Conflict - Live At Centro Iberico

CONFLICT - LIVE AT CENTRO IBERICO

Slipping into a position that they were destined to maintain for many a year by continuing to give succour to the Anarcho Punk scene was Conflict, whose next record release was the 7" EP Live At Centro Iberico.

Released on the Poison Girls' XNTrix label, it contained six songs of fair to medium quality, acting primarily as a document of Conflict playing live during that period. Being a live recording, justice wasn't really being done to the songs but served instead as a teaser for what Conflict might actually be capable of producing. Of greater interest was the fact that the recording was taken from a gig at the Centro Iberico, an old school building in West London that had been taken over and squatted by Spanish anarchists.

All the money that had been made from the Crass/Poison Girls split single, Bloody Revolutions/Persons Unknown, had been put toward the setting up of an anarchist center in London. A place where anarchists, Punks and anarchist Punks could go 'to drink a cuppa and meet people of possibly similar views'. According to the sleeve notes on Bloody Revolutions, the aims of the center were both political and social. The political aim being to make anarchist literature and ideas more easily available; the social aim being to offer a meeting place for people interested in anarchy and its various outlets, as in music, etc.

True to the word of all involved, the center was opened in an old warehouse in Wapping, East London, but after just a year the project folded. In the introduction to the Shock Slogans booklet that came with Christ - The Album, an update regarding the center was printed:

'The Anarchy Center closed down after a year in which, apart from some very good gigs, very little happened. The general feeling is that we were ripped off and that a lot of the money that we, Poison Girls and many others put into the center was wasted'.

In this instance, it seemed, the reality fell short of the idea.

After the closure of the Anarchy Center, the people who had been putting on the gigs there moved operations to the Centro Iberico where, under the umbrella of the Spanish anarchists along with The Mob and their entourage a free, autonomous venue was established.

Sometimes, it seemed, the reality could match the idea.

Britain was being a bit slow in catching up with other European countries where squatted, autonomous venues were widespread but through the persistence and hard work of a small number of people, the situation was slowly but surely changing, ably supported by a plethora of bands - Conflict being one of them.