Letters: Red Wedge (1986)

Letters to the Editors from the July 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Red Wedge

Dear Editors.

With reference to your article Rock Bottom (March) I should like to make the following comments. I attended two Red Wedge concerts and was also present at a "Day of Action" in which Billy Bragg and the "Wedgies" were questioned about their motives for the tour and I feel that your article gives the wrong impression.

The tour was not thought up or arranged by the Labour Party but by Billy Bragg, Paul Weller and other left-wing artists; in fact, your first line is incorrect as Red Wedge is not just a campaign by rock musicians but also by comedians, cabaret artists, actors and writers who have been or will be on the road with their own tours.

Propaganda did not come from the stage but MPs — and a certain (ex) GLC leader — were in the foyer to be approached only if so desired. The theme of the tour was to make young people aware that politics is something that affects everyone, and also to get young people to register to vote —whatever party they may vote for, as many young votes had been lost in the 1979 election due to "punk" apathy.

In all. socialism was more the issue than the Labour Party, and at one concert Joolz stated that "no mighty thing" called the Labour Party would change anything — only the people can do that.

Amongst the leaflets left on chairs were ones on behalf of CND and the Anti-Apartheid Movement. Socialist Worker and Militant papers were for sale (where was the Socialist Standard?) and even the slogan on the official T-shirts, like the songs of the artists involved, advocated socialism, and I don't think that is a thing to be knocked.

Yours faithfully.

Philippa Britton

Jersey

Reply:
It was an omission on our part to refer to Red Wedge as including only musicians; it does also include comedians and actors. It is, however, definitely a pro-Labour movement, even though it is officially independent of the Labour Party. During 1985, Billy Bragg performed some fifty concerts as part of the "Jobs For Youth" campaign in conjunction with the Labour Party. That tour led directly to the founding of Red Wedge which declared itself, from the start, "committed to a Labour victory at the next election". Needless to say, the "Jobs For Youth" campaign had not made great play of the fact that Labour policies have proved as hopeless as those of the Tories in trying to control capitalism: every labour government since the 'thirties has left office with unemployment higher than when they were elected.

It may be true that Labour Party propaganda has not been featured on stage, but the performers would not have to tolerate the politicians “in the wings" if they did not wish to. It would be rather surprising if, come the next election, Red Wedge performers such as Robbie Coltrane, Paul Weller and Billy Bragg were to withhold their votes from the nationalist and fundamentally pro-capitalist Labour Party, and, of course, they make no secret of this. Indeed. Billy Bragg tried to defend his active canvassing for Kinnock in a Sunday Times article of 26 January 1986: "Anybody who cares about politics has their part to play, and that's best done as a local party member". He went on to say of earlier protest singers, "All that generation came to nought. They thought if they joined hands and sang Imagine the world would change" Of course, it is essential for people to think critically and to organise politically; but when John Lennon asked people to "imagine ... no possessions”, was that not more challenging than Bragg's sad badge of slavery in Between The Wars. "I'll give my consent, To any government. That does not deny a man. A living wage"?

Meanwhile, the political hacks were gloating. In the Sunday Times article referred to above, Andy McSmith, co-ordinator of the Labour Party's Jobs and Industry campaign, was quoted as saying "Billy is worth his weight in gold to us”, and Eric Heffer comments: "It is a good thing that an ordinary working-class lad like Billy should identify himself with the Labour movement".

It is fair to conclude that Red Wedge does not exist purely to encourage young people to vote and to think in any way they might feel like, but to vote and think Labour. The T-shirts might refer to "socialism", but this would not be the first time this term has been used for its popular appeal. Perhaps some performers are being "used" by the politicians to some extent, and any comments they might make about young people thinking for themselves can only be supported by socialists But it is contemptible for artistic popularity to be prostituted to the sale of stale and second-hand ideas for an alternative brand of "people's capitalism".

The Socialist Party did produce a leaflet which has been distributed at Red Wedge events, which we quote from here:

  Enjoy the music, but do your own thinking. Beware of the smooth talking leaders who are waiting in the wings to sell you their sterile ideas. Workers are capable of building a future which might now seem like a dream. That future has nothing to do with swapping the inhabitants of Ten Downing Street It is about establishing a society of common ownership, democratic control and production for use — a genuine socialist society. You owe it to yourselves to consider the case, not for the Labour Party, but for socialism.

Editors

No reform

Dear Editors,

Central to your position is the belief that capitalism cannot be destroyed piecemeal; the struggle must be for all or nothing. I agree that most reformist campaigns are futile and ultimately counter-productive However, I believe that there are exceptions to this rule.

I have in mind the following campaign proposal: "In order to safeguard the National Health Service private medicine should be abolished. Only when those who control the nation's purse-strings are compelled to rely on the NHS will they ensure that it is properly funded Quite simply, medicine is too vital a service to be bought and sold in the market-place".

Such a campaign can surely be seen only as a first step in persuading people that they would benefit from the common ownership of all resources. I am also convinced that it would gain widespread support. Even Sun readers would see through crude propaganda of the "freedom of choice" variety. In short, the prospect of the rich waiting their turn for treatment has very wide appeal.

Of course, a similar case can be made for the outlawing of private education.

Socialism remains the only answer to humanity's problems. It's time we took that first step.

Yours.

A. Beckett 

Chester

Reply:

A. Beckett is correct in asserting that central to the Socialist Party's position is the belief that capitalism cannot be destroyed piecemeal and that reformist campaigns are futile and counter-productive. But A. Beckett takes the view that some "worthy causes" are exceptions and can be reformed within capitalism.

The National Health Service does not represent a step towards socialism: the 1944 White Paper proposing such a service was presented by Henry Willinck. a Conservative Minister of Health, because it was necessary to give credibility to the concept of "fighting for a better Britain '; a centrally administered service was more efficient; a fitter workforce was needed for post-war reconstruction; it was feared that workers' agitation would break out again after the war if concessions were not granted.

Although health care is centrally funded the supply of drugs, equipment, provisions and construction have remained in private hands and the state in its role as employer has been just as ruthless in holding down wages as any private business concern.

To suggest that privileges can be given up by abolishing private medicine, without removing the causes of privilege and the exploitation of one person by another, is to invite failure Like all institutions under capitalism health services facilitate business interests which explains their growth when labour is in short supply and needs to be conserved, and the cut-backs imposed when unemployment causes a surplus of labour. "Non-producers" such as the elderly, the young, disabled. mentally handicapped and long-term mentally ill are kept short of resources even in a time of prosperity and expansion because they no longer contribute to the profitability of capitalism which overrides social needs.

The incidence of ill-health and premature deaths are higher for the poor than the wealthy and health services, however sophisticated, can only treat the symptoms of poverty instead of tackling the causes. Therefore, to campaign for better health services while leaving the causes of ill- health intact is to collaborate in the continued, and often unnecessary, ill-health of the workers. The same objections apply to A. Beckett's concluding view, that a similar case could be made for the abolition of private education. Indeed, once on the reformist road a case could be made for campaigning against destroying food; pollution; racism; sexism; nuclear weapons — all of which are doomed to failure or at best only limited success while we have a social system based on profit. Instead of enduring the frustration of trying to change a piece of capitalism we invite A. Beckett to join with socialists in building a moneyless society which puts people first.

Editors.

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.

Letter: Red Wedge (1986)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

With reference to your article Rock Bottom (March) I should like to make the following comments. I attended two Red Wedge concerts and was also present at a "Day of Action" in which Billy Bragg and the "Wedgies" were questioned about their motives for the tour and I feel that your article gives the wrong impression.

The tour was not thought up or arranged by the Labour Party but by Billy Bragg, Paul Weller and other left-wing artists; in fact, your first line is incorrect as Red Wedge is not just a campaign by rock musicians but also by comedians, cabaret artists, actors and writers who have been or will be on the road with their own tours.

Propaganda did not come from the stage but MPs—and a certain (ex) GLC leader—were in the foyer to be approached only if so desired. The theme of the tour was to make young people aware that politics is something that affects everyone, and also to get young people to register to vote—whatever party they may vote for, as many young votes had been lost in the 1979 election due to "punk" apathy.

In all, socialism was more the issue than the Labour Party, and at one concert Joolz stated that "no mighty thing" called the Labour Party would change anything—only the people can do that.

Amongst the leaflets on chairs were ones on behalf of CND and the Anti-Apartheid Movement, Socialist Worker and Militant papers were for sale (where was the Socialist Standard?) and even the slogan on the official T-shirts, like the songs of the artists involved, advocated socialism, and I don't think that is a thing to be knocked.

Yours faithfully,

Philippa Britton

Jersey

Reply:

It was an omission on our part to refer to Red Wedge as including only musicians; it does also include comedians and actors. It is, however, definitely a pro-Labour movement, even though it is officially independent of the Labour Party. During 1985, Billy Bragg performed some fifty concerts as part of the "Jobs For Youth" campaign in conjunction with the Labour Party. That tour led directly to the founding of Red Wedge which declared itself, from the start, "committed to a Labour victory at the next election". Needless to say, the "Jobs For Youth" campaign had not made great play of the fact that Labour policies have proved as hopeless as those of the Tories in trying to control capitalism: every Labour government since the 'thirties has left office with unemployment higher than when they were elected.

It may be true that Labour Party propaganda has not been featured on stage, but the performers would not have to tolerate the politicians "in the wings" if they did not wish to. It would be rather surprising if, come the next election, Red Wedge performers such as Robbie Coltrane, Paul Weller and Billy Bragg were to withhold their votes from the nationalist and fundamentally pro-capitalist Labour Party, and, of course, they make no secret of this. Indeed, Billy Bragg tried to defend his active canvassing for Kinnock in a Sunday Times article of 26 January 1986. "Anybody who cares about politics has their part to play, and that's best done as a local party member". He went on to say of earlier protest singers, "All that generation came to nought. They thought if they joined hands and sang Imagine the world would change". Of course, it is essential for people to think critically and to organise politically; but when John Lennon asked people to "imagine . . . no possessions", was that not more challenging than Bragg's sad badge of slavery in Between The Wars: "I'll give my consent, To any government, That does not deny a man, A living wage"?

Meanwhile, the political hacks were gloating. In the Sunday Times article referred to above, Andy McSmith, co-ordinator of the Labour Party's Jobs and Industry campaign, was quoted as saying "Billy is worth his weight in gold to us", and Eric Heffer comments: "It is a good thing that an ordinary working-class lad like Billy should identify himself with the Labour movement".

It is fair to conclude that Red Wedge does not exist purely to encourage young people to vote and to think in any way they might feel like, but to vote and think Labour. The T-shirts might refer to "socialism", but this would not be the first time this term has been used for its popular appeal. Perhaps some performers are being "used" by the politicians to some extent, and any comments they might make about young people thinking for themselves can only be supported by socialists. But it is contemptible for artistic popularity to be prostituted to the sale of stale and second-hand ideas for an alternative brand of "people's capitalism".

The Socialist Party did produce a leaflet which has been distributed at Red Wedge events, which we quote from here:

Enjoy the music, but do your own thinking. Beware of the smooth talking leaders who are waiting in the wings to sell you their sterile ideas. Workers are capable of building a future which might now seem like a dream. That future has nothing to do with swapping the inhabitants of Ten Downing Street. It is about establishing a society of common ownership, democratic control and production for use—a genuine socialist society. You owe it to yourselves to consider the case not for the Labour Party but for socialism.

Editors.

Rock bottom (1986)

From the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Red Wedge is a campaign by rock musicians aimed at conning young workers that voting Labour is in their interest. It is a cynical tactic employed by a party which, despite the idealistic intentions of some of its supporters, is in the business of forming a government to run the capitalist system of inequality, exploitation and insecurity.

The campaign strategy is simple: concerts are sponsored by the Labour Party and young workers are sold tickets promising a good night out. Then comes the propaganda. Billy Bragg or Paul Weller sing a few songs and then pass some comments on the need to get Kinnock into Number Ten. They might just as well advise people to try disco dancing on the M1. Waiting in the wings at all Red Wedge concerts are a few Labour MPs—carefully selected ones who don't use long words or talk about the need to recognise the realities of the world market. Their job is to make big promises, like drunks in pubs who tell you that if you  come back tomorrow night they'll be drinking with Samantha Fox. Recipients of these giant-sized whoppers are supposed to leave the concert with a burning desire to vote Labour. 

This all comes as music to the ears of Labour leaders like arch-opportunist, Robin Cook, who has observed that

At the next election there will be four million first-time voters who were too young to vote in 1983. Norman Tebbit might ponder with profit on how they will vote on the day of reckoning, and his campaign advisers could usefully remind him that it was a majority among young people that secured the election of a Labour government in 1964 and in 1974. (Guardian, 7 February)

So, the Labourites are again hoping for electoral success on the basis of anti-Tory feeling by workers too young or too forgetful to know that Labour-run capitalism is just as bad for the working class. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of Labour's strategy is its negative appeal: in general, workers are not told that Labour will do anything great—rather, Kinnock has been at pains to stress how little he would try to change—but are urged to rally under the pink flag because "anything must be better than Thatcher". In short, the Labour Party is depending on a rejection of the present, rather than plans for the future.

Paul Bower, Labourite co-ordinator of the Red Wedge con-trick, has a pessimistic view of the mental capacity of young workers. Indeed, he is condescending in the extreme:

Leaflets convince nobody. Meetings convince nobody . . . Why push a leaflet through somebody's door? They're probably so depressed they don't want to read it. A woman's come home from doing a cleaning job. She's too tired to read bloody boring leaflets. Also, people aren't literate in the same way that they were twenty years ago . . . they don't sit down and read books in the same quantities that they used to. I read books all the time. I love books. But I'm the product of a very different society than Britain between 1979 and 1985. (LAM, 28 January) 

What patronising nonsense! If Labour leaflets and meetings "convince nobody"—and we are glad to hear this from one of the party's promoters—perhaps it is because workers are sensible enough to reject the message they are being fed. Are we also to believe that women who go out to work are too mindless at the end of the day to examine "bloody boring leaflets"? What Bower must understand is that bloody boring parties inevitably produce them and workers will rightly throw them away. How often have socialists been told "Don't bother putting any of that socialist stuff through my door; I've seen it before and I can't be bothered reading all them promises". The propaganda of the Labour Party is a big turn-off, but that is no reason to suggest that workers are unable or unwilling to read anything.

In the USA, that land of bogus freedom and democracy, moderate actors can become President. In the recent election in the Philippines, Marcos and his wife toured the night clubs doing a double-act song and dance routine to whip up votes for their particularly vicious brand of capitalism. Perhaps all this is the necessary direction of capitalist politics, as reformist promises become hollower the emphasis must be on pure showmanship. Maybe we have yet to see the Iranian Ayatollahs doing a barber shop quartet and Gorbachev playing the spoons on network Georgian TV. We have already experienced the sickly picture of Kinnock dancing around in a pop video with Tracey Ullman.

Red Wedge is just another descent on that familiar journey of political opportunism. Of course, music can and always has been used by those who want to express themselves politically. But there is a mighty difference between the passion of the singer who has something to say and the hollow sound of this new gang of party-political mindbenders.

Steve Coleman 

Billy Bragg: Not Looking for a New England (2012)

From the September 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

“I never advocated the abolition of capitalism” (Billy Bragg, Radio 4, 21 April)

1984 was the year of the Miners' Strike and Billy Bragg. He identified himself with the Miners’ struggle against the Thatcher Tory government. In fact, Bragg says that Thatcher made him who he was. His album Brewing Up with Billy Bragg contained a song called The World Turned Upside Down about the Diggers and Levellers of the English Revolution of 1649 who advocated the“common treasury” of the earth, the title of the song referencing Marxist historian Christopher Hill's book.  All proceeds from Bragg's EP, Between the Wars, were donated to the Striking Miners’ Fund.

In April, the Reverend Richard Coles invited his old Red Wedge comrade, the ‘Bard of Barking’, Billy Bragg, onto his Saturday Live Radio 4 show, introducing him as “the British Left's most consistent voice”.  Bragg's consistency has been as a reformist, gradualist, and non-revolutionary voice. The Guardian (1 January last year) declared that Bragg had “an unshakeable commitment to democratic socialism”. Is the term ‘socialist’ an accurate description for this Dorsetshire denizen?

Bragg was brought up in Barking in East London, experiencing “the reality of working class experience not the theoretical” and attending Barking Abbey Comprehensive School.  He was energised by the Punk Rock explosion of the late 1970s, stating he was politicised by seeing The Clash at the Rock Against Racism carnival in Victoria Park in Hackney in 1978. The Clash were notorious for radical chic Leftist gesture politics such as wearing Red Brigade/Baader Meinhof T-shirts, and eulogising the Leftist Nicaraguan Sandinista government.

Bragg would have been better politicised if he had seen the Gang of Four confronting British Movement skinheads at Thames Poly in Woolwich in 1979. The Gang of Four were a Marxist post-punk band originating at Leeds University who were influenced by the Frankfurt School, and wrote about love, sex and leisure as fetishised commodities in capitalism, and alienated labour. In 1982, their single, I Love a Man in a Uniform, dissected war and capitalism. This song came too late for Billy Bragg because in 1981 he had joined the British Army. He had not worked out an analysis of capitalism and war and the fact that the working class do the killing and dying in capitalist wars.

After the end of the Miners’ Strike in 1985, Bragg's next campaign was Red Wedge which was a pop music collective dedicated to electing the Labour Party and getting Neil Kinnock into Downing Street.  Bragg told Coles that Red Wedge was “hardly revolutionary, it was Neil Kinnock”. Kinnock was already expelling from the Labour Party Trotskyists such as Militant and beginning the modernisation process that would eventually result in New Labour.  In 1987 Thatcher was elected for the third time.

After the 1987 election, the next stop for Billy Bragg was joining the newly formed pressure group, Charter 88, which had been set up by Liberal/SDP intellectuals. Charter 88 would eventually merge with the New Politics Network (which had evolved from Democratic Left which was, in turn, the 1991 successor to the defunctCommunist Party of Great Britain) and form the pressure group Unlock Democracy.

Barking Abbey Comprehensive School also produced Malcolm Eden and Tim Gane who formed the indie pop band, McCarthy, in 1985 who were explicitly a Marxist group that sang about socialism (Red Sleeping Beauty), the socialist commonwealth (CelestialCity), while their 1987 album, I am a Wallet, was all about capitalism and commodity fetishism in Thatcher's Britain

When McCarthy split in 1990 Tim Gane teamed up with French singer, Laetitia Sadier, to form Stereolab. Sadier told Melody Maker in 1991: “I want to change the world” and Stereolab's lyrics had a Marxist content. One song called Ping Pong in 1994 was a Marxian economic analysis of capitalism's crises. A 1992 song, Surreal Chemist, identifies the Marxist perspective of Stereolab:

“Even more than philosophers/Aiming at no less than the total transformation of man and his world/ True life embodying pleasure principle's noblest triumph/Over the cowering mendacity of bourgeois christian civilisation”.

In 2005, Bragg supported Oona King MP (New Labour, pro-Iraq war) in her election campaign in Bethnal Green and Bow in East London against the maverick Leftist, George Galloway. She was defeated.  New Labour had so abandoned the working class in East London that the far-right BNP gained seats on Barking Council.

The rise of the BNP in his native East London prompted Bragg to write his 2006 book, The Progressive Patriot, where he champions English nationalism and multiculturalism and even draws inspiration from Rudyard Kipling. (He of the British Empire and ‘the White Man's Burden’ whose propaganda egged on the slaughter of millions of the working class in the trenches of the First World War.) Bragg has no class analysis of society and writes he is “developing a narrative which explains how we all came to be here together in this place” (my emphasis) and states we now live in a “present classless society”. He does not see that the capitalist ruling class seek to convince the working class that ‘we’ is ‘the Nation’ and the Nation state is run by the capitalist class in their interests. He does not see ‘multiculturalism’ from a socialist angle, which views it a divisive because it forces the working class to identify with other groups against their class interests.

Since 2001, Bragg has stated that he is a tactical Lib-Dem voter but feels betrayed by the Lib-Dems being in the Coalition government with the Tories: “They had some positive things in their manifesto, and they seem to have abandoned the lot of 'em”.

Bragg told Reverend Coles in April that “there are no utopias, I was never that kind of revolutionary. As if I've ever called for the abolition of capitalism”. He agreed with Coles that his was “a modest programme of change, chipping away at that which is tractable”. Last year he told the Guardian:  “We're living in a post-ideological period” and that “the long shadow of Karl Marx” was over, and of the new protests he did not “care if it's called socialism”.

Steve Clayton

Further Reading:

Socialist Standard review of Billy Bragg's The Progressive Patriot

Further Listening:

Billy Bragg - The World Turned Upside Down

Gang of Four - I Love A Man In Uniform
McCarthy - Red Sleeping Beauty
Stereolab - Ping Pong