London Burning, Punk Rock and a Tea Party dream come true
posted by Dave Allen, 29 Comments
When I was recently interviewed by the author Rick Moody I found myself digging back through my memories of the UK and my time during the punk rock years of 1976 through roughly 1981. It wasn’t a nostalgic exercise; the oft used colloquialism “it’s grim up North” was more of an astute observation than a simple quip. Things that came to mind during the interview exercise were the coal miners standoff against a para-military police force, the right wing government of Prime Minister Thatcher privatizing our public companies to enrich her friends in the City of London, (our Wall St,) and the overall upheaval, the convulsing of society that came with that.
So here we are again in 2011.
The last time Britain saw widespread rioting, in the 1980s, street violence came after a long and failed political struggle against the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher, which suppressed trade unions and decimated social services.
– Richard Sennet and Saskia Sassen.
History repeats itself, especially when memories are short. Here’s a paragraph from me in the aforementioned interview with Rick Moody:
It’s worth pointing out that Gang of Four began when the Labour party was still in power under the hapless leader James Callaghan, with Margaret Thatcher taking the reins in 1979, eight months after the release of Entertainment! So it’s not as if we were in opposition to the Conservative party at the time, and we certainly didn’t write songs that had a political party agenda. We were openly supportive of the striking coal miners, we supported the Rock Against Racism movement, we were openly Feminist (“It’s Her Factory”) and so on, but really is that any different than simply being coined “liberal” or being a left-leaning Democrat in the USA today?
Just after we released our debut album, The Clash released London Calling – The album’s subject matter was social displacement, unemployment, racial conflict and politics with a small p.
This time in London there is no Punk rock revolution swirling around the rioters providing a musical soundtrack to their nihilism. Here’s Richard Sennet and Saskia Sassen again:
In attempting to carry out reform, the government appears incompetent; it has lost legitimacy. This has prompted some people living on Kingsland Road to become vigilantes. “We have to do things for ourselves,” a 16-year-old in Hackney told The Guardian, convinced that the authorities did not care about, or know how to protect, communities like his.
A street of shuttered shops, locked playgrounds and closed clinics, a street patrolled by citizens armed with knives and bats, is not a place to build a life.
Americans ought to ponder this aspect of Britain’s trauma. After all, London is one of the world’s wealthiest cities, but large sections of it are impoverished. New York is not so different.
The American right today is obsessed with cutting government spending. In many ways, Mr. Cameron’s austerity program is the Tea Party’s dream come true. But Britain is now grappling with the consequences of those cuts, which have led to the neglect and exclusion of many vulnerable, disaffected young people who are acting out violently and irresponsibly — driven by rage rather than an explicit political agenda.
And they point out that if the radical right and the Tea Party insist on attempting to fix economic problems and social ills by reducing the size of government the consequences of those decisions and actions will be enormous for the USA:
Britain’s current crisis should cause us to reflect on the fact that a smaller government can actually increase communal fear and diminish our quality of life. Is that a fate America wishes upon itself?
Are we all ok with that?
August 11th, 2011 @ 8:13 pm
You seem to assume that Tea Partiers are philosophically consistent. They don’t want to shrink government when it comes to war, empire and police. They just want to shrink the part that actually helps people survive.
Government will always be big enough to crush individual spirits.
August 11th, 2011 @ 9:36 pm
Mark, I agree with you up until your final sentence. Without government we’d all be living behind barricades – that would crush my spirit for sure..
August 11th, 2011 @ 11:18 pm
It’s often people on the fringes that are needed to push reasonable people towards the middle ground and I think it’s sort of the case with the tea partiers. You and I may have little in common with them but they have a point. Bigger gov’t isn’t automatically better. I think it’s fair to say that many of those who’ve worked in and around with the US gov’t would agree with the idea that our gov’t is bloated, ridiculous and inefficient. I wasn’t in favor of the TP’ers refusal to negotiate on the budget at all but deep down I sort of enjoy their zealotry.
All you have to do is look at Britain, they have a huge state with all sorts of social welfare programs and still the kids are rioting. When I traveled through there as a backpacking kid (too long ago) I had friends that were getting welfare checks to play in bands! It didn’t make them happier for it and I don’t doubt it would have stopped them from rioting. Hell, I know I did.
August 12th, 2011 @ 10:17 am
Fritz,
As long as I’ve lived in the USA, I have always found it astounding that Americans are never outraged that the rich pocket more take home money than themselves because of low taxes. And when, as of now, the idea that a tax on the super-rich (who have never been taxed so low in the history of the country) is floated as a way to reduce the deficit along with cuts, the howls of outrage come from the right and the Tea Party – and the Tea Party supporters are the one’s who will be hurt the most. So the destruction of the working and middle classes is well under way, and should the Republicans win in 2012 we will see an overall decline in everyone’s standard of living – unless you are a multi-millionaire..
I find it odd that American’s also point to Britain as an example of “big” government. Why on earth would Americans not want access to free healthcare for all, subsidized education and housing and a decent retirement? These programs are now under attack, as they always have been, by the right wing Conservative party. That is why the long-term unemployed are out in the streets and that is why the residents of Hackney have turned into vigilantes to protect their property. They understand that the system that served the country so well is being undermined by those on the right who are comfortably well off.
To save money the conservative party wants to cut the police force by 10,000 members, that will be a useful idea next time the people need protecting from the backlash, right?
And by the way, no one gets welfare checks to play in bands. If there is no work for the unemployed and you have musical talent, then you can certainly use your unemployment check to live on while playing in a band. That’s what I did.
I would challenge the Tea Party supporters to stand up and do the right thing – do not accept unemployment pay outs if you lose your job, do not use Medicare or Medicaid, do not take Social Security payments when you’re elegible, never call the police or the fire service in an emergency, and make sure your congress person votes to slash the armed forces budgets so that we don’t fight foreign wars.
If all the Tea Party supporters did that and we slashed the military budget, there’d be huge savings – we wouldn’t have to tax the rich and we’d probably pay less tax to boot.
Yeah, that’ll work..!
August 12th, 2011 @ 3:02 pm
[...] This blog post about the UK riots from Dave Allen, best known as the bass player from the great “political” punk band Gang of Four, has been making the rounds this week. He compares the youth street protests for which Gang of Four was a symbol in the late 1970s and early 80s with what’s unfolding today in the UK. [...]
August 12th, 2011 @ 3:06 pm
Bravo, sir. You’ve hit upon the reason that the Tea Party agenda worries me – a distinct lack of compassion toward other humans, and a lack of understanding that we’re all in this together.
I’m thankful for now that I’m not caught up in this madness beyond missing out on Spurs v. Everton tomorrow, but I fear this will be coming to the USA soon enough. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll live long enough to see the end of this country.
August 12th, 2011 @ 4:29 pm
The Tea Partiers are profoundly ignorant, and have been manipulated by corporate interests (Koch Brothers, Murdoch’s Fox News) to drive America further right. They are a fringe that is not making American more reasonable – they have gotten the Republican Party as well as President Obama to move right.
There is no strong left in the US – unions are broken, and at a national level corporate interests control the Democratic Party. So we have a right-wing Republican Party and a centrist Democratic Party. And there is certainly no nationally influential extreme-left counterpart to the Tea Party.
August 12th, 2011 @ 4:58 pm
[...] Allen, bassist of influential political punk outfit Gang of Four, has posted a blog entry wherein he reflects on his own experiences in the tumultuous England of the 1970s, and finds [...]
August 12th, 2011 @ 6:00 pm
[...] This blog post about the UK riots from Dave Allen, best known as the bass player from the great “political” punk band Gang of Four, has been making the rounds this week. He compares the youth street protests for which Gang of Four was a symbol in the late 1970s and early 80s with what’s unfolding today in the UK. [...]
August 12th, 2011 @ 7:08 pm
[...] Allen, bassist of influential political punk outfit Gang of Four, has posted a blog entry wherein he reflects on his own experiences in the tumultuous England of the 1970s, and finds [...]
August 13th, 2011 @ 12:10 am
The Tea Party (im not a member) isn’t trying to “fix economic problems” by cutting government spending. They simply believe in personal responsibility (dirty words to today’s far-left) and that government is more likely than not to mess things up further.
August 13th, 2011 @ 8:33 am
@Fritz, The tea party is not based on size of government but on hatred, fear and bigotry.There is no masking that.
August 13th, 2011 @ 11:46 am
Kevin,
Only to appease the Tea Party members in Congress is the Republican leadership doing everything wrong regarding the current state of the economy. During recessions governments should be spending to stimulate the economy which in turn creates jobs, which in turn creates tax revenues, which in turn balances the budgets.
Creating austerity in an economic downturn is a disaster – look at Ireland, Greece, and now Britain. I am what you call “far-left” and I find your comment about “personal responsibility” distasteful. Government simply has a responsibility to work for and protect its citizens. Doing that requires funding infrastructure such as highways, schools, hospitals etc. It funds the police and fire forces and funds the military. It funds welfare programs such as those for retirement and health.
Sane people on both the left and the right understand that. Tea Partiers have no clue about that apparently and when they gain more power we will see a huge decline in the standard of living in the USA. But they sure as hell won’t raise taxes on the rich!
August 13th, 2011 @ 12:48 pm
[...] Dave Allen (bassist, Gang of Four), discusses the riots in England, then and now. [...]
August 13th, 2011 @ 1:02 pm
I thought I’d bring this to the table – American towns and cities are going bankrupt already, and are ending pension payments to retired police officers and firemen. It will only get worse..
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/13/us/13bankruptcy.html
August 13th, 2011 @ 1:43 pm
dave allen…liberalism is a mental disorder and you prove that point…be responsible for your own life and keep your grubby hands off my money..i made it and you are not entitled to it…all the welfare programs of the last 50 years have solved nothing but make people think they can get something for nothing..
And they point out that if the radical right and the Tea Party insist on attempting to fix economic problems and social ills by reducing the size of government the consequences of those decisions and actions will be enormous for the USA….
your statement is correct…those decisions and actions will be enormous….life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all in the great US of A…long live the TEA PARTY
August 13th, 2011 @ 1:59 pm
KCasey,
You seem to mistake me for someone who wants to get my “grubby hands on your money..” which is not true.
If the Tea Party gets its way there will not be any money to go around. I also presume you don’t partake in the current govt systems of social security, Medicare/Medicaid or unemployment benefits, right? If you accept any of those payments or similar then you are a hypocrite who wants things both ways.
Thanks for your comment.
August 13th, 2011 @ 2:09 pm
Excellent points, Dave, I actually am questioning some of my long-held political beliefs; this upheaval has been the catalyst. Proof of life after Punk/Go4! That coming from a mid – 50′s USA Southerner (who is Spotifying “Armalite Rifle” as we speak). Cheers
August 15th, 2011 @ 10:00 am
// If the Tea Party gets its way there will not be any money to go around. I also presume you don’t partake in the current govt systems of social security, Medicare/Medicaid or unemployment benefits, right? If you accept any of those payments or similar then you are a hypocrite who wants things both ways. //
So people are to be forced to pay into the system(s) but if they complain about the amount of taxation & later they receive those benefits (no serious person has advocated removing SS, medicare, unemployment), they’re hypocrites? Interesting logic. Or, lack thereof. Great strawman, though. Juvenile & lacking linear thought (freshman debate team tactic, easily torn apart), as well.
Pushing for a decrease in government spending is in line with the Tea Party. Pushing for no government is the fallacy & erroneous argument you are attempting to make.
Sad.
BTW, surely, you pay the tax rates that you espouse, correct? And, of course, you’ve done this each year, right? Otherwise, that would make you………
August 15th, 2011 @ 10:16 am
Cam, this is getting tiresome but I’ll respond anyway. One point that you, but apparently not the rest of nation, appears to have missed – the Republican party, kowtowing to its new junior Tea Party members held the nation hostage during the debt ceiling debate over reducing the national debt that included cuts to social security and Medicare. Obama put them on the table and asked in return for tax revenues – and the Republicans walked away. So the Tea Party-fueled Republican party wants to cut the nations debt and benefits but not raise taxes on those that can afford it. The Republicans have historically attempted to slash all welfare as deeply as possible, and I believe that if they win in 2012, they and their Tea Party followers will believe they’ll have a mandate to cut deeply into welfare programs.
And by the way, why is it that the comments that are posted here from Tea Party supporters always have to include at least one insult?
August 15th, 2011 @ 10:18 am
Cam,
I forgot to mention that yes, I have always paid my taxes, and quite happily too.
August 15th, 2011 @ 10:26 am
// And by the way, why is it that the comments that are posted here from Tea Party supporters always have to include at least one insult? //
What should you expect from hostage takers, Mr. Allen?
Tip: hold yourself to the same standard that you hold others.
//that included cuts to social security and Medicare.//
Where? Entitlements were not touched. Both parties kicked the can down the proverbial road.
Where was social security touched? Medicare? The formulas remain intact.
Where are you getting your information?
August 15th, 2011 @ 10:34 am
I said the entitlements were put on the table after John Boehner and his friends specifically asked for cuts in those areas. They didn’t ask for cuts to the military budget nor would they allow for tax revenues to be raised, and yes, they were kicked down the road – to be raised again at a later date, no doubt after the election. There’s no point in continuing this conversation as we clearly disagree on what governments role is on behalf of its citizens. You can vote with your conscience and I’ll vote with mine, but when even Warren Buffet calls for a fair and level playing field when it comes to taxes and budgets, then surely one has to stop and think about all the recent madness?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html
August 15th, 2011 @ 1:03 pm
Thanks for this post. I also wanted to say that I find it refreshing that you take the time to answer comments posted, and that you are able to defend your position in non-attacking manner.
The back and forth of the comments made me think about a study (from Cornell University) I recently read about that shows most people (in the US) who receive “government help” think that they’ve never received “government help”. Quite interesting in my opinion… Maybe if they were aware of the programs that have helped them, they’d have a different opinion?
http://www.disinfo.com/2011/08/most-beneficiaries-of-government-programs-dont-know-they-use-government-programs/
August 15th, 2011 @ 7:58 pm
this article is fucking asinine.
England is a welfare state. A nation of people addicted to free handouts. And like the rest of Europe, is collapsing under a system that is overspent. And your riots have more to do with the TV generation and multiculturalism than anything substantive.
Your elite, which is the same as ours, has its wealth whether taxes are sky high, or non existent. You are concentrating on the wrong thing. your war, like ours, is against the central bank and money-making schemes via non-representative legislation. THATS your focus. you WANT a private sector thats in the hands of the uneducated common man.
cmon England!
August 16th, 2011 @ 7:10 pm
Erm, Matt,
Thanks for your comment..I think. I prefer less ranting and more discussion if you don’t mind.
Again, thanks.
August 23rd, 2011 @ 3:01 pm
[...] post es producto de leer ESTE ARTÃCULO, y todo lo que ha sucedido recientemente en Inglaterra, especÃficamente en [...]
August 25th, 2011 @ 10:24 am
[...] “London Burning, Punk Rock, and a Tea Party dream come true“, Dave Allen (Gang of Four) (north.com) Share this:TwitterFacebookLike this:LikeBe the first to like this post. [...]
March 10th, 2012 @ 1:31 pm
[...] wrote recently about the London riots, London Burning, pointing out the parallels of disaffected youth in London today to those of 1980. The punk rock [...]