‘… Do They Think Guitars and Microphones are Just Fucking Toys?’ *
* Lyric from ‘Banned From the Roxy’ - CRASS
On the 4th of September 1976, the Sex Pistols made their television debut, performing Anarchy in the UK on a late-night music show. Before the first chords were even struck, a young Johnny Rotten, all nervous energy and bile, stared directly into the camera and screamed, 'GET OFF YOUR ARSE!" - an act unleashing a cultural shock-wave that still reverberates today. For thousands of youngsters watching TV that night, it was as if a bomb had detonated in their living rooms—a call to action that demanded an immediate response.
The following Monday, school playgrounds were alight with conversation—"Did you see that band on Saturday?" "What does it all mean?" and, most importantly, "How can I get involved?" Within a few short months, punk groups could be found up and down the country; an antidote to a tired pop music formula that continued to say little about young people's lives, concerns, and experiences.
By the time the Sex Pistols split up in early '78, many in the music press declared punk-and its assault on culture-over. For youngsters who had only just binned their flares and cut off their hair, the news of punk's demise seemed premature. As the tabloids looked away from punk in search of fresh outrage, a social movement of young punk fanatics began to form. Its mission? To ignore the music press' denunciations and take the Pistol's call for Anarchy in the UK seriously. Its methods? Self-organised culture and direct action. GET OFF YOUR ARSE!
Central to this movement was the Epping-based art collective CRASS, the first of the new punk acts to combine a self-sufficient 'Do It Yourself' politics with radical aesthetics and ideas. In an era of immediate digital connection, it's easy to overlook the central role of travel in coordinating this movement. CRASS self-organised tours (that commenced in earnest in 1978), playing in venues that fell outside the established 'Rock n' Roll circuit - squatted houses, community centres, village halls, scout huts, working men's clubs - in an attempt to reach parts of the country ignored by the music industry.
Through self-produced records sold at their gigs-the covers of which folded out to reveal political essays, lists of contacts for campaigning organisations, their lyrics, and agitational posters - alongside the home-made leaflets they distributed denouncing the horrors of war, the meat industry, patriarchy, and capitalism, CRASS introduced radical politics to a generation staring down the Thatcherite assault. Thousands would be turned on to their blend of art noise, anti-authoritarianism, and their 'DIY' sensibility.
CRASS was also engaged in a series of spectacular stunts that sought to undermine the authority of the government and their cronies in the mainstream media. The most notable of these pranks was the Thatchergate incident - an 'audio-collage' that CRASS 'spliced together' and then leaked to the press, purporting to be a clandestine recording of a telephone call between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan enthusiastically discussing nuclear annihilation in Europe. These tapes resulted in the band receiving visits from the local police, and the attention of Special Branch and the KGB. Concerns were also raised about the band's activities in Parliament. Nonetheless, Thatchergate also inspired thousands to become involved in the anti-nuclear/peace movement. GETTING OFF YOUR ARSE!
CRASS lived in a commune in the Essex countryside, operating an 'open door' policy that allowed their fans to travel and stay with the group. Inspired, within a few short years, hundreds of new 'anarcho-punk' bands would form across Britain, making up their own 'alternative society' based on experiments in collective living (urban squatting, 'back to the land' communes, and shared houses), resistance to the 'world of work' and '9-5 drudgery' (signing on the dole, setting up your own record label or tape distribution 'business'), the creation of radical propaganda (in the form of punk bands, theatre troupes, self-produced zines, poetry collectives and anarchist publishers), and support for 'direct-action' - in particular anti-nuclear protest, animal liberation, hunt-sabbing, and anti-fascist activity.
CRASS also played a central role in the large 'Stop the City' demonstrations, protesting the relationship between financial institutions and the arms industry that laid siege to financial and shopping districts across the country in 1983-84. Notable acts in the early anarcho-punk movement included - Chumbawamba (of 'I get knocked down, but I get up again!' fame), KUKL (feat. the vocal talents of a young Bjork), and the Flux of Pink Indians (who would go onto found the record label 'One Little Independent').
The movement was forged from friendships made at gigs, a network of local, national and international contacts. At most 'anarcho' concerts, you could find a campaign stall supporting a radical cause, from local anti-fascist groups, to solidarity drives for striking miners. The movement itself was coordinated through letter writing—'pen pals' who advertised local gigs, coordinated their own band's tours, exchanged information, offered places to sleep or lifts to concerts, direct actions, and demonstrations. Many of these bands borrowed heavily from CRASS aesthetics, dressing head to toe in black, producing agitational banners that hung behind them as they played, producing their own leaflets and short films - a la CRASS - that would accompany their live sets.
Zine production was also central to the punk scene. Access to a pair of scissors, paper, pens, a glue stick, and your parents' office photocopier was all that was needed to make your own magazine. YET MORE GETTING OFF YOUR ARSE! The first Anarchist Bookfair, held at the Wapping Autonomy Centre (an important venue for the nascent anarcho-punk movement ), was populated with stalls distributing self-published zines alongside heavier theoretical tomes produced by the older anarchist publishing houses. Anarcho-punk revitalised the fortunes of a flagging (and ageing) anarchist movement during the early '80s, breathing fresh life into feminist, anti-militarist, squatting, and radical ecological networks, and inspiring the look and tone of many of that decade's new anarchist organisations, most notably Class War. The tactics, politics, and friendships developed in this period left a lasting imprint on radical culture, providing a blueprint for later social movements, particularly the ecological direct action movement of the 1990s.
The conditions that allowed anarcho-punk to thrive, however - an adequate 'out of work' benefit system and weaker squatting legislation - got wiped away by the actions of later governments. Despite this, it's not hard to imagine a popular youth movement emerging today in response to the threat of ecological annihilation, expanding global conflict, and worsening social inequality. What role could music play in the coordination of such a movement?
Inside the contemporary punk scene, anarcho-punk remains a vibrant, albeit partial, force. In any given city, on any given weekend, anarcho-punk gigs are still being (self) organised, acting as fundraisers for contemporary campaigns, and as a soap-box for a myriad of radical concerns. At the scale of pop culture, the politically charged concerts of bands like KNEECAP or Primal Scream, with their vocal support for the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, suggest that music concerts can still act as vital 'entry points' to progressive ideas and causes.
How music cultures could produce direct action, coordinate, sustain, and then expand their own radical agenda remains an open question. However, if the history of anarcho-punk is anything to go by, music and its dissemination are vital staging posts in the struggle to create a kinder, more equitable world.
To end, and in the spirit of anarcho-punk itself, if you want the world to change, you're going to have to do it yourself. So, why not GET OFF YOUR ARSE and do something?
MayDay Rooms is an archive of radical social movements and experimental culture. It has recently launched a dedicated archive relating to anarcho-punk and its histories. If you have materials relating to the anarcho-punk movement (such as posters, flyers or leaflets) or material relating to the campaigns that anarcho-punk supported, then please contact MayDay Rooms on research@maydayrooms.org
Seth Dresden Wheeler is an independent researcher and artist currently exploring anarcho-punk with the MayDay Rooms. Since the early 1990s, he has been active in the struggle against capitalism and unjust authority, writing and editing several books on radical social movements, and working as an editor with Agit Press, a DIY self-organised publisher.
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