Attila (2012)

Attila the Stockbroker

Music Review from the August 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Attila the Stockbroker is currently on tour in Britain, with Rory Ellis.

Rory Ellis is a singer-songwriter-guitarist from Melbourne in the urban folk tradition who sings about street life, referencing the notorious nightclub ‘Bojangles’ and criminal “Chopper” Read. Rory’s ‘Skeleton Hill’ is about the gold field heritage site in Victoria in danger of becoming a quarry. His ‘Waiting for Armaguard’ is a witty and touching song about working-class longing for some material wealth. Rory shows the audience that his fingernails are painted in the black/red/gold colours of the Aboriginal flag.

Attila has said that seeing The Clash at the Rainbow in 1977 politically inspired him. He sings his eulogy for Strummer entitled ‘Commandante Joe’ during the gig. He, like others on the Left and anarchists like Class War have a tendency to personalise the iniquities of capitalism in the person of Mrs Thatcher. His song ‘Maggots 1, Maggie 0’ is a good example of this.

Attila is steeped in labour history, referencing Peterloo, the Chartists, and Tolpuddle.  His song ‘An honour not a stain’ is about transportation to Botany Bay. In 2005 he appeared at the Levellers Day in Burford. He sings ‘The world upside down’ about the Levellers/Diggers of the 1649 English Revolution. A more contemporary song is ‘Looters’ about the financial capitalists of the City.

Attila has expressed his support for the ‘socialist’ government of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) who ran Afghanistan with USSR support from 1978-92 and this is recounted in his song ‘Mohammed the Kabul red’. He has no love for New Labour singing “ New Labour, fuck off and die” and has called it a “travesty of a socialist party”. He described the 2003 Iraq War as a “hideous imperialist crusade”. During this tour Attila is writing a column for the Morning Star, the newspaper of the Communist Party of Britain (former CPGB). The Morning Star describes Attila as “a non-aligned Communist and a good friend of the Morning Star”. He describes himself as a “freelance leftie”, and others have called him “an anti-fascist social surrealist rebel performance poet”.

Attila’s website carries a photograph of himself and his band mates in front of the Karl Marx monument in Karl Marx Stadt in the former DDR. He has written that “it is up to us, the people, to determine the future and to take power away from the bastards who would destroy our hopes, our communities, our world”. It’s a shame he gives his support to reformist policies and state capitalism.

Steve Clayton