ARGUMENTS YARD

by ATTILA; THE STOCKBROKER

  And I was STILL pestering Swells to get the material for his half of our book over to Allen & Unwin: finally he did it. He came up with far less stuff than I’d provided, because he wasn’t writing much poetry any more, but all his best ones were there alongside some great illustrations from Jon Langford. Into production it went: publication date September 30. Book title: ‘The Rising Sons of Ranting Verse’. My half (actually about 65%), title chosen by me with homage to Mr Belloc: ‘Cautionary Tales for Dead Commuters.’ Swells’ half, title chosen by Unwins because Swells couldn’t be bothered to come up with one of his own: ‘Rants.’ My cover: Porky’s illustration of me, in pinstriped suit and bowler hat, carrying a machine gun and a bomb in front of a line of identikit businessmen commuter types. Swells’ half: a masked terrorist with a sawn off shotgun menacing a tied up hippy beat poet with the quote ‘Buy this book or the poet gets it!’ Illustrations great, material our best stuff: I was well happy.

  A summer of gigs, including another long stint in Holland and Belgium and a return to Glastonbury, a Radio One session for Janice Long and then, not long before publication, I went to the Unwins office in London and saw the first copy of my first-ever book of poetry – one of a print run of 5,000, which is an awful lot for a poetry book.

  At first glance I was disappointed: it looked as though it had been printed on bad quality toilet paper and the cover illustrations and titles were surrounded by strange multicoloured stripes. But I soon got used to that and ended up very proud of it. We (or rather I) did quite a lot of interviews – though there was very little in the music press, which didn’t surprise me by now. It went into the shops, and, of course, I started selling the books at my gigs: I had to pay about 45% of cover price for each copy, but got them on account, paid Unwins when I’d sold them, and they sold very well. At gigs, that is. Not so well in the shops.

  It soon became obvious to me – and, I guess, to Unwins - that people were far more likely to buy a copy after they had seen me performing the poems live than if they were simply browsing in a bookshop. When I got the initial sales figures after a year or so, the balance between shop sales and live sales was about 65-35, but after that I sold more than the shops did, soon many, many more. I was learning another lesson here. By most poets’ standards I do an awful lot of gigs: over my 35 years of performance this has varied between about 80 and 120 or so a year, averaging out at slightly under 100. Very early on, I started to think: if I produced books myself, I could have exactly the design I wanted - and I wouldn’t have to pay 45% of cover price for each one to sell at gigs! My first self-published poetry book (of five so far) wouldn’t come out until 1998, but the seeds were sown in my mind well before that. And in any case it wouldn’t be that long before my first book would become self-published in one sense.

  About two and a half years after the book came out I got a call from Unwins, though obviously not from the department which regularly dealt with me when I came in to pick up more copies to sell…

  ‘Mr. Baine, this is a courtesy call to inform you that the remaining copies of your book are about to be remaindered and pulped, and we are offering you ten copies at the special discount price of £2.’

  ‘How many copies are left?’

  ‘Let me see. Approximately 1,500.’

  ‘Right! I’ll have the lot. But I’m not paying you £2 each for them. How about 10p?’

  A brief discussion with higher authority and the deal was done. Fortunately there was a small lock-up right outside the front door of Steve’s flat in Harlow, and very soon it was crammed full of books. Within three years they had all gone. 5,000 sales for a book of poetry is a pretty rare thing, and the majority of those sales were done via a very, very heavy rucksack. I didn’t drive in those days, and unless Joy, or occasionally melodeon player Lynne, drove me to a gig it was always the train. Swells sold a few, but by then he was well into a career as a much-loved (and much-feared!) journalist, video director and publisher: he wasn’t a Rising Son of Ranting Verse any more. Although out of print for years now the book is still available on EBay, needless to say, and like my fanzine Tirana Thrash, it goes for a lot more than the cover price. As some of you will already have realised, many of the poems in it are featured here.

  The publication of my first book meant, of course, even more gigs than usual. I had a pretty good circuit established now, both in the UK and Holland, and more venues were being added to it all the time as people got in touch: each one was treated like gold dust, carefully written down with contact name and phone number and listed in a home-made directory. If I wasn’t going to be getting much help from ‘the business’ in the future I was going to make sure I could do the business myself. Bristol Poly, Norwich Penny’s, Swaffham Labour Club, my first gig in Liverpool at the North Star (or was it Birkenhead? Very different, I know, but I can’t remember!) and plenty more.

  Steve and I organised some UK gigs for fiery French punks The Brigades from Paris - who had set up the shows for The Neurotics and myself earlier in the year - and then in October I was off to Belfast for the first time ever.

  This, of course, was during the Troubles: the Anglo-Irish Agreement was about to be signed, much to Ian Paisley’s disgust, and the signs of war and division were everywhere. I met and stayed with Martin Smyth, editor of ‘Youth Anthem’ fanzine, with whom I’d already been in touch, and he and his mates made it clear to me exactly where, as a youngish bloke with an English accent, I could go safely - and where I couldn’t. I remember walking through the security gates in Belfast city centre and thinking ‘this really is a warzone’: eighteen years later, with help from the late lamented Colin McQuillan, singer with Belfast punk legends Runnin’ Riot, I’d record a live spoken word/music album (called, imaginatively enough, Live In Belfast) at a newish venue called the Warzone Centre. By that time there was enough hope for that youth/community centre to have been so named tongue in cheek, but 1985 was very different.

  Many English bands and performers wouldn’t go to Belfast at that time. I took the view that as long as I accepted the advice of those who lived there as to where to play and what to do, I’d be fine, and of course I was. The punk scene was one of the few areas where the two ‘sides’ mixed freely and openly, because of course the whole idea of punk was to reject that kind of bigotry and division – as summed up in Stiff Little Fingers’ wonderful anthem ‘Alternative Ulster’. Martin soon introduced me to Terri Hooley, founder of the ‘Good Vibrations’ record shop and label and the man behind the success of band like The Outcasts, Rudi and of course The Undertones. I still haven’t seen the acclaimed film of the same name made about his life, but by the time this book is published I will have done, no doubt of that.

  My first gig in Belfast was an anti-apartheid benefit at Queen’s University on Thursday 24 October and over the next few days I enjoyed the hospitality of Martin and his family. He showed me round the city, or the bits of it where it was safe for us to go, and we spent a lot of time in the legendary Lavery’s bar. I filmed a poem for BBC Belfast on the top of the Europa Hotel, which had the dubious distinction of being the most bombed hotel in Europe. And on the Sunday we went to Dublin: I didn’t have a gig there, I just wanted to visit the place, since I’d never been to Ireland before.

  It took a few years before I came back: in 1989 I did gigs in the Rotterdam Bar and Queens Speakeasy and in the early 90s I played the Errigle Inn, then at the Cathedral Quarter Festival at the beginning of the last decade and the Warzone Centre as mentioned above. There have been some other visits too (I remember once doing a gig at Laggan College, a pioneering school with pupils from both sides of the divide). I always had a good time, especially after the peace process had taken hold and I could go there with Robina, whose maternal family originate from Clough, County Down, and walk together round parts of the city we could never have visited in safety twenty years before. I also played at Derry Arts Centre once – and eventually got to do a gig in Dublin too. I still remember that gig: it was at a pub which
had two names, The Firestone or The Plough. I also remember that I have never seen so many pissed people in one room before. I finally came back to Dublin for the James Connolly Festival in 2015.

  But my most unlikely souvenir of Belfast is a photo Martin took of me sitting in an old bath we found lying around at Knockbracken Snooker Centre. It was a publicity photo for years, and it’s in this book. I really like Belfast, a brave and vibrant city, and I’m due a return visit.

  Back in Harlow I’d started playing the fiddle with a very, very silly country & western band called Austin’s Shirts, fronted by my old mate Richard Holgarth, an absolute stalwart of the local scene. The Shirts played the Square regularly and I got them a few gigs in London as well. Soon I’d start recording with Richard a lot: he was not only a brilliant guitarist and pianist but also a talented arranger and studio engineer. Then I’d meet up with John Otway again, Otway would need a guitarist sidekick after his previous one (Robin, I think) wore out, as they tended to do after a while, and I’d suggest Richard.

  At that point Richard’s life would change forever as he learned how to bash his head on a microphone, play guitar behind his back while standing at the top of a dangerously teetering ladder, not get angry when his lead was pulled out in the middle of a solo and impersonate a Portuguese man of war jellyfish! And Seymour from the Shirts would become a founder member of the Otway Big Band. But that was still a few years away…

  Of the twenty of so gigs left at the end of 1985 I shall give special mention to just two: there’s no need for me to do long lists anymore. On 9 November, after Brighton had played away at Shrewsbury, I had a gig at the Bull Hotel in Ludlow where my conversion from lager to real ale officially became complete: about ten pints of the lovely stuff were lined up in front of me during my set and I ended up on the floor attempting to do a Jimi Hendrix impersonation by playing the mandola with my teeth. (Needless to say I couldn’t, I looked very silly and I felt rather ill the next day.)

  And on 23 November I did my first ever gig at the Adephi in Hull, without doubt my favourite venue of anywhere I have ever played in my 35 years. Not because I get my best crowds there: in the Eighties when I was popular with students I would pack the place out, but now, after around 25 gigs there in a changing town and a changing world, attendances are nowhere near what they were. Not because it is a breathtakingly beautiful venue: it is quite literally a hollowed out terraced house in a Hull back street with a World War Two bomb site as a car park and toilets which, until a recent and quite startling upgrade, were legendary.

  No: because The Adelphi and its indefatigable and inspirational owner Paul Jackson epitomise the very heart and soul of the independent music scene. He, like me, has carved his own path, without compromise, for thirty years. The Adelphi launched countless music careers, from Pulp to The Housemartins: it is at once a home for local bands starting out and a welcoming and familiar stop-off point for regular visitors from far afield: it is brimming with friendship, fairness and honesty and has great real ale. Many far grander venues all over the world would do well to learn from The Adelphi. Mr. Paul Jackson, you are a hero from Hull and I salute you.

  If early 1985 saw the end of the miners’ strike, early 1986 saw the beginning of another great battle between the forces of ideological Thatcherism and those of a group of workers with a powerful trade union and a proud history. This time it was the Fleet Street printers, organised in SOGAT and the NGA - and, once again, Thatcher was determined that her side would win. Her Minister of Propaganda Rupert Murdoch, boss of News International, had demanded that the print unions working on The Sun, Times, Sunday Times and News of the World accept flexible working, agree to a no-strike clause, adopt new technology and abandon their closed shop. The unions said no.

  War started on 24 January 1986, when nearly 6,000 newspaper workers went on strike following the breakdown of talks around News International’s plans to move its entire operation from Fleet Street to a new plant in Wapping, East London. All strikers were immediately served with notices of dismissal. Overnight, Murdoch then moved the Times, Sunday Times, Sun and News of the World to the new site, dubbed ‘Fortress Wapping’, and hired members of the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union (shame on them!) to man it.

  Journalists were then instructed to report for work there: many did, including Garry Bushell, to whom I wrote an angry letter a few days later. (I got a reply. ‘Still wearing the turn-ups, John?’ That’s all it said. Haven’t spoken to him since.) Some refused, but not enough to affect production. The new plant was immediately besieged by thousands of angry workers whose livelihoods had been snatched away – and, as during the miners’ strike, Thatcher used the police as her private army to enforce Murdoch’s will.

  I joined the demonstrations in Wapping and saw the brutality at first hand: not only was I angered beyond belief at the brazen connivance of Thatcher’s government and Murdoch, the fact that my granddad had been a printer gave me some sort of vague connection as well. Police charging, battering, brutalising and arresting peaceful demonstrators, women as well as men, denying local residents access to their own homes and towing legally parked cars out of the way so that Murdoch’s distribution lorries were able to drive away from the plant at a ludicrously dangerous speed down the narrow streets to get the papers to their outlets. The open partisanship of the police at Wapping was evident: it was class war, they were there fighting for Murdoch and Thatcher, and many of them thoroughly enjoyed doing so. The aim of the demonstrators was to try and stop the scab labour, both print workers and journalists, from getting into the plant, and to block the lorries carrying newspapers getting out: there were several different exits from which lorries could leave, and demonstrators were constantly trying to work out which one was going to be used next. Thereby hangs a rather amusing story.

  My former partner Joy had a long and successful career as a journalist and editor and was firmly on the side of the print workers: she was not, however, someone to end up at the bottom of a scrum being battered by police. When I told her what was happening at the demonstrations she decided to drive us over there so she could see for herself – despite my protestations that the place was a bloody fortress surrounded by hordes of rabid police perfectly happy to attack anything that moved. We skirted round the plant for a bit and, sure enough, arrived at a solid blue wall bristling with hostility and gesturing vigourously to her to turn round and go back from whence she’d came. Joy held her ground: she was made of sterner stuff. One of the more senior policemen approached. As far as I can remember, matters proceeded roughly thus.

  I kept quiet and covered up my anti-Murdoch badge. She put on her most authoritative editor’s voice.

  ‘Excuse me, Officer. I’m not quite sure where I am. I’m supposed to be having a meeting at the News International plant, but I don’t know where to go. Could you direct me, please?’

  ‘Have you got any accreditation?’

  ‘I’m sorry Officer, no. I had no idea that all this trouble was going on, or that I’d need any.’

  No idea how she got away with it, but confronted by a very polite but firm sounding middle class lady in a Volkswagen Golf, the policeman was taken in. The blue line parted - and we were driving down the main thoroughfare where the lorries left from. Pickets were everywhere, trying to spot the lorries coming out so that they could block their way: so, of course, were police. For a mad few minutes we drove up and down the line: every time we saw a lorry about to emerge, Joy would drive to the nearest lot of pickets and I’d point the relevant entrance out to them. I can still remember pickets cheering as we drove past. The police eventually cottoned on, of course, and we managed to drive off before they stopped us: if they had done, it would have been interesting to have seen their attempts to make a charge stand up in court. Although I am sure Thatcher and Murdoch’s pet police would have tried to prove that it was, driving up and down the public highway is not yet a criminal offence.

  As during the miners’ str
ike I did benefit gigs (and played in a fundraising football match organised by SOGAT) but, sadly, the printers’ battle was doomed from the start. Murdoch had planned the switch to Wapping with military precision and, of course, churned out endless propaganda in his papers against the strikers. Other newspaper owners, pleased to see the back of a strong and organised trade union, joined in the propaganda with gusto and brutal police tactics did the rest. The strike collapsed on 5 February 1987.

  With the miners and printers beaten, employers could declare open season on trade unions and hard-fought workers’ rights and they did: current UK labour conditions are the poisonous legacy of those days. Zero hours contracts, ‘flexible working’, unions banned from workplaces, arbitrary sackings, minimum wage salaries while employers’ profits soar, bankers flaunting their wealth in our faces while the poor and the sick are blamed for their own condition: all this, for me, has its roots in the great defeats of 1984-1985 and 1986-1987.

  Now here’s an irony. As the Wapping dispute was escalating and the miners were licking the wounds of their bitter defeat, the ‘Labour’ Party – which had studiedly and abjectly refused to back either the miners or the printers - decided to go into showbiz.

  The seeds had been sown at the end of 1985: I was one of many who received an invite to a reception at the Houses of Parliament for the launch of something called Red Wedge. Somewhat against my better judgement I went along and I found a load of pop personalities, media figures and MPs being served drinks by bow-tied waiters on a House of Commons terrace. Not my scene at all. I was offered a drink by a very familiar-looking waiter with a wry grin on his face. We both burst out laughing. It was my early inspiration, sometime gig partner and all round punk rock hero Patrik Fitzgerald!