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.

Disorder

DISORDER

Punk was once again mutating and now with the added Discharge factor it was spawning a new breed of bands far noisier and far more ragged than any that had ever gone before, no better illustrated than in Disorder, from Bristol.

When first starting out, the Sex Pistols had been cast as 'Dickensian urchin types' and though Johnny Rotten had the demeanour to fit this description it shouldn't be forgotten that a lot of their clothes were being supplied from Malcolm McLaren's and Vivienne Westwood's clothes shop. Disorder, on the other hand, were feral youths dressed in greasy rags that in no way could even be described as 'Oxfam chic' because Oxfam would never have accepted these kind of clothes in the first place.

On their return from their first tour of America, The Clash had traded in their zips and bondage Punk clothes for dark suits and trilby hats; Joe Strummer declaring at the time: "We don't walk around with green hair and bondage trousers any more. We just like to look, sort of, flash these days."

Disorder were as far from 'flash' as a band could probably get, creating a sound to compliment their tramp-Punk style that was so seemingly simplistic yet so energised that they too would go on to influence a swathe of new bands themselves.

Their début EP, Complete Disorder, captured perfectly the spirit of the lifestyle that they and their friends were leading, revolving around squatting, drugs, gigs and protests. These were the first real steps towards adopting Punk as a sub-cultural way of life, grounded in poverty yet enthused by Punk as a vehicle into alternatives to the mainstream. The social make-up of this scene was as probably to be expected, pretty disparate; the main bond being a love of Punk Rock and a penchant for drugs, be it alcohol, glue, tuinol or even heroin.

Come the release of Disorder's second EP, Distortion To Deafness, the heights of Punk delirium were scaled with tumbling drums, thudding bass, screeching feedback and screaming; almost obliterating the lyrics within: "Come to the gigs and you have a fight, and that's fine until you're doing time. Anarchy means this: do what the fuck you want. If you wanna fight, then you're gonna fight. But there must be more than fights? Must be more than fights, must be more than fights..."

Over time, protest and creativity would become less important factors to the Bristol squat-Punk scene as (no doubt driven by the hardship of the lifestyle) drug abuse would become the raison d'etre and noise become a way of blocking out the world so as not to hear it. For a short moment at least, however, early Disorder gigs were wild celebrations of a pure freedom through screaming and sheer fuzzed-out noise, forging an almost proto Punk-nirvana experience, particularly when performing the Pistol's Anarchy In The UK in their inimitable Disorder manner.

Discharge - Why

DISCHARGE - WHY

Whether or not there was a corpse in the mouth of Cal, lead vocalist of Discharge, was negligible. What was certainly true, however, was that there were plenty of corpses in his dreams and visions - and subsequently in his lyrics.

Snapping at the heels of their three classic singles, Why was Discharge's first foray into 12" vinyl territory and though it may well have suggested to some that they were perhaps a one trick pony; what a mighty, thoroughbred, uncastrated stallion of a pony it was.

Consisting of nine brilliant slabs of roaring Punk intensity, Why was the sound of the anti-war/CND/peace movement being dragged completely away from the trappings of the 1960s into the ugly reality of the 1980s. Combining once again Cal's haiku-like lyrics with the sonic violence of the music, taken as a whole, Discharge had forged a quite astonishing Zen-Punk-like experience:

"My head is filled with fear of war, fear and threat of war. Horrific disturbing visions of war fill my head. Among the maimed and slaughtered my body lies... I look out my window to a blinding bright light, Enola passes, passes by. Hysterical men, women and children run in search of their families. Skin is shed like that of snakes but it's not the work of mother nature. Tomorrow, tomorrow, a look at tomorrow... Besides her man she kneels, holds him tight and begins to cry. Her loved one's just another piece of meat on the battlefield. Why, why, why but why... Men, women and children cry and scream in pain, wounded by bomb splinters. Streets littered with maimed and slaughtered, in rigid pathetic heaps... In order to satisfy their mania for conquest, lives are squandered... Scorched earth is all that's left where trees and flowers once grew. Nothing left but wasteland littered with human flesh and bone... Sounds of distant aircraft get louder. Men, women and children flee from the open in search of safety. A woman breaks down and cries, her child is left playing in the street - massacre of innocence... Why, why, why but why..."

Could there be any better way of conveying such thoughts other than through harsh blasts of furious noise? What Discharge had created was the almost perfect vehicle for such anger and horror that in time would be much copied but never bettered.

Whilst the focus of Why was rightly upon the subject of war, two songs that stood out from the set dealt with wholly different topics. On the track Does This System Work?, that very simple question is posed along with a very brief example of why the answer might be in the negative: "Men and women, young and old, out on the streets homeless. In plastic bags they carry their homes, clothes in rags they walk the streets. In bins they search for the odd dog end, the odd dog end and food. Does this system work?"

It was enough to make you wonder, at least.

The other song - and probably the best track on the record - entitled Ain't No Feeble Bastard, turns their noise into an immediate and in-your-face proclamation of empowering defiance: "Ain't no feeble bastard that has no say, I say what I think not what they want me to think. Ain't no feeble bastard, no fucking scapegoat."

This was the kind of song that if heard by any parent being sung by their children might make them slightly worried. The kind of song that if heard by your average Daily Mail reader might make them fearful as to what was becoming of the younger generation.

In truth, however, all the songs on Why were extremely positive and life-affirming. All, in actual fact, very sane responses to an insane situation. "The voice of common sense has to be heard, for man is an endangered species," said Cal in Discharge's first and only interview with the NME "Throughout the world, peace and anti-war movements are blossoming as never before. We each have a contribution to make."

The times were harsh and the harshness of Discharge was reflecting this perfectly. 

This was unlistenable music for unliveable times.

Unrelenting and unpretentious.

Maze

MAZE

There was a sense of newsiness about Crass that was very unique to them. A sense of being very on the ball and of being very up to date on worldly matters. So much so, in fact, that people were looking to Crass to interpret not only the news but the world itself. People trusted them and had a lot of faith in their interpretation and understanding of what was going on and how the world was - and the possibility of there being something that could be done about it.

Whether it was a conscious decision or not, their album Penis Envy was Crass almost reinventing themselves and presenting a credible interpretation of the world through the eyes of woman. The world, however, was changing fast and in Britain events were taking place that anyone working in the medium of music would find impossible to keep pace with let alone report on.

In a bid to gain special category and political prisoner status, Irish Republican prisoners being held within the H-Blocks of the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland had been conducting a 'dirty protest' consisting of smashing up furniture, refusing to wash, shave or wear clothes, and smearing their own excrement over the walls of their cells.

Upping the ante further, a hunger strike was started by the IRA leader in the Maze, Bobby Sands. At the same time, Sands stood from jail as a candidate in a local by-election which if he won would make him a Member of Parliament. Despite all the best efforts of the British authorities to prevent this happening, Sands did indeed win the parliamentary seat, leading to news headlines around the world.

Other governments, newspaper editorials and protest marches came out in support of him, demanding that Thatcher relent and grant Sands and other IRA prisoners political status. She refused. The Iron Lady was not for turning, choosing instead to face down all her opponents. To Thatcher, the Republican prisoners were terrorists, murderers and just plain criminals and in no way were their crimes political.

Bobby Sands MP died on Tuesday 5th of May 1981, his death provoking large-scale rioting in Londonderry and Belfast. More significantly, however, from that date on Thatcher became the IRA's top target for assassination.

None of this, of course, was touched upon by Crass in Penis Envy, nor, to be fair by any other Punk band in their recordings. Crass instead were singing of love - albeit the politics of love - but in doing so giving much credence to the oft quoted words of Belgian Situationist, Raoul Vaneigem:

"People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraint - such people have a corpse in their mouth."