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...

The Southall Riot

THE SOUTHALL RIOT

Away from Stonehenge during that summer of 1981, a tour was about to take place featuring the so-called cream of the current Punk crop. Given the name 'Apocalypse Now', the nationwide series of gigs would be a showcase for The Exploited, Discharge, Anti-Pasti, and Chron Gen; offering an ideal opportunity for fans to see all these bands in one fell swoop.

Touted as the Eighties equivalent of the Sex Pistols' 'Anarchy' tour, the gigs were to pass (unlike said Anarchy tour) without any major incidents, bannings or cancellations but served effectively to underline just how different this second wave of Punk was to the first wave.

This new wave of new Punk was appealing almost exclusively to working class teenagers and was shorn of any pretensions of artiness or musical sophistication. Musically it was far faster, more brutal and much more political than anything that had gone before. This was Punk born from, baptised in and influenced by nothing else but Punk. As Gene October of old school Punk band Chelsea observed: this was the real hard stuff.

To most music journalists it was inexplicable. Punk was growing ever more popular with even the most derivative of bands attracting large audiences to their gigs and selling huge numbers of records. Only one journalist out of all the music newspapers would champion, support and promote this second generation of Punk and that was Garry Bushell of Sounds newspaper.

Though ultra-critical and damning of Crass and Discharge, Bushell was an ardent enthusiast for what was then being styled as 'street Punk'. Conscious of the failure of The Clash to live up to their aspirations, Bushell had turned his attention upon Clash-inspired bands such as Sham 69, Menace, and the UK Subs before focussing on the bands that those very groups themselves were inspiring.

Bushell was a very good writer and soon gained a position of prominence within Sounds, becoming the main features editor; giving him carte blanche to write of the music and bands he clearly loved. To emphasise the difference between this new breed of Punk bands and their predecessors, Bushell began categorising and labelling them according to each style of Punk he judged them to be playing.

Oi! was initially an umbrella name given to cover a large part of this new Punk scene but quickly came to define just the Cockney Rejects branch where the bands dressed in casual skinhead garb and played a type of Punk Rock not unlike that of Sham 69 at their stomping best.

Bushell (like Crass) was in a powerful and influential position with thousands of readers hanging onto his every word. A good review from him or even just a short mention could introduce a band to a huge audience so it was no surprise that very few bands initially objected to being labelled Oi!. A slight problem for some, however, was that this audience comprised a large number of skinheads and with them came the skinhead baggage of violence, machismo, and Right-wing politics.

Fighting with skinheads at gigs was a commonplace occurrence but it was at a gig in Southall, west London, featuring three leading Oi! bands - The Business, Last Resort, and The 4-Skins - that gig-related violence suddenly escalated beyond what anyone thought might be possible.

As fans of the bands started arriving into the area for the gig, almost inevitably trouble started between some of the skinheads and the local Asian residents. Seeing the concert as nothing less than a skinhead invasion of their community, hundreds of Asian youths descended upon the venue to do battle with them.

To keep the two sides apart, police threw a cordon around the venue but in the eyes of the Asians this was simply the police giving protection to the skinhead invaders. From the odd brick and bottle being thrown at the police line, the situation escalated into a full scale riot with Molotov cocktails being thrown at the venue causing those inside to evacuate and for the venue to be eventually burnt down.

In as much as the skinheads were the initial target of the violence, the police quickly took their place with over sixty of them in the end being injured. A photograph of a burnt-out van (belonging to The Business) outside the burning venue was to later become an iconic image.

The media backlash against Oi! was immediate and breathtaking, with many of the bands associated with it being falsely labelled as Nazis, and Garry Bushell (along with Sounds editor Alan Lewis) as being culpable.

Bushell, if anything, was guilty of playing with fire and starting a blaze. Everybody knew that the skinhead image was a violent one and that there was a seam of Right-wing extremism running through the skinhead ranks. Everybody knew that teenagers adopting skinhead as a new fashion were going to adopt the image wholesale, taking on all its traits be they good or bad. Bushell and co were doing very little to challenge any of the most negative of these traits, allowing a propensity for violence, homophobia, machismo and - to a certain extent - racism to flourish unchecked.

At Southall all these chickens came home to roost, dealing a near fatal, knock-out blow to what was potentially a very powerful vehicle for young, working class frustration and protest...

Stonehenge '81

STONEHENGE '81

That summer of 1981 at the Stonehenge Free Festival, other people were lifting the veil from their eyes - or from their third eye, at least - through copious amounts of psychedelic drugs. Unswayed by the previous year's 'biker riot' at the festival, a new generation of Punk Rockers were there in attendance, swelling the ranks of the already flourishing and criss-crossing tribes. For many, this would have been their first encounter with a range of drugs beyond the accepted 'Punk drugs' of speed, alcohol and glue; and no better place could there be to take a first trip.

Careering around the site from dusk to summer solstice dawn, the festival offered an array of assaults upon the senses: fire breathers and flaming torch jugglers, poets and ranters in hippy/Punk rags, hawkers and dealers with spikes and dreadlocks, city hobgoblins and road rats, Hells Angels on honeymoon and hippy would-be high priests. The outlandish, the exotic, the weird and the frightening. Characters straight out of Middle Earth, from the darkest streets, from all corners of the country with accents to match.

Tents, benders, wigwams, coaches, caravans, buses and ambulances. Banners and flags declaring such messages as 'Happy Anarchy', 'Disorder - Complete Fucking Chaos', and 'Anarchy England'. Drug price menus, nudity, sound systems and a main stage graced by such bands as Ruts DC, Androids Of Mu, Misty In Roots, Lightning Raiders (apparently featuring a certain 'Wally' from the prototype Sex Pistols), Nik Turner's Inner City Unit, The Mob, Flux Of Pink Indians (showing either bravery or stupidity having under the guise of their previous band name, The Epileptics, been bottled from the stage the previous year), The Raincoats, Here And Now, and of course, Hawkwind.

A strange sense of warmth and brilliance had descended upon those fields adjacent to the standing stones, causing an air of common awareness. Though no doubt magnified somewhat by the drugs, the people there were sharing an insight into a vision of freedom where anyone could say, do and be anything they wished so long as it didn't impinge upon the freedom of others to do exactly the same. The very idea of anyone coming along and saying you couldn't do this or you couldn't say that, or of trying to assert their morals or their values upon another seemed suddenly to be absolutely absurd.

In many ways this was a representation not of an alternative society but of a true society; standing in stark contrast to the society outside, represented by the gangs of police waiting around on the edges of the festival site busy training their binoculars upon the goings-on within.

The festival made apparent that these police officers were the real weirdos, especially when harassing and strip-searching hapless festival-goers at the side of the road, which was their wont.

Having suffered the biker's violence of the previous year's festival, Stonehenge was bearing up to be a life-changing experience in the positive. So much so, in fact, that rather than simply returning after the festival was over to the world of Thatcher and all which that entailed, a number of people were deciding to continue the experience by moving on to the next free festival site at Inglestone Common, near Bristol and setting up camp there. Then after Inglestone moving on to the next festival and then the next, and on and on.

Suddenly, adopting a traveller lifestyle seemed quite an appealing career option...

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Photo: Al Stokes

Zounds - Demystification

ZOUNDS - DEMYSTIFICATION

A more conventional yet none the less powerful form of song writing was to be found in the next 7" single release by Zounds, entitled Demystification.

Following the huge success of their Can't Cheat Karma EP on the Crass label, Zounds had moved over to the Rough Trade record label for their second single and with that move came a slight change in the way they were perceived. If Zounds had their way they would probably have happily stayed on Crass Records but by this time Crass had decided on a policy of only releasing one record by any one band before letting them go on their own merry way.

Whether they were aware of it or not, Zounds were a very enigmatic band and in being lumped in with Rough Trade's roster of post-Punk groups such as The Fall, Cabaret Voltaire, the Monochrome Set and Swell Maps simply served to make them even more difficult to pigeon-hole. There was a mystique about Zounds that was actually only added to by them calling for "a demystification about what's going on".

Demystification was like a breath of agitated Pop Punk - drugged to the gills, abandoned in a bus station and told to make its own way home. Sounding as though fueled by equal measures of paranoia and chemically-induced awareness, vocalist Steve Lake sang of dark thoughts: "Now I hear they're counting numbers to store down in Whitehall. So much information what can they do with it all?"

In signing to Rough Trade, Zounds were provided with the medium of the glossy record cover as opposed to the Crass, black and white, fold-out affair; and it's the cover of Demystification that captured the essence of Zounds better than anything else.

Depicting a crowd of commuters emerging from a London underground tube station, all the commuters in the picture are shown to be blind-folded apart from one who is shown lifting the blind-fold he has on from his eyes. The subsequent look in his eyes is a mixture of terror, amazement, determination, paranoia and awe.

This look in his eyes was a near perfect depiction of Zounds.

Flux Of Pink Indians - Neu Smell

FLUX OF PINK INDIANS - NEU SMELL

The next release on Crass Records was also far noisier than anything previously on the label though far more ideological than anything Disorder might muster. Neu Smell by Flux Of Pink Indians was a brilliantly gorgeous example of an ordinary Punk Rock record being turned into a glorious classic through simply putting a lot of thought and effort into it.

Evolving from the remnants of The Epileptics, Flux Of Pink Indians were, like Poison Girls, becoming regular touring partners of Crass. Of the three bands, Flux were the youngest and played a more typical and more readily accessible form of Punk Rock that endeared them easily with the Crass Punk audience.

Consisting of three songs, Neu Smell begins with an introductory snatch of dialogue bemoaning the appearance of new buildings down in the valley: "Can you smell the new (neu) smell travelling through the air? Aye, I can lad, it's a-coming from over there... There's a nuclear power dump site. Someone doesn't care. Parliament says it's safe..." then in a voice trembling with frustration and anger "So why not bury it there?" An almighty bass line then leads into pounding drums and crashing fuzzbox guitars as the main track on the record, Tube Disaster, introduces the extraordinary vocals of Colin Latter.

There's an argument to be had that all the best lead vocalists - or at least all the most interesting - can't really sing for toffee. If this is the case then Colin Latter certainly fits this bill too, for not only could Colin not sing in tune but he couldn't shout in tune either. Whatever Colin lacked in vocal talent, however, he more than made up for in panache, attacking the somewhat trivial lyrics of Tube Disaster with gusto: "I love tube disasters, I wanna marry a tube disaster. I want another one like the last one cos I live for tube disasters, yeah!"

The song ends, however, with a spoken-word poem that in its poignancy elevates Tube Disaster from sublime raucousness to a brilliant beauty:

"And oh, as yes, as the sky did turn to night

I shield my eyes and hide from the bright of day

And cast the stone deep into the field of man and hide in shame

And low the flag raised in vain

And close my mind to this lost day

And shield my body with ferns of grey

And ask no more of life unsaved

And smile no more and lay here scathed

Become the tombstone of my grave."

The capacity to communicate such sentiments was one of the things that gave Punk another edge and was yet another example of what separated it from other forms of music. As was its capability of carrying and conveying atypical song subjects in a rousing and relevant manner.

Background Of Malfunction and Sick Butchers, the two additional tracks on the flip side (or 'Bacon side') of Neu Smell were examples of this, both focusing upon the issue of vegetarianism.

By simply cloaking this specific subject in pounding Punk noise and delivering it with joyous passion, Flux Of Pink Indians were probably tipping more young people into becoming vegetarian and taking an interest in animal rights than any number of pamphlets and written articles on the same subject.

Along with the songs, Neu Smell came wrapped in another fold-out, Crass-style sleeve containing extensive notes expounding upon the song themes. Reading through these notes it was apparent that Flux were touching upon the same ideas as Crass; so much so, in fact, that they could even have been a continuation of the sleeve notes on Nagasaki Nightmare. They could even have been written by the same hand:

'If enough people made it clear that they did not want to fight and kill, wars would end. How can there be wars without people? We are the system - if you want to change the system, you have to change yourself, you have to reject the rubbish that we have all been manipulated to accept. Violence is neither masculine or fun. It's painful, bloody and stupid. Wars hurt. If we change ourselves, there will be no system and then harmony might exist. But this can't be forced on people, they must agree and share that desire for change. If they are forced into it, they are simply being further oppressed. Give peace a chance...

The nuclear power industry is nothing more than an elaborate cover up for military interests. The first reactors were built solely for the production of nuclear weapons, there is no reason to suppose that there has been any real change in thinking. The more reactors there are, the more bombs can be made. It doesn't seem to matter that we already have sufficient warheads to destroy the world several times over. The war game goes on and on and on...

Has this country the courage to say "NO"? Have we the courage to reject the absurd escalation towards war? Have we the courage to stand up and be counted, to say "NO" to government and authority? Have we as individuals the courage to stand against what we see as being an evil and distorted future? Act Now: Protest and survive.'

The main difference between Crass and Flux Of Pink Indians was that Flux were putting much more emphasis upon vegetarianism than Crass ever did; in the sleeve notes of Neu Smell detailing the "uneconomical and disgustingly wasteful" policy of using farm land to graze livestock and to grow cereal on to feed that same livestock. At the same time describing the "horror show" of the slaughterhouse where "the blood flows in rivers hot and steaming across the floor, the dying animals kick and twitch, the stench of fear awful".

Even here, however, as in opposition to war, the government, the system and so on; the proposed solution lay in learning to say 'No':

'Next time you bite into a lump of meat, whatever disguise it comes in, ask yourself if you really need it. Ask yourself if you really agree with the terrible pain and suffering and cruelty that put that flesh on your plate. Learn to say 'NO'. Stop the killing now.'

Whilst not tirading bulletins like that of Crass, the lyrics of Flux Of Pink Indians had a neat habit of including very memorable one-liners such as "Vicarious living rids your boredom" from Tube Disaster, "My soul for the sole of your shoes" from Background Of Malfunction, and best of all, from Sick Butchers: "Come on, Thomas, eat it up. Sometimes I don't think that you were worth the fuck!".

As a band, Flux were basically the same age as a lot of their audience and in many ways there was little distinction between them and that audience. They were serious yet capable of being daft, ideological but grounded, intense but joyous. They were 'down with the kids', as you might say. Flux Of Pink Indians could be identified with.