Captain Sensible - This Is Your Captain Speaking

CAPTAIN SENSIBLE - 
THIS IS YOUR CAPTAIN SPEAKING

Many individuals hitherto unassociated with politics and protest were also coming forward and joining the ranks of anti-war demonstrators in a bid to voice objection, a good example of this being Captain Sensible from seminal Punk pranksters The Damned.

Famously known as the guitarist who when not dressed in a variety of fancy dress costumes would often be naked on stage save for a guitar held by a strap adorned with the slogan 'Sod the whale', the Captain was not thought of as being the most serious of people. It was a surprise then, to see him appear on the Crass label with the EP This Is Your Captain Speaking, railing against the notion that 'the Russians are coming'.

Apparently very taken by the lyrics of Crass, the Captain felt, however, that their music was rubbish so had approached them with the idea of a collaboration. Flush with the success of their previous releases the offer was taken up, resulting in a Crass/Damned hybrid that unfortunately didn't really do justice to either band.

Driven by Captain Sensible's melodic, almost traditional rock'n'roll-style guitar playing over the drumming of Penny Rimbaud, the first track on the EP, entitled The Russians Are Coming, had the Captain declaring "I feel so bored with hate, so tired of hate, want peace but I can't wait. I feel so tired of war, so bored with war, can't be what life is for? Don't I have the right to live? Hate and war is all they give. Want to live my life, be free, but they stole my world from me. The Russians are coming - I don't believe a word. The Russians are coming - it's all I've ever heard. The Russians are coming - I don't wanna hear it any more. The Russians are coming - I won't sit by and take their bloody war."

Accompanied by girl band Dolly Mixture on backing vocals it was hardly typical Damned subject matter.

On the track (What D'Ya Give) The Man Who's Gotten Everything, the Captain sings of the emptiness of a rags to riches life: "From racing pigeons I'm a self-made chap, I bought everything I can but it's a load of crap. Something failed in my masterplan cos I'm bored if I can't spend, I'm bored if I can." This being a neat echo of the Crass stencil slogan 'Wealth is a ghetto'.

The final track, Our Souls To You, was a hymn-like play on the similarity between the words 'our souls' and 'arseholes', that unfortunately wasn't actually as amusing as it might have seemed at the time of recording: "Lord, we've sinned against Thee, worked and schemed against Thee and now You're free to punish us. We've worked and schemed against Thee, punish us and teach us and we'll give our souls to You. Arseholes to You."

Years later, Captain Sensible would say he was very proud of the record and would consider it the best thing he ever did. This Is Your Captain Speaking, however, would turn out to be a financial loss for Crass Records though there wasn't any one particular reason for this.

As a record it was perfectly adequate and being by a member of The Damned should have widened its receptive audience beyond the traditional Crass base. The fact that it was neither really a Crass-type record nor a Damned record seemed instead to work against it, causing it to fall between two stools.

As a piece of polemic it also didn't really work. Whilst it was interesting to hear Captain Sensible displaying his political sensibilities, it may well have been more effective if he had done so under the Damned banner rather than joining the Crass camp to do it? As a Crass Records release it lacked also a certain energy, an invigoration, a strangeness; a cutting edge that other releases on the label all possessed.

On the other hand, it was good to see a display of unity between Captain Sensible and Crass. For Crass themselves, it was gratifying to be given the thumbs-up from one of Punk's old guard instead of the usual (and incessant) jibes from the like of Garry Bushell. And for Captain Sensible, after six days in the studio with Crass he turned vegetarian.

If only Happy Talk by Captain Sensible had been released on Crass Records? It could have given the label a Number One hit record? It could have changed the world! Or at least confounded absolutely everyone's expectations of what Crass were about? And what more fitting lyrics could there be for a Crass/Anarcho Punk anthem: "Happy talk keep talking happy talk, talk about things you'd like to do. You got to have a dream. If you don't have a dream how you gonna make a dream come true?"

The War Game

THE WAR GAME

Far away from the world of records (and other commodities), if only Thatcher had not made the decision to refuse political status to the Irish Republican 'H-Block' prisoners and to refuse to be moved by their hunger strikes, then perhaps Bobby Sands MP would still be alive?

If Thatcher had not made that decision then perhaps an IRA bomb would not have subsequently been let off outside Chelsea Barracks in London that summer, killing one by-stander and injuring many soldiers?

This was the age of tension and quarrel where it was becoming increasingly difficult to escape from the results and effects of the political decisions being made by the Thatcher government. Clearly, war was very much on the agenda be it home-grown war between the Irish Republican Army and the British State or impending global nuclear war, with everyone being sucked into it and being forced to take sides whether you wanted to or not.

You either supported Thatcher's political decisions or you didn't but as silence was being interpreted as consent, the only way to register disagreement was to demonstrate it in whatever way able. So, whilst hundreds were taking to the streets in protest marches calling for Troops Out of Northern Ireland, thousands were attending mass demonstrations called for by CND as well as attending public meetings where the Cruise missile question would be addressed.

Often at these meetings a copy of the banned BBC docu-drama The War Game would be shown, which though being a work of fiction was still the truest depiction there was available at the time of a what a nuclear attack upon Britain would look like. The fact that The War Game had never been shown on British television since being made in 1965 only added to its power as an effective propaganda tool for CND, helping to convince a huge number of people that Thatcher's nuclear sabre rattling was seriously insane.

Apart from depicting the horror of a nuclear bomb being dropped upon the south of England, it was incredibly realistic scenes such as looters being lined up against walls and being shot by British policemen armed with rifles that made The War Game so effectively shocking.

Incorporating vox-pop style interviews, scientific reports, official Civil Defence documents and dramatic 'pre-constructions' shot in newsreel-style black and white, the film was fully reminiscent of old World War Two footage; in particular scenes of cities such as Dresden, Nagasaki and Hiroshima after being destroyed.

Whilst it was a total flashback to the horrors of WW2, the film also served to catapult the viewer into the future where the idea that there might be survivors of a nuclear war seemed to be an even more terrifying prospect than total annihilation.

Condemnation of and objection to the nuclear arms race being waged was coming from all sections and all levels of society: from clergy and retired army generals to middle class housewives; from academics, Trade Unionists, and the unemployed, to teenage (increasingly black-clad) Punk Rockers and beyond. Or as Poison Girls had put it: "Housewives and prostitutes, plumbers in boiler suits, wild girls and criminals, liggers and layabouts, accountants in nylon shirts, feminists in floral skirts, astronauts and celibates, deejays and hypocrites, liars and lunatics, pimps and economists, royalty and communists, rioters and pacifists, visionaries with coloured hair, leather boys who just don't care, garter girls with time to spare, judges with prejudice, dissidents and anarchists, strikers and pickets, collectors of tickets, beggars and bankers, perjurers and men of law, smokers with heart disease, cleaners of lavatories, the old with their memories." Persons unknown, essentially.

That summer's Glastonbury Festival featuring among many others New Order, Hawkwind, Gong, Ginger Baker and Aswad had been organised primarily so as to be a benefit for CND, subsequently raising over £20,000 for the cause - the largest single contribution CND had ever received.

In London, a demonstration called for by CND attracted around 250,000 protesters whilst from Cardiff, in Wales, a relatively small group of 36 people calling themselves Women For Life On Earth set off on a protest march to Greenham Common with the intention of delivering a letter expressing their opposition to the site being used as a Cruise missile base.

After having their request for a meeting with the Base Commander ignored, the women set themselves down just outside the perimeter fence and set up camp. The women's camp immediately became a Peace Camp that unbeknown to the Base Commander and even to the women themselves would remain there for the next 19 years, becoming an extraordinarily powerful and extremely provocative symbol of resistance.

Zounds - The Curse of Zounds

ZOUNDS - THE CURSE OF ZOUNDS

It was obvious even by the cover of their Rough Trade label released début album, The Curse Of Zounds - the front depicting firemen aiming their hose at the Houses of Parliament as smoke engulfs Big Ben; to the back revealing their hose is not attached to a fire engine but to a petrol tanker - that there was much more to Zounds than at first met the eye.

Here was a band who were unique in a very subtle and very understated way, their apparent ordinariness masking a radicalism born of a very English imagination. With Crass, they shared a hope and a desire for a better world but whilst the forte of Crass was anger, the forte of Zounds was fear, as the first track on the album - with its cover designed by Clifford Harper (anarchist, illustrator, anarchist illustrator) - depicted perfectly:

"I'm frightened of the humans, I'm frightened of the stares, frightened of the poisons they pump into the air. Frightened of the chemicals they spray upon the land, frightened of the power they hold within their hands. I'm frightened of bureaucracy, I'm frightened of the law, frightened of the government and who it's working for. Frightened of the children who won't know how to cope with a world in rack and ruin from their technocratic dope."

Given the state of the nation and the political climate at the time, it was perfectly reasonable to be afraid. Very afraid. Who in their right mind wasn't frightened of nuclear war and scared of what politicians might be capable of? The Home Office on behalf of the government were, after all, responsible for the most bizarre public information pamphlets offering advice on how to survive a nuclear attack. Their instructions being to stockpile a bit of food, water and some warm clothing, then to build a makeshift shelter in the cupboard under the stairs. Just stay there for two weeks until the all-clear is given by the local council and then presumably emerge and be greeted with a cup of tea and a biscuit at the local community hall or other such building to be used as a gathering point. Services such as buses and trains may be disrupted.

Fright and anger were quite rational responses to this kind of delusory but very dangerous thinking. Anger, as demonstrated by Crass and later to be proclaimed by John Rotten/Lydon was an energy but fear as stated by Zounds was "a bum thing, a silly and a dumb thing. Fear can be the one thing that keeps us all apart."

What they were saying made sense. Fear was a form of social control. A tried and tested method of dividing and ruling a population. Fear of unemployment, of homelessness, hunger, crime, violence, damnation, nuclear Armageddon, etc, etc. Fear of 'the other'. Fear of one and other.

Fear was a weapon used to keep people in line and in place but to simply be aware of this was a step in the right direction toward further awareness and freedom. Highlighting this in a trilogy of songs linked together to form a mini opus, Zounds called out to the world: "The unfree child is full of woe, into the unfree adult he will grow. Have unfree children of his own, on and on and so it goes."

Caught in a perpetual cycle of repression, vocalist Steve Lake understood that his parents were actually his first oppressors but held no malice toward them as he also understood that they too were caught in the same cycle, as explained in the track My Mummy's Gone: "Now that I am older I know that you scarred me but I don't hold it against you though it damaged me sorely. I know that you're a victim just like me, you can feel the pressure just like me."

In the track Did He Jump Or Was He Pushed, a repressed upbringing be it socially or emotionally is taken to a possible logical conclusion where Steve sings: "Who was that on the window ledge? Did he jump or was he pushed? He left a note which no-one read, in desperate hand the note just said: Never turned my back on society, society turned its back on me. Never tried once to drop out, I just couldn't get in from the very start." Then in an echo of the Crass dictum that reality is an asylum, the track ends with the refrain: "All the world cannot be wrong, it must be me - I don't belong."

Could it be that there were more people feeling alienated than might actually care to admit it? Could it be that society was truly atomised, separated by degrees of fear?

According to Thatcher in her analysis of the summer's riots, all sense of community was lost - particularly within the inner cities - due to a culture of welfare arrangements which encouraged dependency and discouraged responsibility. Displaying her prejudices, Thatcher laid the blame firmly and unequivocally upon socialism for the demoralisation of communities by offering dependency instead of independence. The kind of independence promoted by Thatcher, however, simply meant a culture of selfishness and dog eat dog, pandering to some of the worst aspects of human nature.

Profit and profiteering was all. Anything without a monetary value was of no worth and merely surplus to requirement. To the conservative mind, wealth and ownership defined an individual and a society so deserved therefore to be protected by law, insurance, the gun, and ultimately The Bomb.

Those who could not achieve were simply 'the poor' and be they deserving or undeserving, they really had no-one to blame for their position but themselves. It was not the world that was wrong but the individual self.

The world as depicted by Zounds, however, was a world of ambiguity and dissatisfaction. A world where the "rain is flooding, the pavement cracks, headlines screaming 'Pay more tax'." A world where the news is "stranger than fiction," and where "the music is crap, that the radio plays." A world "choking with wires and plugs, strangled with fences and stuck with knives," where "everybody's looking for a little bit more."

This yearning for something other is explored to good effect in the track Dirty Squatters, where Steve Lake sings the song from the viewpoint of someone who has lived in the same street "for nearly fifteen years, lived here with my hopes, lived here with my fears. Paid my taxes, paid my bills, watched my money vanish in the council tills."

One day "some dirty squatters" move into his street "with their non-sexist haircuts, dirty feet. Their dogs, cats, political elite; they may have beds but they don't use sheets. Furnishing their houses from the contents of skips, things that decent people put on rubbish skips." He observes them as looking "quite harmless sitting out in the sun but I wouldn't let my daughter marry one. Oh my god, they're moving in next door! Is it for people like this that Winston won the war?"

Bemoaning his personal situation, he comes to see the squatters as being representative of some kind of an alternative: "Along come these scruffs with their education, their grand ideas and talk of corruption. My rent keeps rising, my job gets boring. If things get worse then I'm gonna have to join them."

The song ends with him doing just that: "Bought myself a lock and late tonight, under the cover of darkness if the moon's not bright. Getting out of here, moving next door, don't think I can take much more. Oh my god, I'm moving in next door!"

An alternative of any kind can very often and very easily be merely a different version of the same old thing with just a new set of different problems - as anyone who has had any experience of squatting, for example, would know. These contradictions are looked at in what is arguably the best song on the album - New Band - in which a yearning for something other is once again expressed:

"Been searching for something but I don't know what, been searching for a long, long time. Someone comes along and says 'this is it' but it will cost you, realise. Pay your money, try your luck, think you'll trust them one more time. But how long does it take to feel you're being ripped off? There's always something new to buy."

According to Zounds, alternatives of any kind within a capitalist system, particularly as promoted by the mainstream media are nothing more than new ways to make you spend. At the end of the day everything is a commodity to be either bought or sold. Be it good, bad, ethical or unethical, everything is a business and as Zounds point out in a more honest way than most, this even applies to music and bands:

"There's a new band every week, new ways to move your feet. New sounds to thrill your ears, same old chords dressed up weird. New attitudes, brand new stance, different steps but the same old dance. New ways but in the end it's just a new way to make you spend."

So did this mean that Zounds too were just another "new band" who in the end were "just a new way to make you spend"? By aligning themselves with Stonehenge and the free festival scene, along with supporting a variety of worthy causes through playing benefit gigs, it was apparent that Zounds weren't exactly going all out to court mainstream commercial success. Just like any other band, however, they were still releasing records that no matter how subversive they might be could still clearly be defined as 'product'.

Be it Abba or Crass, Boney M or Poison Girls, St Winifred Girls School Choir or Zounds, the exchange between producer and consumer remained the same no matter how expensive or how cheap the product might be. This was the bitter truth that Zounds were wrestling with and apart from not making records at all or making them and giving them away for free, there seemed to be no escape from it.

Caught in such a trap, the least any band could do in their songs was to impart something of worth or of value, or something they deemed to be of importance; which is exactly what Zounds do in the track Target: "The Americans are coming, they're bringing us their bombs to aim them at their enemies from our island home. Well, I don't want to die because of some mad President's whim. I don't want to be part of a war no-one can win."

The bombs being referred to, of course, were America's Cruise missiles, still bound for their bases in England and Europe despite an ever-growing opposition to which Zounds were adding their voice: "You're welcome here, Americans. We love you but not your bombs. And not your lies..."

The album ends with a track entitled Mr Disney, which itself ends with the words "radiation green!" being howled out, before the music morphs seamlessly into the guitar riff from the track War, the introductory song on Zounds' début EP Can't Cheat Karma, on Crass Records. The last words from Steve Lake on the album are indeed "War! War! War! War!", again taken directly from their début Can't Cheat Karma record.

The circle was complete.

From a hash-fuelled, post-hippy shambling band before being shaken down and fine-tuned by Crass, before setting off on their own trajectory; Zounds had ended up carving out an irrefutably, absolute classic album that would prove to be a milestone in the history of Anarcho Punk.

With Steve Lake's distinctive vocals backed by chorus-line-type chants, blown along by melodious, booming bass lines scribbled and skated over by electric guitar; all knitted together by the brilliant drumming of one Joseph Porter - The Curse Of Zounds would stand the test of time far, far better than most other albums of that same period.

The decision made by Crass to release on their label only one record by any given band and to then let them go their own way had proved to be a right one. If Zounds had stayed on Crass Records and not moved to Rough Trade then the resulting album would have been produced by Penny Rimbaud and come with a fold-out, black and white sleeve.

The result may well have been extremely interesting but it most certainly would not have been The Curse Of Zounds.

Discharge - Never Again

DISCHARGE - NEVER AGAIN

And then there was Never Again, the fourth single from Discharge, ripping through anything that might dare stand in its way. Built around an incredibly good guitar riff of Motorhead-sized proportions, fluid bass and frenzied drumming; vocalist Cal was once again serving up a vision of the horror of nuclear war along with a chorus so simple yet none more appropriate: "A blinding light, winds and firestorms, agonised crying. Unanswered cries of help, panic and desperation. Dazed and stricken survivors search for lost families. Choking dust, crazy with thirst, drinking from poisoned pools and streams. Never, never, never again. Never, never, never again."

Discharge, it seemed, could do no wrong.

Annie Anxiety - Barbed Wire Halo

ANNIE ANXIETY - BARBED WIRE HALO

Annie Anxiety, like Poison Girls and Flux Of Pink Indians was a staple part of the whole Crass live experience. Hailing originally from New York, she had forged a close relationship with Crass through having met them on their one and only short tour in America in the very early days of the band.

Annie was first and foremost a poetess and with the aid of backing tapes would regale a Crass audience with her poems but to say that Annie was a challenge is to put it lightly. A section of the audience attending a Crass gig, particularly those relatively new to Crass, would arrive expecting a Punk Rock blitzkrieg only to be met at first by a middle-aged woman fronting a weird, almost esoteric Punk band - in the form of Poison Girls - and then by a mad-eyed, pre-Goth chanteuse reciting strange poems full of cries and screams to the accompaniment of tuneless noises from a tape machine - Annie Anxiety.

The amount of times that Annie would suffer a hail of spit, beer and general abuse from an audience was almost tragic but by getting up on stage alone with just taped noise to accompany her, by staying true to her art and not courting popularity for the sake of it and for showing courage in the face of adversity, Annie would serve as an inspiration to others who wished also to go it alone.

Barbed Wire Halo was Annie's début record and was another beautifully designed release on the Crass label, the cover composed of very artistic, black and white photography by Eve Libertine. The actual two songs on the record, however, were 'difficult' to say the least and even though this may have meant they were simply ahead of their time, it still meant they failed to appeal to a good many people. Blitz or 4 Skins-type compositions they were most definitely not.

When appearing live, Annie was perplexing, beguiling, astounding and somewhat disturbing. Annie was different. She was a stranger in a strange land who instigated a confusion. She could scare, unsettle, disturb, entice, bewitch and bewilder all in the space of a single performance. There was no compromise. Dressed all in black, she certainly looked the part and fitted in perfectly with the whole Crass 'image', even having the slogans to match: 'Horror is a figment of our reality - Reality is a figment of our horror'. Musically, however, the sound collages she used as backing as created by Penny Rimbaud failed to do justice to her words and in a certain way did them an injustice. It was experimental but the experiment failed.

What she really needed was an entirely different musical collaborator and a different approach to presenting her poems.

In due course, however, this would come.

Blitz - All Out Attack

BLITZ -ALL OUT ATTACK

From a different corner of the country - New Mills, in Derbyshire - another even more stunning record appeared as if from nowhere that summer of '81 by a band called Blitz. Comprised of two skinheads and two Punk Rockers, Blitz were the living embodiment of unity between those two tribes; the only sartorial flaw in their make-up being that their lead guitarist sported a very un-Punk Rock moustache.

All Out Attack was the name given to their début EP, which was an extremely apt title considering the driving but very controlled wall of noise they were showcasing. Like a brilliant hybrid of all the best of the new Punk groups but with an added twist of a developed awareness of violence, Blitz were to have a relatively short lifespan but would prove to be a huge influence upon other Punk bands the world over.

Someone's Gonna Die was the song that in particular caught and captured the sense of mindless violence that at times seemed endemic throughout the country: "This is where the good times went, with his brains lying on the pavement. With a broken bottle in his hand and another in his back. Was it something that he said, or his football scarf now stained red? A broken bottle in his hand, he will never understand."

It's in the chorus, however, that the song is propelled from social observation to a rousing thing of simple but aggressively powerful and energised beauty: "Do you feel alright? Oi! Oi! Oi! Someone's gonna die tonight. Oi! Oi! Oi! Do you feel alright? Oi! Oi! Oi! The boys are out tonight."

Whether one liked it or not, this kind of music and this kind of subject matter was striking a chord at the time with a huge amount of young people, which (unfortunately?) is more that can be said about the next release on Crass Records...

4 Skins - One Law For Them

4 SKINS - ONE LAW FOR THEM

Charles and Di. "She is pure," said Di's father, implying a virgin was being supplied to the Royal Court. "Do you lover her?" asked a journalist of Charles. "Yes," he replied "Whatever that means."

The curious thing regarding the royal wedding celebration of 1981 was that there was really no visible objection to it from any quarter. In comparison, just the year previously in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, violent protests had broken out on the day of the Dutch Queen's coronation between squatters and police. Under the slogan 'No house, no coronation', the squatters and their various supporters had attempted to disrupt the proceedings, resulting in full-blown rioting.

At the time of the last major royal event in Britain (the Queen's silver jubilee in '77) the Sex Pistols had, of course, released God Save The Queen and famously sailed down the river Thames past Parliament on Jubilee night, playing said song. For their efforts, they could have (and should have, according to some people) been tried for treason.

Years later it would emerge from officially released government records that Thatcher had been under the impression that riots could indeed seriously disrupt the royal wedding, particularly following the riots in Toxteth, Moss Side, and Brixton. So great was her fears that she had seriously contemplated arming the police and making available army camps for the detention of the anticipated large numbers of arrested rioters.

The reality, however, was that as the country buckled under a media barrage of royal romance and patriotism, all was quiet - even on the Punk front. In fact, the best Punk broadsides that summer were emerging not from the politically conscious Crass camp but from the supposedly apolitical Oi! scene. One Law For Them, the début single from the 4 Skins, for example, being a record that can only be described as an utter classic.

Benefiting hugely from the patronage of Garry Bushell, the 4 Skins were one of the most prominent of Oi! bands, revelling in the imagery of skinhead menace. Though no strangers to accusations of condoning mindless violence, it was their involvement with the gig at the centre of the Southall riot that sealed their reputation and ultimately became their undoing.

Built on a bubbling bass line and chugging guitar chords, One Law For Them was a howl of objection to the unfairness within society: "One law for them - another law for us!" Judging by the picture on the cover of the record depicting a crowd of gentlemen in top hats and ladies in summer head wear at (what is probably) Royal Ascot, the "them" in question is obviously the rich, upper class.

This was one of the first times that class division and inequality had been presented so well on a Punk Rock record. However, whilst the "us" was obviously the (probably white) working class, on close listening to the lyrics, the "them" could just as easily be interpreted to mean the rioters of Brixton and Southall - black and Asian youth, in other words.

This ambiguity was quite typical of Oi! and was the very thing that put paid to it being in any way progressive. For all that, One Law For Them was still a very good record and should be acknowledged (if only for the record's sleeve itself) for putting forward class as an issue within British society.

Summer of '81 - Babylon's Burning

SUMMER OF '81 - BABYLON'S BURNING

That week of July 1981 something very strange and bewildering was happening to Britain that was taking everybody by surprise. Nobody had foreseen riots of this nature occurring and nobody - particularly within politics - could offer any adequate explanation for them.

The inner cities had become so marginalised that for any of the major political parties or even any of the minor ones they were off the radar and weren't figuring in any of their visions. The revolutionary Left in particular was failing spectacularly to seize the moment and instead were standing idly by, at best simply seeing 'police brutality' as an issue to contend with. Stuck in a Marxist mindset of power being held only in a Union and on the shop floor - exercised by striking - the Left appeared oblivious to the power held within a community - exercised by rioting.

As to be expected, however, a chorus of voices on the Right ranging from Conservative MPs, newspaper columnists and Chief Constables (in particular Manchester's James Anderton) saw the riots as being politically motivated and nothing but; without hesitation casting blame upon the Communist Tendency, the Labour Party Young Socialists, the Militant Tendency, and even the leader of the Greater London Council, Ken Livingstone.

Perhaps Ken Livingstone was one of the four masked motorcyclists as reported in the Daily Mail that were being hunted by Special Branch - suspected of being responsible for fermenting the riots? If so, then Ken and his gang were being mighty busy and travelling a lot of miles for as soon as the rioting came to an end in Moss Side, Manchester; further rioting, looting, burning and mass confrontations with the police suddenly erupted in towns and cities all around the country.

In the Hyson Green area of Nottingham, hundreds of youths attacked police, fire-bombed vehicles and looted shops. "A man distributing leaflets calling for the downfall of 'Babylon' was arrested and it kicked off," said a former local police officer. "He and the arresting officer went through a shop window and that was it, within half an hour it was bedlam. We were being attacked with bottles, poles, concrete blocks, anything and everything."

In Sheffield a 500 strong crowd charged through the streets shouting "Brixton! Brixton!" There were 20 arrests and 14 police officers injured, with offices inside the Town Hall being damaged and the trees outside set alight.

In the Handsworth area of Birmingham there were 121 arrests and 40 police officers injured, with widespread damage being caused to property.

In Hull, 300 youths smashed windows and shops in the city centre.

Rioting was spreading like wildfire with further disorder erupting in Reading, Wolverhampton, Hull, Preston, Slough, Yorkshire, Bradford, Halifax, the Chapeltown area of Leeds, Huddersfield, Gloucestershire, Blackburn, Blackpool, Fleetwood, Highfields in Leicester, Southampton, Portsmouth, Luton, Derby, High Wycombe, Birkenhead, Aldershot, Chester, Knaresborough, Stockport, Maidstone, Crewe, as well as Bristol, Brixton and Southall again.

The sheer breadth and scale of the rioting was astounding.

England was in flames.

Babylon was burning.

Five years after the release of the Sex Pistols' début broadcast to the nation, the spirit of Anarchy In The UK was being made flesh through mass, violent attacks upon authority. Five years after John Rotten's brilliantly searing pronouncement of the word 'Destroy', riding out on an electric hurricane of scorching feedback, the country appeared to be finally doing as Rotten had bid.

"You have to destroy in order to create," the Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren had declared in response to his protégées being criticised for their destructive behaviour "You have to break it down and build it up again in a different form."

To give him his due, for a renowned bullshitter this was one of a number of statements McLaren made that actually rang true. This wasn't the first time, however, that the idea of the destructive urge being a creative urge had been cited, most notably having first been made years before by Russian arch godfather of anarchism, Mikhail Bakunin, from whom McLaren would have taken it.

Destruction could indeed be a potentially creative force due simply to the fact that it could open up and make way for any number of new possibilities, or at the very least create an atmosphere for change. In the case of the inner city rioters of that summer of 1981, the destruction being wrought was both an actual and symbolic attack upon the order of things. Violent assaults upon the police were violent assaults upon authority. Whether the rioters were conscious of it or not, chasing the police from the streets meant ridding the streets of State authority and State control.

The immediate effect of this, of course, meant the opportunity to loot but beyond this the further possibilities were potentially huge and far-reaching.

Could a community actually function properly without a police presence? Would the weaker and minority members of that community be protected? Would all the essential services be able still to operate as normal? Could this be a first step toward a genuinely free and progressive society?

If the answer to all this was 'Yes', then what would that mean for the structure of power within society? Could the world, in effect, be turned upside down?

Interestingly, during that same week of rioting, Crass had been touring and though encountering violence at their gigs had become nothing unusual, it was at a gig in Perth, in Scotland, that the violence appeared to come to a head. Years later, a recording of this particular gig would be released as a live album entitled You'll Ruin It For Everyone, capturing Penny Rimbaud arguing from the stage with one of the brawling audience members: "If you want anarchy, mate, go out on the street and start it. We're in here for our form of anarchy, you go outside for your form of anarchy - now fuck off out of it! Just look at what happened in London last night, mate, if you want anarchy and just you wait for it to come to you - and then you'll learn a little bit of what the word means, wise guy. Mouth and trousers, mate, will get you nowhere so fuck off out of it! Balls, you twat!"

Was Penny condemning the rioting? Was he suggesting a riot was something to be feared? Were Crass possibly out of touch with the inner cities when it came to the question of rioting? Or as pacifists, were they simply unhappy with the violence being unleashed? For the first time, Crass's position seemed suddenly to be quite ambiguous.

Margaret Thatcher, on the other hand, whilst insisting there was no excuse for the rioting (particularly as there was plenty of worthwhile work in local communities for wayward youths to expend their energies upon such as cutting grass and picking up litter) was shrewd enough to understand that this was a blatant display of anti-authoritarianism born from a breakdown in family values and a lack of respect for law and order.

Whether or not unemployment was a contributing factor to family breakdown was a debate for the sociologists but in pinpointing lack of discipline and lack of respect for law and order, Thatcher was perfectly correct. If there was any respect for the police then they wouldn't be getting bombarded with bricks and bottles. Obviously.

Further to this, Thatcher was also perfectly correct in talking of a lack of respect for authority in all its forms - in the home, the school, the church and the State. The difference being that for some this was a rather healthy thing but for Thatcher and her ilk it was the end of civilisation as they knew it.

As towns and cities throughout the country burned and tension everywhere escalated, police in Brixton once again displayed the by now expected stupidity from them by staging a series of raids upon premises in Railton Road, scene of the riot earlier in the year. Supposedly in search of caches of petrol bombs, police armed with axes and crowbars smashed their way into properties, causing widespread and wanton damage. No petrol bombs were found but unsurprisingly the result was the area once again erupting into rioting.

Then just as the spell of nationwide civil disorder had suddenly started, so did it suddenly stop. It was almost as though the rioters - wary of what exactly they were unleashing - were withdrawing to their homes to consider their next move. Only there wasn't a next move.

The rioters had raised their fists and had let out a collective roar, giving the police a good hiding and sending a shudder of fear down the spine of middle England. What was left was a wake of blustering conservative MPs and chiefs of police calling for detention camps, the return of the Riot Act, and the re-introduction of national service. Perhaps for most rioters this was enough?

In Liverpool, however, having suffered a high number of injuries and much humiliation, the police there were seemingly out for revenge as they continuously stopped and harassed youths for weeks after - particularly black youths. Lo and behold, rioting once again broke out in the Toxteth area though this time with a far deadlier and tragic result than previously.

Borrowing the tactics used to such effect in Moss Side, chief constable Kenneth Oxford ordered that police vans drive straight at the crowds so as to cause them to scatter. Anyone within the riot zone would have the very simple choices of dispersing, being arrested, or being hit by a police van. Kenneth Oxford had made the decision weeks earlier to use tear gas upon crowds of people (a decision that turned out to be an entirely illegal one), this time round he was following the example of Manchester's James Anderton and declaring war.

Although the Toxteth rioters had caused massive damage to property and countless injuries to police officers, they hadn't actually killed anyone. By following Kenneth Oxford's orders, the Merseyside police did.

David Moore, a twenty-three year old disabled man was struck by a police van and killed, his death marking the end of that summer's riots but also signalling something far more complex.

Thousands of different people had rioted that month for a thousand different reasons though between them all was a shared thread of unspoken commonality. Through the act of rioting they had all - every single one of them and if only for a moment - thrown off the yoke of ingrained subservience to a society and ultimately a world not of their making and become alive. They had breached a series of invisible but very real walls both within and without and entered into what Thatcher described as "a virtual saturnalia" but what could also be described as a realm of unadulterated freedom.

Rioting had proved to be a way of glimpsing and actually touching upon this freedom that throughout history the greatest of philosophers had agonised over. Just as Joe Strummer had stated years before in White Riot, rioting was potentially a way forward: "Are you taking over, or are you taking orders? Are you going backwards, or are you going forwards?" Remember?

A riot was not to be feared but applauded. It was a means to an end. A ticket to ride. From riot to...? Where? Insurrection? Revolution? Who knew? Who could say? But wherever it was, it was a place that those in authority wished to prevent people from reaching.

So it came to pass that the rioters of Toxteth were met by those intent on preserving the status quo at whatever cost and by any means necessary. The police were willing to use the most extreme measures - firstly tear gas, then threat of death, then actual murder - to have people stay in line and for things to stay exactly as they were.

David Moore paid with his life for the police to show that ultimately they would not buckle or allow the rioters to win and from that point on, England changed. The gloves were off. It was different rules now. The United Kingdom became polarised and the divisions within society became stark and clear, no better exemplified than by the royal wedding between Prince Charles Windsor and Diana Spencer held the very next day after David Moore's death.

And of the two events, it was the least important one, of course, that garnered all the attention...

The Moss Side Riot

THE MOSS SIDE RIOT

Centering initially on an area around a local after-hours drinking club called The Nile, the rioting in Moss Side, Manchester, started with shops being bricked and set alight. It wasn't, however, done on a whim. Just as in other cities around the UK, tension had been simmering within the local community for some time, stoked by high unemployment and police hostility. This sudden outburst of disorder was put down relatively quickly by the police but the smell of burning buildings and the noise of the rioting acted as a message that drifted far and wide. Everyone knew that further trouble was brewing and in anticipation of more potential disorder the shopping centre was closed down earlier than normal the next day.

In a hastily convened meeting between community leaders and police, it was decided to keep the police presence to a minimum so as not to cause unnecessary antagonism and to enable community leaders to maintain calm within their communities. The fallacy of 'community leaders' was immediately exposed that night, however, when a crowd reported to be a thousand strong made their way to the local police station with the intention of razing it to the ground.

As the station was bombarded with bricks and bottles, smashing all the windows and destroying the parked-up police cars, the officers sheltering inside frantically called for help. A fleet of police vans duly raced to the scene causing the mob to abandon their goal though by then the fuse had irretrievably been lit and everyone simply headed back into the centre where the will to riot continued.

Shops were attacked and looted, fires started and cars overturned as police desperately attempted to contain the rioting. The disorder continued throughout the night before slowly ebbing away by dawn as the tired rioters withdrew to their homes.

Incensed at the attack upon one of his police stations and seeing the rioting as "close to anarchy", Manchester's chief constable James Anderton reversed his 'softly, softly' approach and instead went on the attack himself, the next day practically declaring war upon the rioters.

Adopting tactics tried and tested by the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Northern Ireland, police vans with their back doors open charged directly at the crowds causing them to disperse in all directions. Officers then jumped from the vans, hitting out and arresting any stragglers. The vans then continued through Moss Side, with officers leaning out and shouting abuse at youths and inviting them to fight. Strangely, one of the chants police were later accused of making towards black youths was "Nigger, nigger, nigger - Oi, oi, oi!".

From skinheads in Southall to police in Moss Side, it seemed to be just a very small leap.

Though criticised as a being a police riot, the uncompromising tactics brought an end to the disturbances and apart from another attempted, small-scale attack upon the same police station again the next day which was repelled by a superior force of police, the Moss Side riots came to an end.

The Toxteth Riot

THE TOXTETH RIOT

By sheer coincidence (or perhaps not - who knows?) that very same night as Southall in London burned, a black youth on a motorbike was being chased by police through the streets of Toxteth, in Liverpool. After falling from the bike, a crowd of other black youths grabbed and pulled him away before he could be arrested. A stand off between the youths and the police ensued, escalating into hand-to-hand fighting and brick throwing that went on for more than two hours into the night before ebbing away.

The following evening an anonymous phone call to the police reporting a stolen car lured officers back into Toxteth where they were greeted by a hail of bricks and bottles. Vans of police sped to the scene as back-up only to met by more missiles along with petrol bombs thrown by masked youths.

As in Bristol and Brixton, cars were overturned and set ablaze as shops were burned and looted. The violence raged throughout the night only to be finally quelled early the following morning by large numbers of police charging en masse at the rioters with their batons flailing.

The events of these two nights, however, were only really a warm up as the word quickly spread and by the next evening there were even more people willing, able and up for a riot.

That night, all hell broke loose.

As rioting once again erupted in Toxteth, just about every kind of missile imaginable was rained down upon the police lines, thrown by hundreds of youths both black and white.

Spiked railing posts and scaffolding poles were hurled like javelins and thrust at the police riot shields. Stolen and hi-jacked milk floats, cars, a fire engine and even a cement mixer were driven straight at the police. A fire hose being used against the rioters by the police was seized and turned back upon the officers themselves. Snatched riot shields and police helmets were held aloft like trophies. The local Liverpool establishment's private drinking club, frequented by top solicitors and bankers of the city was razed to the ground. 
"Cars had their accelerator pedals tied down, the cars set on fire, then driven straight at the police lines," recalled a former police officer "I remember javelins being thrown. I remember a school being broken into, and javelins being taken out of the school sports cupboard and being thrown at the police cars."

Faced with such a ferocious onslaught, the police once again - as in Bristol - decided to retreat for their own safety and in doing so abandoned the area to the mob. The situation as to be expected was taken full advantage of as whole families from very young children to grandparents joined in the free-for-all, stripping the shops of anything that could be carried away.

Police reinforcements from all the neighbouring counties were called in as support but still the rioting continued and buildings burned. Finally, recognising the riot was totally out of control and that his men were continuing to be seriously injured, Merseyside's chief constable Kenneth Oxford made a hugely controversial and historic decision: for the first time on mainland Britain, CS teargas would be used against crowds of people.

As fire threatened to engulf a local geriatric hospital, rioters pulled back to allow the building to be safely evacuated. Taking advantage of this sudden lull in the rioting, Kenneth Oxford called forward his police marksmen who immediately positioned themselves to shoot a volley of CS gas cannisters at the crowds.

The introduction of this new weapon had the immediate and desired effect of scattering the rioters, bringing an end to a riot of such unprecedented scale that it left Liverpool city council in a state of fright and requesting that troops be put on standby in case of further trouble. The request was denied but sure enough, the very next day rioting kicked off once again in the same area only to be put down quickly by the police in a massive show of strength.

Straightaway, arguments flew, accusations made and blame cast as to what was the cause of the Toxteth riots. To the Labour Opposition and general critics of the Conservative government it was proof that Thatcher's economic policies were causing social breakdown and violence. For some, high unemployment was to blame while others saw the riots as a reaction to police brutality and racial discrimination. Echoing the aftermath of the Brixton riot, the police suggested the Toxteth riots may well have been orchestrated by outsiders, conspirators and agitators though once again no actual proof was proffered to substantiate this.

"We were set up." said Kenneth Oxford "I blame a small group of criminal hooligans who were hell-bent to provoke the police into a situation that would give them an opportunity to attack what is visibly a symbol of authority."

All well and good but then, before the dust had even settled in Merseyside and to the shock and bewilderment of many, Moss Side in Manchester suddenly erupted into rioting too...