This old money game (2025)

From the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

In December, 2022 a music video entitled Hi Ren appeared on YouTube. The name of the singer-songwriter-guitarist was Ren. The video was over nine minutes long, virtually an epic by music industry standards. It was a live recording made on a shoestring budget. The song vividly dramatised the singer’s mental health issues and state of inner conflict, conditions which many can relate to. Within two months Hi Ren had gone viral, gathering nearly seven million views and coming to the attention of a host of online music reactors – people who post videos of themselves reacting to other people’s music. Few of those reacting to Hi Ren for the first time had ever heard of its creator, and many were clearly unprepared for what they were to witness.

Intrigued and eager for more, they began reacting to Ren’s extensive back catalogue of online music videos, and to new songs that he continued to drop over the following months. It soon became clear to everyone that here was a musician of exceptional skill and versatility. Ren was an accomplished singer, rapper, guitarist, songwriter and keyboard player. He was also a superb storyteller, performer and producer of his own music videos. His songs were never predictable. They broke convention and they defied genre. Musicians, film makers, videographers, and music lovers enthused online about the way he was breaking open the moulds into which commercial interests had been pouring popular music in recent years.

Dirty-grey average

Capitalism is often praised for innovation and choice, yet the logic of its drive to maximise profit induces companies to turn out products with the widest possible appeal, thereby reducing them to a dirty-grey average. In the popular music industry this tendency to sameness has deepened in recent years thanks to the availability of sophisticated data-analysis tools. Recording companies are now increasingly able to identify and predict the kind of hooks and singing styles that make hit songs. Having once established a winning formula, they mobilise teams of in-house songwriters to churn out pattern-book songs which big-name singers and musicians are then contracted to record and convert into cash. New post-production technology is used to ‘optimise’ the product by electronically removing glitches and correcting imperfections in studio performances. It is now possible electronically to adjust a wobbly vocal line, repair an off-key note, or smooth out an uneven beat. The result is another glossily perfect musical product tumbling off the production line. Commercial radio stations help to magnify this tendency to sameness by demanding songs which fit neatly into their time slots, deal with the right kind of easy-going and uncontroversial themes, and have catchy ‘hooks’ designed to snag listeners.

The music industry as a whole is notoriously ruthless and litigious. Capitalism’s property system makes it prone to scams and money grubbing. Often this involves the murky legal world of copyright. Ren appears recently to have himself fallen foul of just such a scam. Typically, he has responded to it by speaking openly online and making a music video about it. Such openness is unusual and has attracted support from other musicians who have suffered in the same way. Uploaded music videos are themselves often targets for online scammers. In one such fraud, recently exposed, scammers have been using a green screen to remove video images of original artists from videos of Britain’s Got Talent and similar TV shows, and then insert video images of themselves lip synching to the vocals. By uploading the manipulated videos onto their own platforms and attracting an audience they are able to obtain money from the advertising revenue generated.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world. Yet every so often a creative artist comes along who is able to communicate with music of such originality and directness that they can bypass the big companies and attract their own audience. Ten months after Hi Ren went viral, Ren dropped a self-produced album of his own music called Sick Boi. Without corporate backing, with almost no radio exposure, and without the publicity of live shows, the album floated serenely up the British top 40 chart to take the number one position. Ren had arrived – much to his own apparent surprise.

Who is Ren?

So, who is this man? Ren is the professional name of Ren Eryn Gill, an open, generous and appealingly boyish musician, now aged 34, hailing from a remote Welsh village on the Isle of Anglesey. His personal story is studded with drama and tragedy. Signed up to Sony Records at the age of 19, he was forced to abandon the recording of his first album by the onset of severe ill health. He returned home to Anglesey where he became bed-ridden and suffered excruciating pain for eight years. He developed auto-immune disease and experienced a stress-induced psychotic breakdown. During this time, his best friend committed suicide on the Menai Bridge. His illness was repeatedly misdiagnosed until, after years of useless therapy and medication, a private physician in Brussels identified his condition as Lyme disease. Treatment for the disease has now partially restored his health, but having harboured the infection for so long, it is likely that his body will never fully recover.

Convinced that his chance of a major career in music was over, Ren went back to busking on the streets of Brighton, and producing low (or zero) budget videos of his own music. These rapidly gathered a following of loyal fans. And then, in 2022, he dropped Hi Ren and his world exploded. He now has almost 2.2 million YouTube subscribers and Hi Ren has 56 million views worldwide. Those numbers continue to climb.

Ren has taken the experience of his personal tragedy and his struggle to fulfil himself as a creative musician and universalised it into something highly relatable. In his own words, ‘I owe much of my success to the most destructive force in my life, which has been the turbulence of my physical and mental illness’. His music addresses difficult social issues such as mental health, suicide, and the cycle of child abuse. It communicates with raw emotion enhanced by his habit of recording his songs live, in a single take, and with minimal post-production work, a procedure almost unheard of today. Minor glitches in performance are left unedited. This side of his art has touched people of all ages. Comment sections of his online videos are flooded with accounts of how listening to his music has given new hope and even saved lives. Yet, not all of his music deals with difficult subjects. He has a strong sense of humour coupled with an apparent lack of inhibition. His songs vary from the cheeky to the deeply serious. And interwoven into many of them is yet another theme: the nature of capitalist violence and our own complicity in maintaining the system. A trilogy of music videos entitled Money Game, Parts 1, 2 and 3, tackles this theme head on.

Portrait of capitalism

Ren’s music and story-telling skills find particularly powerful expression in Money Game 3, which focuses on the life and career of ‘Jimmy’, who is driven to win his father’s approval by seeking success in business. By his late teens he is already amassing capital. On his way up the financial ladder, he discovers the potency of the lie and the capacity of capitalism’s money game to translate wealth into political power. His business dealings become increasingly risky and illegal. When his father dies of a heart attack his obsessive search for wealth and power become both socially and personally destructive. As the lyrics of Money Game 3 put it, ‘he followed the code in the land of the free: put your hand in the cookie jar and take more than you need’. Jimmy eventually overreaches, is injured in a shootout between drug cartels, and becomes confined to a wheelchair. Too late, he comes face to face with the consequences of his actions and values.

Ren’s exceptional story-telling ability has left a huge impression on his audience. As Money Game 3 tells us, Jimmy is an ‘exaggerated version’ of you and me. He is an Everyman, both complicit with, and a victim of, the system. One reactor responding to Ren’s message nailed it: ‘When you talk to people individually, it seems like everybody gets it, but then we kinda go right back to that lifestyle, because that’s just the way that the world works. It sucks, but it only works that way because of us.’ (Duane Reacts). We are all indoctrinated into the capitalist system and its ideologies from an early age through our parents, through an organised system of schooling which denies children control over their lives, and through the ideologically driven media. The message drummed into Jimmy’s head is that financial success is the only meaningful kind.

Money Game 3 is a punch in the guts, a dramatic piece of musical theatre which won Ren and his friend/videographer, Samuel Perry-Flavey, an award for the best Independent European music video of 2024. Together, the three Money Game videos deal with the violence arising from the profit system, and as well as its impact on attitudes to immigration. They show how we uncritically adopt and reproduce the values promoted by capitalism. It is a fact of life that we can no more stand outside our own society than we can stand outside our own skin, and yet we are not robots: we can step back, reflect on our experience and identify where it clashes with the conventional values and practices of our world. Socialism is, in part, a process of learning to overcome our indoctrination.

The three Money Game videos paint a picture of our world that many recognise. Recognition, however, is insufficient to provide a secure insight into how the system works or how it can be addressed. Ren describes himself as an anti-capitalist, someone who rejects a society that puts profits above people. He has all but denied that he is a socialist. Nevertheless, as socialists we can recognise the portrait of capitalism that he gives us. We can unpack the clues in his work to show that the only way to reject ‘profit over people’ is to reject profit and the money game altogether.

Now that Ren’s star is rising will he continue to resist the blandishments of the music industry or sign up with a record label? If he signs up, he will have greater resources to put into the music he is so passionate about making, but unless he becomes such a highly bankable commodity that he is capable of dictating his own terms it would almost certainly mean a loss of creative freedom. The money game would soon consume him.

At the moment, it looks like he is strongly resisting. True to character, though, he has spoken openly about his own inner conflicts on the matter. We can empathise. These are the inner conflicts and compromises familiar to anyone caught in the contradiction of advocating for a world beyond the destructiveness and repression of the capitalist system, but who, for now, has to live and survive within it. While capitalism persists, however, a socialist perspective helps us to focus on the goal of achieving a world which is more social, more humane and more satisfying than the one we have at present.

Hud.

The assassination of art (1975)

From issue number 1 (1975) of The Western Socialist

In a democratic society, art is politics in the widest sense, a celebration of common values which sweep away the old and clears the way for the new needs of man.

Victor Jara, Chilean play producer, singer guitarist, was a supporter of the Allende regime. In the military coup that followed he was assassinated on 15th September 1973. They broke his guitar fingers before breaking his spine. Bullets were then shot into his body.

He is one more addition to the many creative people in history who have become too dangerous to live. For the arts are not amusements, ornamental skills, diversions, comforts for tired businessmen or social polish for the pretentious. At least, not to the men who wield political power. The arts communicate and communication is the most potent force for progress and change.

History is full of the power of the arts, not the overt expression of dissatisfaction nor the blatant clarion call to rise and fight but the uniquely potent expression of ideas which show that man is ready for change. Art is a barometer and a celebration, a mirror to the emotional and intellectual development of man. The artist says, “This is man, how he feels, how we feel,” and once said, it can never be repealed. The ideas catch fire in the minds of men, not because they are new and logical but because they express clearly what people feel but cannot quite themselves make known.

George Bernard Shaw provocatively said that art is propaganda. It is this but far more. In a democratic society, art is politics in the widest sense, a celebration of common values which sweeps away the old and clears the way for the new needs of man.

This does not mean that artists are consciously political in the modern use of the term. In fact, the moment an art becomes consciously political, it usually ceases to be art. The pamphleteer is not an artist because he knows rationally exactly what he wants to say before saying it. He may express new values but they are communicated on a mechanically logical level. There is no bridge of feeling between the old and the new for the mass of the people, still struggling to understand their own feelings, to make the crossing. Art does not lead the needs of man; it expresses them and man, whose evolution is on a social and economic level rather than a physical one, can develop further because he then knows clearly where he is. He recognizes as his the values expressed by the artist.

But some artists do not communicate in their own time. They may lead the way for other artists to follow but they themselves may be a little too far ahead of their time. These artists are sometimes called “important” as distinct from “great”, the universally recognized artists who signify a whole epoch or “celebrate” a common feeling.

Both kinds of artists can be dangerous to the established powers but the “important” artists are more easily destroyed than the “great” ones. They are less supported, less recognized and their deaths provoke less reaction.

The Un-American Activities Committee could not destroy Charles Chaplin or Arthur Miller nor could the Soviets destroy Yevtushenko but artists with less recognition, ahead of their time and people, are frequently destroyed in the power struggles of the world.

President Allende did not have the control of the Chilean parliament or of the army and his own political programme did not have the understanding of the peasants. He was supported as a leader and all this suggests that he was not really the spokesman for the people. The intellectuals and artists who supported him were therefore not truly representative of the people; they were a little before their time. Victor Jara died because his death meant a delay in his ideas developing among the people. Had he been expressing true national feelings, his martyrdom would have been too dangerous because of the possible reaction. More importantly, his martyrdom would have been irrelevant because his values would already be held by the majority of people anyway.

Throughout the world, the fate of the Allende administration has been hailed by the left and the right wings as an illustration that a majority of people cannot change society by democratic and constitutional methods. In actual fact it merely illustrates the futility of a vanguard group trying to lead an ignorant mass of followers into a change which the majority do not understand. When you can destroy a leader and destroy a cause, destroying a leader is obviously the best solution.

A second moral can be drawn. We must learn to respect and protect our artists whatever their political opinions. A society which neglects them is destroying its capacity to change.

Mark Fury, 

S. P. of New Zealand

‘Imagine’ – Sugar-coated anti-capitalism? (2023)

From the August 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

John Lennon’s 1971 song Imagine is often hailed as the encapsulation of a true socialist society. It depicts unswervingly and melodically a world where the resources of the earth are shared between its populace with everyone having enough to eat, living cooperative lives and no longer being plagued by war, religion or national divisions. Yet there’s no shortage of criticism of it from those who have a different view of the best way for humans to live or from those who just don’t like John Lennon.

A recent example of this is in an article – ’10 revered classic rock songs that are actually awful’ – which recently appeared in Far Out Magazine. It places ‘Imagine’ among those ‘actually awful’ songs (tinyurl.com/4wpuam45). It describes its words as ‘cliched’ and says that Lennon ‘treated the populace as idiots’. The article then goes on to describe the song as ‘so insipidly idealist that even school kids can see through the lack of sincerity and humanised realism’. It also alludes to Lennon’s well-known ‘sugar-coated’ comment, that is to his having himself said of the song: ‘Anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic, but because it is sugar-coated it is accepted. Now I understand what you have to do. Put your political message across with a little honey’ (quoted in Geoffrey Giuliani’s 2000 biography Lennon in America).

Imagine there’s no heaven

It’s easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries

It isn’t hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peaceYou may say I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one

I hope someday you’ll join us

And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world

You may say I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one

I hope someday you’ll join us

And the world will live as one

It’s easy to see why someone might see the words of Lennon’s song as ‘idealistic’. After all, the future world he describes and advocates is, in just about all its features, the direct opposite of what exists today. ‘No countries to live or die for’, ‘no religion’ (‘above us only sky’), ‘no need for greed or hunger’, ‘all the people sharing all the world’. How far away can you get from the nationalistic, religion-besmirched world that is modern capitalism, a system in which greed is lauded and personal wealth is looked up to while around 286 million people wake up every day not knowing where their next meal will come from? But is Lennon’s ‘idealistic’ vision here something to be scorned as lacking ‘realism’ simply because it yearns for something different and better?

As for the idea that it is something that school kids will ‘see through’, will they in fact not be more likely to see the sense in it? After all school kids have spent less time than others living in the system that dominates and enslaves the world and so may be less conditioned by its rules and norms, and therefore more able to imagine a world organised differently. Conversely, for adults, having been subjected to the conditioning process for longer, a greater effort of the imagination may be necessary for them to contemplate a world with ‘no heaven’ and ‘no hell’, where people are ‘living life in peace’ and where there are ’no possessions’ (ie, surely artistic shorthand for no monopoly of wealth). But imagination is what socialists have always insisted is needed by those who own nothing but their ability to work and need to sell their energies to survive (ie, the vast majority).

Meanwhile those who have difficulty in exercising their imagination will always tend to say of the existing social order that ‘there is no alternative’. And this, contrary to what Lennon’s critic says about ‘Imagine’ being clichéd, is the real cliché and summed up so well by the science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin who wrote: ‘We live in capitalism – its power seems inescapable. But so did the divine right of kings.’ As history has shown, change does come, and, if that change means looking to a radically different way of living, perhaps we should say with Lennon ‘it’s easy if you try’.

Finally, another part of the criticism seems to be that Lennon doesn’t attempt to give any prescription as to how his imagined world is to be brought about. But how could he in three minutes or so? The fact is that he has outlined some of the key features of a socialist world, one without buying and selling, without markets, without rich and poor, without leaders and led, without wars or religion. And, as pop song popularity polls have constantly shown, he has done it in a way that people find appealing and listenable to. And if that’s what ‘sugar-coated’ means, then so be it. Of course, Lennon’s Imagine doesn’t seem to have made a large impact in shifting people towards socialist ideas, but it’s not hard to imagine that, as socialist ideas spread, it will be an anthem that people identify with as they take action to plan and bring into being the system of society it depicts.

Howard Moss

The Old Lie (2023)

From the April 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori’ – It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country – is taken from an ode by the Roman poet, Horace. There are lots of sick people in the world who would agree with Horace. Just so long as they’re not the ones doing the fighting and dying. Politicians, deluded nationalists, arms dealers, arms manufacturers, as currently is the case in Russia and Ukraine. Wilfred Owen responded:

…If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer,

bitter as the cud 

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

In August 1914 the SPGB had already declared:

Having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our fellow workers of all lands the expression of our good will and Socialist fraternity, and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of capitalism and the triumph of Socialism. THE WORLD FOR THE WORKERS!

In the mid-sixties Barry McGuire was growling ‘We’re on the eve of destruction.’ We’ve been on the eve ever since the first American-produced atomic bomb was exploded on Japan in 1945. Twice.

At the same time, Donovan was singing about the effects of nuclear war:

Cities full of people burning, screaming, shouting loud, 

And right over head, a great orange mushroom cloud. 

Now there’s no more war 

For there’s no more world.

Heavy metal bands were also producing anti-war songs.

As the mad men play on words, 

And make us all dance to their song,

To the tune of starving millions, 

To make a better kind of gun. 

(Iron Maiden, Two Minutes to Midnight )

Politicians hide themselves away, 

They only started the war,

Why should they go out to fight? 

They leave that role to the poor, yeah’

(Black Sabbath, War Pigs)

War, I despise, it means destruction of innocent lives

War means tears to thousands of mother’s eyes when their sons go off to fight

and lose their lives.

It’s an enemy to all mankind…

Peace, love and understanding, tell me, 

Is there no place for them today?

They say we must fight to keep our freedom but there’s got to be a better way,

War, What is it good for? You tell me (nothing)

Stand up and shout it (nothing). 

(Written by P F Sloan, performed originally by Edwin Starr)

Folk singers too:

I learned our Government must be strong; 

It’s always right and never wrong; 

Our leaders are the finest men, 

And we elect them again and again.

War is not so bad;

I learned about the great ones we have had.

(Written by Tom Paxton, performed originally by Pete Seeger)

(Written by Tom Paxton, performed originally by Pete Seeger)

Donovan sang:

He’s the Universal Soldier and he really is to blame, 

His orders come from far away no more, 

They come from here and there and you and me, 

And brothers, can’t you see?

No, individuals are not to blame for war. Capitalism is. In 1935, Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, an American who had taken part in many military campaigns had an epiphany. He spilt the beans, listing the various countries he had worked in and the capitalists whose interests the military was working for: oil, banks, Wall Street, fruit companies. He described himself as a ‘gangster for capitalism’.

Karl Marx’s words that ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it,’ remain even more relevant today. The time is long past for us all to change it for the better.

Charles Dickens’s Scrooge asked the Ghost of the Future, ‘Are these the shadows of the things that will be, or are they shadows of things that may be, only?’ Response: ‘Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead.’

Dave Coggan

Blogger's Note:

I think there was a bit of a mix-up in the editing of this article. 'War' by Edwin Starr wasn't written by P. F. Sloan. It was written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong. And it wasn't performed originally by Edwin Starr. It originally appeared on The Temptations album,  'Psychedelic Shack'. 

P. F. Sloan did write Barry McGuire's 'Eve Of Destruction'.

Wood for the Trees: The Art of Cynicism (2020)

The Wood for the Trees Column from the March 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those who might be unaware of it can be confidently assured that we live in a ‘Golden Age of Rock Music’. The music of bands like: Disturbed, Ghost, Godsmack, Rammstein, Epica, Kamelot, Nightwish and Band-Maid represent my evidence for this. The last two bands have released new singles that have rekindled the old debate between the cynical and the hopeful. Some see Nightwish’s Noise and Band-Maid’s The Dragon Cries as merely profiting on the environmentalist zeitgeist whereas others hope that these tunes represent the political integrity of the respective bands and will help create political change. Obviously these videos and the music that they promote are extremely costly and can only be made within the capitalist context because they represent a commodity that will, for the investors, sell at a profit. However this fact, beloved of the cynics who choose to believe that nothing will ever change, does not exclude the possibility that the nature of that commodity might itself become subversive of the system which helped create it. Change, for good or ill, is inevitable and we can ask what role music and the arts play within our culture’s restless history.

Nightwish have a long track record of using their music to communicate a political perspective. It is only recently that this Finnish band, courtesy of the internet, has started reaching a global mass audience. They have become commercially powerful enough to only create the music that they want to make rather than bow to the commercial pressures incarnated by studio execs, producers and owners of record companies. The Japanese Band-Maid, although very popular with the rock cognoscenti online have not reached a similar stage of commercial ‘independence’. Their single The Dragon Cries is their first overtly political song but because it was produced in the USA and is sung in English some suspect it of cynically exploiting the environmental and political concerns of its intended youthful listeners. What is beyond dispute is the quality of musicianship that produces the aesthetic catharsis so essential to great rock music (or any art form). Another possible avenue for a cynical critique is the appearance of the band. They wear doll-like house maid uniforms which emphasize the extreme feminine quality of many young Japanese women. Again whether this is purely a commercial decision to attract male audiences or whether it represents an intriguing antithesis to the macho posing and costumes of the traditional purveyors of heavy rock music is debatable. If we like a band we feel the need to defend it against criticism, whether justifiable or not, but is it necessary or important to do so?

Art, as with all concepts, is full of dialectical contradictions; it can serve the powerful or it can subvert their power. It can also, if it’s any good, contradict the intentions of the artist through the interpretation of its audience. Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen became, famously, an anthem for patriots despite the composer’s opposite intentions. In his effort to communicate with a global audience Bob Marley, according to some, sold his soul to Island Records. Art seems quickly to become independent once it leaves its creators hands. We use the word zeitgeist to emphasise this phenomenon in an attempt to understand why some art becomes iconic whilst other art, despite being of equal aesthetic quality, drifts into historical obscurity. Of course without the artist, recording technology, capital investment, the internet etc. we wouldn’t have any art to discuss but although the motivation, inspiration and integrity of those concerned in its creation is intriguing it is not the most decisive factor in the political and historical fate of any work of art.

In America the music of Jimi Hendrix, Marvin Gaye, The Doors and Creedence Clearwater Revival all fed the anti-Vietnam War zeitgeist that helped to end the conflict. The music of James Brown, Gil Scott Heron, War, the Temptations and Harold Melvin all strengthened the Civil Rights movement in the US. Not that this represented the cause of any political improvement but it would be foolish to deny that it helped create a cultural background for change. Perhaps the reason that we see such a flourishing of rock music is because of another surge of political discontent? Another irony is that many of these bands no longer come from rock’s birthplace (the USA) and oppose its economic and cultural imperialism. The German band Rammstein have said that they will never use English in their lyrics for this reason. Ironically seventy years on from the end of the Second World War we see a young band from Germany’s old axis ally Japan having to make the decision of whether to confront (like Rammstein) the contemporary icon of capitalism and its destructive values or try to subvert it – that is if they do indeed possess the political integrity one might wish them to have. It has always been challenging to believe that those with extraordinary talent might have no moral integrity or political good will and would sell themselves to the highest bidder but, to misquote the lyrics of another great rock band, ‘we’ve all been fooled before’.

Wez.

Night All.

Hello Dear Reader ('Reader' singular, 'cos I know it's just the one.)

You are currently reading the last post on the blog for the year — actually, I'll go further than that — you are currently skim-reading the last post on the blog for the decade. I thought I'd end on a round number, and this is post number 2,500 for 2019. That many posts in 12 months is not to be sniffed at. I doubt I'll reach such heady numbers again in a calendar year but I'll give it a shot. (Just maybe not in 2020, if that's okay with you.)

I could have reserved the final post of the year with a scanned in article by John A. Dawson - one of my favourite Socialist Standard writers from the pre-1914 period - or finally got round to scanning in that long arse essay by Maximilien Rubel that's been 'resting' in drafts for about two years now but I'm feeling lazy: There are films to be watched, family to annoy, and Grandma pizza to be eaten.

So, instead, I will leave you with this pop classic from 2006. One of those songs that never ages. Should have been a smash (getting to number 48 doesn't cut it), pisses all over John Lennon's 'Imagine' and will be my song of choice if I ever audition for The Voice.

See you next year:

A Bit of Argy-Bargy (1996)

The TV Review column from the August 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

The approach to history of those so-called "radical" historians who still uphold the capitalist system was exemplified last month by Channel Four’s Secret History: The Battle of Goose Green (12 july. 9pm). This programme. based on a book by Spencer Fitz-Gibbon, devoted itself to examining the strategic conduct of one of the key battles during the Falklands war. Its main contention was that far from being the type of honourable victory Thatcher exhorted us to "rejoice" at, it was instead a campaign severely flawed by the archaic tactics of the British army and the "over-the-top-lads” mentality of paratroop commander Colonel H. Jones. Colonel Jones, killed in action and awarded a posthumous VC for his troubles, was portrayed as a soldier straight out of a Boys Own comic—heroic— but in the cold light of day unprofessional in an army of supposed "professionals".

The attraction to Channel Four of such a programme is obvious—a chance to attack the culture and ethos of a British institution, in this case the army, without doing anything so radical as question its reason for existence, with a good deal of trivia and personalisation thrown in for good measure. In other words, this programme exemplified the approach of reformists and radical poseurs everywhere, the approach that deals with effects and not causes and isolates phenomenon that are mere aspects of a greater totality. Its real intention was to highlight "the shortcomings of the army’s command system at the time of the Falklands war", as Spencer Fitz-Gibbon put it himself in an article in the Guardian. Though one Falklands commander went so far as to question why the Battle of Goose Green need have been fought at all, this was a mere side-show and was still informed by the mentality which is obsessed with the strategic conduct of battles and with army tactics. But what, we may ask, was the purpose of all this?

Who—apart that is from the stereotypical Brigadiers in Bournemouth and flag-waving buffoons with improbably short haircuts—cares precisely how efficient British paratroopers are at killing foreigners? It is just not the kind of issue that preoccupies an adult, critical intelligence. This is what makes it all the more galling that Channel Four should have devoted time to such a farrago of nonsense, especially under the heading Secret History, which suggests that if this is an example of the type of secrets left to uncover, it is probably not worth the bother.

Crass as ever

Instead of concentrating on this type of non-issue, why didn't Channel Four commission a programme examining why the Falklands war was actually fought in the first place— probably a real secret to millions? Was it fought to protect 1,800 freedom-loving Falklanders or was it to defend the interest of the capitalist class from Britain and their investments there? Was it to defend democracy from dictatorship or to protect the ownership rights of the British government and capitalists over billions of pounds worth of adjacent raw materials? While it was at it, the programme could have investigated why all the major political parties in Britain supported the slaughter, and why it was that that inveterate peace-monger and CND luminary Michael Foot urged Thatcher on to make an example of the Argies.

And—more important than the desperately sad antics of Colonel H. Jones—why did the freedom-loving British Parliament try to stifle opposition to the war? For instance, when the anarchist punk band Crass released an anti-Falklands war single they were instructed to "watch their step" by the House of Commons. When they refused and released their "homage" to Mrs Thatcher, How Does It Feel To Be The Mother Of A Thousand Dead?, the government prosecuted them (as it turned out, unsuccessfully). The sound and sight of the pompous government minister Tim Eggar on TV and radio being asked to recite some of the offending lyric is still something to be treasured by those opposed to the jingoism of the entire pro-war campaign.

But just how many people are aware of the real facts surrounding the Falklands conflict is a matter for speculation. One thing is certain, however, they will not have been enlightened much by Channel Four's Secret History. If they don't get round to doing a proper investigative job of the real reasons for the Falklands war, then perhaps they may at least try to redress the balance by devoting a programme to the thousands if not millions who opposed the conflict instead of focusing on those who gave gloried in slaughter and who have sought to defend the need for armies and armaments. Let them also show the fake radicals in their real colours bemoaning after the event the strategic conduct of a slaughter they supported—let them show the Labour leader and all the others baying for Argie blood while those with a real idea of what it was all about stood out against the entire barbarous conflict. If they do they may let the final word go to Crass, who were more perceptive at the time of war than a thousand Channel Four historians who fancy themselves as latter-day armchair generals, helping the army to be more ruthlessly efficient:

Is it any wonder there was such sickening celebration over the Task Force
When so-called radicals work hand in hand with the ruling elite?
Yesterday those wily creeps rejected the ‘status quo',
Today they smarm and charm passageways to its very heart
Where's the free individual in all that? Where’s the hope and aspiration?
Identities have become corporations.

(Yes, Sir. I Will)

Dave Perrin 

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

Brief Reports (2012)

The Brief Reports Column from the September 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Researchers have discovered that temperatures in Antarctica 50 million years ago were warm enough for palm trees to grow. They also point out that temperatures in Greenland are now warm enough for palm trees to grow. A climatologist commented: ‘Travel companies are missing a trick – I predict Eskimo Sun Tours and Seal-Club 18-30 holidays.’ A local Inuit fisherman added: ‘Phew, what a scorcher. I’m down to my string vest. It’s Arctantastic!’

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The dust has finally settled and the crowds have gone home after the greatest competition of games in the modern era, with a raft of new world records set in jumping over obstacles, throwing things, batting things backwards and forwards, lots of rowing, and endless running round in circles. A spokesman for the G8 said last week: ‘If only we gave out medals it would be just like the Olympics. Otherwise it’s a lot of strenuous effort signifying nothing. Capitalism needs the G8 like a pentathlete needs a groin strain. We may as well make a game out of it.’

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Auditors have found that the Department of Work and Pensions has been paying a company to pass dead people as fit to work. French firm Atos was paid more than £112m in the last financial year to carry out about 738,000 face-to-face medical tests on people who later turned out to be deceased. 80 percent of these dead people were pronounced ‘fit and able to work’. A spokesperson for Atos said it worked very closely with the DWP on a “complex and challenging contract” to “fulfil all our contractual obligations”. He added ‘in any large enough sample there will be a statistically significant number of stiffs. Our staff are trained to spot benefit fraudsters, not signs of life.’ Four out of 10 appeals for live claimants are upheld at tribunals.

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Vladimir Putin has intervened to commute the sentences imposed on Pussy Riot activists, on condition their publicity agents come and work for him. A Kremlin aide stated earlier: ‘All that attention over one crap song in a church – who wouldn’t want PR like that?’ Pussy Riot are famous for focussing the media spotlight on a number of derelict cultural icons including Madonna, Sting, Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono.

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In China this month, the sensational trial of Gu Kailai, wife of former Party boss Bo Xilai and alleged poisoner of British businessman Neil Heywood, has been plastered all over no headlines and no internet websites. The controversial trial, which has thrown the Chinese Communist Party hierarchy into serious internal disarray, has not caused a media frenzy in newspapers and editorials have not blazed with wrath over the ‘moral corruption’ at the heart of government. Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo, China’s two Twitter equivalents, have been buzzing with no information whatsoever about the trial. Ms Gu, known as a Communist Party ‘princess’ in China, was unavailable for interview. Foreign journalists say they suspect ‘some censorship’ may be involved.

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US woman Diana Nyad is attempting a world record swim from Havana, Cuba, to Key West, Florida, a distance of 103 nautical miles. Nyad, who first attempted the swim in 1978, told reporters before she set off that this time she was very hopeful: ‘It helps a lot that I’m being followed stroke for stroke by 53,000 of my Cuban fans’.

Letter: Billy Bragg (2012)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Billy Bragg

Dear Editors,

I greatly enjoyed the article on Billy Bragg in the September Socialist Standard. By anyone’s standards, Billy is a great songwriter (if not a great singer!), but it is true to say that he has always been much clearer about what he is “against” than what he is “for.”

Being of a certain age, I was greatly enamoured of much of the post-punk scene of the early ’80s, of which the Gang of Four (also mentioned in the article) were a part. I’m not sure if they quite merit the label “Marxist”, though, at least not as we would understand it. Also, although they certainly had their moments, their po-faced brand of “feminism” could be a little tiresome, if not patronising – when the previously all-male band appointed a female bass-player they then announced to the world that they were now “one woman and three token men!”

Post-punk had pretty much run its course by the time of the miners’ strike, but the article did recall to mind a time when the Radio 1 playlist was occasionally troubled by SWP agit-poppers the Redskins (yes, really!), and also possibly one of the most subversive hit singles ever, the Style Council’s “Walls Come Tumbling Down.” From its initial scream of “You don’t have to take this crap” to it’s breathy female chorus of “Governments crack and systems fall/ ‘Cos unity is powerful”, Bragg’s fellow Red Wedgers brought something close to a genuine socialist message into the Top 10.

Those were the days!

Shane Roberts, 

Bristol.

Fyah Inna Babylon – A Marxist in the Media (2012)

From the November 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

I woke up one morning with a three-hour weekly radio show. The show was to be in the evening ‘specialist’ slot on Fridays and was called ‘Roots, Rock, Reggae’. I’ve always loved Jamaican music and for a Socialist ‘Roots Reggae’ is a perfect genre with its 100 percent political lyrics. Made in the ghettos of Kingston, these are songs of liberation: as I used to say, ‘the conscious thunder of righteous rhythms’. On the death of Bob Marley there was a slow drift back to ‘gangster ragga’, as Jamaican music lost its way in the eighties. After joining a reggae collective in 2000 I was relieved to find that not only ‘old school’ roots was back in favour, but a whole new generation of conscious musicians were rocking to the sound of liberation once again. I had not really expected to get the job as I had explicitly stated that my show would have to have a high political content. I was not interested in the usual ‘pick and mix’ entertainment genre.

Don’t get me wrong – I had a lot of respect for some of the other DJ’s with their in-depth knowledge of specific music genres. I just wanted to discuss the ideas that the lyrics and rhythms of roots reggae provoke – liberation, righteousness, Zion and the Babylon System, etc. Truth be told, it was a great opportunity to air some socialist ideas on live radio (a rare thing these days).

Everything started pretty well and I even got away with not playing ’The News’ in the middle of my show on the grounds that Murdochian propaganda would not go down well with my ‘audience’. My idea was to pick a theme or two from the lyrics and discuss the political implications. There’s something called ‘dub reggae’ (an enhanced instrumental track) that would keep the rhythm going as I pontificated. One such deliberation concerned the vexed subject of the reactionary and progressive elements within Rastafarianism. I have been called a hypocrite by some Rastas because I play the Roots but reject the spiritual part of its message. I attempted to point out that, as in most religions, because of its absence on earth, the need for justice is projected into another supernatural or spiritual realm. The yearning for righteousness is a very human ideal born of the suffering endemic within the exploitation of Capitalism (the Babylon System) and is shared by Socialists. Once you relegate political action to the mystical caprice of a deity (Jah) you inevitably produce an authoritarian social structure, with God and his prophets on top and the rest of us somewhere below – always anti-democratic and reactionary. Such was the polemical nature of my broadcasts. When I started, the ‘boss’ had taken me to one side and said: ’make the show you would want to listen to’ – and this is precisely what I did.

Before finding myself on the other side of the microphone I had nursed a contempt for local radio. The blandness, let’s be honest, is mind numbing. The mindless repetition of ‘petit bourgeois’ propaganda masquerading as community radio is politically laughable. And yet, as I learned, the people involved are normal human beings, totally oblivious to their role in perpetuating the values of the capitalist obscenity. They are obsessed with something they call ‘professionalism’. Any minor technical mistake or, much to my amusement, the use of inappropriate language is anathema. Turf wars with other radio stations is another obsession that feeds the fragile egos of those who are terrified by the endless ‘rules and regulations’ of broadcasting. It is this atmosphere that produces the blandness which so disfigures local radio and renders it politically impotent – and is, of course, the very intention of this kind of broadcasting censorship. To many broadcasters and consumers alike, music has become just another commodity with beautiful people singing beautiful songs with beautiful voices 24/7. Perfect nonsense fills the airwaves to feed the sick romance of lifestyle consumerism. And yet a show like mine found its way through the cracks for a while. What it so obviously lacked in ‘professionalism’ it made up for in ‘novelty’. I tried, as the rastas say, to ‘keep it real’ and forbad any political cynicism for three hours a week. So, I hear you ask, what could possibly go wrong and why is this great gift to radio no longer broadcasting?

The cost of running even a modest local radio station, even staffed with volunteers like me is prohibitive, and without advertising revenue it became impossible for the individuals involved to continue financing it themselves. Licences for FM, DAB and online broadcasting are astronomical and serve the dual purpose of financing the treasury and keeping those without money off the airwaves. Just for a while there, I was able to indulge two of my great passions in life, reggae music and socialism. The Devil doesn’t have all the best tunes and I’m sure conscious reggae roots will once again provoke revolutionary vibes on local radio somewhere. I’m just relieved my comrades didn’t hear me utter the phrase ‘Jah Rastafari’ at the conclusion of one of my more emotionally intense broadcasts – love is a funny thing.

Wez

Mixed Media: The Strange Agency (2013)

The Mixed Media column from the February 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Strange Agency (Live in Tottenham)

The Strange Agency, an Anarcho-Socialist ‘prog rock’ quartet from West Wales was the highlight at the ‘Paranoid Olympics’, a Mad Pride fund-raiser for the Campaign Against Welfare Benefit Cuts in Tottenham recently.

The Strange Agency (possibly named in homage to the 1960s Marvel Comics superhero, Dr Strange) are Craig High, vocals, Dave Bates on guitar, Issy Bates on bass guitar, and Steve Johnstone on drums. Their début LP, Strange One, was reviewed by Classic Rock Magazine in September 2012, which declared that: ‘Had this unruly bunch of West Wales long hairs been signed to Stiff Records in 1976, you can’t help but think chart success would surely have been theirs’. Dave was previously a long-term member of former Hawkwind front man Nik Turner’s band, and Craig also worked with Turner on a dub/psych version of the 1973 Hawkwind single Urban Guerrilla, which was about the anarchist Angry Brigade.

The Strange Agency played a set of nine songs in Tottenham which displayed Craig High’s political lyricism from helping out your neighbour in Digging Holes – also notable for the John Cipollina guitar style of Dave Bates – to Stanley, a tribute song to the film director Kubrick, famous for the anti-nuclear bomb film Dr Strangelove, and the psychedelic 2001: A Space Odyssey. Twisted Instinct is a powerful tour de force, referencing LSD discoverer, Albert Hoffman, and musically it was Blue Cheer’s cover of Summertime Blues or James Williamson’s guitar on Iggy and the Stooges album Raw Power. The lyric ‘Do they know what we are after? signals a call to overthrow the system. Digital Inferno is an attack on capitalist war, The Storm identifies the bankruptcy of bourgeois capitalism and Judeo-Christian civilisation, Corporate Buildings highlights the oppression of financial capitalism, A Global Warning shows that capitalism is the enemy of nature and the urgent need for a green socialism. Whirlpool attacks political apathy and urges people to ‘mobilise your picket lines’ and ‘mass action is a must’.

Craig High’s vocals are articulate and literate Punk, and his trilling ‘r’s’ are reminiscent of John Lydon while Dave Bates’ guitar has its origins in Hendrix. With Craig also on clarinet or blues harp, the Strange Agency effect is a 1960s and 70s psychedelic and progressive melodic rock sound. Think of a heavier Tom Verlaine and Television circa 1977.

Steve Clayton

Mixed Media: Bermuda Triangle Test Transmission Engineers (2014)

The Mixed Media Column from the March 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Bermuda Triangle Test Transmission Engineers (BTTTE) are the live performance extension of a trio of sound artists: Melanie Clifford, Howard Jacques and Nick Wilsdon who produce the BTTTE radio programme for the London radio arts station Resonance 104.4 fm. Last October BTTTE presented their Little Red Set: ‘dialectical cabaret in song, sound and exquisite hope’ at the Club Integral at the Grosvenor pub in Stockwell, South London.

BTTTE sang in Magyar Hidegen Fujnak a Szelek (Cold Winds are Blowing), a Hungarian folk song, the music collected by Zoltan Kallos in 1969 in Ördöngösfüzes in Mezoseg, today in Romania. The folk song is a prisoners’ song, a yearning to be free, to break the chains of oppression, reminding us of the Magyar working class attempts at controlling their own lives in the 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic or the 1956 Hungarian revolution which was crushed by the Russian Army.

The Song of Investment Capital Overseas written by Chris Cutler and Fred Frith of Avant-rock group Art Bears in 1980 is a satire on capitalist globalisation: ‘I empty villages, I burn their houses down, I set up factories, Lay out plantations, And bring prosperity to the poorer nations.’

BTTTE sang in German Epitaph 1919: Die rote Rosa written by Bertolt Brecht and set to music in 1928 by Kurt Weill as The Berlin Requiem: ‘Red Rosa now has vanished too. Where she lies is hid from view. She told the poor what life is about, And so the rich have rubbed her out.’ Marxist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg was murdered by Freikorps troops during the Spartacist working class uprising in Berlin in January 1919.

The Spanish El derecho de vivir en paz (The Right to Live in Peace) was written by Chilean folk singer Victor Jara who was murdered in the coup which overthrew the Allende government in 1973.

They finished with The Internationale written by Eugène Pottier: ‘if these vultures disappeared one of these days, the sun will shine forever, this is the final struggle, let us group together and tomorrow the Internationale will be the human race.’ It was written during the 1871 Paris Commune, of which Edouard Vaillant wrote: ‘If socialism wasn’t born of the Commune, it is from the Commune that dates that portion of international revolution that no longer wants to give battle in a city in order to be surrounded and crushed, but which instead wants, at the head of the proletarians of each and every country, to attack national and international reaction and put an end to the capitalist regime.’

Steve Clayton

“Abolish Money” – Sinéad O'Connor (1993)

Sinéad O'Connor on SNL.

From the January 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

The music business certainly contains some odd contrasts. On 5 November, the world’s biggest music publishing company, Time Warner, handed a cheque for £26 million to Elton John and Bernie Taupin for the future marketing rights to all their songs from 1974 onwards, including the next six future albums. This was the largest advance ever paid in music history. It reflected the safety of investing in the popular material involved.

Around the same time, a fairly successful but somewhat more controversial singer hit the headlines, not just of the music press, but also in the tabloids and elsewhere. Sinead O’Connor had torn up a picture of the Pope, live on camera on the “Saturday Night Live” American network comedy show. This only added to an already radical reputation, which had polarised opinion between the “moral majority”, particularly in the States, who see her as a public enemy and figure of hate, and the few who have been intrigued by the passionate protests she has pursued.

On an earlier occasion, she had refused to participate in a concert which was to have ended with a rendition of the Stars And Stripes, and for this Frank Sinatra was quoted as eloquently saying that he would like to “kick her butt”. The Sun did an excited expose about her alleged support for the IRA, which later turned out to be unfounded. She horrified the music industry by refusing to collect her “Brits” and US “Grammy” awards in 1991 as she disagreed with the acquisitive and competitive ethos it represented. Then, at the time of the Gulf War, this popular singing star again distinguished herself from her musical colleagues by nailing her colours to the mast and going on record as being emphatically opposed to the war.

Ugly scenes
In the USA, ugly scenes ensued in which piles of her records have been destroyed in public (no doubt in the name of freedom of expression). In Britain, she has been ridiculed instead, through the somewhat limp wit of radio DJs, attempting pathetically to stray into the vocal exposition of their insipid conservatism.

Matters came to a head last October, when she was violently shouted off the stage at a special New York concert held to commemorate thirty years of records produced by Bob Dylan. How ironic that this smug party held for the protest singer of a previous generation should have displayed such brutal intolerance for someone who had spoken out with views which had protested against certain sacred cows in the 1990s. Did they think that the sixties had been so successful in liberating humanity that “protest” could be quietly laid to rest?

It was in the aftermath of that concert that she announced her resignation from her singing career, stating that she had striven to achieve fame only in order to obtain a platform for certain strongly-held views. She then explained these views in some detail through various press interviews. It was subsequently announced that her record company had then persuaded her to reconsider her decision, and she was therefore included in the bill for an Amnesty International concert.

So what were the ideas which lay beneath this wave of controversy?

The opposition to Sinead O’Connor’s pronouncements about the need to abolish money had a tiresomely familiar ring to socialists. In supposedly radical journals like New Musical Express and supposedly liberal organs like the Guardian the tired old arguments in defence of the money system were trotted out with religious devotion, as if kept permanently ready, to use at the first signs of any heretical statements made against the money god:

  “Take away money, then you take away the pillars of society . . . Money may well be the root of all evil, but what choice do we have? Right now, no money equals no power. No power equals a voice in the wilderness. Sad, but that’s the real world. (NME, 14 November). 

  So you don’t accept that human nature is essentially competitive and that money is just part of this? … But what about you, Sinead? You must have a few quid stacked away somewhere? (NME, 31 October). 

   “Mad Woman in the Attic, Part II”; “I’m not a raving loony”. Sinead O’Connor told the Sun last week. “My biggest aim is to get rid of money”, she continued. “If everyone agreed to do it at the same time, it could happen”. Unsold piles of the last Sinead CD could be the new currency.”(Guardian, 31 October).

Revolutionary socialists, who have been working for many years for the creation of a moneyless system of society, have grown used to these inane defences of the money system. They confuse the notion of a fixed “human nature” with the wide variety of human behaviours which have evolved through the conditions of various social systems. It was of note that in the main NME interview involved, O’Connor made no fewer than fifteen separate references to the urgent need to abolish the money system. Whilst socialists will want to question some of the religious commentaries which were woven in with this, it was very heartening nevertheless to see this proposal receiving this unexpected platform:

   So the only solution to all of the problems in the world — starvation, homelessness, joblessness, etc — is to get rid of money . . .  A survey has to be conducted. Let’s have a vote and see . . . ”If everyone else was going to do it, would you be prepared to live without money?” Let’s see how people feel about it — supposedly we live in a democracy. I bet you that people will be able to do it . . . as long as there exists the system of money, there will always be people who have some and those who haven’t . . .  Ninety-five per cent of the world’s wealth is owned by five per cent of the world’s population. That’s the whole problem . . . We can do it, but there’s no point unless everyone’s gonna do it, it just can’t work . . .  Look at our lives, how they’re run by money . . .  get rid of money. In one foul swoop, you get rid of the whole thing. With love, and our supposed belief in God . . . Have the faith to go through the rocky part and believe that God’s gonna help us out. (NME, 31 October).

Child abuse
She holds the view that most modern social problems had their origin in the rise of the Catholic Church and “Roman Empire” based in the Vatican, with its sanctioning of various invasions and imperialisms, and its imposition of repressive moral codes over millions of people. In her own country of origin, Ireland, she describes how alcoholism, drug-abuse and, in particular, child abuse have in her view been the inevitable legacy of that historical process. She makes no secret of the fact that her own childhood there was plagued by persistent sexual abuse. It might readily be seen that her theorising about the key historical role of the Vatican in the rise of a globally exploitative system is a reflection of her own experiences and is too narrowly based on one interpretation of the development of certain, mainly European countries and in particular of Ireland. She fails to take a broader world view of the ruling class which in fact encompasses all religions, and in many cases none. On the other hand, these arguments are soon tied in with sounder lines of economic criticism:

  We’re all trapped in a society that has been very, very carefully orchestrated and structured to control us by people who want power over us, for money . . . they took us away from the truth, brutalised us and then only offered us one God, a God outside and above us, unattainable. They made our God into money.” (NME, 31 October).

She goes on to explain that the people who did all this were the Catholic Church, especially with reference to their role in Irish history. Again, this is a peculiarly narrow definition of the minority class enemy which exploits us, and leaves out of account the quite separate evolution of ruling groups in other ways in other parts of the world. Her proposed solution, however, of abolishing the social system which is based on money, is both universally applicable and urgently needed. There is an international ruling class which certainly does impose moral codes and supervise institutionalised poverty and abuse.

Regardless of the reservations referred to above, Sinead O’Connor is to be applauded for these specific proclamations which she has pursued so single-mindedly. The profusion of panic, misunderstanding and venom with which her comments were greeted is in fact testimony to the refreshingly different and viable ideas involved.

Clifford Slapper

Music Review: 'Dangerous Dogs' (2018)

Music Review from the January 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Dangerous Dogs', by Stern John (Off Records. 2017)

A polemical and at times whimsical album of nine tracks from a latter-day Billy Bragg, with acoustic guitar at the ready. There also are echoes of the wry social commentary of bands who have stood outside the mainstream over the years like The Declan Swans and it is clear that Stern John has his proverbial ear to the ground when it comes to spotting social developments and pricking prevailing attitudes.

Stronger vocally than musically in the main, the first and last tracks – ‘The Tipping Point’ and ‘Rope’ seem to be the most overtly political and driven by a passion for things to change. ‘Rope’ is easily the stand-out track and deserves a wider audience, both for its lyrics and melody. It recognises the power of collective thought and action and forms a metaphoric call to arms for those who question the system – ‘tiny strands can make a rope, once bound together they can’t be broke, when we’re united there’s more hope . . .  tiny strands can make a rope’.

Dave Perrin

Paying the Piper (1989)

From the February 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

As an addition to background music we play a subliminal message in a store, a message which you can't consciously hear, but which is going to be subconsciously received. We are in a sense an improvement in that we can focus more specifically on what we're trying to achieve with the pro-active system than you can with background music. We are trying to create a subtle effect, for instance using it for theft prevention. We've had systems in for two and a half years now and our results have ranged anywhere from 20 per cent reductions on theft to 90 per cent reductions on theft
(David Tyler. President of Pro-active Systems Inc., interviewed on Omnibus. BBC TV. 16 July 1984.)

The system described in this quotation — appropriately enough in the year 1984 — includes the words “I do not steal. I do not steal. I am honest . . . " repeated in a whisper which cannot be consciously heard as it follows the sound level in the supermarket. Policing the workforce has certainly come on a long way since the days of the Bow Street Runners. Rediffusion now exports the sedative effects of "Muzak" to 135.000 large subscribers in over 30 countries, from Africa to New Zealand and Japan. But the power of music has long been recognised by those in power. In Ancient China there was the Foundation Tone, a "sacred" pitch believed to guard against disorder. In Ancient Greece, music was legally regulated as a potential force for good or evil. In the nineteenth century, the emotive quality of music was shamelessly prostituted to enhance many nationalist movements, despite its intrinsically global appeal. In the 1920s. Catholic missionaries introduced brass bands into Papua to "subdue the dangerous energy" of native headhunters. And when the BBC lengthened the last pip of the radio time-signal after the Second World War, a number of angry listeners complained about unwarranted interference with the true and proper order of things.

Music and songs can, of course, be great forces for change, although recent cases where this has been claimed are in fact nothing but shams. Take the boom in musical charity projects which began a few years ago with Bandaid. Liveaid and the We Are The World record. The fine sentiments of global unity and compassion fizzled out in the old holy trinity of "faith, hope and charity"; the attempt to redistribute poverty failed utterly. Even Bob Geldof himself now freely admits that it solved nothing and changed nothing. Some still say "Well, we know it's not the answer, but . . . " in a defeatist tone which accepts that this society of insane contradictions will just have to do for the time being.

The subversive rebel music of the fifties and sixties — the tradition of sticking two fingers up at the establishment — found its seventies expression in punk rock. Once again, there is a long history of such musical defiance, with jazz in its day having enjoyed a similar reputation, even if it did not embody the punk idea of participation and access to the music for anyone. In 1928, W.H. Hadow wrote that "the jazz band . . .  puts itself outside the pale of music by the coarseness and vulgarity of its utterances" and four years later Arthur Bliss pronounced that jazz was "a subject for the pathologist rather than the musician". These fearful reactions continue today, particularly among the "moral majority" in the American South where an MCA executive refused to produce an album by the punk group Black Flag on the grounds that it was “anti-family”.

The ways in which such music has been accommodated into the mainstream have been well documented. Speaking of the punk album Never Mind The Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols, the Virgin Records Press Officer, Al Clarke, said: "The LP was released eleven days ago. It brought in £250.000 before it was even released and went straight to Number 1 in the charts". Once Castro was in power in Cuba he used the tradition of subversive music, La Trova Cubana to consolidate the new régime, with an official festival in Havana in 1967 called a "Protest Song Get Together". Likewise, reggae has been used in Jamaica by the state as a means of controlling dissent; it is perhaps significant that Bob Marley's first record was called Simmer Down. And in Britain, the idea of using apparently rebellious music as a means of control came readily to ex-teachers like Sting when he was singing with his old group The Police. In an interview he spoke of controlling the crowd and leading them to oblivion, and concluded "There isn't much difference between rock'n'roll and teaching, mind you. It's the same job. You're entertaining delinquents for an hour”.

The limitations of protest music were well summed up by the folk singer, Dick Gaughan in Folk Roots, September 1986:

 You can say what a bunch of villains the ruling class really are, what a nasty bunch of war-mongermg bastards they are. Bob Dylan made a fortune out of doing that in the '60s. Nothing wrong with that. But as soon as you go over the edge and take the step of saying the solution to the problem is ordinary working class people who are actually not just going to say the world is a terrible place, but are going to take the power off you and stuff it up your arse . . .  say that we are actually going to lake control . . . at that point you have gone too far. You can say anything you like except suggest a change of power into the hands of the working class. You can argue for socialism as long as you don't define what you mean by socialism. 

This safety has been well noted and acted on by some of the commercially promoted and quite successful artists who form the eighties equivalent of protest music, the (mostly pro-Labour) ‘agitprop” bands and singers affiliated to campaigns like Red Wedge.

Whereas an earlier generation of protest singers like Dylan sang the poetry of dissent without campaigning for presidents or prime ministers, the present wave have been recruited into British party politics by the ogre of Thatcherism rather than the capitalist system itself. In some cases artistic popularity has been used to sell stale and second-hand ideas for an alternative brand of "people's capitalism”.

During 1985. Billy Bragg performed 50 concerts as part of the "Jobs For Youth" campaign in conjunction with the Labour Party, and that tour led directly to the founding of Red Wedge, a coalition of performers which declared itself "committed to a Labour victory at the next election'. Billy Bragg himself was quoted as saying of the earlier protest singers that “All that generation came to nought. They thought that if they joined hands and sang Imagine the world would change" (Sunday Times, 26 January 1986). But this eighties "realism" is not all it seems, and John Lennon's plea for people to “imagine — no possessions" will prove to have been more challenging than Bragg's badge of slavery in Between The Wars: “I'll give my consent, to any government that does not deny a man a Living Wage . . . " In the same article, Andy McSmith. Labour's Jobs and Industry campaign co-ordinator said “Billy is worth his weight in gold to us”, and Eric Heffer commented “it is a good thing that an ordinary working-class lad like Billy should identify himself with the Labour movement". The Red Wedge manifesto itself strengthened the myth that mass unemployment was invented in 1979 and could be cured by “Government and council spending", and on the subject of war only promises more of the same:

The Russians are making clear their commitment to world peace . . .  under Labour we would see a move to real defence . . .  This does not mean, as the Tories claim, that the country would be defenceless. It means strengthening and modernising our conventional defences, which are dangerously run down.

Which brings us full circle to the Ancient Chinese Foundation Tone, humming the monotonous tune of the present order, with its international rivalry and bombs, its poverty and despair. But there are far brighter things to sing about. The world and all its resources, including communication and entertainment, are still waiting to be taken into the hands of the world community, to be used by and for us all.

Clifford Slapper

To be continued next month with a look at how the music industry makes its profits.