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.

Conflict - To A Nation Of Animal Lovers

CONFLICT -

TO A NATION OF ANIMAL LOVERS

Concerning itself also with the issues of animal rights and vegetarianism was the next 7" single release by Conflict on the Corpus Christie label, which found them finally coming into their own on both a musical and ideological level. With the added bonus of Steve Ignorant on shared vocals, To A Nation Of Animal Lovers was Conflict fulfilling all their earlier promise of being a uniquely important Punk band.

Containing three tracks, the first - entitled Berkshire Cunt - was almost typical blazing Conflict fare but enhanced ten-fold by the addition of Steve Ignorant whose voice when joined with Colin Jerwood's worked amazingly well. Spitting out the words at breakneck speed, taking turns with each verse then coming together for the chorus, the twin vocals delivered a thought-provoking description of the 'art' of fox hunting and the violent hypocrisy of those involved: "Civilised, upright citizens grin as the dog's teeth tear at shrieking skin. 'This ain't savagery, it's jolly old culture', as they stand and wait for death like vultures. She laughs at the bloody furs flying, re-applies her lipstick as the animal's crying. He claims the tail as privileged prize and kicks the mangled corpse aside."

Raining fire and fury upon the hunt participants committing murder in the name of sport, the aristocracy are named and accused of building their lives and their wealth upon a pile of bodies - "Slaughtered animals, slaughtered squaddies."

The second track, entitled Whichever Way You Want It, was Conflict bringing under control their usual storm of bluster and rage, and then riding the thunder. Led by the superb guitar playing of Kevin Webb, the noise pours out from the song like fire from a flame-thrower, kept in check by spine-tingling, piercing fret work. Elevated and pushed along by the suddenly enhanced and advanced drumming skills of Paco and complimented by the bass playing of Big John, it was the perfect vehicle for the ferocious anger of the lyrics describing and condemning the goings-on in an animal research laboratory: "While the guard stands bravely at the gate with guard dog by his side, the same breed of animal is butchered inside. What a fucking waste of money, what a fucking waste of time. A fucking waste of human knowledge, what a fucking way to die."

The third and final track, Meat Still Means Murder, revisits the song of (almost) the same name that appeared on Conflict's début album. Accompanied this time by Steve Ignorant and a near-chorus of angels, the song reiterates the heartfelt passion Conflict have for the subject of animal liberation, leaving the listener in no doubt as to their sincerity: "You moan about the seal cull, about the whale slaughter but does it really matter whether it lives on land or water? You've never had a fur coat, you think it's cruel to mink. Well how about the cow, pig, sheep? Don't they make you think? Since the day you were born you've never been told the missing link. Your blood, their blood serves the same. Serves the fucking, fucking same."

Conflict possessed a no-holds-barred, in-your-face attitude epitomised by the way they would never back down when fighting erupted at any of their gigs. This same attitude was in evidence on the sleeve of To A Nation Of Animal Lovers, where photographs of still alive animals tied-down by string with their innards hanging out were displayed in all their gory detail. And where the Subhumans on their Evolution EP had printed the addresses of where to buy cruelty-free cosmetics, Conflict not only printed the addresses of various protest groups such as the ALF who could assist in stopping animal abuse but furthermore they printed the names and addresses of people and companies directly responsible for that abuse.

Conflict had come of age.

Conflict - It's Time To See Who's Who

CONFLICT - IT'S TIME TO SEE WHO'S WHO

The intention of spreading awareness was an honourable one shared by a good many bands at that time of which Conflict would happily have included themselves. Garry Bushell had from the very start spotted the potential of Conflict to be a bridge between the Crass camp and the Oi! brigade and from there spreading their Anarcho message to an even wider audience.

'We want to further people's consciousness. And we want to use whatever means are possible,' as Conflict stated in a pamphlet included with their Live At Centro Iberico EP 'We want to reach people by whatever means we can - papers, television, radio, music, the lot.'

Their ambition was evident as was their energy and passion as witnessed during their live performances, along with their commitment as shown by their solidarity with the DIY Punk scene. Conflict readily offered their support to anyone aligning themselves with Anarcho Punk and in turn the Anarcho Punk elders such as Poison Girls, Crass and Southern Studios owners John and Sue Loder offered their support to Conflict.

The obvious next step in maintaining their momentum was for Conflict to release their début LP which they duly did in April of 1983 on the Corpus Christi label. Affiliated to Crass, Corpus Christi had been set up to allow bands total artistic freedom regarding their records. In particular, this meant they were free from Crass label design 'restrictions' and that John Loder instead of Penny Rimbaud would decide on who and what to release.

For Conflict at that time, artistic control meant releasing their LP in a full-colour gate-fold sleeve, the artwork and lettering beautifully designed by one Bernard Chandler, future bassist of Poison Girls. Entitled It's Time To See Who's Who, the LP was essentially the live set that Conflict had been touring around with, finally rendered coherently audible by Crass bassist Pete Wright on production duties.

When playing live, Conflict would create a blistering vortex of noise with vocalist Colin Jerwood - eyes popping, veins bulging - shouting for all his worth at the centre. On initial hearing of the LP, what surprised was how tuneful a lot of the songs actually were and what with the lyrics transcribed onto the sleeve, what exactly Conflict were raging about.

One subject known to be very close to Conflict's heart was animal liberation, represented most powerfully on the track Meat Means Murder. Flux Of Pink Indians were the only other band who had ever really focussed on vegetarianism and animal abuse, and even then had still not quite managed to disassociate the subjects from hippy and middle class connotations. Being solidly working class and thoroughly unpretentious hard bastards, Conflict were endorsing vegetarianism with a credibility it had never had before: "Can't you see that juice is blood? From new born throats red rivers flood. Blood from young hearts, blood from veins. Your blood, their blood, serves the same."

This was a subject that Conflict would never abandon, encouraging many of their listeners to not only give up eating meat but to become militantly active against the perpetrators and beneficiaries of animal abuse, animal experimentation and animal exploitation.

Conflict's natural-born inclination towards anti-authoritarianism manifested itself in them shouting down officialdom and power in all its forms, whether it be the government, the police, the law, the Bomb, the music business, the media or whatever. Conflict were natural-born anarchists, with nothing studied about their anarchism, nothing scholarly or gleaned from text books just an instinctive, gut-level understanding of right and wrong.

Equally important, unlike a significant proportion of the Punk fraternity as represented by The Exploited, for example, Conflict weren't at all interested in numbing themselves to the world through drugs and noise. Instead, Conflict were very much Punks of a positive inclination, offering much needed inspirational attitude: "The Left-wing manifesto, the Right-wing sham, tell us we can't but I know we can. They tell us we can't but I tell you we can. Stuff your lies, I know we can. We can!"

In the track Exploitation, The Exploited and their fine but amusing appearance on Top Of The Pops with their song Dead Cities is referred to as an example of how unrepresentative such bands were of their actual audiences, serving in the end to be of service only to the music business: "Yeah, we live in dead cities and the streets are grey, but I don't need Top Of The Pops to make me think that way. I can see this rebellion on my tv screen, but no sign of a future for you and me."

Conflict’s intention was to set themselves apart and to actively oppose the machinations of the music business through both word and deed, taking the same stance toward politics and social justice. In this respect, demonstrating in protest marches and involvement in direct action was just as important as playing a gig or releasing a record - if not more so.

There were high expectations of Conflict's début album but when it came to it, the album acted more than anything else as a way of cementing their presence as a band. Conflict needed to forge their own essentially anarchist identity not only within the realm of Anarcho Punk but within a wider social context. So, not only were they rejecting both Left and Right-wing politics as any good anarchist might but rejecting also all ideas of historical English identity: "Great Britain thinks it leads the world so civilised, pure and free. Great Britain doesn't lead fuck all, Great Britain shit, you don't fool me. Smashing Argies, Falklands ours. Falklands ours, what a con. We ain't even got a place to stick our arses on."

Many of the songs on It's Time To See Who's Who seemed to be more about dealing with specific subjects so as to get them dealt with and out of the way, so as to enable the band to move on to other territory. Along the way a veritable storm of bluster and fury was being whipped up and this in turn was becoming Conflict's most prominent feature. Like all the other Anarcho Punk bands, Conflict were saying 'No' but in their own unequivocal and unerring manner: "Fuck you! Fuck off!" they were roaring "Fuck you fucking fuck off!"

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.

Conflict - The House That Man Built

CONFLICT - THE HOUSE THAT MAN BUILT

From the pages of Sounds music paper, Garry Bushell was continuing to exert his influence by touting a variety of bands which to his credit were almost entirely of the Punk/Oi! type. Snippets of news concerning Conflict had been appearing regularly over the year in the gossip columns of Sounds, creating quite a bit of curiosity about this so-called 'street Crass band'.

According to Bushell, Conflict were more credible than Crass due to the fact that they were from working class Eltham, in London, whilst Crass were from a commune in the Essex countryside. For this reason alone, according to Bushell, Conflict were better placed to spread any kind of message as kids were more likely to identify with Conflict and therefore pay them more attention.

Only time would tell whether Bushell's assertion held any water though the obvious flaw in his argument was that Conflict were die-hard Crass fans and that somehow or other Crass had managed to reach out to them from their supposed 'safe Epping Forest home' and like-wise to many other kids out on council estates throughout the land.

Conflict were an interesting proposition. They were Clash fans who had become Crass fans, who were rightly proud to be Punk. With the rise of the Exploited, Punk rockers were becoming easily caricatured as spiky-haired or mohawked morons whose sole aim was to self-destruct via drink and drugs, causing as much chaos along the way as possible. The iconic, prime example of this, of course, was Sid Vicious in his full-blown caked-in-blood-'gimme a fix'-carved-into-his-chest mode although Kenny Everett as Gizzard Puke in The Kenny Everett Show and Ade Edmonson as Vyvyan in The Young Ones would add a more comic twist to the image.

The music press (and Bushell in particular) was drawing a distinct line between Exploited-type Punk bands and Crass bands though in reality both were attracting a lot of the same audience to their gigs. Apart from differences in their politics, of course, the Exploited and their ilk tended to be sartorially flamboyant while the Crass bands were more inclined toward wearing all black. Conflict seemed to be the exception to this. Though labelled by the music press as a 'Crass band' (if only through having their début record released on the Crass label), Conflict were fully embracing the traditional Punk dress style, reclaiming it from ridicule and lending it a hardened cool. Conflict looked good.

The title of Conflict's début record - The House That Man Built EP - referred to the pillars (or the man-made houses) of the system, in particular to the pillars of law, religion, the slaughterhouse, the tower block and the prison. 'Are you part of the cornerstones...' Conflict were asking 'Or the demolition team?'

Produced by one 'Elvis Rimrod', as with all other Crass Records 7" releases the record came in a beautifully designed fold-out sleeve, this time selling for just 80p. Containing four tracks, the first, entitled Conflict, as sung by lead vocalist Colin Jerwood laid out the band's basic anarchist position: "This side, that side, that side, this side, what side, any side - you can't side me."

The second track, I've Had Enough, as sung by transitory vocalist Pauline, laid out a feminist stance: "This is mankind and mankind kills, you think women are just here for your thrills? Your filthy morals just fucking stink, don't try and get my hands in your sink. Don't call me your bird, I'm not your pet. Well, I've had enough, right up to my neck."

The third, Wargames, was an almost obligatory anti-war statement: "Nuclear war isn't much fun, when The Bomb drops, where you gonna run?"

And the fourth, Blind Attack, another anarchist missive: "Left wing, Right wing, you've heard it all before but can you spot the difference when they're knocking at your door? ...We were told of Gods galore and heroes more but never of the people who were beaten to the floor. Told to admire all leaders great and tall but never told it was those bastards who made the people crawl. If you look quite deep enough you'll see it's all a con. A look at past history tells: All government is wrong."

When playing live, Conflict would produce an intense barrage of energy and anger that interestingly wasn't fully captured by 'Elvis Rimrod's' production in the studio. Interestingly too, Conflict were gaining a reputation as being handy with their fists and like fellow Londoners the Cockney Rejects, they had no qualms about physically taking on any troublemakers at their gigs.

If anything, Conflict were more realistic (or perhaps less idealistic?) than Crass and had no illusions about trying to make gangs of fighting skinheads see the error of their ways through reason and debate over a cup of tea and a biscuit. Instead, Conflict would - in the words of Steve Ignorant - just trounce the fuck out of them.

When in their personal space such as at a gig, Conflict were more than willing to use force to keep the peace but in their lyrics they still espoused the prevalent Crass/peace/pacifist line: "You can't change nothing with your violence and your hate, do you really think by smashing heads you're gonna change the State?"

There was an obvious dichotomy between how Conflict were dealing with violence at their gigs and what they were advocating in their lyrics but in many ways this was no bad thing as it was suggesting that not all Anarcho Punk bands calling for peace were a pushover for those holding more aggressively conservative views and who were intent on disruption.

Conflict were starting to gig regularly around the Punk/squat/small venue circuit but disappointingly for some reason were choosing not to play at what by then had become the mecca of all things alternative and counter-cultural - the annual Stonehenge Free Festival....