, then they should remind themselves what happened to those Extinction Rebellion protesters when they met with commuters at Canning Town Tube station back in 2019. Ordinary Londoners did not take kindly to their stunt or their politics.
I asked Danny what he made of his treatment. ‘The authoritarian cancel culture, toxic abuse and hatred that I have endured this past week is appalling and sickening’, he told me. ‘In close to 40 years in the music industry, I have never experienced this scale of defamation of character and public shaming.’
When I asked him whether this onslaught would make him think twice before airing his political views, he vowed not to be silent. ‘The ability to debate and argue differing opinions is one of our most critical freedoms’, he said. ‘This liberty was fought for by our forefathers and should never be overridden… Open discourse is vital and I will not allow bullies or ideological extremists to dictate what I can and cannot say or do.’
These are brave and inspirational words. Cancel culture has certainly flourished in recent years in everything from education to the arts. But a fightback is possible. There are vast numbers of us who are fed up with a tiny number of agitators telling us what we can think or say, or where we can go.
We need to remind everyone what is at stake here: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of assembly, liberty and democracy. We can’t let cancel culture win.
Alan D Miller is a co-founder of Together.
