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#26 2006-09-04 12:42:10

iPat
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Re: the other 'definitive' Crass book

gerogieporgypudding&pie: ...and thats why one reason why the crass politics were up shit creek - they constantly, conciously ignored class politics because (as far as i can see) the (class) priveleged members of the band constantly got their own way in the way the band presented itself.

so, politics. shit creek. etc. leave a kettle on too long and it 'boils down' to nothing. so, pre-boiling down, how about pacifism as a starting point? sucking ghandi's metaphorical cock never got anyone anywhere positive, did it? certainly not the population of the newly divided india / pakistan......>.end of

I think its a good comment there, i dont buy it but ive heard it said before. Lets see if im eloquent enough to try and answer, after sipping the vino myself! ; )
I dont accept the class division as a credible error. The concept of the class war is in itself divisive It merely keeps the farce going. If you want it to exist then it will but it doesnt mean that others have to view it the same way.

my snapshot of the crass experience didnt see class as an issue and i still dont. Class was an outdated concept that had run its sell by date and one the Thatcher recognised and utilised by selling the dream of 'moving up', where class terminology may be used until more suitable descriptions come to play. Upwardly mobile people flooded the Iraq war protests to voice their disaproval but couldnt understand my contempt that they were still playing stock and shares and investing in the whole affair and profiting from it.


The peace movement bored me, it was -partly - another charade of people clinging onto a cause to feel that they were doing something, as if existing wasnt enough! I saw things happen that sickened me from pettiness to complete backstabbing that i realised that the same people with issues were hiding behind another banner, whether it was peace camps or class war. I should say that i did meet some truely inspirational people as well, who have had a good influence on me and i do think we did some good.

So instead of using peace or class as an issue i rejected the peace convoy scene and took a different path. I made big mistakes during this time - still do - but i feel that i faced the core issues that were within me and as a result i freed to a certain extent myself. I have friends who hid behind class excuses all their lives, bitter and drinking themselves to oblivion. I was influenced heavily by my readings especially of Krishnamurti and from my personal development in the martial arts.

When my father died i found an anger remerge that i hadnt known existed, a violence that lies at the route of my make up. I dont blame this on anything, just see it as what it is and im dealing with it, understanding why i did certain things and why i was so good at dealing with violence. I have personal friends who fought in wars who have less violence in them than some peaceniks i still see. Pacifism doesnt come from forcing an issue onto people, it comes from within.

I didnt choose my education, my upbringing, my 'position'. If you create one for me in terms of class then its you trying to put me there for your own agenda. If you are waiting for a Ghandi to bring us peace then its you whos divorcing your potential by accepting another authority. Any political concept in its own right is already dogmatic and so to be a slave to it missed in my view the whole point.

phew ; )

Last edited by iPat (2006-09-04 14:19:09)


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#27 2006-09-04 17:18:45

quercusrobur
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Re: the other 'definitive' Crass book

I think we also have to consider the time in which Crass emerged, around the late 70s the SWP had pretty much hijacked the political end of the punk movement via Rock Against Racism and the Anti Nazi league, who very much pushed 'class' from a Marxist point of view which was an outdated stereotype even back then (idealising 'the workers' as some sort of  noble cloth cap wearing proletarians slaving in the factories and coal mines all day but simply champing at the bit to man the barricades and overthrow 'the bosses' as soon as the opportunity arose - and look what happened, they all voted for Thatcher and bought their own council houses...).

Crass were in part a reaction against that dinosaur leftism, and certainly helped me to see other alternatives beyond selling Socialist Worker on street corners, the most powerful line ever for me personally was "Do you really believe in Marx? Marx fucks!" which absolutely outraged me at the time, I even went so far as to write a letter to Crass berating them for their political naivity and lack of analysis but never got around to posting it... Luckily it was in fact the Zen-style "whack on the side of the head" that actually broke through the ideas I'd helds up to that time, and far more effective than pages of anarchist debate or critique of Marxist ideas...

So too the pacifism professed by the band could be seen as partly a reaction to the glib romanticisation of violence spouted by so many other bands and leftie politicos who probably hadn't thought things through too thoroughly. Certainly with the benefit of hindsight, Crass' more or less consistent rejection of violence as a way to achieve positive social or personal change holds up with far more grace than, say, The Clashes flirtation with Brigade Rosse imagery or Conflict's ranting and glorifications of riot and 'class anger', which were at best rather infantile and at worst highly irresonsible when they encited riots and general misbehaviour which just led to alot of broken phone boxes and kids getting out of their depth and arrested when it all used to kick off after their gigs...

Interestingly, I don't think Crass ever quoted Ghandi, although they did quote Che Guevarra, who was not a pacisfist...

I'm afarid I don't know that much about the class dynamics within the band, of course Penny is dead posh and comes from a very priviledged background and never denied this, but Gee and Steve were very much from working class backgrounds and were surely as just as strong forces in the development and presentation of Crass and  the ideas they put out? Or am I wrong? As for the other band members, I never knew them as well as Penny, Gee, Eve and Steve, my face value judgement would be that they came from more middle class backgrounds, but that is largely assumption on my part. So it would seem to me that actually the strongest forces in the band were the posh one and the 2 working class ones, and the middle class ones who were in fact less influential in forging the band's direction...

Last edited by quercusrobur (2006-09-04 21:55:41)


"if anybody had told me, the angry young Crass fan, that I would one day be lounging in their garden sipping champagne, eating strawberry cake and listening to Noel Coward on the Dansette, I would probably have denounced them as heretics and sent them off to the anarcho-punk self-criticism retraining school"

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#28 2006-09-04 21:32:58

george berger
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Re: the other 'definitive' Crass book

there'a also a free sample chapter on myspace:

http://www.myspace.com/crass_the_biography


Work as if you don't need money, love as if you've never been hurt, dance, as if nobody can see you, sing, as if no one can hear, live, as if the Earth was a heaven. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/184609402X/
Blog: http://www.flowersinthedustbin.co.uk/news/

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#29 2006-09-04 21:53:07

quercusrobur
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Re: the other 'definitive' Crass book

george berger wrote:

there'a also a free sample chapter on myspace:

http://www.myspace.com/crass_the_biography

Looks good - hey thats me: "other people   would see in Crass a vision paradoxically delicate and beautiful that suggested  a better future out there for the sculpting."


"if anybody had told me, the angry young Crass fan, that I would one day be lounging in their garden sipping champagne, eating strawberry cake and listening to Noel Coward on the Dansette, I would probably have denounced them as heretics and sent them off to the anarcho-punk self-criticism retraining school"

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#30 2006-09-04 22:01:29

george berger
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Re: the other 'definitive' Crass book

Oops - I didn't realise we were on page 2, so I missed the last two replies. really good reads both of them, as was riens reply. thank you.

just a couple of points - the class war as i saw it was being waged by thatcher on the poor, a job blair is continuing for her. *

whilst many in the south east were getting rich, merseyside (amongst other areas, but i was born & bred there) was being deliberately destroyed. i'll never forgive the bitch for that. that was class war, and the good guys lost. nothing to do with the paper or the group.

thats not an excuse to hide behind, its peoples lives. those were dark times for some. wondrous times for others, of course. if the marxist (das kapital) definitions of working / ruling class are no longer relevent (and there's a whole other book waiting to be written about that, but not by me :-), that doesn't mean that class isn't an issue.

when i refer to ghandi i'm thinking of the mick duffield writing in the christ the album booklet (tho i haven't read it since writing the book so i might be wrong). but i think it's fair to say he was an influence on the crass pacifist stance.

but, ipat, he wasn't an influence on me - i was just using ghandi to try and illustrate that lofty and outwardly laudable ideals can sometimes actually cause harm. the more honest we can be about what was great and what was wrong about our youth, the more serenely we can enter (or live in denail about!) middle age.

i'm more with trigger on gandhi, he made one great film and then he disappeared ;-)


*in some respects, though i'm more than happy about the introduction of the minimum wage

Last edited by george berger (2006-09-04 22:24:20)


Work as if you don't need money, love as if you've never been hurt, dance, as if nobody can see you, sing, as if no one can hear, live, as if the Earth was a heaven. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/184609402X/
Blog: http://www.flowersinthedustbin.co.uk/news/

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#31 2006-09-04 22:03:35

quercusrobur
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Re: the other 'definitive' Crass book

george berger wrote:

when i refer to ghandi i'm thinking of the mick duffield writing in the christ the album booklet

I forgot about that!


"if anybody had told me, the angry young Crass fan, that I would one day be lounging in their garden sipping champagne, eating strawberry cake and listening to Noel Coward on the Dansette, I would probably have denounced them as heretics and sent them off to the anarcho-punk self-criticism retraining school"

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#32 2006-09-04 22:17:02

george berger
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Re: the other 'definitive' Crass book

I forgot about that!

these things happen at our age wink


Work as if you don't need money, love as if you've never been hurt, dance, as if nobody can see you, sing, as if no one can hear, live, as if the Earth was a heaven. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/184609402X/
Blog: http://www.flowersinthedustbin.co.uk/news/

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#33 2006-09-04 22:26:46

quercusrobur
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Re: the other 'definitive' Crass book

george berger wrote:

just a couple of points - the class war as i saw it was being waged by thatcher on the poor, a job blair is continuing for her.

Whilst of course you are correct, and indeed the worst of Crass' venom was reserved for Thatcher, and Bliar and Bush continue to cop it from Last Ammendment...

I wonder though if 'class war' is an outmoded concept, it's not so  much Thatcher waged war on the poor so much as the powerful are waging war on the powerless, do the old concepts of 'class' still apply to issues like corporatism, globalisation, the war on Islam and so on... Its not just the 'working classes' who are/were getting screwed, its all of us, the whole of peoplekind apart from a tiny elite, whether its goat herders copping fragmentation bombs in Afghanistan, land theft of native peoples the world over or the herding of the dispossesssed British working classes into sink estates riddled with boredom, alcopops and ASBOs...


"if anybody had told me, the angry young Crass fan, that I would one day be lounging in their garden sipping champagne, eating strawberry cake and listening to Noel Coward on the Dansette, I would probably have denounced them as heretics and sent them off to the anarcho-punk self-criticism retraining school"

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#34 2006-09-04 22:41:32

george berger
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Re: the other 'definitive' Crass book

quercusrobur wrote:

george berger wrote:

just a couple of points - the class war as i saw it was being waged by thatcher on the poor, a job blair is continuing for her.

Whilst of course you are correct, and indeed the worst of Crass' venom was reserved for Thatcher, and Bliar and Bush continue to cop it from Last Ammendment...

I wonder though if 'class war' is an outmoded concept, it's not so  much Thatcher waged war on the poor so much as the powerful are waging war on the powerless, do the old concepts of 'class' still apply to issues like corporatism, globalisation, the war on Islam and so on... Its not just the 'working classes' who are/were getting screwed, its all of us, the whole of peoplekind apart from a tiny elite, whether its goat herders copping fragmentation bombs in Afghanistan, land theft of native peoples the world over or the herding of the dispossesssed British working classes into sink estates riddled with boredom, alcopops and ASBOs...

quite! rather than getting bogged down in semantics, we need to rrust our human instincts.

but it's also worth remembering that the year thatcher was elected, crass were busy promting the concept: 'left wing right wing you can stuff the lot', as though there was no diffeence...

incidentally, today i drove past a church that had one of those 'here's a saying to make you think about god' signs outside and it made me think, wouldn't it be good to paste a poster over the top that said

- " 'god is great' - every suicide bombers last words"


Work as if you don't need money, love as if you've never been hurt, dance, as if nobody can see you, sing, as if no one can hear, live, as if the Earth was a heaven. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/184609402X/
Blog: http://www.flowersinthedustbin.co.uk/news/

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#35 2006-09-04 22:54:15

iPat
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Re: the other 'definitive' Crass book

Thatchers 'class'war was more than that. By allowing the council owners to buy there houses she immediately killed the power of the unions. When workers striked and ahd no wages they couldnt be thrown on the street but once they owned their house that all changed. Because people saw it in terms of class it was. yet the brickie suddenly could afford Armani, the football youth found Stone Island, anything was possible but all served the greater cause, the State. Like the US there was to be no class, but there would always be those who controlled the real wealth, everyone else simply bickered for their crust. Putting it into boxes merely intellectualised the fact that we were slaves.

George, Biko was more influential to me than Ghandi, where he stated that he didnt want a share in the Apartheid world, he wanted a fucking new table where all could sit down. That was more, imho, what crass was about, wht Gee was quoted as referring to themselves not as Anarchists but Nihilists in an interview. That influenced my thinking incredibly, not only as i had to go and look up the word but i still constantly question myself whether i actually live it. But this quote was at a time when Anarchism was becoming a class war thrill, beat the old bill up league which rivalled the Bulldog hooligan league tables. Class War was not what crass was and even at the time i recall speaking to the guy from Flux (i cant keep names...doh) about how i saw it as the end of the era on a CND march at the time.

ALL my initial crass experiences were in a whirlpool of violence. the gig at Ipswich when the NF chant went up, The Perth gig, Yet in the throws of this and the aggressive music i found peace. Even now i train fighters, i go into the ring or cage, i find peace in this environment because i find people growing, developing - stretching. When after years i went back to dial House i wasnt judged, i wasnt told how to behave all though my son chased those chickens all over the place.

The state tries to nanny us, wrap us in cotton wool. Health and Safety and political correctness takes the biscuit every day. in the chaos of the crass gig we found our place, found ourselves and while we may not shout slogans that we didnt understand at the time anymore THAT experience will always keep the flame alive. Give thos buggers a hug for me when you next see them will ya, im indebyted to them but im on a different journey than theres.

When can we discuss god? ; ))


iPat
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#36 2006-09-04 22:58:46

quercusrobur
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Re: the other 'definitive' Crass book

iPat wrote:

When after years i went back to dial House i wasnt judged, i wasnt told how to behave all though my son chased those chickens all over the place.

Hmm, not my experience, last week Gee told my kids off for not washing up their breakfast bowls after themselves... wink


"if anybody had told me, the angry young Crass fan, that I would one day be lounging in their garden sipping champagne, eating strawberry cake and listening to Noel Coward on the Dansette, I would probably have denounced them as heretics and sent them off to the anarcho-punk self-criticism retraining school"

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#37 2006-09-04 23:11:55

quercusrobur
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Re: the other 'definitive' Crass book

iPat wrote:

Biko was more influential to me than Ghandi, where he stated that he didnt want a share in the Apartheid world, he wanted a fucking new table where all could sit down.

Which is kind of how I interpret the "left wing, right wing, you can stuff the lot" line (followed by the crucial "Anarchy and freedom is what I want" that puts it in context)... In other words, a plague on both your houses (whether it was Callaghan vs Thatcher in parliament or Red Action vs the British Movement at Conway Hall), lets look beyond the adversarial limits of traditional politics in 'their' defined arena, and start to look at real alternatives that we can build together... The whole Crass message was about that sense of human possibility...

Or as Bill Hicks put it a decade later;

"A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead, spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace."

Last edited by quercusrobur (2006-09-04 23:16:27)


"if anybody had told me, the angry young Crass fan, that I would one day be lounging in their garden sipping champagne, eating strawberry cake and listening to Noel Coward on the Dansette, I would probably have denounced them as heretics and sent them off to the anarcho-punk self-criticism retraining school"

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#38 2006-09-04 23:25:06

george berger
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Re: the other 'definitive' Crass book

quercusrobur wrote:

Red Action vs the British Movement at Conway Hall)"

i believe (hope) that my book sheds a lot of light on this particular incident - crass didn't have a clue on this one


Work as if you don't need money, love as if you've never been hurt, dance, as if nobody can see you, sing, as if no one can hear, live, as if the Earth was a heaven. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/184609402X/
Blog: http://www.flowersinthedustbin.co.uk/news/

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#39 2006-09-04 23:27:41

quercusrobur
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Re: the other 'definitive' Crass book

george berger wrote:

quercusrobur wrote:

Red Action vs the British Movement at Conway Hall)"

i believe (hope) that my book sheds a lot of light on this particular incident - crass didn't have a clue on this one

The conventional line at the time as I recall was that the reds started it on this occasion - was this not so? Or do I have to wait until I get the book to find out??? wink


"if anybody had told me, the angry young Crass fan, that I would one day be lounging in their garden sipping champagne, eating strawberry cake and listening to Noel Coward on the Dansette, I would probably have denounced them as heretics and sent them off to the anarcho-punk self-criticism retraining school"

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#40 2006-09-04 23:40:51

george berger
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Re: the other 'definitive' Crass book

Or do I have to wait until I get the book to find out???

yes!!

but essentially my point is that the right had it coming and crass - because of living out in epping - didn't (and still don't) have a clue why...


Work as if you don't need money, love as if you've never been hurt, dance, as if nobody can see you, sing, as if no one can hear, live, as if the Earth was a heaven. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/184609402X/
Blog: http://www.flowersinthedustbin.co.uk/news/

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#41 2006-09-04 23:53:30

1234
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Re: the other 'definitive' Crass book

quercusrobur wrote:

A nice write up of the book in yesterdays Guardian...

Fuck I'm getting old.  I only got Teh Guardian because there was no The Times. I hate the Graunad Crossword! It hurts my head and the eggs are never soft-boiled by the time I give up.

Apologies for a shite first post.  I'm glad I took the Guardian though. Otherwise there wouldn't have been a reason to pre-order a book I want to read.  It's not often that happens when you're as jaded as I.


Take care.

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#42 2006-09-05 12:29:14

iPat
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Re: the other 'definitive' Crass book

george berger wrote:

Or do I have to wait until I get the book to find out???

yes!!

but essentially my point is that the right had it coming and crass - because of living out in epping - didn't (and still don't) have a clue why...

it sounds like im getting at you mate but its just a discussion, however this is a fundemental difference on which we may not ever be able to agree. Its the way from which we view. You see the importance of the background of a lot of things - hence your skill in being able to put together what should be a great book. The Right had it coming suggests that the background justified the action.

Now, i have to say that the perspective i had was that its irrelevent what the background events were the use of violence couldn't be justified, not using the Crass event as an excuse. Does it also infer that the views of someone in the rural areas of the world have less value as they wouldnt know the goings on in the big city?

Does my life or my experiences change their value with what goes on at Dial House right now? Not one iota. Do i take an interest in historical events and look at why things happen - yes but history is subjective.


iPat
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#43 2006-09-05 23:19:31

Rien
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Re: the other 'definitive' Crass book

quercusrobur wrote:

So it would seem to me that actually the strongest forces in the band were the posh one and the 2 working class ones, and the middle class ones who were in fact less influential in forging the band's direction...

It's not my style to quote lines from CRASS songs and present them as the New Testament, but reading this thread I can't resist doing it anyway. I mean, analyzing CRASS's direction in relation to the background of the band's members? Give me a break, guys. With all due respect.

"Class, class, class, that's all you fucking hear
Middle class, working class, I don't fucking care"


I’ve been to a post-punk postcard fair
In me Joy Division oven gloves

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#44 2006-09-06 01:13:07

george berger
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Re: the other 'definitive' Crass book

iPat wrote:

george berger wrote:

Or do I have to wait until I get the book to find out???

yes!!

but essentially my point is that the right had it coming and crass - because of living out in epping - didn't (and still don't) have a clue why...

it sounds like im getting at you mate but its just a discussion, however this is a fundemental difference on which we may not ever be able to agree. Its the way from which we view. You see the importance of the background of a lot of things - hence your skill in being able to put together what should be a great book. The Right had it coming suggests that the background justified the action.

Now, i have to say that the perspective i had was that its irrelevent what the background events were the use of violence couldn't be justified, not using the Crass event as an excuse. Does it also infer that the views of someone in the rural areas of the world have less value as they wouldnt know the goings on in the big city?

Does my life or my experiences change their value with what goes on at Dial House right now? Not one iota. Do i take an interest in historical events and look at why things happen - yes but history is subjective.

indeedly doodly, as flanders might put it. history is subjective, as is reality. 'the right had it coming' was the wrong thing to say as it suggested this was my opinion rather than the general opinion amongst punk squatters back then. i didn't have an opinion about it then.

The Right had it coming suggests that the background justified the action.

well, it's late and i haven't got the energy to write it all out but i think you'll find the background quite shocking

Does it also infer that the views of someone in the rural areas of the world have less value as they wouldnt know the goings on in the big city?

not the views - the knowledge of what is going - a significant part of the crass audience in london were punk squatters... oh fuck it, i'll just quote from the book:

Eve Libertine: “Usually with the skinheads, there’d be one who had the suss, and the others would do whatever the leader was doing. If the leader was taken away, they wouldn’t be sure what they were there for, quite honestly. I know there were problems, and I know stuff was going on but they were just like, ‘Look, I’m a Nazi’, but it was more like, ‘No, you’re not, you’re just an idiot.’”
    Steve Ignorant: “We weren’t going to start not letting skinheads in – I used to be a skinhead!”
    Eve Libertine: “They were a pain in the arse and we had a lot of trouble with them after that. Before that, they used to come to the gigs and there wasn’t trouble. OK, so we’re singing ‘Big Man’ and they’re singing along to it – do they not listen to the words? But there was no saying you can’t come in because you’re not a pacifist or anything”
    Joy De Vivre: “One thing that was important to me was that very occasionally we got through to somebody who was really right wing without actually giving them a hiding. There was an idea that if you could get through to people without beating them up, get through their thick skins and influence them… if they were there in the audience, maybe you’d have a chance to reach them in some way.”
    Bob Short: “I think the big difference is that in that era there was so much that you didn’t want to remember.  I look at the period between ‘78 and ‘83/84 as one of the few modern wars without correspondents. There was the birth of a thriving (and genuine) counter culture that almost completely eluded the possibility of corporate manipulation and takeover. Unfortunately, it was set against a backdrop of violence that most people I now know have little comprehension of.”
    “The punk of ‘76/7 was a wild energy rush but by ‘79 it had definitely split into a battle between the reactionary and the creative.  The rise of the large squat estates created a genuine cultural identity. The rise of the British Movement gave it a dark mirror and a wolf at the door.”
    Lots of punk kids had flocked to London and ended up living in squats, the exodus from the provinces becoming the beginning of punk as a way of life and a movement. Often these squats would be viciously attacked by organized gangs of skinheads. As Tony D points out, for all their faults, the SWP didn’t go round in gangs attacking innocent people like this.

“It is not the National Front or the British Movement that represents the right-wing threat; they, like the dinosaur, are all body and no brain and because of that will become extinct.”
Penny Rimbaud - Last Of The Hippies Pamphlet

The punk squatters saw the reaction of Crass to the Conway Hall incident as a clear case of Crass being out in Epping and out of touch with their everyday lives in London. Some I’ve spoken to are incensed that Crass could even think this, given how heavy the violence was at the time. An example: “Penny Rimbaud... what a wanker. He probably thinks broomsticks shoved into unwilling anal cavities are wizard pranks much like what he used to get up to in public school, whato.”
    Alistair Livingstone: “As members of a post-sixties intellectual avant garde privileged elite, living in their Safe Epping Forest Home, Crass adopted the style but not the substance of punk. Dial House was never a squat and its inhabitants never had to confront the ‘in yer face’ reality which the survivors of the punk squatting scene had to as part of their daily life.”

this just scratches at the surface of the attacks that were going on, allegedly with tacit police approval - check out the thread on the punk77.co.uk forum for more details

Last edited by george berger (2006-09-06 01:18:23)


Work as if you don't need money, love as if you've never been hurt, dance, as if nobody can see you, sing, as if no one can hear, live, as if the Earth was a heaven. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/184609402X/
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#45 2006-09-06 18:11:38

quercusrobur
Ultimate Southern Nerd
Registered: 2006-06-05
Posts: 513
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Re: the other 'definitive' Crass book

george berger wrote:

this just scratches at the surface of the attacks that were going on, allegedly with tacit police approval - check out the thread on the punk77.co.uk forum for more details

Can you give a link to the fourum thread in question?


"if anybody had told me, the angry young Crass fan, that I would one day be lounging in their garden sipping champagne, eating strawberry cake and listening to Noel Coward on the Dansette, I would probably have denounced them as heretics and sent them off to the anarcho-punk self-criticism retraining school"

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#46 2006-09-06 21:00:15

george berger
Jeroboam
Registered: 2006-06-24
Posts: 140
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Re: the other 'definitive' Crass book

hmmm, just had a look and couldn't find it - but it's definitely there somewhere so i'll post a link if / when i come across it. lots of chat about when punk squats were attacked and some horrifically frightening and violent things people were put through

(edit)

there's a bit here:

http://www.punk77.co.uk/talkpunk/viewto … p;start=15

and more here:

http://www.punk77.co.uk/talkpunk/viewtopic.php?t=4981

Last edited by george berger (2006-09-06 21:09:30)


Work as if you don't need money, love as if you've never been hurt, dance, as if nobody can see you, sing, as if no one can hear, live, as if the Earth was a heaven. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/184609402X/
Blog: http://www.flowersinthedustbin.co.uk/news/

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#47 2006-09-06 23:35:55

1234
New member
Registered: 2006-09-04
Posts: 6

Re: the other 'definitive' Crass book

george berger wrote:

And buy my book:

A 4-6 week wait via Amazon big_smile

More popular than they might have expected?

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#48 2006-09-08 12:25:15

Rien
MCMLXI
Registered: 2006-06-21
Posts: 204
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Re: the other 'definitive' Crass book

The punk squatters saw the reaction of Crass to the Conway Hall incident as a clear case of Crass being out in Epping and out of touch with their everyday lives in London.

Okay, I'll be a little less slogan-esque. I haven't lived in Greece all my life and I've been an active squatter in the 80s. Like others in those days I too had to run some times to save myself from being seriously hurt by invading skins. The question is, what has CRASS got to do with that? Or what could they have done?

Nothing, obviously. In my opinion it's totally irrelevant if they knew what was going on in some squats or not. Suppose they knew, and I assume they did, what would have been the preferred response? A song? A statement saying that they don't approve of violence against squatters? A leaflet explaining the views of the CRASS collective on the situation in, say, London? Duh. And what good would that have done?

Or suppose they didn't know about it because they were too busy sipping tea in Dial House. Is that a problem? Were they responsible for the health and safety of every anarchist/punk/squatter/fan ? What exactly do you expect from a punk band? An answer to everything? A set of rules to live by?

In short: authority?


I’ve been to a post-punk postcard fair
In me Joy Division oven gloves

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#49 2006-09-08 20:51:48

george berger
Jeroboam
Registered: 2006-06-24
Posts: 140
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Re: the other 'definitive' Crass book

Hi Rien - cheers for the reply.

In my opinion it's totally irrelevant if they knew what was going on in some squats or not. Suppose they knew, and I assume they did, what would have been the preferred response? A song? A statement saying that they don't approve of violence against squatters?

What Crass (and Poison Girls too) did do after the Conway Hall was to issue weighty public statements condemning the violence against the far right skinheads. I think it was the only time they did anything like this, despite the constant violence at their gigs from (right wing) skinheads.

If they did know what was going on in the squats, none of them mentioned it to me. But some did give me the distinct impression that these people were essentially harmless.

Or suppose they didn't know about it because they were too busy sipping tea in Dial House. Is that a problem? Were they responsible for the health and safety of every anarchist/punk/squatter/fan ? What exactly do you expect from a punk band? An answer to everything? A set of rules to live by?

In short: authority?

Erm, I'm a writer who has tried to give a snapshot of the times back then. Don't shoot the messenger - a few people from those times expressed dismay (to say the least) at Crass saying that the violence that night stopped them from building a dialogue with the skinheads. What exactly do you expect from me - personal responsibility for that?

I don't think certain members of the band would have suggested / agreed to me writing the book if they thought I was someone who wanted or needed guidance from them, back then or now.


Work as if you don't need money, love as if you've never been hurt, dance, as if nobody can see you, sing, as if no one can hear, live, as if the Earth was a heaven. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/184609402X/
Blog: http://www.flowersinthedustbin.co.uk/news/

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#50 2006-09-08 20:55:43

george berger
Jeroboam
Registered: 2006-06-24
Posts: 140
Website

Re: the other 'definitive' Crass book

A 4-6 week wait via Amazon big_smile

More popular than they might have expected?

Alas not, well, not as far as i know anyway!

I'm told it's just what amazon put up when they haven't got copies in their warehouse. They should have them byt the weekend, at which point I presume they'll revert to the within 24 hours message. I bloody well hope so anyway.


Work as if you don't need money, love as if you've never been hurt, dance, as if nobody can see you, sing, as if no one can hear, live, as if the Earth was a heaven. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/184609402X/
Blog: http://www.flowersinthedustbin.co.uk/news/

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