Thirty-five years ago, the DJ and writer Dave Haslam invited Morrissey around for cauliflower cheese at his flat in Hulme, Manchester. He adored the singer, whom he regarded as the poet laureate of unrequited love. In his memoir, Sonic Youth Slept on My Floor, Haslam wrote: “Sometimes stuff happens and it’s only later you realise it was one of the highlights of your life.”

That was then. A few days ago, Haslam announced he was throwing a “positive protest party” against Morrissey on 8 July, to coincide with the second of two gigs he is playing in Manchester. Fans, former fans and non-fans are all welcome. The free party, from 3pm until midnight and titled One Nation Under a Groove, is billed as a response to the former Smiths frontman’s “divisive views, and his support for the far right”.

Morrissey recently announced that because the Labour and the Conservative parties “do not believe in free speech” he is now supporting a new party called For Britain. “Finally I have hope,” he declared portentously. On his website Morrissey Central, he wrote: “I despise racism. I despise fascism. I would do anything for my Muslim friends, and I know they would do anything for me. In view of this, there is only one British political party that can safeguard our security. That party is For Britain … For Britain is the bulldog breed that will never surrender.”

For Britain is everything you might expect of a party so named. Its website includes sections headed “Protect British culture” “End the Islamisation of the UK” and “End of political indoctrination”.

‘Back in the day Morrissey was not only a romantic hero, he was a very modern kind of revolutionary.’ The Smiths in 1987 (Morrissey second right). Photograph: Andre Csillag/Rex Features

Haslam is dismayed at what has become of Morrissey. On Friday Morrissey responded to his proposed party in waspish style, also taking a swipe at the Guardian for reporting on the plan. In a statement by his manager on his Facebook page entitled, “The Guardian gets it wrong again!”, it was suggested: “That has-been Haslam character was never a Morrissey fan. And his agenda, stated as using music to spread peace, could not be any further from the truth. He is simply using the situation to gain some much needed attention to himself. Apparently his golden years have not been kind …”

Few former fans are lucky enough to have had the full cauliflower cheese experience with the Pope of Mope, but Haslam is not the only one asking how it has come to this. Back in the day Morrissey was not only a romantic hero, he was a very modern kind of revolutionary – militantly vegan, sexually ambiguous, supremely class-conscious, a supporter of the striking miners, and a despiser of Thatcher (he even wrote a song called Margaret on the Guillotine). Morrissey wasn’t party political in the way Billy Bragg or Paul Weller were, but we knew that in his own idiosyncratic way he was on the side of righteousness.

How horribly wrong we were. From the mid-1980s onwards, his utterances have been consistently rabid. In 1986, he told Melody Maker: “I don’t have very cast-iron opinions on black music other than black modern music which I detest. I detest Stevie Wonder. I think Diana Ross is awful. I hate all those records in the Top 40 – Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston. I think they’re vile in the extreme … Obviously to get on Top of the Pops these days, one has to be, by law, black.”

In 1992, he told Q magazine: “I don’t really think, for instance, black people and white people will ever really get on or like each other.”

In 2010, discussing animal cruelty, he told the Guardian: “You can’t help but feel that the Chinese people are a subspecies.” (You can, Morrissey, you really can.) Last year, he told Der Spiegel that refugees had made Germany “the rape capital of Europe”.

And this year, he has been at it again – this time, defending the English Defence League’s former leader Tommy Robinson when he was imprisoned for contempt of court, and attacking London mayor Sadiq Khan, who happens to be a Muslim of Pakistani origin. “London is debased. The mayor of London tells us about ‘neighbourhood policin’’ — what is ‘policin’’? He tells us London is an ‘amazin’’ city. What is ‘amazin’’? This is the mayor of London! And he cannot talk properly!”

For so long we Morrissey fans gave him the benefit of the doubt – surely a man is entitled to not like reggae and soul music, we’d squirm. Even now, we like to believe it is simply Morrissey who has changed. And that is true to an extent. But the warning signs were always there. We adored the aching loveliness of his songs, the layered irony, the daring juxtapositions, while ignoring the horror of the lyrics. In Bigmouth Strikes Again, he sings: “Oh, Sweetness, Sweetness, I was only joking when I said by rights you should be bludgeoned in your bed”. Brilliant, funny – and nasty. We loved his evocation of a sepia-tinted kitchen-sink England (never Britain) with its myriad references to Shelagh Delaney, Elsie Tanner, Viv Nicholson and dismal seaside towns. But as we know, nostalgia for old-fashioned Englishness can easily bleed into trenchant nationalism and worse.

Which it has done. And now many of us are simply done with Morrissey. It’s always hard to admit you fell for the wrong fella, that his poetry blinded you to his prejudices, that you were well and truly suckered. And that’s what we’re having to do now. So all credit to Dave Haslam for challenging Morrissey, and his own fandom, with his party in support of the charity Love Music, Hate Racism. “Morrissey fans on their way to or back from his concert are more than welcome,” Haslam says, and they can expect a cocktail of “solidarity, love, unity, positivity, reggae, funk, soul and disco”. It is a wonderfully upbeat, if desperately sad, riposte to the poisonous parody that Morrissey has become.

On Friday Morrissey’s management announced he has postponed all his UK and European tour dates in July “due to logistical circumstances”.



• Simon Hattenstone is a Guardian features writer