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Jeremy Corbyn’s Music For The Many initiative allies with the Save The Leadmill campaign
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 3 August 2023
Former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn will introduce a gig at Sheffield venue The Leadmill later this month as part of a campaign he is involved in to “secure the long-term future of music venues”.
It comes as the team who run the popular Sheffield performance space ramp up their own Save The Leadmill campaign against their landlord. Though that landlord disputes the idea that any such campaign is required to secure the long-term future of this particular venue.
The show at The Leadmill on 19 Aug – headlined by alt-pop artist Zand – is being staged by the Peace And Justice Project, an organisation founded by Corbyn in 2021 with the aim of “bringing people together for social and economic justice, peace and human rights in Britain”.
One of its specific campaigns is called Music For The Many. And that has the stated aim of working “with organisations, trade unions and supporters to promote and secure the long-term futures of music venues as community assets and support people from marginalised communities in accessing opportunities in the creative industry”.
Which is a very admirable aim, of course, given it’s no secret that grassroots venues face huge pressure at the moment and are closing down at an alarming rate. Meanwhile, the team who currently run The Leadmill are fighting moves by their landlord to remove them from the building, which sounds like just the fight the Music For The Many campaign was set up to support.
Except, of course, the Save The Leadmill campaign is a little more complicated, given that the landlord isn’t a property developer that wants to turn the building used by the venue into residential apartments. Instead it’s the Electric Group, a music company that already runs venues in London, Bristol and Newcastle, and which now wants to directly programme and manage The Leadmill.
Nevertheless, since it launched last year, the Save The Leadmill campaign has won a lot of support from artists and music fans. And in an emotive video posted last week, the venue’s current management team said: “This is the battle for the soul of Sheffield, it’s a battle for everything that has made our city what it is today”.
Electric Group boss Dominic Madden has been very critical of current Leadmill operator Phil Mills and his Save The Leadmill campaign, which – Madden argues – is misleading people into thinking that the venue faces closure rather than simply a change in management. In fact, Madden insists, his company bought the building that houses The Leadmill to safeguard its long term future.
He said in a recent statement: “Phil Mills, the current operator of the Leadmill, had several opportunities to purchase the freehold of the building, including during a public auction in 2014. However, he chose not to pursue this course of action, and as a result, Electric Group acquired the freehold in 2016”.
He went on: “Electric Group acquired the Leadmill building from MCR Properties with a genuine concern for its future and the possibility of redevelopment. As operators of multiple music venues across the UK, it seemed only natural that we would step in to protect this iconic space”.
Despite all that, the current Leadmill team still have plenty of supporters. Including Corbyn, who said earlier this week: “The Leadmill is an absolutely iconic music venue with a phenomenal heritage in British music”.
“The jobs of the dedicated staff team are threatened by the new landlords”, he added, “and there are real concerns on their ability to maintain the venue in the safe, inclusive manner that all community spaces need to be run. We stand with the workers and community in defence of this absolutely vital piece of music history”.
On the show being presented by as part of his Music For The Many campaign later this month, the politician continued: “We are delighted to announce Zand as the headline act of our biggest Music For The Many show yet. Exciting new artists like Zand are just part of the reason the government must do more to protect venues like The Leadmill. Without them, wonderful talents like Zand will not be able to develop their craft and build up support to advance their careers”.
The Electric Group has now begun legal action to force Mills out of The Leadmill building, with that case due to get to court next year. Meanwhile next month Sheffield Council will consider the venue firm’s application for its own licence to operate The Leadmill moving forward.
