Crass - Rival Tribal Rebel Revel

CRASS - RIVAL TRIBAL REBEL REVEL

Britain: 1980. On all levels - politically, socially, economically, culturally - the country is fragmenting and splintering into various divisions and subdivisions. Whether through choice or not, everything and everyone is adjusting to the effects of the policies being wrought by the Thatcher government.

Unemployment is rising drastically, hitting the two million mark and continuing to climb, creating obvious and huge gulfs between those in and those out of work. We are witnessing the birth of a new super-rich and a newly expanding underclass.

Inflation is soaring as recession deepens. There is talk and a fear of nuclear war. The virtues and values of middle England are being extolled as the be-all and end-all, leaving no room for any other course even though there are plenty - even within the Thatcher government itself - who are expressing concern over the way things are going.

Addressing her critics, Thatcher famously quips "You turn if you want to. The lady is not for turning", indirectly laying down a challenge to those who might dare question her mandate.

On the streets there is a simmering frustration as tempers flare and patience thins leading to eruptions of violence both mindless and calculated. Fighting - particularly emanating from skinheads, it must be said - is transferring from the football terraces to gigs as though it was a new fashion. Bands attracting large skinhead audiences such as Sham 69 are regularly having their concerts interrupted and ruined by those proclaiming allegiance to the British Movement or the National Front but it isn't just ending there at such predictable gigs. The UK Subs, the Slits, Adam And The Ants, Bauhaus, even Toyah - in fact any gig that skinheads are attending has the potential to involve a brawl of some sort.

For a band espousing pacifism, Crass too are attracting an unusually high amount of trouble at their gigs that for some of their members (as well as for a lot of their audience) must be quite shocking. What possibly isn't helping matters is that Crass are making no distinction between mindless violence and politically motivated violence, insisting instead that violence is violence is violence.

For Crass, things had come to a head the previous year at a gig in London, at the Conway Hall, where fighting between skinheads and anti-fascists had exploded into a virtual bloodbath. The skinheads who had been terrorising Punk gigs for months had been met head-on by future Class War founding member Martin Wright and his friends who had meted out a lesson in extreme violence that the skinheads would never forget. Crass, however, had been left appalled at the sight of the carnage and condemned Martin and his friends for attacking those who had made a hobby of attacking Crass fans, even having done so on that very same evening.

Addressing this issue of violence, Crass release a free, single-sided flexi-disc through Toxic Grafity fanzine entitled Rival Tribal Rebel Revel. Incorporating a healthy dose of humour into the song by including mock pre-punch up ad-libbing and plenty of 'Oi! Oi!' chants, the seriousness of the subject is nonetheless not diverted from: "They can stand on their corner with their violence and their hate, stand there and fester til they've left it too late to realise it's themselves they've put their on the spot, cos they've wasted the one and only life that they've got. Tribal wars are waging, everyone's acting out bad parts. Hey there big man take a look at yourself, it's in the mirror that the real war starts."

The inclusion of the flexi-disc leads to this particular issue of Toxic Grafity selling upwards of 10,000 copies, making it one of the biggest selling zines ever. For all that, the reaction of Crass to the violence of the skinheads and to the counter-violence of the anti-fascists reveals a crack in their armour that's rather similar to the one Garry Bushell highlighted when pulling them up on the issue of class. The pacifist vision Crass are espousing is highly commendable but in the face of continuous intimidation and physical violence where is it getting them and more importantly, where is it getting their audience? Rigid adherence to pacifism when aligned with anarchism is serving as an open invite to the bullies of the Far Right to move in and throw their weight around. It's idealistic but it isn't ideal. On the night of the Conway Hall gig, the counter-violence from Martin Wright and his friends served as an immediate answer to that bullying and arguably, it was an effective tactic. From defensive to offensive. Yes, the violence was appalling but at the same time it was also very satisfying to see the skinhead bullies get their comeuppance.

Yes, these are interesting times indeed and everyone - the Left, the Right, the Anarcho Punk audience and even Crass themselves - is on a learning curve. These are days of extremities, be it within mainstream politics with the Thatcher agenda or out on the fringes with the British Movement and the Socialist Workers Party. Crass, their audience and their fellow travellers are holding the middle ground but for how much longer?

"They won't give up their Bomb because we ask nicely," Crass had said on Nagasaki Nightmare. In the same light regarding skinhead and Far Right violence they could just as equally say 'They won't stop beating us up at gigs because we ask nicely'.

"It's in the mirror that the real war starts," Crass were saying on Rival Tribal Rebel Revel and they weren't wrong. Some serious soul searching needed doing and some serious questions needed asking because not only were these interesting times but they were extremely dangerous ones also.