Crucifix - Dehumanization

CRUCIFIX - DEHUMANIZATION

When the propensity for independence was combined with other influences such as American or even Cambodian cultures the results could often be mightily interesting, a case in point being Anarcho Punk band Crucifix, whose début album entitled Dehumanization was released on the Corpus Christi label.

With lead vocals by Cambodian immigrant Sothira Pheng, Crucifix were from California and were proof positive of the global reach of Crass. The music Crucifix produced was adrenalin-pumped, American Hardcore-style Punk mixed with lashings of Discharge that didn't deviate in any way from a full-frontal assault approach. Focussing almost entirely on the subject of war and a desire for world peace, their scope might not have been anything startlingly original for an Anarcho Punk band but the fact that they were full-on, spiky-topped Punk Rockers dressed in black based in sunny California made them uniquely unusual.

In amongst their songs of war and peace there were also references to Sothira Pheng's family history in Cambodia where just a few years earlier Pol Pot's Year Zero program had wrought such horrific devastation. It could almost have been anticipated that at some point Cambodia and Punk Rock would collide as there had always been a slender link between the two. From The Clash referring to Cambodia in I'm So Bored With The USA, to the Dead Kennedys singing about needing a holiday there, to Crass and a proportion of their audience dressed in black rags and black army fatigues looking like they had just stepped straight out of the jungles of Laos.

And who else would be better placed to truly understand the closing line of Crass's Bloody Revolutions - “the truth of revolution, brother, is Year Zero” - than a Cambodian?

Crucifix were a strange flower, born from fragile seeds blown on breezes from different corners of the world. The strange fruit they bore was their album, Dehumanization, that whilst not being to everyone's taste was still an enticing concoction that stood as an example of multi-cultural cross-pollination, genetically enhanced by fine and noble moral and political ethics.

The Thatchergate Tapes

THE THATCHERGATE TAPES

There are, of course, a multitude of ways to “hit back” as Conflict had put it and Crass more than most were pretty adept at it. Behind their public persona they had always been busy beavering away at various illicit activities that by some might have been called seditionary, and in January of 1984 they were exposed by The Observer newspaper for one such activity.

A tape had turned up in America of what was purportedly a crossed-line telephone conversation between Thatcher and Reagan discussing the sinking of The Belgrano and The Sheffield in the Falklands war, along with the plan to sacrifice Europe in the event of a nuclear war. The tape had fallen into the hands of the US State Department who whilst declaring it to be fake were attributing its production to the KGB. According to the Sunday Times newspaper who had also picked up on the story, it was 'evidence of an increasingly sophisticated Russian disinformation campaign'.

For some unexplained reason the Observer newspaper came knocking at Crass's door asking if they knew anything about it and after an initial denial Crass held up their hands and admitted that yes, the tape had been made by them.

The world's media picked up on the story and suddenly everyone wanted to interview these Punk Rockers from England who had fooled the CIA. Expecting in all likelihood a bunch of stereotypical, spotty Sid Vicious types, what they got instead was articulate, self-styled anarchists able to discuss at length the issues that had been raised in the tape.

Crass had hit back by producing what was essentially an amateur, home-made cassette tape of Thatcher and Reagan talking; cut up and rearranged to produce a made-up telephone conversation. They were then given the opportunity to hit back even harder by engaging with news organisations in America, Europe and Japan, and getting subjects into the public domain that hitherto had hardly been given a mention. For years Crass had shunned the mainstream music press and declined interviews with the various music papers but when it came to being able to talk to other mainstream media organisations about things other than music they readily took up the offers.

These were pre-Internet days and at that time music was an incredibly powerful medium for communication and one of the very few forms that could be in the control of those actually producing it. Retaining control of music and the various cultures from which it sprang meant autonomy and freedom of expression, something the Anarcho groups seemed to understand more than most, hence their jealous protection of it. As Flux Of Pink Indians had put it: “Punk belongs to the Punks not the business men. They need us, we don't need them. Punk will never be dead as long as some of us refuse to be led.”

Conflict also understood how precious it was as expressed in a short essay on the back cover of The Serenade Is Dead: 'Punk is not a business, it meant and still means an alternative to all the shit tradition that gets thrown at us. A way of saying 'No' to all the false morals that oppress us. It was and still is the only serious threat to the status quo of the music business. Punk is about making your own rules and doing your own thing. Not about making some pimp shop owner rich.

Punk is still our movement, we can put right was is wrong by learning to say 'No, we're right, you're wrong'. Fuck their fucking future it means oppression, war and hate. It's time to change the tables around and recreate the State.'

For anyone wanting to change the world, communication was key but it wasn't just a matter of what was said that was important but how it was said. Revolutionary and radical ideas in lyrics were all well and good but no matter how well-intentioned the protagonist might be, if those ideas were being delivered via a major record company then the bottom line was that those ideas were products and the sole point of them being sold by that company was to turn a profit.

“CBS promote The Clash but it ain't for revolution it's just for cash,” as Crass had put it. The Clash's reason for signing to CBS, according to Joe Strummer, was due to wanting as many people as possible to be able to hear them which was understandable but did this mean integrity counted for nothing? Did integrity have to be the first thing jettisoned in that bid to be heard?

“Punk died the day The Clash signed to CBS,” said Mark Perry and he was right. The Clash had been in such a good position in their early days that potentially they could have broken the back of the corporate music business had they chosen to remain independent of it. They could have if they had so wished sold their records from backs of lorries, according to Mark Perry again, and their fans would have lapped them up.

More realistically, rather than from backs of lorries there were enough small record shops opening up at that time to make the need for help from a major label to sell records redundant. Four years later in their song Hitsville UK from their Sandanista album, The Clash would sing the praises of the various independent labels (Small Wonder – the first home of Crass and Poison Girls, of course – being one of them) but by then it was too late.

If only The Clash had remained independent, what an escalation in the Punk wars it would have caused! Their début album would still have been made but it would have been far more profound, like a Feeding Of The 5000 for the '77 generation. Give 'Em Enough Rope would have been far different and far better, and as for London Calling who could possibly imagine how it might have been? 

If only, if only...

If it's true that like calls to like and threats are replicated by examples then the influence of The Clash was entirely predictable. They would encourage bands to form but then those bands would simply follow The Clash's lead and try to get signed-up by a major record label, subsequently jettisoning their independence and ensuring the cycle remained unbroken.

The influence of a band like Crass on the other hand was entirely unpredictable simply by them encouraging independence, which obviously opened up the potential for all kinds of independent thought and action.

Or that was the theory, at least...

Conflict - The Serenade Is Dead

CONFLICT - THE SERENADE IS DEAD

Having already released the Icons Of Filth demo tape on their Mortarhate label, Conflict's first venture into releasing vinyl was a 7” record from themselves entitled The Serenade Is Dead. Conflict had always been viewed as a good band and were always a ferocious proposition when playing live but nobody could have foreseen the sheer power of their début record on their own label.

Combining the best of The Clash, Stiff Little Fingers, Crass and themselves, The Serenade Is Dead was like a flower in full bloom. Underpinned by a rumbling bass line, its level of production gave it a thickness and weight that had often been missing from other Anarcho Punk releases, raising what was already a fully realised combination of the personal and the political into a freeform Punk ballad of epic proportions.

To the pounding of drums and a storm of guitars, Colin Jerwood went from describing love forlorn to contemplating god, the system, the threat of war, regret, and the need for unity; arriving at a summary of the state of the Anarcho Punk movement: “The system still stands strong as our movement starts to crumble, the pressure we once held has just turned to a rumble. They've got us where they want us and we all accept that, well don't you think it's time we started to HIT BACK? They ARE the enemy, they want a rope around your neck and if they will go that far then what the fuck is next?”

There are occasions in time when it is the perfectly right conditions and the perfectly right moment to take an action, ask a question or to make a statement; occasions when any of these things will have the most impact. For Conflict, such an occasion was at the start of 1984 when George Orwell's prophetic new year lay ahead and all the very real political problems and objectives of the day were clearly in view.

The forces of the conservative Right were on the march and it was they who were calling the shots. It was they who were on the attack and it was they who were out to quash all their ideological enemies. Something needed to be done to halt the drift towards their world view being fully realised and it was plain to see at that point that peaceful protest was insufficient.

For Conflict – one of the most prominent of Anarcho Punk bands – to ask whether it was “time we started to hit back” was exactly the right thing to do and the fact that their question was being delivered over one of the most powerful and accessible Anarcho Punk Rock compositions to date made it all the more effective and all the more potent.

The Serenade Is Dead was the signal that Anarcho Punk was about to turn more militant. Pacifism had been tried and tested but was now no longer going to be used as a convenient excuse for not moving things forward. From peaceful protest there would now be a lot more active resistance and Conflict would be the prime cheerleaders for it.

'Together we can turn the impossible dream into reality' they declared, and like Crass they sounded mightily convincing. Conflict were proletarian exponents of that impossible dream. Proletarian exponents of an alternative culture that up against the cruel hardness of Thatcherism and the predicted gloom of 1984 were offering much needed energy, enthusiasm, positivity – and hope.

1984

Welcome to 1984

George Orwell was 46 years old when he wrote 1984 and passed away six months after its publication so never witnessed the cultural impact the book would have. His vision of the future as depicted in his novel was both logical and plausible, and if nothing else served as a warning of what could so easily be in regard to the dangers of totalitarianism, surveillance and the distortion of language.

'If you want a vision of the future,' Orwell wrote 'then imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.'

But oh, to be content with that vision! Particularly if the boot was a soft, velvety one rather than steel toe-capped. If only everyone could be content in being ruled by an iron fist, watched over by CCTV and fed a constant diet of bullshit? To be content with eating at McDonalds, watching mindless television game shows and reading The Sun? What a wonderful world it might be?

Gladly, however, there were still some people who wanted more than “the shit they get, the shit they get, the shit they get.” Gladly, there were still some people who wanted something other that they could call their own which wasn't “a Ford Cortina or a mortgage on a home.”

In California Uber Alles, Dead Kennedys vocalist Jello Biafra had welcomed his listeners to 1984 by asking them if they were ready for the Third World War? In 1977 on the B-side of White Riot by The Clash, Joe Strummer had counted down the years and on reaching 1984 had let out a loud gasp. Crass, on the other hand, had counted down to it by cataloguing each release on their label with numbers indicating how many years it was before 1984.

Orwell had created a sense of foreboding around his chosen year that had entered all aspects of culture, Punk being no exception. Many of his terms and slogans from the book had also entered into common language whilst his principle predictions remained standing as warning signs of unparalleled bleakness, forever struggling with the power of Newspeak whereby coercion into that bleakness was presented as free choice and that bleakness even presented as sunshine.

'If there is hope, it lies in the proles,' Orwell had wrote and indeed this had always been the case and would forever remain so but might hope also lay somewhere else too? In the creation of alternative cultures, perhaps? Freethinking, anarchist-based cultures where the participation and input of proletariats was a prerequisite?

Punk had offered hope but its initial vanguard had quickly been bought out and the creativity and destruction it had engendered had been recuperated. From out of the wreckage Crass had emerged, offering fresh hope to a jilted generation and spawning additional hope in the form of Anarcho Punk but now it was 1984 was this still the case? Did Anarcho Punk still have anything to offer apart from Punk Rock? If Stop The City was anything to go by then the answer was a most definite 'Yes' but was Anarcho Punk enough? Could the momentum of the Anarcho Punk movement be maintained? Could it be advanced?

Crass may have started to have their doubts but if Conflict had anything to do with it then the answer again was a most definite 'Yes'...

MDC - Multi-Death Corporations

MDC – MULTI-DEATH CORPORATIONS

Just in time to finish off 1983 with a glimmer of light at the end of an ever-darkening tunnel, one last great record was released on the Crass label. Multi-Death Corporations by MDC was a 4-track EP that had originally been released in America on the band's own R Radical label.

Based in San Francisco, MDC were leading members of the burgeoning American Hardcore Punk scene who had already produced a classic 7” single (under their original name of the Stains) called John Wayne Was A Nazi, released a seminal début album entitled Millions Of Dead Cops, toured the length and breadth of America, and played support to the Dead Kennedys on their first tour of Europe.

Taking it easy they were not.

The Multi-Death Corporations EP came wrapped in a typical Crass-style, black and white, fold out sleeve; the difference between this one and all the others, however, being in how graphic the writing was, particularly in the descriptions of the torture and atrocities committed in El Salvador by US-sponsored and trained government troops. And rather than any Gee Vaucher-style photomontage art on the poster side of the sleeve there was instead a large, graphic and repulsive photograph of two dead victims of those same troops, their faces hideously burnt away by acid.

Ronald Reagan had a lot to answer for.

Musically, MDC were an uncompromising aural assault upon the listener, sounding like a large box of metal objects and broken glass being shaken furiously by an angry person that even to ears accustomed to Disorder took some getting used to.

Lyrically, vocalist Dave Dictor shouted out words at a relentless pace, raining criticism down on multinational corporations, selfish shits, the profit motive, and the rich. In amongst his torrent of words one particular line stood out: “Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the rest of you”.

This particular phrase had originally been used by Martin Luther King Jr in the late Sixties to describe how the rich were being protected by government policies and economic subsidies whilst the poor were basically being left to fend for themselves in an increasingly dog-eat-dog world.

By raising this same idea, Dave Dictor was hitting the nail on the head in regards to Reagonomics in America and Thatcherism in the UK. It was there for all to see, not even bothering to hide in plain sight. Tax cuts for the rich and for big business, for example, were immediately and so blatantly for their benefit alone though presented as if they would also be of benefit to the poor. Anti-union legislation as another example was clearly for the benefit of the bosses with nothing to be gained from it by the actual workers, though again it was presented as if it was for the benefit of the country.

On both sides of the Atlantic, governments were telling their respective populations that black is white and white is black. That censorship is national security, armies are peace-keeping forces, and civilian deaths are collateral damage. That war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength. Examples, of course, of Newspeak, the language used in George Orwell's novel 1984 by a future totalitarian State to limit free thought.

The future, however, had arrived.

The future was now.

The year 1984 was here...

The Harrods Bombing

THE HARRODS BOMBING

Not content with a conventional war in the Falklands and an impending nuclear world war, Thatcher was now declaring war on trade unions; using the power of government and the courts to cripple them legally and financially and then using the police to crush them physically. And just to round things off there was still the matter of the war in Northern Ireland.

“It's all very simple while you keep the war vocal,” as Crass had declared a few years earlier “But the bombs in Belfast are coming down your local. I want to know how much you can take cos you've taken it all, and that's just great.”

Rather than gaining them the freedom for their country that they sought or at least a place at the negotiating table, the IRA's war against the British State was only leading to being responded to in kind. Not that this specific war was one that Thatcher was willing to name as such.

Conventional war, nuclear war, State violence, State control; the capacity for the government to continue inflicting problems and misery seemed to hold no bounds as did the capacity for people to carry on regardless under whatever circumstances. These were problems for the IRA that they were continuously trying to break.

On December 10^th 1983, a bomb planted by the IRA went off at the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, London, injuring four soldiers and a passerby. Two weeks later another bomb went off outside Harrods, in London, killing three police officers, three members of the public and injuring many more. An apology was quickly issued by the IRA over the loss of innocent lives in the explosion; that is, for the deaths of the three members of the public, not the police officers though of course, the apology counted for nothing.

It begged the question, however: If the Angry Brigade had managed to plant bombs without causing any loss of life then why couldn't the supposedly more professional IRA?

On visiting the injured in hospital, the Bishop of London, the Rt Rev Graham Leonard spoke of the “intensity of evil” of those responsible for the bomb, adding “The real agony is that there are actually human beings who can do this.”

Which also begged another question: What might the Bishop think of Thatcher and co, and their willingness to see millions upon millions of dead and injured from an even bigger bomb?

Warrington

THE WARRINGTON DISPUTE

Away from Greenham Common, something altogether different was taking place that was still extremely significant to the way the country was being governed and would prove to have huge repercussions for British workers for evermore. An industrial dispute at a print works in Warrington, near Manchester, had escalated into a state of affairs that no-one – except perhaps Thatcher – could have anticipated after a newspaper entrepreneur called Eddie Shah took on printers union the National Graphical Association (NGA) over the issues of closed shops and the employment of non-union labour.

Less than a fortnight after being elected to government in 1979, Thatcher had started to lay out plans for trade union reform; focussing on picketing, the closed shop and ballots. Her aim was to not just curb but destroy the power of unions and in a bid to do this had devised a raft of new laws and two new Employment Acts.

In Warrington, Eddie Shah had recruited non-union labour for his new printing plant causing NGA members to stage a walkout. Shah sacked the strikers immediately which led to a bout of mass picketing at the plant in support of them. Hundreds of union members were bussed in to take part in the pickets which prompted Shah to cite the new Tory Employment Acts, and to call upon the government for support.

Thatcher was only too pleased to oblige and gave the police the green light to do whatever it took to prevent the pickets having any effect. To Thatcher, not only was this a case of law and order and the pickets acting illegally but also a question of a greater struggle between union and government power.

The NGA was fined huge sums for breaking the rules of the new Employment Acts and finally had their entire funds sequestered for non-compliance. As for the pickets themselves, they were facing a newly equipped, combative police force, trained in the lessons of the riots of '81 and given the go-ahead from the highest level of government to act with impunity.

The strike culminated with the exits of the M6 motorway being blocked by the police to prevent the pickets getting to Warrington and then finally with a full-on battle between the two sides outside the plant where 2,000 baton-wielding police charged, drove at in Range Rovers and fought hand-to-hand with 4,000 workers.

Nobody knew at the time, of course, but this was the shape of things to come in terms of policing future industrial disputes...