{"id":554,"date":"2008-02-10T22:54:30","date_gmt":"2008-02-10T21:54:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/?p=554"},"modified":"2008-02-10T23:21:24","modified_gmt":"2008-02-10T22:21:24","slug":"hippies-now-wear-black-rich-cross","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/hippies-now-wear-black-rich-cross\/","title":{"rendered":"Hippies Now Wear Black\/ Rich Cross"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Boiler\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Hegel\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ok, here we go now, this really is another sociology lecture \u2026by Richard Cross, ex Metro Youth ( from Exeter, on Bullshit Detector 2). It was published in Socialist History magazine in 2004. Rich is working on a book on Crass and Anarcho-Punk 1978- 1984 for AK Press, due out this year and has a blog called hippies now wear black<\/a>\u00a0 .<\/p>\n

Couple of problems \u2013<\/p>\n

1.A focus on Crass misses the sheer diversity of the era \u2013 as even the briefest skim through the musics here on KYPP shows. Mark Perry\/ ATV + Good Missionaries, Genesis P. Orridge\/ Throbbing Gristle + Psychic TV fed had as much into the mix as Penny Rimbaud\/ Crass. Here and Now + Fuck Off Records ditto. And \u2018goth\u2019 emerged out of the darkness \u2026 Blood and Roses played their first gig at the Wapping Autonomy Centre. KYPP featured \/ mentioned Bauhaus, Southern Death Cult, Sex Gang Children, Alien Sex Fiend\u2026all now seen as \u2018proto-goth\u2019 groups.<\/p>\n

2. How \u2018anarchist\u2019 were the politics of \u2018anarcho- punk\u2019? It was argued about then. It is still argued about now. Although Rich Cross says that Crass were influenced by the \u2018hippy\u2019 counter-culture in this article, he doesn\u2019t seem to pick up on the similar arguments between the counter-culturists and the politicos which went on through the sixties and early seventies. And which still go back to Karl Marx\u2019s attempt to turn Hegel\u2019s magickal mystery tour\/ gnostic version of history into scientific materialism. For Marx, the proletariat\/ working classes were equivalent to the Shekinah, physically alienated spirits trapped in ( or in bondage to) a capitalist world created by their exploited labour. Through the scientific process revealed by Marx, the proletariat would inevitably become so exploited oppressed alienated by capitalism that they would be forced to achieve collective gnosis (knowledge), become conscious of their power as a class, overthrow the bourgeoisie, liberate themselves and everyone else and so bring history to an end.Or something like that.<\/p>\n

But what if Marx failed to remove all of Hegel\u2019s mystical\/magickal nonsense from his materialist re-interpretation of Hegel\u2019s philosophy? Then Marxism and all politics derived from Marx \u2013 e.g. Ben Frank\u2019s \u2018Class struggle anarchism\u2019 would be myth rather than history. See Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition: Glenn Magee: Cornell University press: 2001 for more on this\u2026<\/p>\n

AL Puppy<\/p>\n

Now read on\u2026<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018The hippies now wear black\u2019<\/font><\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n

Crass and the anarcho-punk movement, 1977-1984<\/font><\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Few social historians of Britain in the late 1970s would dismiss the influence that the emergent punk rock movement exerted in the fields of music, fashion and design, and art and aesthetics. Most would accept too that the repercussions and reverberations of punk\u2019s challenge to the suffocating norms against which it rebelled so vehemently continue to be felt in the present tense.<\/span><\/font>i<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> Behind the tabloid preoccupation with the Sex Pistols, a maelstrom of bands, including such acts as The Damned, The Buzzcocks, Slaughter and the Dogs, X-Ray Spex and The Raincoats, together redefined the experience of popular music and its relationship to the cultural mainstream. Bursting into the headlines as the unwelcome gatecrasher of the Silver Jubilee celebrations, punk inspired the misfits and malcontents of a new generation to reject the constraints of an exhausted post-war settlement, and to rail against boredom, alienation, wage-slavery, and social conformity.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet, in retrospect, the purity of punk\u2019s \u2018total rejection\u2019 of \u2018straight society\u2019 (if not seen as comprised from the outset) appears fleeting. By the tail-end of 1977, the integrity of punk\u2019s critique seemed to be fast unravelling. What had declared itself to be an uncompromising cultural and musical assault on an ossified status quo, was become increased ensnared in the processes of \u2018incorporation\u2019 and \u2018commodification\u2019. Punk bands which had earlier denounced the corporate big-time were signing lucrative deals with major record labels, keen to package and promote their rebellious messages. Specialist retailers, mimicing punk\u2019s innovate experiments with fashion and adornment, began to market new lines of standardised punk clothing. Punk rock\u2019s non-negotiable hostility to the marketplace and the mainstream appeared to be collapsing. It had, in the words of one cynical observer been \u2018bought up, cleaned up, souped up\u2019 to become \u2018just another cheap product for the consumer\u2019s head.\u2019<\/span><\/font>ii<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> Yet at the same time that punk appeared to be losing its way, a current emerged within the movement declaring itself committed to the prosecution of the punk ideal and determined to rediscover what it saw as punk\u2019s authentic and original intent. <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The story of the birth of punk rock in Britain and the US is being rehearsed in every greater detail in the burgeoning historiography of this \u2018new wave\u2019 of music, fashion, art and culture \u2014 which, alongside individual biography, offers accounts of different subcultures within punk, and treatments of local scenes and time frames.<\/span><\/font>iii<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> Yet despite the proliferation of such studies in recent years, the political history of punk is painfully underdeveloped. The history of what can be claimed as the most intensely radical expression of punk\u2019s politics and aesthetic \u2013 anarcho-punk \u2013 remains almost entirely unrecorded. In the flood of publications addressing different aspects of the punk phenomenon that have appeared in the last few years, it\u2019s striking how often the experience of anarcho-punk is absent.<\/span><\/font>iv<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> Although a few short treatments of Crass have been published,<\/span><\/font>v<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> most of the key debates currently animating both the academic and the popular literature on punk simply exclude anarcho-punk from their frame of reference.<\/span><\/font>vi<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> This is an all the more glaring omission given the sophistication of anarcho-punk\u2019s own critique of punk practice, and the profound significance which Crass and other artists invested in the medium of punk.<\/span><\/font>vii<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> In part, the exclusion of anarcho-punk from the majority of histories of the genre is a reflection of the reluctance of many authors to confront anarcho-punk\u2019s critique of \u2018conventional\u2019 punk\u2019s own practice. Yet it is also the unintended consequence of anarcho-punk\u2019s own fiercely independent sensibilities, which often resulted in its effective separation from punk rock\u2019s own \u2018orthodox\u2019 mainstream.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Centred around the work of the band Crass, anarcho-punk asserted a belief in the politics and practice of punk \u2018as it was always supposed to have been\u2019 \u2013 autonomous, subversive and free from commercial corruption. Embracing the politics of anarchism, anti-militarism and pacifism, Crass worked to popularise the notion of a consciously revolutionary punk rock culture. It was an approach that inspired many thousands to immerse themselves in the highly distinctive \u2018do-it-yourself\u2019 (DIY) milieu of anarcho-punk and to commit their energies to what were recognised as the critical political struggles of the hour. The results of this \u2018reclamation\u2019 of the punk imperative were often remarkable, but as the years passed it became clear that the movement was struggling to realise what it hoped was its true potential. Because it thrived with little permanent structural form, anarcho-punk existed as an intriguing example of a movement defined by the contours of its subculture.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The emergence of anarcho-punk<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 1978, the release of the debut mini-album <\/span><\/font>The Feeding of the Five Thousand<\/em><\/span><\/font> by the band Crass announced the birth of a new current within the evolving British punk movement which came to be celebrated \u2014 and sometimes derided \u2014 as \u2018anarcho-punk\u2019.<\/span><\/font>viii<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> Musically, anarcho-punk certainly represented a further recalibration of the punk sound. After the Sex Pistols\u2019 <\/span><\/font>Never Mind the Bollocks<\/em><\/span><\/font>, or the self-titled first album by The Ramones, only a handful of records comprehensively reinvented the notion of what punk rock album could sound like. In that, Crass\u2019s early releases could stand alongside artists as diverse as Joy Division and Discharge. When <\/span><\/font>The Feeding of the 5000<\/em><\/span><\/font> was released it sounded like no other punk record before it had \u2014 the signature military drum-beat; the skittery power-buzz of the two guitars; the relentless lyric-chewing vocal; the shift without pause from one song to another; the lack of rock pretensions. More notable than the musical presentation, was its content \u2013 from the stunning, disturbing cover artwork, and the densely typed lyric sheet; to the uncompromising, compelling polemic with which the whole package bristled. <\/span><\/font>It would be just these jarring juxtapositions between the content of the message and the medium of delivery that would give this new subculture so distinctive an edge, and infuse it with an infectious appeal that quickly attracted the interest of tens of thousands of young punks and displaced radicals.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The anthemic track \u2018Punk Is Dead\u2019 encapsulated the tension at the heart of what Crass were about, and what anarcho-punk would become \u2014 a band and a movement that both embraced and celebrated and shunned and denounced punk:<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I see the velvet zippies in their bondage gear \/ The social elite with safety pins in their ear \/ I watch and understand that it don\u2019t mean a thing \/ The scorpions might attack, but the system stole the sting.<\/span><\/font>ix<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

As drummer Penny Rimbaud subsequently explained, this critique of punk was also intended as a rebuttal to what was perceived as the nihilistic declaration by Sex Pistols\u2019 frontman Johnny Rotten that there was to be \u2018no future\u2019.<\/span><\/font>x<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> Even though the ever-resourceful Rotten has since rejected pessimistic readings of this lyric as shortsighted, Crass were, in contrast, claiming punk as a rallying cry to \u2018make history\u2019 rather than as the soundtrack for its end.<\/span><\/font>xi<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although a sizeable youth movement quickly burgeoned around them, Crass\u2019s position as the catalyst and engine for anarcho-punk was never seriously in question \u2014 however awkward Crass felt about their \u2018leading role\u2019. Most of those involved with Crass were significantly older than the people who bought their records and turned out for their concerts. Unlike the majority of their contemporaries, Crass sought to highlight connections between the aspirations of 1960s counter-culture and the original impetus of 1970s punk. Importantly, Crass claimed punk as an extension and redefinition of elements brought forward from the culture of hippy. Several of the occupants of the Dial House commune from which Crass emerged had had long associations with hippy and other counter-cultural movements.<\/span><\/font>xii<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> This notion of a rekindled hippy ethos sat problematically with punk\u2019s insistence on outright rejection of the political and musical forms of the past, but punk \u2014 drawing, as it had to do, on antecedents of all kinds \u2014 could not sustain the pretence that 1976 was some kind of \u2018year zero\u2019. More problematic than hippy\u2019s pre-punk origins, was its content \u2014 and the difficulty of reconciling The Clash\u2019s declarations of \u2018hate and war\u2019 with Crass\u2019s insistence on \u2018love and peace\u2019. Ultimately, such approaches could not be reconciled, even though both claimed to be legitimate representations of punk. <\/span><\/font>Even so, Crass\u2019s <\/font>was never an uncritical reading of hippy, but rather a reclamation of what were seen as common principles \u2014 a rejection of crushing social conventions; of miserable wage-labour; of war and militarism; and a celebration of freedom, both collective and individual. It was also, as many of the band\u2019s critics appeared slow to acknowledge, a vision of hippy which offered its own bi-polar view \u2013 castigating the self-satisfied hedonism of sixties counter-culture, whilst romanticising its more consciously political elements. The band\u2019s assertion of a counter-cultural continuity linking hippy and punk immediately aroused the suspicion of some within the punk movement concerned to protect punk from the contagion of the \u2018failures\u2019 of earlier generations. Disappointment with the decline and corrosion of hippy may help to explain the intensity of Crass\u2019s subsequent investment in punk. It had to work where hippy had failed. In their farewell written statement, Crass insist that the anarcho-punk brand of punk rock had eventually become \u2018almost synonymous with punk\u2019.<\/span><\/font>xiii<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> They may have wished that this had been so, but in fact things were more complex. In reality, anarcho-punk was in perpetual contest with \u2018mainstream\u2019 punk, its take on the punk project opposed, ignored and challenged by those who saw their own readings as equally (or indeed more) authentic.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Anarcho-punk reclaimed the notion of punk autonomy \u2013 rejecting all approaches from the pop industry, establishing in their place the movement\u2019s own record labels and distribution networks; working directly and collaboratively, without agents or intermediaries, to set up tours, produce publications and record music. Remarkably, none of the bands whose reputation gave them a national, and indeed international, profile broke this self-imposed embargo to \u2018sell-out\u2019 to the majors. Crass themselves were approached by a would-be impresario, already responsible for a roster of mainstream acts, offering to \u2018market\u2019 the band\u2019s revolutionary message through the established channels. His offer of a large advance and a lucrative deal was summarily dismissed. In 1984, the band were amused to reject a tentative expression of interest in their work from thinly-disguised representatives of the Soviet Embassy in London \u2014 but not before Crass\u2019s own delegation had sunk the supply of vodka on offer from the agents of the Russian \u2018literary magazine\u2019 who had invited them for talks.<\/font>xiv<\/sup><\/a><\/font><\/sup> All aspects of the group\u2019s work, from its appearance on stage, the packaging of its records, to the band\u2019s relationship to its \u2018fans\u2019 were subject to a political critique which, it is claimed, tried to subvert usual rock\u2019n\u2019roll conventions, to reclaim what were seen as the essentials of \u2018punk\u2019. Messages of anarchy, peace and love were now delivered in anguished howls, over distorted guitar riffs and thundering drum beats, by bands who sought to honour the principles of \u2018do-it-yourself (DIY) punk\u2019 in every aspect of their work \u2013 records were stamped with the instruction to \u2018pay no more than\u2019 the breakeven price fixed by the band; concert tickets were sold for the barest minimum; all of the affectations and decadence of the rock-star lifestyle were shunned; and genuine efforts made to minimize the gap between performer and audience.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

By 1984, the year in which Crass disbanded (a cut-off point set by the band in 1977), the anarcho-movement had reached the height of its powers, and was beginning to strain against its own political and sub-cultural limitations, and encroaching sense of fatigue.<\/span><\/font>xv<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> Throughout the intervening years Crass remained the central focus and organising hub for anarcho-punk, at the centre of a network of bands, labels, artists and publications which rallied around the anarcho-punk banner, and which, taken together, loosely defined this movement within a movement. <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A defining feature of anarcho-punk was the refusal to co-operate with the established music industry on all levels. To the consternation and incredulity of many music journalists Crass and other anarcho-bands declined to be interviewed and photographed for the pages of <\/span><\/font>Sounds<\/em><\/span><\/font>, the <\/span><\/font>NME<\/em><\/span><\/font> or <\/span><\/font>Melody Maker<\/em><\/span><\/font>. Instead anarcho-punk sought to stimulate its own outlets for its message, through the distinctive network of fanzines, and through handouts, mailings and publications under its own imprint, where control over content and presentation remained total, and unsullied by pop trivia around it. Crass\u2019s own position on the question was not absolute. When controversy propelled the band into the limelight, members of the group would appear on television and radio shows, to put an anarchist case, but the band\u2019s own minimum criteria for participation usually made such appearances difficult to agree. Despite the efforts of many officials in the pop industry to exclude them (a fate earlier endured by the Sex Pistols) Crass\u2019s records regularly sold sufficient quantities to break into the Top Thirty of the BBC\u2019s chart. There was no prospect of the BBC\u2019s producers agreeing to appearances by the band (they had only to cite the band\u2019s \u2018unbroadcastable\u2019 lyrics and the court actions for \u2018obscenity\u2019 that were a recurrent and unwelcome byproduct of the band\u2019s published work), but Crass had their own impossible counter demand. Asked by <\/span><\/font>Tongue in Cheek<\/em><\/span><\/font> fanzine if there were any circumstances in which they would agree to appear on <\/span><\/font>Top of the Pops<\/em><\/span><\/font>, Crass replied: \u2018That we could talk uninterrupted on any subject of our choice for the length of time that the record that got us there took to play.\u2019<\/span><\/font>xvi<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Such uncompromising statements of independence were, of course, criticised for being willfully counter-productive, by those arguing that the most effective acts of subversion were undertaken from within the industry \u2013 by those who heralded the Pistols and other as the \u2018poison in the machine\u2019 \u2013 and not by those denouncing it from the outside. As the movement mushroomed, Crass could counter that their own practice was drawing the attention of tens of thousands young people to anarchist ideas on an unprecedented scale, something that the movement\u2019s incorporation into the pop industry would immediately jeopardise. For Crass, the position remained self-evident:<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

We believed that you could no more be a socialist [<\/span><\/font>band<\/em><\/span><\/font>] and signed to CBS (The Clash) than you could be an anarchist and signed to EMI.<\/span><\/font>xvii<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Crass also powerfully asserted that if the practice of anarcho-punk was to mean anything, then it was self-evident that it had to demonstrate the validity of its precursor politics. <\/span><\/font>Anarcho-punk performers everywhere insisted that it would trivialise and diminish their revolutionary message to align themselves with those complicit in reducing punk to product \u2013 by this time typified by the transformation of Adam and the Ants from a darkly sexualised art-punk ensemble into a sanitised pre-teen pop machine \u2013 and expose their DIY manifestos to ridicule.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And yet, inevitably, the integrity of anarcho-punk was sustained at no little cost. The movement\u2019s reliance on its own networks and outlets meant that to those engaged with it, the movement could appear vibrant and vital. But many outside of the immediate punk subculture were almost entirely unaware of its work. The movement\u2019s high principles made the negotiation of alliances difficult, but the very completeness of anarcho-punk\u2019s own defiant subcultural independence made it difficult for the movement to accurately assess its own political and cultural worth.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The politics of anarcho-punk<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The politics espoused through the medium of anarcho-punk reflected a hectic and eclectic mix of aspirations \u2013 which drew as much on moral as on material considerations. There was no singular ideology in play, with \u2013 in Crass\u2019s case \u2013 inspiration being drawn from Ghandian principles, radical philosophy, the aesthetics of the Beat and Bohemian poets, and the words of Rimbaud and Baudelaire, as much as from the formal anarchist tradition. Crass probably overstate the case when they claim that in the bands\u2019 early days they \u2018probably would have thought\u2019 that Bakunin \u2018was a brand of vodka\u2019<\/span><\/font>xviii<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup>, but the profound suspicion of ideologues and fixed ideologies remained. It afforded a politics largely free of debilitating baggage, but at the same time the anchor points that it provided were few and far between. <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Initially replete with expletives and rich in harsh invective, Crass\u2019s own writing and pronouncements developed into what were often sophisticated, lucid and poetic writings. Alongside early songs such as \u2018<\/span><\/font>Fight War, Not Wars\u2019<\/span><\/font> (in which the only lyrics were those of the title), came such detailed and intensely argued polemics as \u2018Bumhooler\u2019, \u2018Rival Tribal Rebel Revel\u2019, and \u2018Bloody Revolutions\u2019, and spoken word pieces such as \u2018Demoncrats\u2019, which concludes:<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Taken aside, they were pointed a way,<\/font><\/p>\n

For God, Queen and Country. Now in silence they lie.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

They ran before these masters, children of sorrow<\/font><\/p>\n

as slaves to that trilogy they had no future.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

They believed in democracy, freedom of speech,<\/font><\/p>\n

yet dead on the flesh piles I hear no breath,<\/font><\/p>\n

I hear no hope, no whisper of faith,<\/font><\/p>\n

from those that have died for some others\u2019 privilege.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Out from your palaces, princes and queens,<\/font><\/p>\n

out from your churches, you clergy, you Christs,<\/font><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll neither live nor die for your dreams.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll make no subscription to your paradise.<\/span><\/font>xix<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many other bands and performers within the anarcho-punk orbit chose a less poetic and literary timbre, grounding their work in the language and iconography of the radical campaigns and issues of the day. Crass\u2019s own reading of anarchism retained hippy\u2019s concern with the freedom of the individual from the intrusions of the state, but infused it with militant opposition to the \u2018war machine\u2019, and an excoriating critique of the alienated social relations of capitalism. In Crass\u2019s original lexicon, anarchism and pacifism were seen as synonymous and symbiotic. Around the calls for \u2018anarchy, peace and freedom\u2019, anarcho-punk\u2019s varied political impulses pushed the movement in diverse directions. Anti-militarism, and in particular, opposition to the nuclear arms race, remained definitional concerns throughout. But anti-war cries did not exhaust the anarcho-punk remit. The movement engaged \u2014 sometimes more successfully than others \u2014 with feminist, atheist, anti-capitalist and eco- politics. For bands such as Conflict and Flux of Pink Indians, the politics of animal rights, animal liberation, vegetarianism and veganism were central. <\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Crass\u2019s early work ensured that the politics of atheism took a prominent place in the movement\u2019s propaganda and artwork. After assembly line workers refused to press copies of the band\u2019s first record in protest at the sacrilegious content of the opening song \u2018<\/span><\/font>Reality Asylum\u2019<\/span><\/font>, Crass were obliged to replace the offending article with a silent track \u2013 which the band bitterly retitled \u2018The Sound of Free Speech\u2019. Denunciations of the culpability of organised religion in the persistence of war and human suffering, and attacks on the church\u2019s position within the hierarchy of the \u2018ruling elite\u2019 became recurrent themes of the wider movement.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Punk had provided numerous outlets for women performers and feminist messages, but anarcho-punk offered a platform for a distinctively anarcha-feminist politics. Poison Girls combined impassioned invectives against capital and militarism, with sophisticated critiques of the alienated nuclear family, and subtle explorations of gender relations. The women artists and performers within Crass had explored feminist themes since the band\u2019s formation, and in 1981 the band released the album <\/span><\/font>Penis Envy<\/em><\/span><\/font>, conceived as a specifically \u2018feminist attack\u2019, on which only the band\u2019s female vocalists appear.<\/span><\/font>xx<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> The record\u2019s lyrical preoccupations were directed as much at the group\u2019s predominately male fan base as to the world beyond, driven by an awareness that many of the punks enthused by the driving and aggressive agit-punk that was seen as Crass\u2019s stock-in-trade often appeared to find the complexities of gender politics challenging, of secondary concern to the \u2018more pressing\u2019 conflict with the war state, or even an uncomfortable irrelevance. <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The complications of Crass\u2019s own political position, and by extension that of anarcho-punk, were acute. Explored in the extended essays of Crass\u2019s 1982 book <\/span><\/font>A Series of Shock Slogans and Mindless Token Tantrums<\/em><\/span><\/font> the politics of anarcho-punk emerge as an interplay between nonviolence, counter-culturalism, spartan anti-consumerism and the exploration of personal liberty that might provide the supportive context for a relentless struggle against the forces of capital and the war state. Criticised by some anarchist opponents as a confusion of revolutionary perspectives with the \u2018politics of lifestyle\u2019,<\/span><\/font>xxi<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> anarcho-punk was premised on the adoption of radical practices in the personal lives of its adherents \u2013 co-operative and communal living, not-for-profit publishing and artistry, squatting, re-appropriation \u2013 that could together help generalise the culture of disobedience and direct action. Throughout, Crass\u2019s politics remained an unresolved fusion of the utopian and absolutist, and the acutely personal and immediate.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Crass certainly attacked head-on the assertion that the legitimacy of punk itself rested on its working class origins, and condemned those whose sought to exclude participation in punk culture to those who measured up to the bogus criteria of \u2018street credibility\u2019 externally imposed by journalists and music industry pundits.<\/span><\/font>xxii<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> As a critique of the fetishisation of young white male working class street-culture \u2013 exemplified by the political schizophrenia of the early eighties Oi punk wave \u2013 and as an attempt to hold open the boundaries of the movement, the argument held great merit. Additionally, anarcho-punk was able to offer something almost entirely absent from the campaigns against rising unemployment of the time \u2013 a rudimentary critique of wage-labour itself. In the far less punitive welfare climate of the time, Crass suggested that the young unemployed should reject the passivity of their place in the \u2018reserve army of labour\u2019 and seize the opportunities that freedom from the factory and office afforded them. Celebrated in the band\u2019s riotous <\/span><\/font>Do They Owe Us a Living?<\/em><\/span><\/font>, this was a raucous and uncompromising defence of a new subversive \u2018giro-ethic\u2019.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

There were points, however, at which this rejection of alienated labour found expression in destructively hostile language \u2013 in which, for instance, the workers on the Ford production lines were seen as willingly complicit in their own subjugation.<\/span><\/font>xxiii<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> And yet, those keen to dismiss anarcho-punk\u2019s \u2018d\u00e9class\u00e9\u2019 politics faced the difficulty that so much of the movement\u2019s energies were directed at encouraging collective action against multiple capitalist targets, through language, imagery and song intimately concerned with exposing the social relations of power, ownership and wealth in Thatcher\u2019s Britain. By 1984, as many anarcho-punk benefits were concerned with raising money and support for striking miners as for anti-nuclear causes, and the peace movement\u2019s conflict with the nuclear state was itself seen as developing an increasingly revolutionary logic. Committed anarcho-punks ran with the hunt saboteurs, whilst denouncing the military and economic imperialism of the USA; they organized public fasts against world hunger, while they prepared clandestine spray-paint attacks on army recruitment offices. What kept the movement connected was the shared subculture of gigs, records and fanzines, not the diktats of any central organizing committee, or ultimately the pronouncements of Crass. Anarcho-punk\u2019s politics remained a moving target. For critics and supporters alike, even as the movement\u2019s manifestos evolved, they remained frustratingly imprecise.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was a politics that left the movement noticeably separated from both the anti-militarist and anarchist traditions that it initially hoped to fuse. Crass\u2019s enthusiasm for some of the venerable institutions of the British pacifist tradition produced some interesting intersections and cultural clashes. Respectable organisations such as the Peace Pledge Union (or in other contexts, the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection or the National Council for Civil Liberties) found that their postbags were now bursting with envelopes scrawled with garish subversive slogans that revealed letters from young punks eager for the latest news on \u2018the struggle\u2019. Somewhat taken aback by the attention, the PPU showed little enthusiasm for reflecting the imagery or vocabulary of anarcho-punk in any of its materials, prefering to rely on the organisation\u2019s time-honoured imagery and language, and sidestepping the punks\u2019 feverish appeals for \u2018anti-war action\u2019. It revealed a mismatch of expectations on both sides. <\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of necessity, much of anarcho-punk\u2019s political identity was defined in oppositional terms. Crass\u2019s profound suspicion at the motivations of the trotskyist left, ensconced within some of the key campaigning organisations of the day, was in large measure reciprocated by those left activists wary of Crass\u2019s anarchist credentials. Crass\u2019s association with the Rock Against Racism initiative, which many punk bands lent their name to, proved to be short lived, with Crass attacking what they claimed as disingenuous motives of RAR promoters, and the hard-left\u2019s hidden agendas.<\/span><\/font>xxiv<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> More controversial still was the role of the Anti-Nazi League, and the street-level anti-fascist squads which at that time operated on its fringes. After such squad arrived uninvited at a Crass gig at London\u2019s Conway Hall and began setting about those in the audience with close-cropped or skinhead haircuts (on the assumption that this identified them as fascists), the band were incensed \u2013 going on to denounce in song the \u2018left-wing macho street-fighters willing to kick arse\u2019 who revealed their own \u2018bigotry and blindness\u2019 in the process.<\/span><\/font>xxv<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> It served to reinforce the band\u2019s anarchist insistence on the parallel between the power aspirations of the hard right and hard left.<\/span><\/font>xxvi<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The culture of anarcho-punk<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The defining visual aesthetic of anarcho-punk was the colour black. Crass maintained that the band had opted to clothe themselves almost entirely in black was a reaction against the \u2018peacock preoccupations\u2019 of the \u2018fashion punk industry\u2019 \u2013 to adopt a plain, uniform colour circumvented such \u2018irrelevances\u2019.<\/span><\/font>xxvii<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> When combined with other elements of the band\u2019s design and performance, it made them an imposing presence on stage. Many of those drawn to the music and philosophy of Crass soon adopted a similar dress code, refreshing their wardrobes from Army Surplus and charity shops, with cotton-drill and moleskin displacing Levis and leather. At gigs and demonstrations, anarcho-punks sought each other out, in an earlier manifestation of the kind of \u2018black bloc\u2019 seen in today\u2019s anti-globalisation protests. Although the similarity of appearance sometimes offered anonymity in the cut and thrust of a lively street march, police forces quickly recognised the hallmark of the new anarchist contingent, and responded accordingly. Critics mused on the apparent irony of \u2018uniform anarchists\u2019 urging the freedom of all from imposed rules (while Crass countered that this was both a trivial observation and a misrepresentation).<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And yet the dress sense of anarcho-punks \u2013 however unmissable it remained \u2013 was actually one of the least significant aspects of the movement\u2019s culture. Far more important was the sub cultural expectation of co-operation and self-activity. However partial and halting it proved to be in practice, anarcho-punk was premised on the notion that the movement would sustain and extend its influence through the self-directed activities of its adherents \u2013 who would form more bands, produce ever greater numbers of publications, set-up record labels and radical co-operatives, and so generate the cultural infrastructure through which the movement\u2019s influence could be multiplied. Although many of those who bought the records and turned out for the gigs ignored the exhortation, there remained a hopeful expectation that anarcho-punks would commit themselves to building the culture of the movement itself, and engage in political activity beyond it. Some anarcho-punks certainly functioned largely as \u2018fans\u2019 of the genre, who bought the music, checked-out the gigs and \u2014 subject to sufficient pestering \u2014 bought the fanzines, but did little more than act in the role of consumer.<\/span><\/font> <\/strong><\/font>Even so, the organisers, promoters, printers, composers, designers and authors of anarcho-punk tended to be thrown up from within the ranks of the movement.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The visual and graphic work of both Gee Sus and Mick Duffield was ground breaking. The disfigured Crass logo; the all-black-clad appearance; the trademark stencil typography, and all the other elements of Crass\u2019s graphic packaging offered a striking identity to rival Jamie Reid\u2019s work for the Sex Pistols. Gee\u2019s stunning artwork of collage and montage gave visceral and graphic reinforcement to Crass\u2019s musical messages. Duffield\u2019s and Gee\u2019s video presentations turned punk gigs into film shows and punctuated Crass\u2019s live performance. The work was stunning, and often appalling and horrifying \u2013 using juxtaposition, and a fusion of <\/span><\/font>decollage<\/em><\/span><\/font>,<\/span><\/font> gouache and photorealist techniques to breathtaking effect.<\/span><\/font>xxviii<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> For a band opposed outright to the commercial packaging and presentation of punk, Crass developed a visual identity that was distinctive and unmistakable. In retrospect, Vaucher\u2019s work in particular is increasingly recognised as \u2018having been seminal to the iconography of the \u201cpunk generation\u201d.\u2019<\/span><\/font>xxix<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Records functioned as another tool in the agit armoury. Cover, defined by their stencil lettering and circular motif, were stripped to black and white, but reconceived as wraparound sleeves \u2013 opened up to provide multiple panels of information and artwork. Anarcho-punk gigs were also distinguishable from the mainstream commercial circuit in innumerable ways, tending to be organised in youth clubs, scout huts and church halls outside the usual rock circuit, and usually put together by amateur fan promoters. Larger gigs, involving artists such as Crass, Flux of Pink Indians, Conflict or Poison Girls, offered a wide variety of performers: poets with backing tapes, films, drum and vocal duos, alongside full bands. The presentation would be as comprehensive as possible, as halls would be decked with banners of anarchist and anarcho-punk emblems, TV sets and film screens. There would be no row of bow-tied bouncers on the door; no capitalist promoter in the background; certainly no merchandising stall or hot dog concession; and few incentives for \u2018ticket touts\u2019 to lurk outside. Entrance would be phenomenally cheap, and inevitably the evening would be a benefit for at least one cause if not several \u2013 although the discounted door price might generate fairly meagre receipts. Events got underway the minute the doors opened and were usually wound-up before last buses, tubes and trains so people could get home. These would also be, as they are characterised now, \u2018all ages show\u2019, without access restrictions.<\/span><\/font>xxx<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite, and partly because of these distinctions from the punk rock norm, anarcho-gigs were vulnerable to attack, and were sometimes marred by outbreaks of violence, usually fairly minor but at other times more serious.<\/span><\/font>xxxi<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> In addition to the tensions inherent in anarcho-punk\u2019s \u2018confrontational pacifism\u2019, there are a number of other factors that explain this apparent anomaly. As has been mentioned, anarcho-punk\u2019s political critique extended to the dominant trotskyist politics of the hour, and explicitly condemned the highjacking of causes and the manipulation of \u2018front organisations\u2019 by the authoritarian left. At same time anarcho-punk was implacably hostile to the peripheral far-right and Nazi movements then trying to mobilise in Britain in the context of early Thatcherism. In consequence, anarcho punk gigs could be seen, by sections both the hard-left and the far-right, (as well as by thugs or no particular political affiliation), as \u2018soft targets\u2019:<\/span><\/font>xxxii<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> the gigs would be found outside the usual club circuit; there would be few security staff able to intervene; and no enthusiasm amongst organizers for summoning the police. On top of that, would-be assailants surmised that the readily identifiable core audience at these gigs subscribed to a form of pacifist politics, which for some included a reluctance even to resort to physical self-defence. Many of the audience were people in their early teens, and \u2014 although bands would respond to any violent incidents and protect people as best as they could \u2014 in many respects the audiences were expected to fend for themselves in a culture that, for the most part, frowned on the use of violence. All of which meant that large-scale anarcho-punk gigs were usually characterized by a palpable atmosphere of exhilaration and anticipation \u2014 sometimes defiant and celebratory, at other times uncomfortably threatening. <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gigs were also a forum in which innumerable anarcho-punk \u2018fanzines\u2019 would circulate. \u2018Fanzines\u2019 had been a central part of punk culture since titles such as the seminal <\/span><\/font>Sniffin\u2019 Glue<\/em><\/span><\/font> began to document the emerging London punk scene in 1976.<\/span><\/font>xxxiii<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> As the literary and design equivalent of punk\u2019s musical exhortation to \u2018do-it-yourself\u2019, fanzines had become the defining \u2018xeroxed texts\u2019 of the original punk original wave. Self-produced and self-published, the cut-and-paste collage and stencil design ethos of the punk fanzine was enthusiastically taken up by such publications as Rock Against Racism\u2019s <\/span><\/font>Temporary Hoarding<\/em><\/span><\/font> and (to the evident disquiet of some Communist Party officials) the Young Communist League\u2019s <\/span><\/font>Challenge<\/em><\/span><\/font>. Yet what had effectively begun as a range of amateur publications by young punk music fans was transformed into something more specifically didactic through the experience of anarcho-punk. Often reconceived as \u2018zines\u2019 (to dispense with the associations of the \u2018fan\u2019 prefix) anarcho-punk generated a quite remarkable subterranean network of anarchist publications, which struggled against the design limitations imposed by the now-archaic \u2018duplicator\u2019 presses on which so many were produced to augment the movement\u2019s musical output. Direct, uncensored and strident, titles such as <\/span><\/font>Acts of Defiance<\/em><\/span><\/font>, <\/span><\/font>Kind Girls<\/em><\/span><\/font>, <\/span><\/font>No New Rituals<\/em><\/span><\/font>, <\/span><\/font>Children of the Revolution<\/em><\/span><\/font> and <\/span><\/font>Pigs Will Fly<\/em><\/span><\/font> used shocking imagery and crude juxtaposition, alongside poetry and song lyrics, to urge the intensification of the struggle against the nuclear state, animal cruelty, unemployment and police harassment. Individual print runs could run into several thousand copies, or be restricted to a few dozen. This entirely uncoordinated and uncatalogued outpouring of young people\u2019s radical political writing remained as ephemeral as it was passionate \u2013 the turnover of titles proved relentless, and few imprints reached a double-figure issue number \u2013 and yet, for a brief while, it provided important confirmation of anarcho-punk\u2019s ability to inspire and engage. <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet this sub-culturally distinct anarcho-punk milieu proved more adept at defining and defending its own independence than in forging effective alliances with other groups recognised as engaged in struggle with a shared set of enemies. Outside of the networks of venues, bands and fanzines, the organisational framework around which the movement might rally its forces remained rudimentary where it existed at all. Crass, reluctant to accept the burdens of political leadership which some in the movement wished them to take on, rarely issued calls for unified action of any sort. Enthusiasts for the spontaneous and the temporary, the band sought to redirect the energies of those keen to be recruited to new anarchist organisations \u2013 concerned that the once innovative culture of anarcho-punk risked becoming an impediment of its own.<\/span><\/font>xxxiv<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> At one point, Crass did set in motion plans for an ambitious mass \u2018walking tour\u2019 of some of the \u2018key institutions\u2019 of the nuclear state \u2013 beginning at the Windscale plant, and ending in Parliament Square \u2013 intended to demonstrate the movement\u2019s political clout. But as the momentum of the initiative grew, and with it the likely scale of the turnout of young, militant punks, Crass reconsidered. Concerned by the possible serious consequences of a series of set-piece confrontations between groups of anarchist punks and the forces of law-and-order, Crass cancelled the event, and weathered the resulting criticism. Although the organisational clarity of anarcho-punk never once matched its subcultural distinctiveness, it was still capable of asserting its influence in some of the prominent political and campaign movements of the day.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A list of Crass\u2019s own claims to political notoriety in this period would need to include the funding of the promising but short-lived Anarchy Centre in London (a follow-on for the band\u2019s support for the defendants in the Persons Unknown trial); high profile opposition to the Falklands War (which led to \u2018questions in the House\u2019 about the band\u2019s \u2018depraved and scurrilous\u2019 attack on her majesty\u2019s government in the guise of the \u2018How Does it Feel to be the Mother of a Thousand Dead?\u2019 single); and the \u2018Thatchergate\u2019 stunt (a gloriously subversive tape montage of an alleged telephone conversation between Thatcher and Reagan in which the leaders share war plans, which fooled both the FBI and KGB, as well as the British broadsheet press, for many months).<\/span><\/font>xxxv<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> Yet behind anarcho-punk\u2019s own headline history, lay the countless actions and political initiatives, self-selected by the movement\u2019s own adherents, which blossomed uncollated and largely undocumented.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The most striking example of the collective mobilization of anarcho-punks were the series of anti-capitalist Stop the City (STC) demonstrations in London\u2019s financial centre between 1983 and 1984 called to protest \u2018against war, exploitation and profit\u2019 and to \u2018celebrate life\u2019.<\/span><\/font>xxxvi<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> Although not initiated solely from within anarcho-punk, Crass\u2019s own film documentary of the second STC confirms the extent to which these were primarily, though not exclusively, anarchist and punk affairs.<\/span><\/font>xxxvii<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> These part-carnivals, part push-and-shove fracas effectively illustrated both the capabilities of the movement and the limitations of its political coherence \u2014 demonstrating its disrespect for the routines of traditional law-abiding demonstrations; while at the same time highlighting the movement\u2019s uncertainty over questions of strategy and agency.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

In their own writing, Crass somewhat overstate the contribution that anarcho-punk made to resuscitating the moribund Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in the early 1980s.<\/span><\/font>xxxviii<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> The initiation of a new arms race, confirmed by plans to deploy first-strike Cruise and Pershing nuclear missiles across Europe, revived anti-nuclear movements across the continent, and would have arisen with or without the intercession of anarcho-punk. What Crass and anarcho-punk can quite legitimately claim is to have convinced a substantial number of radical youth to commit their energies to the most militant anti-militarist wings of the disarmament movement, which laid siege to nuclear installations across the country and which saw no conflict between its pacifist precepts and its willingness to commit acts of \u2018criminal damage\u2019 on the military property of the nuclear state.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

There can also be no question that Crass and anarcho-punk together also reinvigorated the ranks of the once-more marginalised British anarchist movement,<\/span><\/font>xxxix<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> which had slid back into the fractious periphery after a brief resurgence in the early 1970s \u2014 although the \u2018old hands\u2019 and the \u2018new punks\u2019 never became fully reconciled to one another. Despite the misgivings of some longstanding activists, anarcho-punk both infused the movement with new blood, and refashioned its existing pre-occupations the better to reflect the primary concerns of the new militants.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Crass\u2019 political position shifted significantly, particularly in the latter years of the band\u2019s work (something which could only alter the centre of gravity in the movement as a whole). In the aftershock of the 1982 Falklands War, and Thatcher\u2019s re-election in 1983, the band began a process of political reassessment that saw the group\u2019s commitment to pacifism publicly corrode. The final material produced by the band also indicated the degree to which the \u2018corporate\u2019 position projected by the group since 1977 was beginning to unravel. Typified by the desperate remonstrations of the band\u2019s final single \u2018<\/span><\/font>You\u2019re Already Dead\u2019 the band were directly c<\/span><\/font>astigating the wider peace movement for its own \u2018appeasement\u2019 with the \u2018war state\u2019, and its hesitation at so critical a juncture \u2014 the imminent deployment of Cruise missiles. It was the most explicit call to action ever articulated by Crass, and the \u2018increasingly militant and increasingly covert\u2019 trajectory along which the movement was being pointed appeared to be darkening.<\/span><\/font>xl<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The sense of impending catastrophe that came to define Crass\u2019s endgame had a number of unintended consequences. The sense of desperation at the inability to defuse the \u2018ticking time bomb\u2019 of nuclear conflagration halted the development of the movement\u2019s politics. Shifts in that politics, in part encouraged by the experience of the Miners\u2019 Strike, were held in check in the shadow of \u2018The Bomb\u2019. Such reasoning helped to reinforce the sense of isolation, and indeed siege, preoccupying the movement, and encouraged the development of a distorted sense of its own significance \u2014 as if, on its own and unaided, it might yet \u2018save the world\u2019. Conflict\u2019s 1986 album would announce, without a hint of self-parody, that <\/span><\/font>The Ungovernable Force is Coming<\/em><\/span><\/font>. Yet the culture of anarcho-punk made the forging of political alliances outside of its own ranks immensely difficult. In that combination of urgency and dread, the anarcho-movement lost perspective and began to substitute itself for the popular uprising it so desperately wanted to see.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The ferocity and intensity of Crass\u2019s condemnation of war, the church, the state and \u2018the system\u2019 could prove intoxicatingly attractive to disgruntled and disaffected teenagers, who had already seen in punk rock a way to channel their own rebellious energies, and whose own political perspectives remained fluid. Some of the movement\u2019s critics suggested that \u2013 despite the informality of anarcho-punk\u2019s manifesto \u2013 many of its adherents absorbed its messages unreflectively, to become, in effect, \u2018Crass punks\u2019. There was, they suggested, an unresolved tension between anarcho-punk\u2019s advocacy of individual creativity and the political uniformity by which the movement appeared to be defined. Whatever the validity of such a critique, it overlooked what might be seen as a more critical weakness in anarcho-punk\u2019s veracity \u2013 that many of those intrigued by its musical and cultural passions, did not take the movement\u2019s political ambitions as seriously, or as literally, as Crass and others around them had hoped. Some were attracted by the music, others by the graphic anti-war imagery, and still others by the sub-culture\u2019s seductive appeal. Many punks turning out for anarcho-punk gigs did not make sharp distinctions between bands such as Crass and other \u2018commercial\u2019 punk acts of which they were also \u2018fans\u2019, and inevitably for many involvement proved to be transitory.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And yet, Crass\u2019s fidelity to the principles of independence and self-direction that the band (and the wider movement) took as self-evident, left the critics eager to decry the \u2018selling-out\u2019 of anarcho-punk disappointed. The music and culture of anarcho-punk exposed many tens of thousands of young people to a kaleidoscope of radical ideas and practices, which aimed to stimulate their sense of self-belief, uncluttered by the party-left\u2019s fixations with recruitment, bureaucracy and empire building. The fact that Crass, and anarcho-punk as a whole, attracted such intense critical reaction from others within punk should, in many respects, come as no surprise. Crass in particular provided an easy target. By most measures of \u2018street credibility\u2019 they ought not to have registered at all \u2014 many of the band were the wrong side of thirty; they were open hippy sympathisers; they lived in a commune in the country and grew their own vegetables; and, on top of that, they had the audacity to get stuck into the punk \u2018aristocracy\u2019. Not only was their work an explicit critique of the \u2018for-profit\u2019 operation of many other punk outfits; their insistence that punk be recognised as seditious and propagandist infuriated (or left bemused) those who saw punk as the expression of things outrageous, escapist or plain stupid.<\/span><\/font>xli<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup> Punk itself, meanwhile, eluded simple categorization \u2013 proving itself capable of providing the soundtrack to a multiplicity of political projects, from the subtle and jazz-infused \u2018sex-pol\u2019 of the Au Pairs, through the gut socialism of Sham 69 and the UK Subs, the studied art-school Marxism of The Gang of Four, and the makeshift sloganeering of Oi.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Much of the significance and many of the peculiarities of anarcho-punk are revealed in the tensions \u2014 some of them \u2018creative\u2019, others of them more problematic \u2014 within the movement and its practice. For Crass themselves, such tensions were manifold. There was the sharp contrast between <\/font>the sophistication, complexity and subtlety of much of the message and the stripped-down, raw directness of the delivery. In every sense, it was not always clear that anarcho-punk\u2019s intentions were audible above the noise. Then there\u2019s the discord between Crass\u2019s irrefutable position as the movement\u2019s figureheads and agenda-setters and the band\u2019s refusal of that leadership role and reluctance to assume responsibility for it. Crass\u2019s own determination to try out different forms of attack, to re-invent their own format and to strain at the creative limits of their project was not always matched in the work of the wider movement, where, in the work of lyric writers, fanzine editors and graffiti artists, evidence grew of a slide into formalism and routine, and where \u2014 through familiarity with the subject matters of war, animal suffering and the nuclear threat \u2014 the law of diminishing returns made itself felt. This was another illuminating conflict \u2014 exposing the contrast between the sophistication of anarcho-punk\u2019s analysis of punk and its betrayals, and the inability of the movement to acknowledge anarcho-punk\u2019s own limits, as well as celebrate its strengths. <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

If Crass and the movement they inspired sought to invest in punk a weight it could not bear, anarcho-punk remained an unanswerable riposte to the buffoonery, compromise and squandered principles which had corrupted so much of punk\u2019s original potential. To the tens of thousands of young people who found its intensity inspiring rather than repellant, anarcho-punk suggested that personal politics, counter-cultural work and \u2018revolutionary practice\u2019 might once again be the catalyst for a new mass movement for \u2018peace and freedom\u2019 \u2014 one which had ultimately eluded the \u2018rainbow warriors\u2019 of an earlier generation. If the ambition went largely unrealised, that was a fate which most other contemporary \u2018progressive\u2019 movements found themselves sharing. Crass, at least, saw the challenge as unchanged: \u2018It\u2019s our world stolen from us every day. We set out to demand it back. Last time they called us hippies. This time they call us punks.\u2019<\/span><\/font>xlii<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/font><\/sup><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Richard Cross<\/h1>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Notes<\/strong><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

i<\/a> \tSee, for instance, Gina Arnold, Kiss This: Punk in the Present \tTense<\/em> (London, 1997)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

ii<\/a> \tUncredited journalist from Radio Caroline, sampled on the Crass LP \tChrist \u2013 the Album<\/em> (Crass, 1982).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

iii<\/a> \tSee, for example, Erica Echenberg and Mark P, And God Created \tPunk<\/em> (London, 1996); Adrian Boot and Chris Salewicz, Punk: \tThe Illustrated History of a Music Revolution<\/em> (London, 1996); \tMark Spitz and Brendan Mullen, We Got the Neutron Bomb: The \tUntold Story of L.A. Punk<\/em> (New York, 2001); Mark Andersen and \tMark Jenkins, Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation\u2019s \tCapital<\/em> (New York, 2001); Blank Generation Revisited: The \tEarly Days of Punk Rock <\/em>(London, 1997); Dennis Morris, Destroy<\/em> \t(London, 2002); Stephen Colegrave and Chris Sullivan , Punk \t<\/em>(London, 2001); David Nolan, I Swear I Was There<\/em> (Bury, \t2001), and dozens of other titles.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

iv<\/a> \tIn Jon Savage\u2019s now \u2018classic\u2019 general history of British punk, \tfor example, he acknowledges his inability to do justice to the \tphenomenon of Crass and anarchist punk, concluding that due to the \tcomplexity of Crass\u2019s work \u2018they deserve a book to themselves.\u2019 \tJon Savage, England\u2019s Dreaming: The Sex Pistols and Punk Rock<\/em>, \t(London, 1991) p.584.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

v<\/a> \tThese include: George McKay, \u2018Crass 621984 ANOK4U2\u2019, in McKay, \tSenseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance Since the \tSixties<\/em>, (London, 1996) pp.73-101;<\/font> \t\u2018Postmodernism and the Battle of the Beanfield: British Anarchist \tMusic and Text of the 1970s and 1980s\u2019, in S Earnshaw (ed), \tPostmodern Surroundings<\/em>, (Amsterdam, 1994) pp.147-166; \tRitchie Unterbe<\/font>rger, \u2018Crass\u2019, in \tUnknown Legends of Rock\u2019n\u2019Roll<\/em>, \t(San Francisco, 1998)<\/font> pp.259-264.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

vi<\/a> \tEssays in Roger Sabin (ed), Punk Rock: So What?<\/em> (London, \t1999), for instance, contain passing references to the work of \tCrass, but make no effort to integrate the experience of \tanarcho-punk into the analytical frameworks on offer.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

vii<\/a> \tThis may begin to change now that members of Crass have begun to \tpublish their own autobiographical and retrospective work, notably: \tPenny Rimbaud, Shibboleth: My Revolting Life<\/em>, (Edinburgh, \t1998); and Gee Vaucher, Crass Art and Other Pre Post-Modernist \tMonsters<\/em>, (Edinburgh, 1999).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

viii<\/a> \tCrass, The Feeding of the 5,000<\/em>, (Small Wonder, 1978).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

ix<\/a> \t\u2018Punk is Dead\u2019, The Feeding of the 5,000<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

x<\/a> \tSex Pistols, God Save the Queen<\/em> (Virgin, 1977).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xi<\/a> \tJon Savage, England\u2019s Dreaming<\/em>, pp.355-359; Julian Temple \t(director), The Filth and the Fury<\/em> (UK, \t2000);<\/font> Penny Rimbaud, \u2018The Last of the Hippies\u2019, A \tSeries of Shock Slogans and Mindless Token Tantrums<\/em> (London, \t1982) pp.62<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xii<\/a> \tPenny Rimbaud, Shibboleth<\/em>, pp.36-68.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xiii<\/a> \tCrass, \u2018\u2026In Which Crass Voluntarily \u201cBlown Their Own\u201d\u2019, \t(insert with the retrospective Crass LP Best Before 1984<\/em>, \t(Crass Records, 1984).)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xiv<\/a> \t\u2018Still Ignorant, not so Crass\u2019, Living Marxism<\/em>, February \t1999; Penny Rimbaud, Shibboleth<\/em>, pp.259; \u2018Preface\u2019, \tCrass: Love Songs<\/em> (Hebden Bridge, 2004); p.xxviii; Crass, \u2018In \tWhich\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xv<\/a> \tCrass\u2019s own contemporary accounts of the development of the band \tand the anarcho-punk movement can be found in: Crass, A Series of \tShock Slogans and Mindless Tokens Tantrums<\/em>, (London, 1982); and, \tCrass, \u2018In Which\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xvi<\/a> \tTongue In Cheek<\/em><\/span>, \tNo 2, n.d. but circa mid-1982.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xvii<\/a> \tRimbaud, \u2018Preface\u2019, Love Songs<\/em>, p.xxiv.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xviii<\/a> \tCrass, \u2018\u2026In Which Crass\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xix<\/a> \t\u2018Demoncrats\u2019, Stations of the Crass<\/em> (Crass Records, \t1981<\/font>).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xx<\/a> \tCrass, Penis Envy<\/em> (Crass Records, 1981<\/font>)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xxi<\/a> \tSee, for instance, the features on Crass and Poison Girls in \tAnarchy<\/em>, No 34, n.d., but circa 1982.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xxii<\/a> \tMusic journalist Garry Bushell \u2013 a persistent and vocal critics of \tthe band and of anarcho-punk \u2013 repeatedly attacked Crass for \tproposing such views, see, for example, \u2018The Mystic Revelation of \tCrasstafari\u2019, Sounds<\/em>, 30 August 1980.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xxiii<\/a> \tThe lyrics of Crass\u2019s \u2018End Result\u2019, from The Feeding of the \t5,000<\/em>, conclude: \u2018I hate the living dead and their work in the \tfactories \/ They go like sheep to their production lines \/ They live \ton illusions, don\u2019t face the realties \/ All they live for is that \tbig blue sign \/ It says\u2026 Ford.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xxiv<\/a> \tSee Crass, \u2018\u2026In Which Crass\u2019; A Series of Shock Slogans<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xxv<\/a> \tCrass, \u2018White Punks on Hope\u2019, Stations of the Crass<\/em>, \t(Crass Records, 1979).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xxvi<\/a> \tSee the discussion in, Paul du Noyer, \u2018At Crass Purposes\u2019, New \tMusical Express<\/em>, 14 February 1981.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xxvii<\/a> \tSee, for instance, Mike Holderness, \u2018Crass\u2019, Peace News<\/em>, \t18 May 1979; Rimbaud, \u2018Preface\u2019, Love Songs<\/em>; \u2018Still \tIgnorant, not so Crass\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xxviii<\/a> \tSee Gee Vaucher, Crass Art and Other Pre Post-Modernist Monsters<\/em>; \tand all Crass record sleeves and artwork.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xxix<\/a> \t\u2018Artist profile: Gee Vaucher\u2019, 96 Gillespie Gallery, London: \thttp:\/\/96gillespie.com\/artists_profiles\/vaucher.htm (accessed 20 \tApril 2004).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xxx<\/a> \tThese latter aspects \u2013 \u2018all ages access\u2019 and public \ttransport-friendly finish times are familiar enough features in \ttoday\u2019s music scenes, but they were significant breaks with the \tdominant rock\u2019n\u2019roll conventions of the day. For an evocative \taccount of a 1981 Crass, Poison Girls, and Flux of Pink Indians gig \tat the 100 Club, London, see, Edwin Pouncey, \u2018Tea and Anarchy\u2019, \tSounds<\/em>, 20 June 1981.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xxxi<\/a> \tThe fraught and atmosphere of a volatile and sporadically violent \tCrass gig (Perth, Scotland, 4 July 1981) is captured on the CD: \tCrass, You\u2019ll Ruin it for Everyone<\/em> (Pomona Records, 1983).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xxxii<\/a> \tRimbaud describes the attack on an early Conway Hall, London Crass \taudience by leftists seeking \u2018Nazi scum\u2019 in Shibboleth<\/em>, \tp.119: \u2018Anyone with hair shorter than half an inch\u2026 was regarded \tas fair game. The resultant carnage was ugly, unnecessary and \tutterly indefensible.\u2019; and other attacks by right and left, \tp.127.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xxxiii<\/a> \tSee the collected Sniffin\u2019 Glue<\/em>, (London, 2000).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xxxiv<\/a> \tRimbaud, \u2018Preface\u2019, Love Songs<\/em>, p.xix.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xxxv<\/a> \tSee, \u2018Crass Statement\u2019, Freedom<\/em>, 27 November 1982; \u2018\u2026In \tWhich Crass\u2019; Shibboleth<\/em>, p.250-254.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xxxvi<\/a> \tLeaflets and posters advertising \u2018Stop the City\u2019 events, \t1983-1984, in author\u2019s possession.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xxxvii<\/a> \tCrass and Exitstencil Films, Stop the City 29-03-84 (Rough Cut, \tAugust 1984<\/em>), (Crass, 1984).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xxxviii<\/a> \tSavage, England\u2019s Dreaming<\/em>, p.584; Rimbaud, Shibboleth<\/em>: \t\u2018our efforts on the road slowly bought CND back to life.\u2019. p.109<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xxxix<\/a> \tSavage, England\u2019s Dreaming<\/em>, p.584.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xl<\/a> \tPenny Rimbaud, quoted in, Neil Perry and Hugh Fielder, \u2018Crass: A \tMilitant Tendency?\u2019, Sounds<\/em>, 25 October 1986.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xli<\/a> \tFor an exploration of such views of punk, see Stewart Home, Cranked \tUp Really High: Genre Theory and Punk Rock<\/em>, (CodeX, Hove) 1995.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

xlii<\/a> \tPenny Rimbaud, \u2018The Last of the Hippies\u2019, A Series of Shock \tSlogans<\/em>, p.63.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Ok, here we go now, this really is another sociology lecture \u2026by Richard Cross, ex Metro Youth ( from Exeter, on Bullshit Detector 2). It was published in Socialist History magazine in 2004. Rich is working on a book on Crass and Anarcho-Punk 1978- 1984 for AK Press, due out this year and has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letter-from-the-editor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}