Crass – Toxic Grafity Fanzine – 1979

First pressing of flexi

Second pressing of flexi

Crass – ‘Tribal Rival Rebel Revel’ flexi disc

This particular issue of Toxic Grafity is probably the most well known of the handful that were produced. It was also one of the best selling (of all fanzines, not just Toxic Grafity!) due to the free flexi disc of a (then) unreleased track by Crass being included.

It should be noted that Throbbing Gristle are also featured in this issue which was always a bonus for fanzines in the late 1970’s.

I am indebted to Toxic Grafity’s writer and editor, Mike Diboll for supplying the following information below on how this particular issue of Toxic Grafity got produced. All artwork on this post is from this issue of Toxic Grafity.

This edition of Toxic Grafity was put together while I was squatting in New Cross, south London and originally printed during late 1979, but it didn’t really get into folks homes until early 1980, when a substantial reprint was done. Originally 2,000 came off the presses, quite how many were eventually printed, I am not sure.

 

Joly from Better Badges (who also printed the first three KYPP’s fanzines, the last three were printed by Little ‘A’ Printers) used to always swing things so it seemed that I owed him lots of money (quite large sums for those days); I’m sure he may well have been diddling me, but that was my fault, because I was very naive in those days and thought that anything do with business, copyright etc, was bourgeois and reactionary, so perhaps I deserved it. Also, it must also be added that I was off my head a fair bit in those days, but of course so was Joly! Judging by the number of flexi’s that were sent to Better Badges, I suspect the actual print run was over 10,000, perhaps well over.

 

A year before the release of this particular issue of Toxic Grafity, in 1978, and also during 1979, there had been some really nasty rucks at Crass gigs at the Conway Hall in Red Lion Square in west central London. These rucks had mainly been fought between boneheads and bikers brought in by the SWP.

 

I can’t remember what the gigs were in aid of, but it was something the SWP had a hand in. The boneheads were used to pushing punks around, but got far more than they bargained for when taking on the bikers, some of whom were grown men in their 30s and 40s armed with bike chains, knives etc. After those experiences at there concerts Crass seemed to get a lot more edgy than they had been previously about sharing any sort of platform with members of the ‘hard’ left wing.

The lyrics to the Crass 7″ single ‘Bloody Revolutions’ is based on that feeling from the band around this time.

 

Basically it was the left wing causes that Crass would sometimes support, that seemed to aggravate the boneheads, and of course the boneheads would generally mill around the halls looking dangerous, and on occasions causing some real trouble.

Toxic Grafity didn’t really have those left wing associations, and (luckily) I also knew a few of the bonehead contingent quite well. I had always despised their ideology, but on a human level I was quite friendly with some of them. This I think helped diffuse things when Crass performed at the Toxic Grafity event staged at the Conway Hall late on in 1979.

 

 

It was not a violent night at all, which was obviously good news at the time considering the previous gigs at the Conway Hall. There were of course some minor problems, but those situations were quickly nipped in the bud by some friends of my family that had come to witness the gig.

 

The flexi disc followed on from the Toxic Grafity benefit gig, it was Penny’s idea, he bought it up one evening at Dial House, the Crass commune, way out in North Weald, Essex.

 

The original Toxic Grafity benefit was staged because of an incident late on in 1978 when I was pulled by the police in Soho, the seedier area of the west end of London. The police stopped me on one of those charges they used to pick punks and other ne’r-do-wells up on, the infamous SUS law. I had stopped off in Soho on my way back from a visit to Dial House, and had the artwork of an earlier Toxic Grafity on me. The police found this highly amusing, as you might imagine, destroyed the artwork, treated me a bit roughly, threatened me, and said that they’d put me on some sort of Special Branch terrorist watch list. Looking back on this as a 50 year-old I can see that this was almost certainly bullshit, but I took it seriously enough at the time!

As a result, Crass decided to help Toxic Grafity out (a previous issue had carried one of the first in-depth interviews with them), and the gig at the Conway Hall and the flexi disc followed on from that.  

 

The track on the flexi disc, was not one of Crass’ more in-depth or enigmatic tracks, rather it was what it says it is, a protest against violent political sectarianism screwing up the young. Of course I was extramely grateful never the less.

I’ve repudiated so much of what I used to believe in during those days in the late 1970’s, but the closing words for Crass’ ‘Bloody Revolutions’ track “but the truth of revolution, brother, is Year Zero” still appeals to the Burkeian in me!

 

Joly at Better Badges did the litho printing for the fanzine and sorted out the badges. Southern Studios took care of the flexi disc by Crass, but I can’t remember where they had it pressed, or how many exactly were manufactured. The Crass flexi discs were written in red for the original publication of Toxic Grafity, others were written in silver for subsequent issues of the fanzine.

 

Eventually there were five Toxic Grafity fanzines that were produced and sold from 1978 – 1981.

 

Toxic Grafity issue 6 and 7 were planned and in large part nearly prepared, but I became a father in March 1982 (I’m now a grandfather, twice), and ‘reality’ stepped in quite soon after so all those projects were cancelled.

 

The later Toxic Grafity’s, including the issue above, had dropped the whole band interview thing and had became more like an anarcho-punk agit-art magazine, similar to what Kill Your Pet Puppy would evolve into.

 

By 1983 I was doing a lot of dispatching and also a lot of ‘white van man’ work until sometime in 1989. While doing these small jobs, a friend of mine, Wayne Minor (from Brixton’s 121 Railton Road bookshop) and myself brought out one issue of “The Commonweal” which was a more mainstream anarchist publication in 1985.

 

In 1989 I entered university as a mature student.

 

I now live and work in the middle east.

To advertise this issue of Toxic Grafity, Crass arranged to press up a few hundred vinyl copies of the same version of ‘Rival Tribal Rebel Revel’ to give to record stores that were ordering the fanzine in bulk. This was so the shop had a ‘hard’ vinyl copy that the shop could play rather than play the flexi disc from the fanzine if any potential buyers wanted a snippet pre buying the product.

With thanks to Chris Low for supplying the personal letter from Mike to Chris

310 comments
  1. Mike Diboll
    Mike Diboll
    April 18, 2009 at 8:49 pm

    Cheers, will check them out. Curry’s done!

  2. Sam
    Sam
    April 19, 2009 at 2:26 am

    ‘Time for Truth’ off the first Jam album included:

    “I bet you sleep at night with silk sheets and a clean mind
    While killers roam the streets in numbers dressed in blue
    And you’re trying to hide it from us
    But you know what I mean
    Bring forward those six pigs
    We wanna see them swing so high

    ….Liddle Towers!”

  3. andus
    andus
    April 19, 2009 at 4:45 pm

    Talking about teenage sub cultures Mike, Andy Martin has written an article about that, its in the post 86 section, Dna Unit, if you have not already seen it.

  4. Graham Burnett
    Graham Burnett
    April 19, 2009 at 9:29 pm

    In later years Dave Goodman formed a rather pleasent ‘hippy’ band called New Age Radio – I have a couple of CD’s that they made that are both rather enjoyable, and apparently they also used to do gigs using a peddle powered sound system – a far cry from the Pistols!! Unfortunately he died a few years ago so I believe…

  5. Graham Burnett
    Graham Burnett
    April 20, 2009 at 12:20 pm

    Conflict did a song about Carlos Guiliani, but I’ve never actually had the pleasure of hearing it…

  6. Graham Burnett
    Graham Burnett
    April 20, 2009 at 12:23 pm

    Crass refered to Blair Peach indirectly in ‘The Gasman Cometh’ – “from coshes at Southall/its just a small leap/to ashes at Auschwitz/life is cheap”

  7. alistairliv
    alistairliv
    April 20, 2009 at 2:19 pm

    The Pop Group were a bit more direct… who killed Blair Peach…who killed Kevin Gately…what ever happened in Red Lion Square? Who guards the guards, who polices the police?

    Or Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? as Juvenal said.

    Justice (edited)

    I wake up every day
    And look at my country
    This is what the blind man sees
    Does it look like justice to you
    It doesn’t look like justice to me

    They’ve got to protect their property
    Better phone up the police
    Call up corruption
    Who killed Blair Peach?

    Political prisoners caught at Southall
    And tried by kangaroo courts
    A man had to have his balls removed
    After being kicked by the S.P.G.
    It doesn’t look like justice to me

    Who guards the guards
    Who polices the police

    What happened at Red Lion Square
    Who killed Kevin Gately
    Jimmy Kelly arrested in Liverpool
    And later died in custody

    Ireland is their practice ground
    To control civil disorders
    Our very own Vietnam
    Who guards the guards
    Who polices the police
    Who

  8. Graham Burnett
    Graham Burnett
    April 20, 2009 at 4:54 pm

    Ee, they certainly knew how to write a catchy singalong lyric in them days…

  9. Mike Diboll
    Mike Diboll
    April 20, 2009 at 8:18 pm

    “The Shitzine”, out of the mouths of babes, eh? I’m glad I never went mainstream, like the “edgy” punk crowd who got into the mainstrean music press, C4, &ct in the early ’80s.

    In my capacity as a schools inspector I did my first visit to a Bahrain boys’ secondary school today. Previously I’d been to girls’ schools, which are far more civilized.

    This one was in a local riot zone, and frankly was more like a prison: the smell of male piss, sweat and testostrone; corridors made dark by students vandalising the lighting to they can do secret goings on unseen; the arachic revellry of frustrated youth in between classes after the bell; teachers barely in control; classrooms covered in graffity, with food, ink and God knows what splattered up the walls.

    Our trainee teacher was doing his best to maintain control, and use the student-centred and collaborative learning methods which we hope will reform the school system here. The kids played ball, up to a point. A couple of weeks previously there had been a riot at this school, and the riot police had been called, CS gas fired, and a couple of kids got hit in the legs by birdshot.

    The air conditioning was broke (it’s in the mid 30s C here already), so the CO2 from 30 students breath was sending everyone to sleep, me included. Then I noticed the words on the shirt one of the students was wearing:

    PRRTTY VACANT

    HOLIDAYS IN THE SUN

    Written in cut out newpaper blackmail note lettering, as per NMTB, spelling mistakes notwithstanding. Another brick in the wall, eh? How much did this guy know about what he was wearing? Maybe he was Bahrain’s biggest Pistols fan. Maybe he’d never heard of them. Who knows, I’ll have to ask him. Amid the Shia political and religious graffity on the wall (Bahrain is a Shia majority country, ruled NI style by a Sunni elite), was an (A) anarchist sign.

    What do they know of all this? Probably not much. In my very early punk days (pre Crass) I remember going to a very “political” anarchist gig with the Red Army Faction (Barder Mienfoff) badge (the white badge with a red star containing a Tommy Gun) that The Clash had popularised amongst us punks. “Red Army Faction, eh?” said the slightly sinister looking anarchist guy on the door, and started to grill me about ideological differences between the RAF and the anarchos.

    I didn’t know what the fuck he was on about, since before that I’d only known the RAF badge as a rebellious looking image gleaned from Joe Strummer’s t-shirt, and if you’d have aked me I’d have said, as a good Biggin Hill boy, that the “RAF” was the “Royal Air Force” (my primary school had a Spitfire as a badge. . . still proud of that). Good job I wasn’t wearing a swastika, which in those very early days I easily could have been!

    So somehow I doubt that the “radical” Shia youth here are about to give up Hizbollah and Ahmedinajed for Anarchism, but you never know.

    Cool shirt though, and it really got me thinking. Globalisation, eh?

  10. baron von zubb
    baron von zubb
    April 20, 2009 at 8:37 pm

    Reckon it was some bored expat kid Mike.
    Also I think that band Rage Against The Machine used it for a bit didnt they?
    Anyway back to me me me.
    I also found the only-very faded-copy of ‘The Mamalian Syndrome’ Sam. Didnt know it existed.
    Also found a load of stuff from me ma about her brothers career( yeah yeah the famous one…) that I didnt know I had.
    And loads of cuttings from ’90 poll tax and strangways & other prison riots.
    Bit of bonkers time, if you re read the papers.
    And chucked out loads of stuff.
    Brilliant!!
    Lyrics?
    Nah there aint any bands who are writing anything interestingly political. All that Napalm Death (and their copyists) stuff about revolution is complete abstract waffle.
    Welcome to the 200 club diabolical.

  11. andus
    andus
    April 20, 2009 at 9:14 pm

    I thought you said they respected the grey hairs in the non western world, oh well, just shows how wrong you can be.lol.
    I don’t think there has ever been a school riot here in blighty, but then again there is a bit of a fashion for burning schools down.

    And lets face it Napalm Death killed punk.

  12. Mike Diboll
    Mike Diboll
    April 20, 2009 at 9:43 pm

    Andus: I ain’t got no grey hairs (well, no more than I can’t pluck out)

    Jake: this wasn’t one of those astronomical school fees private schools: it was the local equivalent of yer mutha-funkin’-niggers-in-the-ghetto schools (if you pardon the expression).

    Seriously, Bahrain ain’t like the other Gulf states, the have-nots here are have-nots by anyone’s standards, there’s real poverty; here there is a lot of ethno-confessional tension, the haves tend to identify with Saudi and the Sunni Arab world; the have-nots are Shia and and sympathise with and often have family or tribal connections with either Iran or Shia southern Iraq.

    As in NI during the troubles, certain occupations, particularly in the government, the army and the police, are almost completely shut off from the have-nots along ethno-confessional lines, ditto quality housing, and all sorts of stuff. This ain’t Dubai (where the working class is imported).

    The schools aggro has not so much been the result of a lack of respect for education, so much as the fact that to many of these angry young men the education system is their most direct experience of the state.

    Kids do want to learn, and in that sense have probably more respect for “grey hairs” than their peers in the UK, but, alas, the schools as institutions symbolise the state and all that goes with it. So the poor trainee teacher wasn’t a victim of a youth vs grey hairs thing, he was about 25. It’s just that education segues into so many other big picture issues.

  13. Mike Diboll
    Mike Diboll
    April 20, 2009 at 9:57 pm

    Grahame, “Chat” have let the side down: that should be “Pay No More Than 75p”, not plain old “75p”.

    A 75p mag in 2009? However crap they are it’s amazing they can do it. What sort of prizes do they offer that can equate to those weighty imponderables “Life” and “Death”?

  14. andus
    andus
    April 20, 2009 at 10:06 pm

    Students in the UK seem to view learning as a passport to a big salary rather than for the betterment of themselves and society, or as a tool which enables them to look down on others.
    I put my name down for a plastering course, cause I’ve been unemployed for 18 months, now I have to go on this new deal thingy once a week for the next 16 weeks, which is a glorified job club, however if my plastering course starts during those 16 weeks I cannot do it without having my benefit cut.
    This country doesn’t want people to learn anything despite their constant harping on about a skills shortage, plastering being one of those areas. Well if the job club helps to get me employment I won’t be bothered. but what if it doesn’t and I miss out on the plastering course.
    Heaven’s sake, God’s sake. Christ’s sake, fucks sake, Pete’s sake.
    Bring back the Tories !

  15. Sam
    Sam
    April 20, 2009 at 10:11 pm

    Would like to read The ‘Mammalian Syndrome’ Jake. Wasn’t that based on Sol?

    Can’t believe I just heard Mike Diboll revive a nostalgic weapon of the past…very refreshing to hear. I love a Spitfire myself.

  16. andus
    andus
    April 20, 2009 at 10:27 pm

    My Grandad was a mechanic, working on the spitfire, and my Dad was in the RAF. So I got spitfires coming out me ears.

  17. Mike Diboll
    Mike Diboll
    April 21, 2009 at 9:16 pm

    Yes, the Spitfire, what can I say? A sublimly beautiful design, beautiful form following deadly function perfectly. An example British engineering at its best.

    Even when I put it together part of me at least thought that the “Forming a Stereotype” thing was bollocks.

    When my family moved to Biggin Hill (from inner London, I might add) in 1963 the Second World War was less then two decades past, Biggin Hill still had an important military airbase, and the Battle of Britain and the Spitfire were deeply embeded in the culture of the town.

    My primary school (the school I liked, the odd whack not withstanding, not my whacko secondary school) had a Spitfire as its school badge, and rummaging around in the woods as kids we could still find old 20mm cartridge cases and bits of melted alloy with bits of hydraulic hose &ct sticking out.

    Biggin Hill had two airbase, an RAF one (now defunct) and a civillian one (still thriving), so there were two airshows, one in May and one in September.

    The Spitfire always put in an appearance, so I’m quite familiar with the sight and sound of them. We were used to seeing little Cessnas and stuff take off from the civil airport all the time. They would often stuggle into the air over the valley of the Downs, struggling against headwinds as if they were standing still.

    The Spitfire, in contrast, flew like a jet, not like a lumbering airliner but taking off and then ascending on full power up into the blue at a 90 degree angle, its big propeller visible as a disc of haze from a couple of miles away, turning, its eliptical wings cut through the air. An amazing perfomance from a piston engined, 25 year old aircraft (as it was then).

    But most of all, there was that engine noise which I’ll never forget and which I recognise without even looking up when the occasional Spit flies over Burgess Hill from the Farnborough Airshow: that wonderful, wonderful pulsing V12 rumble, and that amazing whine from the supercharger. God, that must have been a reassuring sound when England’s skies were darkened by hordes of swastika clad Luftwaffe.

    Yes, it was a killing machine, but purely a home defence one. It barely had the range to follow the Germans back to France.

    I once heard an interview with an octogenerian Battle of Britain fighter ace who’d dropped out of Oxford (reading Classics) to join the RAF. He said he was in two minds about both the prospect of being killed, and the prospect of killing, until he saw the Luftwaffe flying over Kent “All those ruddy swastikas and iron crosses on the tails, who did they think they were? I just saw red and thought bloody bugger orf!” Then he swooped in for the kill.

    The P51-D Mustang (really an American Spitfire) is also a beautiful aircraft, espcially in shining aluminium (by that stage in the war they had such air superiority to to bother with the extra weight & wind resistance of camoflague), ditto the Korean War era Sabre (sorry, Sam, Saber), and the mid-50s supersonic Super Saber, all in shiny aluminium.

    But the the Mustang had the range to take the war to the Germans, and the hell the Allies unleashed on the Germans was of an altogether different scale to what the Luftwaffe did to us. There was a saying in the pubs of Bermondsey, where I lived for nearly a decade (returned, in fact, since that’s where my lot had been from, pre-Biggin Hill days), that the post-War Southwark Council did more damage to old Bermondsey and Rotherhithe than the Luftwaffe did, although London’s Docklands, being a strategic target, really were hit bad during the Blitz.

    So imagine what Germany must have been like circa 1945 (the Poison Girls’ “Bremen Song”, &ct). So perhaps the Mustang was a less “innocent” killing machine than the home defence Spit.

    Still, my heart thrills when I hear that V12 engine and see those wings cut the air. I know war is shit and there was all sorts of political chicanery (Churchill hitting Berlin so that the Luftwaffe would hit London in retaliation, saving the Downlands airfields, &ct).

    But still, that’s the spirit that really did face down a Fascism that was a damn site more real, frightening, and ruthless than the skinny BM skins half of us used to shit our pants over. So who are we to cast nasturtiums?

    But I still get echoes of the Spit, then I fire up my old 1984 Range, more classic British design, with its aluminium, American derived push-rod V8 engine, when see the car rock from left to right under the torque reaction as it fires up, hear it warm up, and the uneaven tick-over from cold settle into that V8 “crob ,crob, crob”; chocks away, I’m off to work!

  18. Mike Diboll
    Mike Diboll
    April 21, 2009 at 9:47 pm

    I love to walk over the Downs when I’m visting England, family and the rest. There are some wicked pubs at the foot of the Downs you can visit to down a pint on the way down after a day’s walking on the Downs. Often you see that advert for Shepheard Neame’s Spitfire Ale, “Downed all over Kent, just like the Luftwaffe”. Only a matter of time before the PC brigade outlaw such sentiments. “By Gad, Sir, it this what we fought a war for?”

    What ever happened to 66a Volker, BTW?

    Down, down, digger-um down. . . .

  19. Sam
    Sam
    April 22, 2009 at 5:42 am

    Mike, you’ve slayed me with your Spitfire talk. Is this part of the ex-pats lot in life? To obsess about real ale, Spitfires and double decker buses? And Lord knows, I love all three. If you haven’t already, read Josef Porter’s ‘Genesis to Revolutions’, listed somewhere on this site. His Anarchist Manifesto circa 1980 had me pissing myself laughing:

    “RUSSIA: Of course it’s really bad that there is oppression in the Eastern Bloc, but we’re just as bad (see above) as we oppress the Irish. The cold war isn’t as bad as the government makes out, but it’s a good way of keeping the people down by making them scared. Also, it enables the government to justify the presence on English soil of American troops, who are really here to keep the state in control. While not agreeing with governments and armies, and being against the soviet system, we have a secret fascination with their uniforms and tanks, which look really cool on the News at Ten – in fact we haven’t quite gotten over our childhood love of military hardware, but will endeavour to suppress it as it is not Anarchist: thus, when we see news reports on foreign wars, we resist the temptation to blow our cover by saying things like “Oh look, there’s a Phantom/Harrier/Mirage”, or whatever warplane it may happen to be. This is occasionally frustrating, as we are still very much children in some respects, but we are against war.”

    So true. As a nine year old, me and Johnny Farrow went to see ‘The Battle of Britain’ 3 times at the cinema and I have never lost my love of the aircraft and, I must admit, the heroism of this era, though there’s no way I would have admitted this at the time. 1969 was not Woodstock for me – it was running around the playground being a Spitfire. Josef Porter also describes the ’30s and 40s as ‘England’s Dreamtime’. In retrospect we all grew up in the shadow of WWII. I was born a mere 16 years after. I wonder how much we all mimicked the last of England heroics of the conflict?

  20. Mike Diboll
    Mike Diboll
    April 22, 2009 at 5:06 pm

    Sam,

    Yes, it is a bit like that. Against your better instincts one finds yourself becoming sort of patriotic, and joining organisations with titles like “The Royal Order of St. George” (not to be confused with the League of St. George, although after they’ve had a few it’s hard to tell the difference).

    A lot of it is mere sentiment, I know. But there is a serious point here too, that perhaps it takes long term residency elsewhere to make you appreciate the things that are genuinely good about where you’re from (e.g. Spitfires, Real Ale, Double-decker Busses, &ct).

    I even love the British weather now, anytime of year, in all its moody changeablness. It almost seems exotic nowadays, how I suppose your regular British tourist views palm trees and turquoise seas.

    There is the other side of the coin, acculturation. The other day I was doing a school visit and by coincidence a couple of straight-of-the-plane middle aged, middle class British women from Oxford University Press turned up (they’re flogging some sort of English language learning package to Bahraini schools). All of a sudden they seemed like foreigners to me, their clothes, their accents, their body language an gestures, the lot.

    And I realised how much of a foreigner I must have seemed to them, my English peppered with Arabic words, my gestures and body language more Middle Eastern these days than Arabic. Oddly, I was dressed kind of rocker-ish, with a black leather jacket, black Levis and boots, but I’d let my beard grow about a week (helps establish rapport), and greeted people with Salaams, and it was inshallah this and mashallah that.

    It must have been like that back in the days of the Raj, when newbies sraight off the boat met old India hands. In fact, working in the Gulf States is very close to what it must have been like as a Brit working for one of the quasi-independent “Princely States” in the Raj 100 years ago. Frankly, after seven years out here I’m ripe to move on.

  21. Mike Diboll
    Mike Diboll
    April 22, 2009 at 5:37 pm

    “. . .in fact we haven’t quite gotten over our childhood love of military hardware, but will endeavour to suppress it as it is not Anarchist: thus, when we see news reports on foreign wars, we resist the temptation to blow our cover by saying things like “Oh look, there’s a Phantom/Harrier/Mirage”

    This is so true, thanks for pointing me in the direction of the Josef Porter stuff, Sam and Penguin.

    Yes, our generation really did grow up in the shadow of the Second World War, and the older one gets the more one realises it.

    As I said a couple of postings before, in the 1960s Biggin Hill had huge civic pride over the Battle of Britain. During the military airshows, one stunt was for big beasts like Phantoms and Vulcans to fly over the houses really low, swooping up into the sky with their afterburners on.

    You felt it rather than heard it, as purcussion waves pounding your chest, momentarily making your vision blur. Windows would crack and slates and chimmeys fall, but nobody seemed to mind much because that’s what being from Biggin Hill was all about. That started to change in the mid ’70s, when it started to become more of a London overspill commuter town, and people didn’t want the aggro.

    Yes Sam, the Battle of Britain genuinely was “heroic”. In 1939-40 most of Europe had either surrendered to the Nazis, been overran by them, or was allied to them in the first place. The USSR was feeling all cozy with the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and the USA really didn’t want to know until Pearl Harbour (Harbor!) at the end of 1941.

    This really was one of history’s Themopyleas, “This is where we stand and fight, this is where stop them!”, and it’s hard to imagine now how frightening and intimidating the hitherto invincible Nazi war machine must have seemed at the time, and how pitifully armed Britain was to withstand it. Yes, I know it was America’s military-industrial might and Russian blood that finally defeated th Nazis, but without that initial stand the “sleeping giants” would have carried on counting the sheep.

    My mum was born with a congenital deformity of her left hand, and had to have extensive skin grafts as an adolescent, at the burns hospital in East Grinstead where a lot of the badly burned pilots, guys with out faces and stuff, were being treated. The ones who were able to walk and talk and were convalescing adopted her as a mascot and used to take her to the pub with them. The sights and smells were burned into her memory. Now she’s losing her marbles she goes “Did I ever tell you about them airmen who. . .” “Yes, Mum”, “Oh really, when?” “About ten minutes ago” “Oh!”. And so it will go on all night.

    As a boy I was a huge fan of “The Battle of Britain”, “Dam Busters”, “633 Squadron”, &ct., and the Pearl Harbo(u)r film “Tora! Tora! Tora!” I once had every WW2 aircraft, surface ship and tank in the entire Airfix, Frog and Revell ranges, and as I leaned more about them I went from crudely glueing them togther without painting them, to really anal stuff like painting details onto the pilot with a two-hair brush, and putting blackpowder stains streaming back from the gunports (my early attempts I’d shoot up in the garden with my BSA Super Meteor, or blow up by putting a Chinese fire cracker in it).

    The music to those films was the very backdrop of my childhood (and the incidental music to Thunderbirds), and I still find myself da-da-da-da-daaa-ing the music to 633 Squadron when I’m on a mission, my thumb reaching for an invisible “fire” button as I line up behind the BMW or Toyota in from of me on the highway!

  22. Mike Diboll
    Mike Diboll
    April 22, 2009 at 6:27 pm

    Then there’s all that German you learned from war comics like “Commando”
    and “War Picture Library”:

    “Zer varh ist over fur tu, Tommy”

    “Don’t count on it, Squarehead!”

    “Was ist das. . .?”

    Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat

    “Ach, Himmel, Englischer Schwein-hund!”

    “That was for Joe! Quick lads, scarper!”

    Ok, not so useful on a wine tasting/dam spotting weekend break in the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer region, but there you go.

    Not that I’ve got anything against Germans at all, “some of my best friends” and all that.

    But all the post-WW2 popular culture of my childhood is still deeply engrained, and probably makes me sound a right old fart to kids who think the Gulf War is “history”, but that’s life.

    Looking back it seems that at least one element of the Anarchism and Pacifism I used to espouse was a certain guilt and envy to having missed out on an age of heroes.

    Perhaps if I had been born earlier and experienced the horrors of war I would think differently. But my Dad fought in Germany, and he’s never spoken like that, nor have any others of his generation I’ve talked to.

    His main concern when I was growing up wasn’t the horrors of war, or the thought that the Cold War might turn hot, but that we’d never experience the real poverty he had experienced growing up in London in the 1930s.

    To this day he has a horror not of the smell of dead meat, but of the smell of cheap cleaning fluids like Jeyes Fluid, and cheap soap. So he went into business, to make money how best he could, getting a leg-up in that world from none other than Peter Rachman.

    Then clever bastard here has to make him feel really shit by moving back up to London and taking drugs in a rat infested squat. Ho hum!

  23. Sam
    Sam
    April 22, 2009 at 7:43 pm

    One of my earliest memories is of lying on my back on my Grandmother’s lawn in Pett’s Wood and watching the aircraft fly over en route to the airshow. There’s a lot of revisionist history regarding the Battle of Britain, mainly by British historians who like to play it down, largely on the premise that Hitler couldn’t have invaded if he’d wanted to as he didn’t have the equipment or navy. Personally I find it sickening, as Britain could have easily made peace with Hitler after the fall of France. I read a personal account by someone called David Crook who was on a 3 aircraft patrol over the Channel, spotted a 300+ formation of German planes and tore into them. Like you said, puts our run ins with boneheads etc…in the shade.
    My son loves The Battle of Britain movie too, and asked me a couple of years ago: “Dad…are we still at war with the Germans?”

    Blimey…. here we are in the 21st century discussing the Battle of Britain.

    I’ve become small ‘p’ patriotic too I must admit. Much of it is a riposte to the mainly good-humoured jibes from the Yanks. But I was seriously considering a ‘Made In England’ tattoo a couple of years ago.

    The heroes we’re talking about, it should be remembered, are still the stuffy old bastards we used to like to annoy by jumping the bus queue etc…

    We all destroy what we love.

  24. Mike Diboll
    Mike Diboll
    April 22, 2009 at 9:10 pm

    Sam:

    “One of my earliest memories is of lying on my back on my Grandmother’s lawn in Pett’s Wood and watching the aircraft fly over en route to the airshow.”

    Truth be told, it was a Cold War display of power, as much as the Moscow May Day parades (although with more style) and was appreciated as such in BH. The juxtaposition of Spits, Hurricanes, Lancasters &ct with Phantoms, Vulcans, Harriers, &ct sent the message, “We’re still here for you”. . .

    “There’s a lot of revisionist history regarding the Battle of Britain, largely by British historians who like to play it down, largely on the premise that. . . .”

    Pardon my language, but these motherfuckers make me want to puke. In 2002-5 at the United Arab Emirates University (of all places) I worked closely, as a Literature bod, on interdisciplinary projects with a load of Brit academic Historians who’d been bought over at great expense to do this and that. Most of them were guilt-tripping, self-loathing unreconstructed old style Marxists with axes to grind and fucked up personal lives to match. If you’d listened to them you’d have thought that Britain was worse than Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s USSR, and Maoist China all rolled into one, they just had better PR. . .

    “Hitler couldn’t have invaded if he’d wanted to as he didn’t have the equipment or navy. . .”

    Yeah, like fleets of u-boats, the Bismark, the Tirpitz, the Scharnhorst, the Genaisenau, the Printz Eugen, &ct., thousands of light and heavy bombers, Stuka dive bombers, cutting edge fighters, parachustists &ct., &ct. And look how easily the Japanese island-hopped in the Pacific. . . .

    “Personally I find it sickening”

    Me too!

    “as Britain could have easily made peace with Hitler after the fall of France”

    Absolutely!

    “My son loves The Battle of Britain movie too, and asked me a couple of years ago: “Dad…are we still at war with the Germans?”

    European absolutism is called the EU nowadays. For all its faults and hypocricies over slavery, the US constitution is a couple of thouand classic words that begin “We the People. . .” The EU constitution runs to about 900 pages and begins “The King of the Belgians. . .”

    “Blimey…. here we are in the 21st century discussing the Battle of Britain.”

    Living in the Middle East has taught me to take a long view of history. A hundred years or so here or there is small potatoes!

    “I’ve become small ‘p’ patriotic too I must admit.”

    Me too, small “p”. Who can get patriotic about the “Britain” of Blair, Brown, Miliband, &ct? I take Andus’ point, New Labour has been an utter disaster for the working man in Britain.

    “Much of it is a riposte to the mainly good-humoured jibes from the Yanks.”

    I love the States, and the American attitude, which is so easily misunderstood over in Europe. But I didn’t until I went there. Once out of the Gulf, I’d very much like to work Stateside. That said, American stereotypes about “England” can get heavily on one’s tits. And they ripped off the jet engine and supersonic flight from us. . . And what about Concorde?

    “But I was seriously considering a ‘Made In England’ tatoo a couple of years ago.”

    But not on your forehead, I hope. I have a St. George’s cross on the tailgate of my Range Rover!

    “The heroes we’re talking about, it should be remembered, are still the stuffy old bastards we used to like to annoy by jumping the bus queue etc…”

    Too true:

    “I’ll have you know I fought in. . . so that you could. . .”

    “Fuck off, grandad!”

    At least I didn’t add insult to injury by becoming a Seig Heiling Nazi skin!

    “We all destroy what we love.”

    Too, too true, in so many different ways!

  25. Graham Burnett
    Graham Burnett
    April 22, 2009 at 9:18 pm

    I liked the Airfix skellington best…

  26. Mike Diboll
    Mike Diboll
    April 22, 2009 at 10:15 pm

    One of the Yank kit firms did a neat line in horror movie models, Dracular, Frankenstine, the Wolf Man, and some Witch thing with a couldron full of boiling rats, &ct. These had glow-in-the-dark (and probably carcinogenic) bits too (a precursor of glow in the darky vinyl?), and does anyone remember glo-juice, glow-globs, &ct?

    My construction kit days ended with the sailing ships. These went from crude Airfix Santa Maria’s to huge Yank kits with working rigging that’d send you blind in your bedroom (it was the models, honest!) trying to construct. My prize model from those days was some Yank kit of a Moby Dick era whaler (oops!), that took about three months to construct.

    Then I got into airguns and blew the shit out of them all. Those days did give me my first “high” though, all that glue in the stuffy summer air of my loft-conversion bedroom. So there you go, half a life’s degeneracy was all Airfix’s fault!

  27. Sam
    Sam
    April 22, 2009 at 10:25 pm

    “I love the States, and the American attitude, which is so easily misunderstood over in Europe. But I didn’t until I went there. Once out of the Gulf, I’d very much like to work Stateside. That said, American stereotypes about “England” can get heavily on one’s tits. And they ripped off the jet engine and supersonic flight from us. . . And what about Concorde?”

    I think some of the ‘misunderstandings’ may be correct, though there’s much to the American character that I do like. The American idea of patriotism, I find to be like pre-WWI jingoism. I went to my son’s PTA meeting the other day and, as always, felt self-conscious when everyone else stood up, put their hands on their hearts and swore allegiance to the flag. I have rarely come across any suspicion of nationhood over here and they tend to assume I have a similar feeling about my country, which I most certainly don’t. They’re surprised to find I’m not a royalist. As someone who’s London-Irish, I find most people’s sentimental views on Ireland and Scotland to be absurd, and they’re amazed that Irish and Scottish people also live in England. American world views are every bit as blinkered as Europeans fear I’m afraid.

    I felt as positive as you did Mike up until 9/11 and the subsequent bad old days of the Bush years. In many ways I think Britain is much more open and prone to free speech than over here. I can’t imagine the satire of something like Spitting Image over here. It’s generally much more lightweight. There’s a fine history of dissent and anti-authoritarianism (as we all know!) in our country that I miss.

    I think on the whole, Americans are more generous of spirit and funnily enough less prone to violence than us. But I talk mainly of the Britain of 15 years ago when I moved over here. I see it in brief chunks every few years and mainly from behind a pleasant beery haze.

  28. Mike Diboll
    Mike Diboll
    April 22, 2009 at 10:27 pm

    My mother’s most heart-rending experience from the Queen Victoria reconstructive surgery hospital in East Grinstead led to her acquring a life-long smoking habit (60 a day in the ’60s).

    It concerned a pilot who was so badly burnt that he had no skin left whatsoever. He lay in an old fashioned galzanized bath with a constant stream of cool water passing through it, strung out on diamorphine, waiting to die.

    My mum, then aged 12, used to try to talk to him, saying the simplest thing was a huge effort to him. As he got weaker, he started to whimper for a cigarette.

    She got one and lit it for him, a way away as he was incredibly sensitive to heat. She put it to his lips, and he took a deep lug. Seconds later, he was gone.

    To think that I used to check for stupid voyeristic shit like Throbbing Gristle’s “Hamburger Lady”, but was so insensitive to what my mother had been through as an adolescent girl.

    I used to play it in the living room, deliberately to wind her up, explaining what the track was about in full knowledge of what she’d been through. This was quite simply evil, and for this I pray for forgiveness.

  29. joly
    joly
    April 22, 2009 at 11:41 pm

    On the USA topic;

    Having lived here 35 years or so my considered opinion, often given uninvited to new arrivals, is “It may be superficoal, but it’s never boring.”

    I agree with the ‘less violent’ comment – here the only people being violent are serious criminals and crazy people, but in the UK, as I sometimes point out to the locals “people fight for fun.”

    I also occasionally point out- In England, “Fuck Off!” means “Have A Nice Day” – (whereas the opposite is generally true here)

    A couple years ago we were blessed with a visit by P. Rimbaud. I recorded his comments: http://punkcast.com/1065/index.html

  30. Graham Burnett
    Graham Burnett
    April 23, 2009 at 12:11 am

    > One of the Yank kit firms did a neat line in horror movie models, Dracular, Frankenstine, the Wolf Man, and some Witch thing with a couldron full of boiling rats

    That would be Aurora models, I had a few of those too. the best one was a scale model of the moonbus from 2001 A Space Odyssey, which had a removable roof so you could see the engines, passenger comaprtments, control room, etc. Another good one was the yellow flying submarine that came out of the bottom of The Seaview from Voyage To The Bottom of The Sea which also had a removable roof to reveal internal details.

    Probably the most rubbish of the assembly kits had to be Airfixes scale model of Queen Elizabeth I, I bet they only ever sold about 4 of those in the whole of the company’s lifetime. For some reason I had one as well which got particularly dusty on some old bedroom shelf.

  31. Graham Burnett
    Graham Burnett
    April 23, 2009 at 12:15 am

    > That said, American stereotypes about “England” can get heavily on one’s tits.

    When I co-taught a permaculture course in Los Angeles last year there was quite alot of good natured intercultural banter between myself and the students, one exchange that caused some merriment went thus;

    “say, Graham, why is it that every time you do an American accent you sound like some Down South Trailer Trash Girl or something?”

    “Dunno, probably because every time one of you lot does an English accent you sound like fucking Prince Fucking Charles….”

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