Anyway, back to the matter in hand. Bushell said he’d do a feature on me in Sounds, based around my forthcoming Poetry Olympics gig in Stratford, and he very soon offered me the chance to do freelance work for the paper as well, maybe out of out of a desire to ‘poach’ me from the NME more or less before I’d started writing for them. To say I was chuffed would be an understatement. God knows where his head is these days, but I’ll make no bones about it: back in 1982 Garry Bushell helped me a lot, and I thank him for it.
By now opportunities were coming thick and fast. I was being offered more and more gigs, and was as ever writing lots of new material. From my first gig to this day, national and world events have never left me short of subject matter, and in 1982 it was certainly there in abundance.
In January of that year, at Ipswich Crown Court, an ageing High Court judge called Bertrand Richards ruled that a 17-year old female hitch hiker who was raped after thumbing a lift home from a dance hall was ‘in the truest sense, asking for it’ and guilty of ‘contributory negligence’. The man who raped her was let off with a fine, and there was a huge outcry. When I heard about the case, one of far too many over the years, of course, I was beside myself with rage, and my rage soon became verse…
CONTRIBUTORY NEGLIGENCE
Hitching up the M11
Coming back from an Upstarts gig
Got picked up ‘bout half eleven
By this bloke in a funny wig
Flash Mercedes, new and gleaming -
Deep pile seats and deep seat piles
I got in and sat there scheming
While the fat cat flashed me smiles…
Told me he was back from sessions
With a load of brain-dead hacks
Told me he’d made no concessions
To the bootboys and the blacks
Said he thought that it was stupid
Fuss ‘bout rapists on the news
Bloke was only playing Cupid
Girls like that they don’t refuse
Asked me if I thought him enemy
Asked me if I bore a grudge
Told me that he came from Henley
Said he was a High Court judge
I asked him to stop a second
‘Need a slash’ that’s what I said
When he did the anger beckoned
And I smacked him in the head
Took the keys and took his money
Crashed the car into a ditch
Though he moaned ‘They’ll get you, sonny!’
Got away without a hitch
I don’t think they’ll ever find me
‘Cos I’m many miles away
But if one day they’re right behind me
I know what I’m gonna say –
HE ASKED FOR IT! He’s rich and snobbish
Right wing, racist, sexist too!
Brain dead, stupid, sick and slobbish –
Should be locked in London Zoo!
He wanted me to beat him up!
It was an open invitation!
Late at night he picked me up –
An act of open provocation!
High Court judges are a blight –
They should stay home in nice warm beds
And if they must drive late at night
Should never pick up Harlow Reds!
A five pence fine is right and proper
And to sum up my defence
It was his fault he came a cropper –
CONTRIBUTORY NEGLIGENCE!
I performed this poem for the first time at Michael Horovitz’s ‘Poetry Olympics’ at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East in early 1982: at the end of the fifth verse it was interrupted by a huge roar of acclaim. I had touched a chord, and the same thing happened again and again at gigs in the following weeks and months: I’d rarely finish it in one go. Thirty-plus years later, it still gets a cheer. And, very soon, the geriatric ramblings of the English judiciary would be in my line of fire again.
Around the same time as the Stratford gig, the ‘Jobs not YOPS’ march round London started, with evening benefit gigs compered by myself and Swells. The big one was a secret gig by the Jam. I was psyching myself up for another full frontal verbal assault on a big hall full of mods and punks when four blokes with guitars, weird cowboy-ish outfits and big hair - very, very big hair indeed - materialised in front of me: fully formed, image-perfect. They looked as though they’d been born like that.
‘Hello’, said the one with the biggest hair of all. ‘We’re The Alarm. Can we do a short spot?’
I checked, got the go-ahead from the organisers, and they did. I don’t remember their set, to be honest, but this was their first London appearance: former guitarist Dave Sharp confirmed that during a chat when he turned up at a gig I did in Southport just before this book went to press. I shared a few bills with them in the next couple of years and thoroughly enjoy their songs to this day, though it must be said that their lyrics made them sitting ducks (‘Get back in your shelter/If you can’t come down off the fence…’) Their first release was ‘The Stand’, an excellent song, and then the epic ‘68 Guns’, the words of which were so exquisitely ridiculous that they eventually inspired my ‘Zen Stalinist Manifesto’ in the mid 1990s. Singer Mike Peters heard it for the first time when I did a gig with him on the Leftfield Stage at Glastonbury in 2004, and I’m happy to say he found it very amusing. He’s a good bloke, has fought cancer in an inspirational way, and for the record, he and Paul Heaton from the Housemartins/Beautiful South are the two best footballers of all the musicians and poets I’ve ever met.
Here’s the poem, celebrating my new philosophy for the 21st century, Zen Stalinism: a combination of the caring, loving, pacifistic approach of Zen Buddism, the political clarity of Stalinism and the lyrics of The Alarm.
THE ZEN STALINIST MANIFESTO
Playing golf or being otherwise dull
with malice aforethought
watching TV for more than ten hours a week
discussing soap operas
(or any TV programmes or adverts
in the case of a stand-up comedian on stage)
and becoming obsessed with the work of
Quentin Tarantino
Damien Hirst
or William Burroughs
will become a criminal offence
punishable by five years’ enforced participation
in a non-stop mime
juggling
and face painting workshop
in Slough.
The Berlin Wall will be rebuilt -
only five metres higher.
It will keep people out.
People like the World Bank
the International Monetary Fund
Price Waterhouse
Roman Abramovich
Ant & Dec
Mark Lawrenson
Vladimir Putin
and Coldplay.
Michael Gove and Richard Littlejohn
will suffer immediate retrospective abortion.
In order to combat the increasing danger
to civilised society
posed by pig-ignorant
misogynistic
right-wing
testosterone-poisoned
road rage specialists
theme gulags will be introduced
for anyone who drives a van with scratches down the side
and shouts at or otherwise intimidates
lone women drivers at roundabouts
or buys shares in industries
which belonged to him in the first place.
These gulags will all be situated on Rockall
and will have three themes:
Saturday night in August on the Costa Del Sol
auction day at the used car emporium on Shoreham seafront
and happy hour in a Harlow theme pub.
All themes will run 24 hours a day
365 days a year
and inmates will be able to nominate their chosen
theme o
n arrival.
No theme changing will be allowed
but Clash albums
chess sets
and copies of ‘The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists’
by Robert Tressell
will be available for rehabilitation purposes.
Tight security will be enforced.
Theme gulags will be surrounded by large, deep moats
filled with soya milk and real ale
guarded by pitbullfrogs
and kept under constant surveillance
by hundreds of high court judges
watching from carefully constructed ivory towers.
Tony Blair will finally be recognised
as the war criminal he is
and made to spend the rest of his days
cleaning out the toilets
at the Glastonbury Festival.
With his tongue.
Every Western government leader
and the entire staff of the United Nations
will be forced to walk naked
through the memorials
and mass graves
in what used to be the Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia
and then have the words
‘Marshall Tito was right’
tattooed on their foreheads.
A Zen Stalinist National Curriculum
will be introduced into schools.
Albanian
- both dialects, Gheg and Tosk -
will become compulsory as a foreign language.
Reading Geoffrey Archer
and supporting Crystal Palace
will become not just highly illegal
but indicative of a disturbed mental state
requiring instant frontal lobotomy.
The Alarm will reform.
All school students will have to attend morning assembly
and sing the new National Anthem:
‘68 Guns’ by The Alarm.
Mike Peters of The Alarm
will become the new Welsh football manager
with David Icke as his assistant.
The Royal Family
will be allowed to remain as figureheads
but will have to join The Alarm.
Billy Bragg will become next in line to the throne
and rhythm guitarist in The Alarm.
All game show hosts
all TV cooks
and everyone who works for the Sun
and the Times Literary Supplement
will be shot.
Their executions will be videoed
an acid house soundtrack will be added
and huge week-long parties
known as ‘graves’
will begin.
Ken Livingstone and his pet newt Dennis
will become Prime Minister
and Chancellor of the Exchequer.
All privatised industries will be renationalised
without compensation
and a huge TV and poster campaign will be launched
saying simply
‘Tell Sid tough shit.’
The Queen will be privatised
and promoted to lead singer of The Alarm.
The first Zen Stalinist Five Year Plan
will be published
declaring world peace and social surrealism
and the dark nightmare of monetarist madness
will finally come to an end.
For ever.
At one of the gigs on that tour, Swells was given a tape by a young singer-songwriter from Barking, and I think, though I’m not sure, that was the first time I said hello to Billy Bragg. There would be many more meetings in the future…
At the end of February 1982, Garry Bushell’s Sounds feature on me was published, typically headlined ‘You’re the Hun that I want’(!) and by the end of March I had written ‘Awayday’, the rude, loud, definitive early Attila piece which, along with ‘Willie Whitelaw’s Willie’, would appear on one of his ‘Oi!’ compilation albums, with my anti-fascist poem ‘Andy Is A Corporatist’ on another. ‘Oh, bloody hell, Oi!’ I can hear some older and more ‘sensitive’ readers groan. ‘What were you doing getting involved with that?’ Well, having had a go at the judiciary – the upper class Right - the working class Right and the Stock Exchange middle class Right, it’s time I had words with the middle class Left.
I have always believed, as a socialist and anti-fascist, that it simply isn’t good enough to preach to the converted: if you spend your life in a vegetarian whole food-ridden ghetto strewn with wine glasses and discarded copies of Society Guardian, then you are absolutely no use to anyone. There’s a world out there. Right wing, fascistic and just downright dumb ideas need to be combatted head on, and there were plenty associated with ‘Oi!’ which is why I got involved – to reach people, argue, challenge ideas, change minds. Furthermore, despite what the likes of the NME said, it’s not true that everything to do with ‘Oi’ was awful, and the majority of the bands weren’t right wing: allied to it were some fine outfits like the Angelic Upstarts, Blitz, Red Alert and the fantastic Red London, whose first EP ‘Sten Guns in Sunderland’ I produced in 1983 after helping them get a record deal. I like punk rock, always have done, and I’ve never felt comfortable just preaching to the converted - not then, not now, and I never will. I’ll go to places most poets won’t. It’s meant a few bruises, metaphorical and physical, given and received, over the years, and so be it. Much more on this subject to come…
1982 was a bad year for the English judiciary: a very, very bad year indeed, even by their brontosaurine standards. Just two months after the ‘Contributory Negligence’ fiasco came the London Transport ‘Fares Fair’ debacle.
In October 1981, as part of their election manifesto, Ken Livingstone’s Greater London Council reduced London tube and bus fares by 31% to encourage greater use of public transport and reduce traffic problems: it was a hugely popular and successful measure, and was challenged in an act of sheer political spite by Tory-controlled Bromley Council. Five Law Lords led by Lord Denning ruled that the entire scheme was illegal, and in March 1982, the GLC were forced to double the fares.
Once more, there was uproar at a ‘judicial’ decision made by elderly upper-class males who appeared completely out of touch with ordinary people and their lives. A campaign was launched, and many people refused to pay the increased fares. Badges and stickers were everywhere: ‘I voted for cheap fares. Who voted for Lord Denning?’
My contribution was a cautionary tale about the perils of a day out in London with the Law Lords…
AWAYDAY
Woke up got up read the post attacked the postman took the rat for a walk came back fed the amoeba made some coffee wrote a passionate love letter to shirley williams enclosing a small dead animal then thought i’m bored think I’ll go to london ‘cos london’s more interesting than harlow and i might be able to pick up some buck’s fizz bootlegs or the latest jean-paul sartre dub lp got the bus ten minutes late got the train twenty minutes late train was delayed for two hours due to dead liberals on the line got to london liverpool street went down the tube stepping on unsuspecting commuters all the way up to the ticket booth single to covent garden please sure mate that’ll be five pound fifty what do you mean five pound fifty it was only twenty pence yesterday i’m not paying five pound fifty to go to covent garden from liverpool street sorry mate i know it was only twenty pence yesterday but a ninety seven year old deaf geriatric ostrich-minded extremely rich archaic obsolete semi-senile reactionary friedman-worshipping member of an outdated unnecessary and entirely superfluous elitist and oligarchic institution who never uses the tube anyway ‘cos he’s got a fucking chauffeur-driven limousine woke up with a headache in the middle of last night and decided to increase london transport fares by two thousand percent and got four of his senile friends to agree with him – posthumously – and so we’ve had to put the fares up that’s called freedom democracy the rule of law and defending the british way of life that’ll b
e five pound fifty please…
BOLLOCKS TO THAT i said and after a short pregnant pause all the people in the queue plucked up courage and said BOLLOCKS TO THAT and all the pinstripe-and-soda brigade coming down the stairs said BOLLOCKS TO THAT and all the other people at liverpool street underground and at the bus stops said BOLLOCKS TO THAT apart from the nice polite human league and haircut one hundred fans who thought it was rude to say BOLLOCKS but when it was revealed to them that in the famous sex pistols LP cover trial of 1977 a high court judge had ruled that BOLLOCKS was not an obscene word then they too said BOLLOCKS TO THAT and soon the entire length and breadth of the london transport network was full of people saying BOLLOCKS TO THAT and refusing to pay the increased fares and when finally a large crowd of completely sober and totally moderate forty nine year old lloyds underwriters called Brian started going up to yer average law lord in the street saying BOLLOCKS TO THAT and hitting him over the head with a large mallet then the powers that be decided to abandon the fares increase in the interest of public safely then everything went back to normal but it made me wonder so i’m forming a mass revolutionary party and our slogan manifesto and programme is going to be BOLLOCKS TO THAT!
Whole audiences joined in. Punks and skins jumped up on stage and did backing vocals. But the country was in the iron grip of Thatcherism, and so, of course, the views of five reactionary Law Lords counted more than those of millions of Londoners. The fares stayed up. Bollocks to that.
I travelled up and down the country researching my piece on new town life for the NME, centred of course around the Harlow music scene, but also featuring Corby, Stevenage and Livingston in Scotland: it received a healthy double page spread in the paper. The money I earned from this, plus my first reasonably paid gigs, enabled me to sign off the dole. It was a very proud day when I phoned my mum in New Zealand to tell her this, along with the fact that my first record with Swells, ‘Rough Raw and Ranting’ had just been released: not long afterwards, recovering well and – wonderful news – with the all clear from the doctors, she came back home, and I went back to Southwick to see her.
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