"Tubthumping" is Shouting to Change The World (then having a drink to celebrate).It's stumbling home from your local bar, when the world is ready to be PUT RIGHT...

"Don't let my unseriousness make you think it isn't serious..." Phil, anti-road protestor; From The Observer, January 1997 +

"It is essential to be drunk all the time. That's all: there's no other problem. If you do not want to feel the appalling weight of Time which breaks your shoulders and bends you to the ground, get drunk, and drunk again. What with? Wine, poetry, or being good, please yourself. But get drunk. And if now and then, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass of a ditch, in the glum loneliness of your room, you come to, your drunken state abated or dissolved, ask the wind, ask the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, ask all that runs away, all that groans, all that wheels, all that sings, all that speaks, what time it is; and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, will tell you: 'It is time to get drunk!' If you do not want to be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk, always get drunk! With wine, with poetry or with being good. As you please." Charles Baudelaire, 1866 +

"I declare a permanent state of happiness" Grafitti, Paris 1968 +

"DRUNKENNESS, noun: A temporary but popular cure for Catholicism." Charles T Sprading +

"Knock hard, life is deaf." Mimi Parent +

Yorkshire TV Interviewer: "It's said that you're sick on stage, you spit at the audience and so on. I mean, how could this be a good example to children?" Malcolm McLaren: "People are sick everywhere. People are sick and tired of this country telling them what to do." YTV, 1976 +

"Don't let the bastards grind you down." Joseph Stilwell, translation of 'Illegitimati non carborundum' +

"In 1990 McDonalds sued two London Greenpeace activists, David Steele and Helen Morris, for distributing a leaflet critical of McDonalds. The two were denied both legal aid and a jury trial; and it was quickly revealed that McDonalds had used spies to collect information on them before the trial. The trial became the longest in British legal history. Despite the Judge ruling against the McLibel Two - but awarding McDonalds only a tiny fraction of their costs - the trial showed that two anarchists could take on one of the biggest capitalist corporations in the world and come out with the vast majority of public opinion on their side. This, in effect, was where the trial was won - as a showcase victory for the notion of People Against Profit." Sally Skull, 1997 +

"I'm a human being and I've got thoughts and secrets and bloody life inside me that he doesn't know is there, and he'll never know what's there because he's stupid. I suppose you'll laugh at this, me saying the governer's a stupid bastard when I know hardly how to write and he can read and write and add-up like a professor. But what I say is true right enough. He's stupid, and I'm not, because I can see further into the likes of him than he can see into the likes of me. Admitted, we're both cunning, but I'm more cunning and I'll win in the end even if I die in gaol at eighty-two, because I'll have more fun and fire out of my life than he'll ever got out of his." Alan Sillitoe, from 'Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner', 1959

AMNESIA

A change of Government is no guarantee of getting policies which put people before profit... as proved by the British Labour Party's past record. Short-term solution, long-term procrastination. +

"A dozen former ministers, from David Mellor to Douglas Hurd, have decided not to declare income from lucrative directorships in the first register of members' interests which requires MPs to disclose outside earnings. Roy Hattersley, the former Labour deputy leader, emerges as the top earner, receiving £104,300 from two contracts with the Mail on Sunday and The Guardian - in a guide to MPs' outside earnings. Others include Patrick Nicholls, Conservative MP for Teignbridge, who receives nearly £60,000 from his directorships, and Sir Dudley Smith, Conservative MP for Warwick and Leamington, who earns £45,000. Some 40 Conservative MPs and a handful of Labour MPs have not declared earnings. Journalism aside, the going rate appears to be between £15,000 and £25,000 for a banking consultancy and up to £10,000 for other work. Jack Cunningham, Labour's national heritage spokesman, earns up to £30,000 from three consultancies." Press report, 1996 +

"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch" Anon +

'Michael Foot (Leader of the Opposition): "The Government must prove by deeds, not words." Edward Du Cann (Tory backbencher): "There are times in the affairs of our nation when the House should speak with a single, united voice. This is just such a time. The Leader of the Opposition spoke for us all." Press report, April 3rd 1983, the day after the start of the Falklands War. +

"I woke up at 6am and started working till 2am. I wanted everybody to do the same. I saw relaxing as a personal attack on the campaign. I started saying to people: 'You're not serious.' I started kissing babies and shaking every hand I could catch. I had no time to get stoned. I began to look at people as 'votes.' The people who were voting for me were the finest people who ever walked the earth. The people who weren't voting for me were my enemies. People were either pro-Rubin or anti-Rubin. I was never seen without my white shirt, long tie and new suit. On election night I was super confident. Then the votes started pouring in: Johnson. Rubin. Johnson. Johnson. My heart sank deeper. There was a 'Rubin' here and there but I was getting creamed. I finished second, 7385 votes, 22 per cent and won four precincts, all in the campus community. I got slaughtered in the hills and a few votes in the black community. I learned the hard way that you can't build a new community while scrounging for votes in elections. To succeed in electoral politics you must be dishonest." Jerry Rubin, from 'Do It!' +

"The punishment which the wise suffer, who refuse to take part in government, is to live under the government of worse men." Plato +

"Labour's unspoken election promise is that they can run capitalism for the rich better than the Conservatives can. New Labour portray themselves as a management team waiting to take over an ailing company. What we've got, and what we've always had, is two parties supporting the status quo. Our democracy is but a name. We vote. What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats; We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee." Helen Keller, 1911 letter to British suffragists +

"The struggles of the youth, already divided by the propagation of multi-culture, had also taken off in different directions. The trouncing the police received at the hands of the Afro-Caribbean youth at the Notting Hill Carnival (1976) had only led to a more sophisticated, mailed-fist velvet glove approach to policing. The tactic of using the media to legitimise the criminalisation of black youth, first begun under Police Commissioner Robert Mark, was continued by his successor, David McNee - only he, taking to heart his nickname 'The Hammer', now brought riot shields to the 'defence' of his force. And increasing police authoritarianism itself found legitimacy in the policies of a Labour government which, with an eye to the forthcoming elections, had begun to back-pedal on its anti-discriminatory programme (however ineffective) and rely on the forces of law and order to smother black discontent." A. Sivanandan, Race and Class, 1985

DRIP, DRIP, DRIP

Nobody chooses to live in slums - but some make a good living from renting them out. +

"The interest of the landlords is always opposed to the interest of every other class in the community." David Ricardo +

"Jack Linden lived in a small cottage in Windley. He had occupied this house ever since his marriage, over thirty years ago. His home and garden were his hobby: he was always doing something; painting, whitewashing, papering and so forth. The result was that although the house itself was not of much account he had managed to get it into very good order, and it was very clean and comfortable. Another result of this industry was that - seeing the improved appearance of the place - the landlord had on two occasions raised the rent. When Linden took the house the rent was five shillings a week. Five years after, it was raised to seven shillings, and after a lapse of another five years it had been increased to eight shillings. During his thirty years of tenancy he had paid altogether nearly £600 in rent, more than double the amount of the present value of the house." The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist, Robert Tressell +

"Landlords have no rights - they forfeit them by engaging in a criminal enterprise, for which seizure of dwellings by those who actually live in them, and complete discontinuance of paying "rents" are the only remedies." From 'Rent: An Injustice', Fred Woodworth +

"It's a typical fudge. (The new laws concerning strict controls on gas appliances) means landlords are ripping out gas fires so you have no heating at all. Or, if the tenant gets a fitter to put the gas fire back, then the landlord can say it's nothing to do with him. In that case you have the crazy situation where technically speaking the safety of the appliance is the tenant's responsibility - it's a very grey area and we're talking about people in poverty who can't afford to get their appliances and chimneys checked; or they can't afford to get into a tussle with their landlord about it if they want to keep the roof over their heads. Worse still, most people I come across don't even know there's a danger." Gas fitter, Leeds 1997 +

"An English priest was on a visit to a remote part of the north of Ireland. A local farmer offered to show him the sights. 'That's Devil's Mountain,' said the farmer. 'Over there is Devil's Dyke. Devil's Wood starts on the other side of the river.' 'The Devil seems to own a lot of property in these parts,' smiled the priest. 'Aye,' agreed the farmer, 'and like most other landlords he seems to spend most of his time in London.'" Old Irish tale +

"Landlord,landlord, My roof has sprung a leak - Don't you 'member I told you about it way last week? Landord, landlord, these steps is broken down. When you come up yourself it's a wonder you don't fall down. Ten Bucks you say I owe you? Ten bucks you say is due? Well, that's Ten Bucks more'n I'll pay you till you fix this house up new. What? You gonna get eviction orders? You gonna cut off my heat? You gonna take my furniture and throw it in the street? Um-huh! You talking high and mighty. Talk on - till you get through. You ain't gonna be able to say a word if I land a fist on you. Police! Police! Come and get this man! He's trying to ruin the government and overturn the land! Copper's whistle! Patrol bell! Arrest. Precinct Station. Iron cell. Headlines in press: MAN THREATENS LANDLORD. TENANT HELD NO BAIL. JUDGE GIVES NEGRO. 90 DAYS IN COUNTY JAIL." Langston Hughes, 1940 +

"Johnny Rotten - the man who once screamed about Anarchy in the UK - has booted squatters out of his luxury West London Flat. John ... was furious when squatters moved in at the same time his flat went on the market. Says a spokesman; 'Yes they were punks, but they're not there any longer. I am not sure how John got rid of them. John may have been a punk himself, but he's an upstanding citizen now. I am sure he never had to squat anywhere." News cutting in Raising Hell Fanzine 1987 +

"LetÕs lynch the landlord!" Jello Biafra +

"Consider the igloo: maximum enclosure of space with minimum of labour. Cost of materials and transportation, nil. And all made of water. Nowadays, of course, the eskimos live on welfare handouts in little northern slums. Man no longer houses himself: he is housed." Colin Ward, 'Anarchy In Action'

THE BIG ISSUE

It's plain mathematics: for the rich to get richer, some of us have to stay poor. But in 'I'm alright Jack' England, reason is in short supply. Everything is blamed on the individual. You lost your job! Lazy bastard! You lost your home! You inadequate bastard! Blaming homelessness on the homeless is as stupid as blaming poverty on the poor. +

Shelter estimates that there are 1,928,300 homeless people in the UK, while the Empty Homes Agency estimates that there are 820,000 empty properties in the UK. Figures from The Big Issue +

"It (begging) is not acceptable to be out there on the street. There is no justification for it these days. It is a very offensive problem to many people... We think aggressive begging is a menace. Action has been taken against aggressive begging for some time and will continue." John Major, May 28 1994 +

"We do not want people begging on the streets... I often drop my kids off in the morning at King's Cross and it's quite a frightening place. I'm saying we have to make our streets safe for people." Tony Blair, Jan 6, 1997 +

"Those among you who have the good fortune to enjoy shelter, warmth and the comfort of a good home, I would ask you to consider just one thing: what would you do if you saw your wife and children condemned to live for years in a single room? I know what you would do. You would move heaven and earth to get something done, and if you knew there were large numbers of empty places which could be used you would protest against it by every means within your power, and so would I. That is what we have done... I, with thousands of other Londoners, want to see something better for our people, and what we claim for ourselves we feel it our duty to find for anyone else." From Ted Bramley's obituary, by Margot Heinemann, 1991 (Ted Bramley played a leading role in the organising of the squatters' movement, when (in 1946) hundreds of families took over empty blocks of luxury flats, demanding that local councils use their powers to requisition all such empty properties. He was tried with four others at the Old Bailey on a catch-all charge of 'conspiracy to incite trespass', where he conducted his own political defence; challenging the crowded court with the above characteristic personal appeal to heart and conscience. The defendants were found guilty, but surprisingly were only bound over instead of the prison sentences they expected; and the requisitioning of homes for the homeless notably increased.) +

"(There's) a hidden army which is squatting or living in unsuitable bed and breakfast accomodation. A national inquiry commissioned by charities suggested that there may be 250,000 people aged 17-25 alone in this group." The Guardian +

"It was only in the aftermath of Jack Straw's speech in Autumn 1995, urging a crackdown on aggressive beggars, winos and 'squeeze merchants' as part of a New York police style 'Zero Tolerance' campaign, that there was serious cabinet discussion about government policy. Michael Howard, the home secretary, pushed to update the vagrancy laws with what became known in Whitehall as the "sluice 'em down" policy to force beggars off the streets." The Guardian January, 1997 +

"Since 1979, spending on housing has been more than halved, and fewer houses are being built today in Britain since at any time since the Second world War. Put another way: in 1975 equal amounts were being spent on defence and housing; in 1984 five times as much was spent on military services and on war material. Britain no longer has a national housing programme. While this policy has created more and more homeless people, a phenomenon has emerged. It is the British-Welfare State bank rolling the exploiters of the homeless and the unemployed to the extent of more than £120 million a year. This windfall now enriches owners of so-called hotels and hostels, most of them squalid, where victims of the recession are sent by local authorities and by the Department of Health and Social Security. These are the workhouses of the late twentieth century." From ÔHeroesÕ, John Pilger +

"Shelter announced their 'NATIONAL HOMELESSNESS WEEK' in Febuary '96. They asked the public to 'wear a badge or send a postcard to aid the homeless'. JUSTICE? in Brighton responded with their own self-help campaign against homelessness; they opened a squatted Estate Agency. Its window displayed empty properties complete with helpful information: "Three bedrooms, nice garden, window open at the back". The Labour Brighton Council rushed an eviction order through the courts, so that an Eviction Notice was served on the building within hours of opening." Paraphrased from Schnews, Brighton

THE GOOD SHIP LIFESTYLE

"Lifestylism" is the practise of wrapping yourself in a blinkered, self-perfecting, idealogically-sound cocoon. The captain of The Good Ship Lifestyle rarely leaves his bedroom. He makes pronouncements on how other people should live but doesn't keep his own rules. His idea of politics is not to Fight The Power but to fight the imagined enemies on his own side... +

"Nothing like the cocoon of unreality when your life's fucked." Answer Me! Magazine +

"If someone gives me a forum to express myself, I will use it. If that means using 'mainstream' channels to do it, then that's all for the better. If you really believe in what you're doing, then why not? By being too cool to publicly talk about these things, we only perpetuate the silence that already exists." Outpunk (taken from Zines, RE SEARCH) +

Stalin, Kruschev and Brezhnev are travelling on a train. The train breaks down. 'Fix it!', orders Stalin. They repair it but still the train doesn't move. 'Shoot everyone!' orders Stalin. They shoot everyone but still the train doesn't budge. Stalin dies. 'Rehabilitate everyone!' orders Kruschev. They are rehabilitated, but still the train won't go. Kruschev is removed. 'Close the curtains,' orders Brezhnev, 'and pretend we're moving!' Anon +

"Most plans for creating a more just society focus on ameliorating human misery. They address unemployment, hunger, illiteracy, class-based inequity, unequal access to medical care, pollution, overpopulation and discrimination based on sex, race, age, or membership in other devalued groups. While I care about all of those problems, I also wonder why so many of the proposed solutions make me shudder with dread. Perhaps it's because people who take on such enormous political chores are usually suffering from burnout. There's no room in their brave new worlds for fun, creativity, ornamentation, play and desire. I am sceptical of utopian schemes that don't take into account the human need for adventure, risk, competition, self-display, pleasurable stimulation, and novelty. In fact, many theoretical utopias are dreamed up by people who are afraid of diversity and deeply conservative about sex. ... The first duty of a revolutionary may be, as Abbie Hoffman said, to survive. But it's pretty difficult to survive without the nurturance of an all-consuming fantasy about where you are headed and what all this hard work is for." Pat Califia from 'Public Sex - The Culture of Radical Sex' +

"Consistency is highly over valued. don't be afraid to change your mind for fear of being branded an inconsistent hypocrite." From Splatterspleen, quoted in Zines, RE SEARCH +

"Waves do not actually travel, in spite of appearances. The water only moves up and down; it is the force that travels. The simplest way to demonstrate this is to throw a stone into a pond with a paper boat in it... Although the waves appear to travel outwards, the boat merely bobs up and down." Anon +

"A worrying development among some committed political activists is their insufferable righteousness. These zealous politicos appear as nothing but fundamentalists in a religious quest, where self-made rules become doctrine and other, less worthy activists are cast out. Born again in the fire of insecurity and guilt, these people create a heaven where none but themselves truly keep the faith... a world of rigid doctrine and self-imposed commandments. And in time, these political fundamentalists take on the aspects of church clergy: Indolence, pride, superstition, bigotry, persecution and ignorance." From 'Educating Us About You', 1996 +

"WhatÕs the difference between a lifestylist and a supermarket trolley? - A supermarket trolley has a mind of itÕs own." Anon +

"In our fear to make an effort to tear ourselves away from the conditions which ruin us, only because the future is not quite certain to us, we resemble the passengers of a sinking ship, who, for fear of stepping into a boat which is to take them to the shore, retreat to their cabins and refuse to come out from them..." Leo Tolstoy +

"The policeman on patrol has got inside our heads and his attitudes continue to be reinforced by the values of a police-loving society." Class War, from 'No Justice, Just Us' 1997 +

"Revolution will be built on the spread of ideas and information, on reaching people, rather than on our habit of creating ghettoes within which to stagnate. It's no use standing outside shouting. We have to start kicking down the doors!" From sleevenotes to first Chumbawamba single, 1985

ONE BY ONE

Dedicated to the striking Liverpool Dockers who are taking on the Merseyside Docks Harbour Company and the British State without 'official' union support - to all workers who take on bosses...and to those who fight with them. +

"Fellowship is heaven, and a lack of fellowship is hell; fellowship is life, and a lack of fellowship is death; and the deeds that ye do on earth, it is for fellowship's sake that ye do them." William Morris - The Dream of John Ball +

"Scabs are scum" Traditional +

"The dockers are represented by the Transport and General Worker's Union, one of Britain's biggest trade unions, whose leaders have maintained that because the dockers' action was technically against the law, the union cannot make the dispute official. But had the TGWU launched a national campaign challenging the circumstances and the justice of the dockers' dismissal along with casualisation, it is likely that the battle would have been won there and then. As it turned out, the union's failure to act unceremoniously closed more than a century of struggle to achieve civilised working conditions on Britain's docks. Moreover, the company is clearly delighted with its "good relationship" with the union and boasts that it runs 'the only unionised port in Britain'. "We show the TGWU far more respect than the (sacked) men." It is hardly surprising that, at Transport House, the TGWU headquarters in Liverpool, the dockers use a bust of Ernest Bevin, the union's pre-war General Secretary and pillar of the right wing of the Labour Party, as a coat-rack. For much of its history, the TGWU has been, as one labour historian wrote: "an encrusted, complacent, bureaucracy" which, in containing the anger of its ordinary members at the injustices imposed on their working lives, has served the aims of the British establishment." John Pilger, excerpts from They Never Walk Alone (Guardian article on the Dockers, November 1996) +

"When I see an actual flesh and blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to say which side I am on." George Orwell +

"Over the past months I have discovered many things about myself and about the laws of this land which I have been led to believe was the finest legal system in the world. But now I can only fear for the working class people of this country. If a mighty trade union can be fined a vast amount of money, and then building workers arrested, tried and sentenced for picketing, will the day come when it will be a crime in itself to be a member of a trade union? Who can tell? The sentence passed on me today by this court will not matter. My innocence has been proved time and time again by building workers of Wrexham whom I led and indeed by building workers from all over the country who have sent messages of support to myself, my family and my colleagues. Messages have in fact come from many of the very Lumpers whom I picketed during the national stoppage and I thank them all, each and every one, for their moral support. I know my children, when they are old enough, will understand that the struggle we took part in was for the benefit and interests of all building workers and their families because we really do care. One could complain of the methods used in this trial, of the identification by photograph. Just one bearded man on all the photographs, yet on my coach alone, beards were worn by at least half a dozen chaps. Statements were thrust on witnesses minutes before they entered the court to give evidence, whether they asked for them or not. Once again is this normal procedure in just an everyday criminal case? I think not. Police officers prompting and priming witnesses with what to say before entering the witness box. I would like to ask if the fantastic police enquiries and mammoth statements taken and the thousands of pounds spent on this spectacular are the usual diligent efforts used in an ordinary criminal trial? I look forward to the day when the real culprits - the McAlpines, Wimpeys, Laings and Bovises and all their political puppets are in the dock facing charges of conspiracy and intimidating workers from doing what is their lawful right - picketing." Eric Tomlinson, one of the building workers tried in 1973 for conspiracy to cause damage to a building site; he was jailed for two years. +

"No more Bosses versus Workers. We are on the same side, the same team." Tony Blair, Labour Party Conference, Blackpool 1996 +

"How could I indifferently stand by, and behold some of the very best of my fellow creatures cruelly treated by some of the very worst?" Richard Parker, Leader of the Nore Mutiny, executed 1797

OUTSIDER

Me, you, she, he. For the community of outsiders, misfits, and plain awkward bastards. +

"Neo-conservatism contains a theory of human nature in which 'it is our biology, our instincts, to defend our way of life, traditions and customs against outsiders - not because they are inferior but because they are outsiders.' " Barker, 1981, 'Racism, The City and The State' +

"Presley dressed oddly, was painfully shy, and seemed apart from everyone else - the individualistic, ungainly, out-of-place oddball who inhabits every class in almost every school in America. He had a distant, sullen father. He was a mama's boy, raw, dirt-poor, and timid. He learned to play the guitar from a preacher who probably would have fainted had he a clue as to how it would be used. Nobody would ever have voted Elvis most likely to succeed, or even likely to survive." Taken from A Thousand Points Of Elvis Website +

"Heterosexuality isn't normal, it's just common." Derek Jarman, At Your Own Risk, 1992 +

"An ageing man living alone in South Armagh, whose only son was in Long Kesh Prison, didn't have anyone to dig his garden for his potatoes. So he wrote to his son about it and recieved the reply, 'For Christ's sake, don't dig the garden up, that's where I buried the guns.' At 4 a.m. the next morning a dozen British soldiers turned up and dug the garden, but didn't find any guns. Confused, the man wrote to his son telling him what had happened, asking him what to do now? The reply: 'Now just put the potatoes in.'" Anon, Leeds Other Paper, December 1980 +

"I was on holiday in Wales in 1960, standing in W.H. Smith in Barmouth, and these couple of real freaks came in and I first became aware of the fact that there were people who were seriously different. They had hair down their backs and wore sandals and jeans and so on. This woman turned to me - I was nine or ten years old - and said, 'There you are: that's what you could grow up like.' And I did. I grew up just like that." David May, Days In The Life, from Voices From The English Underground +

"On the first anniversary of the dispute in September, another kind of support was vividly demonstrated. Thousands of youthful activists from "Reclaim The Future" converged on Liverpool: environmentalists and direct action campaigners. At first sight, the disaffected young in woolly hats, with dreadlocks, pierced noses etc, accompanied by drums, fire-eaters and street theatre, seemed a world away from the dockers. But these veterans of Newbury and other campaigns, having come up against repressive laws such as the Criminal Justice Act, understand well the dockers' struggle. Their alignment with the unofficial labour movement could influence the direction of grassroots action - especially as more and more young people are alienated from the 'gentlemen's agreement', as James Kelman put it, of mainstream politics. "Unimaginable a few years ago, their banners, alongside the dockers' traditional union banners, carried messages such as "New Labour, New Wage Slavery..." Before the sun was up on the anniversary morning, they had occupied the gantries in the docks and the roof of the company headquarters, watched with admiration by snowy-haired dockers and their wives. "We saw their banners fluttering over the occupied docks," said Jimmy Davies. "We didn't see the TGWU, whose officers should have been there. Now we know who our friends are; we welcome the young people's support and idealism." Excerpt from They Never Walk Alone, John Pilger +

"Youth culture has always been treated with suspicion by police and state, but rave and travelling culture provokes outright animosity because it questions the two-up-two-down moral values. It's not large scale gatherings that the Criminal Justice Bill hopes to prevent, it's lifestyle dissent. Speculation as to why the rave scene is being victimized has to include brewery losses. Illegal raves don't bring the government revenue but pubs do. Pub profits are down 11 per cent from 1989 and still falling. It's being estimated that £1.8billion a year is now being spent on E's and going out dancing. The pro-booze lobby has a lot of financial clout which always translates into political power... Ravers all over Britain are finding that the police have decided that parties, illegal or otherwise, will not be allowed to happen. The long arm of the law is over-stretching its powers. One free party group, the Exodus Collective near Luton, have had all their gear confiscated by the local constabulary "on the grounds that it might be stolen". The group's collective farm has been raided numerous times. On one occasion 36 people were arrested and the farm was trashed..." from Herb Garden

CREEPY CRAWLING

Wake up at 4am to find your front door kicked in and the television gone. Creeps steal from those who can least afford it. +

"This is a working class area. DonÕt steal from your own!" From sticker, 1995 + "Inequality is the source of all revolutions; no compensation can make up for inequality." Aristotle, Politics +

"Crime is as endemic to modern capitalism as pollution is to industrialism." Class War, from 'No Justice, Just Us' +

"Those who want social justice for all are by necessity anti-police. If we accept that the state is motivated by its own self-interest, rather than by the population's desires and needs, then we must also accept that the arm of the state, the police, is there to protect the state's interests rather than those of the population. But in attempting to push police interference out of our lives and communities, we have to also address the issue of anti-social crime. Corporate crime is rarely classed as anti-social crime because the rich criminals who steal millions, take enormous bribes and live in luxury off the backs of the working class, put a civilised veneer on their actions by never having to associate with the people they are ripping off. Anti-social crime, muggings and burglaries are at their most concentrated in poverty-stricken working class communities. We steal from each other because it's easier pickings than confronting real enemies. The rich can afford to protect themselves and their homes from mugging and burglary. Private security firms, expensive alarm systems, fences and private roads make the rich invulnerable to attack, so we steal from each other, justifying it with excuses about survival of the fittest and Thatcherite 'I'm alright Jack' logic. Crime has become a livelihood and a source of conflict in working class communities. Insider stealing from the most vulnerable has to be condemned by the community as a whole. Crime which attacks the interests of capitalist enterprise isn't a problem, since the enterprise culture is the biggest scam of all. Crime which erodes our sense of community (and as a consequence our ability to organise in groups) and leaves us distrustful of our neighbours has to be dealt with by the community. Anti-social crime shouldn't be seen as something that individual victims are left to deal with. Community spirit is the force that allows us to survive and fight back against capitalism's catastrophic influence on our day to day reality. The striking dockers can continue to fight because they are bolstered by the support of the whole community. Whether it's burglary, violence or the competitiveness of ripping off our neighbours... those tearing neighbourhoods apart have to be ostracised. In recent years frustrated estate dwellers, in communities like Salford, have tried to deal with the expansion of anti-social crime - not by calling out the police but by taking responsibility for their own communities. Not in distrustful vigilante style, but with the interests of the community at heart. The dog-eat-dog ethos of capitalism is sneaking into our homes and making off with our televisions and videos. Those who can least afford it are again bearing the strain." Class War 1997 +

"A society gets all the criminals it deserves" Emma Goldman +

"Do not waste your time on social questions. What is the matter with the poor is poverty; what is the matter with the rich is uselessness." George Bernard Shaw +

'Let's see. I tell you what we'll do. We'll have a vote. We'll sleep in area A, is that cool?' - 'Okay, good.' - 'We'll eat in area B. Good?' - 'Good.' - 'We'll throw a crap in area C. Good?' - 'Good.' Simple rules. So, everything went along pretty cool, you know, everybody's very happy. One night everybody was sleeping, one guy woke up, Pow! He got a faceful of crap, and he said: 'Hey, what's the deal here, I thought we had a rule: Eat, Sleep, and Crap, and I was sleeping and I got a faceful of crap...' So they said, 'Well, ah, the rule was substantive -' Lenny Bruce
"Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience and rebellion that progress has been made." Oscar Wilde, from 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism' +



"Women have to go through such a tremendous struggle before they are free in their own minds that freedom is more precious to them than men." Angelica Balabanov +



"While men tend to gain social prestige as they age, the opposite is true for women who are given little real power at any age, and are frequently viewed as one dimensional sexual objects - thus losing our usefulness as we age." Manifesto of Riot Girl (Taken from Zines) +



"My anger knows no bounds; my anger is unlimited. I'm a big lady, I can stand up in front of almost any man and cuss him out and have no fear - you know what I'm sayin'? Because I will go to blows. But when I get older I'm not going to be able to do that, and with my temper - I'm going to have to start carrying a gun! And if I carry one, somebody's ass is going to be shot! Because at the rate things are going... I won't tolerate this bullshit (contrary to some of my colleagues who have mellowed with age). I'm not among them - yet. Maybe I have to go through some kind of biochemical change or menopause - I do not know! I'm trying to come to terms with this, because I'm tired of dealing with racial incidents on a daily basis. Why can't I just leave my house, go shopping, do my thing and come home? Why do I always have to deal with some bullshit?" Wanda Coleman, taken from Angry Women, Re Search +



"DonÕt Liberate me - IÕll Do It Myself" Graffiti, Paris May 1968 +



"Learning to speak is like learning to shoot" Avita Ronnel, from Angry Women, Re Search +



"Some women I talk to are so frightened of growing old. I sense their desperation. They say things like, 'I'm not going to live to be old, I'm not going to live to be dependent.' The message young women get from youth culture is that it's wonderful to be young and terrible to grow old. If you think about it, it's an impossible dilemma - how can you make a good start in life if you are being told at the same time how terrible the finish is? Because of ageism, many women don't fully commit themselves to living life until they can no longer pass as young. They live their lives with one foot in life and one foot outside it. With age you resolve that. I know the value of each day and I'm living with both feet in life. I'm living much more fully... The power of the old woman is that because she's outside the system she can attack. And I am determined to attack it. One of the ways in which I am particularly conscious of this stance is when I go down the street. People expect me to move over, which means to step on the grass or off the curb. I just woke up one day to the fact that I was moving over. I have no idea how many years I've been doing that. Now I never move over. I simply keep walking. And we hit full force, because the other person is so sure that I am going to move over that he isn't even paying any attention and we simply ram each other. If it's a man with a woman he shows embarrassment, because he's just knocked down a five foot seventy-year-old woman and so he quickly apologises. But he's startled, he doesn't understand why I didn't move over, he doesn't even know how I got there, where I came from. I am invisible to him, despite the fact that I am on my own side of the street, simply refusing to give him that space he assumes is his." Barbara Macdonald, from 'Both Feet In Life', Out On The Other Side, Contemporary Lesbian Writing, 1988 +



"It will yet be the proud boast of women that they never contributed a line to the Bible." George W. Foote +



"Too much of a good thing is wonderful." Mae West +



"The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation." Elizabeth Cady Stanton +



"When I'm good, I'm very good but when I'm bad I'm better." Mae West +



"It is much more a lack of fun which batters us than over-abundance and indulgence" Raoul Vaneigem +



"Punctuality, regularity, discipline, industry, thoroughness, are a set of slave virtues." G. D. H. Cole

SMALLTOWN

When you can't change small minds... you have to leave them behind. +



"People act upon their immediate, distorted impulses without thinking. Violence pacifies them. They overpower their victims like a pack of wild dogs. Like a swarm of bees they attack. Fights arise from stupid conversations and silly misunderstandings until someone gets hurt. If a person thinks or looks different, people condemn by reflex. Fuck that! I root for the underdog in all situations." Answer Me! Magazine +



"I think that any time a woman expresses her sexuality in an honest or unusual way , it becomes a political act because we are so discouraged from doing that. It takes guts to openly express aspects of your gender that are "socially unacceptable." And anything that disrupts the status quo and pisses people off is political." Brad Clit, drag king, from "Pucker Up", 1996 +



"the fucking view is fucking vile / for fucking miles and fucking miles / the fucking babies fucking cry / the fucking flowers fucking die / the fucking food is fucking muck / the fucking drains are fucking fucked / the colour scheme is fucking brown / everywhere in chicken town / the fucking pubs are fucking dull / the fucking clubs are fucking full / of fucking girls and fucking guys / with fucking murder in their eyes / a fucking bloke is fucking stabbed / waiting for a fucking cab / you fucking stay at fucking home / the fucking neighbours fucking moan / keep the fucking racket down / this is fucking chicken town" John Cooper Clarke, from 'Evidently Chicken Town' +



"The answers you seek / Will never be found at home / The love that you need / Will never be found at home..." From Bronski Beat's 'Smalltown Boy', 1984 +



"KICK THIS EVIL BASTARD OUT!" Front page headline on news that Snoop Doggy Dog would be visiting Britain, Daily Star, February 1994 +



"'Can I turn the telly off for a minute? I really need to tell you something.' When he said he was gay, there was silence. His mother's jaw dropped and her eyes were full of tears. Then his father went into the hall, chucked Darren his coat, and told him to 'sling his hook'. At the time Darren didn't know any other homosexual people, so he wandered the streets in the city where he lived for three nights, till his mother came looking for him. He went back home but only his mum and one sister talked to him. Two weeks later, after a big family party, when a fight broke out between him and his brothers, Darren wrote a note saying, 'Sorry I'm gay, love son and brother Darren', and took 103 paracetomol tablets. Extraordinarily, he was woken up by an ambulance man because his father had had a heart attack! It wasn't until two days later that he went to a doctor in terrible pain and was rushed to hospital. After three weeks of treatment he had recovered enough to return home to his family. His belongings were packed and waiting for him in the dining room. Darren's father had also recovered, but told his son to leave and never return." When Your Child Comes Out, Anne Lowell, 1995 +



"The world is your oyster... but the futureÕs your clam." Paul Weller, 1979 +



"I yawn, I'm tired, I'm sorry / I sneeze, I blow my nose / I'm so hungry Oh Look! / I ate my food with the wrong knife and fork / I wear my collar undone / I will not wear a tie / They won't let me into their disco / They refuse to tell me why / Because I'm dressed informal / Because IÕm dressed informally - ThatÕs why" Patrik Fitzgerald, 1979 +



"I myself have often wondered why it took so long for anyone to get around to 'taking me in for questioning', considering that I used to waltz along the streets of the West End totally unaware that they were infested by plain clothes coppers. Though they did not arrest me till 1943, they knew that I was in a weak position and constantly threatened me for their own and one another's amusement. Their condescension towards me on these occasions will never fade from my mind. Even now I could never wittingly become acquainted with a policeman; nor would I, except under torture, betray anyone to the authorities. Life is so hard for poor little crooks at the best of times. I imagine that these opinions which I hold so intensely are, in a milder form, fairly common. As a former police chief has himself said, 'If the police were popular there would be something wrong somewhere.'" Quentin Crisp, from How To Become A Virgin, 1981 +



"Habit is probably the greatest block to seeing truth." RA Schwallerda Lipicz

I WANT MORE

This is Tearoom England: the class system in microcosm. The worst bigotry can have the best table manners. +



"The distinctions separating the social classes are false; in the last analysis they rest on force." Albert Einstein +



"There is nothing to which men cling more tenaciously than the privileges of class." Leonard Sidney Woolf +



"What do you think the effect of the Beatles was on the history of Britain?" - "I don't know about the history. The people who are in control and in power and the class system and the whole bullshit bourgeois scene is exactly the same except there is a lot of middle class kids with long hair walking round London in trendy clothes and Kenneth Tynan's making a fortune from the word 'fuck'. But apart from that, nothing happened except that we're all dressed up. The same bastards are in control, the same people are runnin' everything, it's exactly the same. They hyped the kids and the generation. We've grown up a little, a lot of us, and there has been a change and we're a bit freer and all that, but it's the same game, nothing's really changed. They're doing exactly the same things, selling arms to South Africa, killing blacks on the street, people are living in poverty with rats crawling over them, it's the same. It just makes you puke. And I woke up to that, too. The dream is over. It's just the same only I'm thirty and a lot of people have got long hair, that's all." John Lennon, 1970 +



"Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, can never bring about a reform." Susan B Anthony +



"Everybody knows that the influence of social class is much less than it used to be - except that it isn't. Scrutiny of General Household Survey figures shows, for example, that sons and daughters of unskilled workers are no more likely to go to university now than they were two decades ago." Observer, January 26, 1997 +



"With the benefit of hindsight, most historians of sport recognise that the concern with the seperation between amateur and professional was a semantic masking of class divisions. Such segregation served the objective of retaining power over the control and allocation of resources through the exclusion of the majority. The formation of the Amateur Football Association in 1907 - originally called the Amateur Football Defence Foundation - over the issue of admittance of professionals to county football associations, was essentially a southern-based, public school reaction to the growing economic might of the Northern, working-class professional clubs. The amateur/professional debate used language that betrayed a political agenda, the double standards and selective application of the rules were breath-taking in their hypocrisy. The elitist, amateur Corinthians often charged more in expenses to play than the weekly wage bill of their professional opponents; amateur cricketers could receive unlimited income from benefit matches. Amateurs didn't need or want to earn a living from sport. Thus their performance didn't carry the same practical or symbolic value. If they played badly the disadvantages were metaphysical - a loss to pride not to the pocket. Loss of form didn't have the demon material consequences that shadowed the exploits of the working class professional. Shamateur clubs were snobs: They wanted to compete, to use the same devices as professional clubs to build a successful team, but at the same time remain unsullied by the grubby practice of openly paying hirelings to beat opponents." From 'Walter Daniel Tull, 1888-1918: Soldier, Footballer, Black', by Phil Vasili +



"The use of legislation, however, should not be allowed to muffle the noise and directness of class conflict. Indeed, legislation cannot be understood without being seen as part of that conflict. Commissioner of Police, Sir Charles Warren said, in relation to the Feltham fair of 1887, "the abolition of the fair is a class question on which as commissioner of police I can say little beyond the fact that it gives the police trouble to keep order, and while one class certainly enjoy it, its existence is a cause of annoyance to others." Popular Culture and Class Conflict 1590-1914, edited by Eileen and Stephen Yeo, 1981

SCAPEGOAT

At the height of apartheid there were more black men in British jails than there were in jails in South Africa. Britain's mucky colonial past lives on, in the mistrust of anybody who isn't a whiter shade of pale - the State still institutionalises racism knowing that when the Òblack ghettosÓ explode then white society can tell itself that its fear of Òthe otherÓ is justified... +



"There has always been racism. But it developed as a leading principle of thought and perception in the context of colonialism. That's understandable. When you have your boot on someone's neck, you have to justify it. The justification has to be their depravity. It's very striking to see this in the case of people who aren't very different from one another. Take a look at the British conquest of Ireland, the earliest of the Western colonial conquests. It was described in the same terms as the conquest of Africa. The Irish were a different race. They weren't human. They weren't like us. We had to crush and destroy them. No. It has to do with conquest, with oppression. If you're robbing somebody, oppressing them, dictating their lives, it's a very rare person who can say: "Look, I'm a monster. I'm doing this for my own good." Even Himmler didn't say that. A standard technique of belief formation goes along with oppression, whether it's throwing them in gas chambers or charging them too much at a corner store, or anything in between. The standard reaction is to say: 'It's their depravity. That's why I'm doing it. Maybe I'm even doing them good.' If it's their depravity, there's got to be something about them that makes them different from me. What's different about them will be whatever you can find." Noam Chomsky +



"Prejudice, which sees what it pleases, cannot see what is plain." Aubrey T. de Vere +



"Detroit was almost as far north as we ever went, but it was still full of crackers and I was always uneasy. One night Chuck Peterson asked me to go with him to a little backstage bar on the corner and have a drink, but I didn't want to go for the same old reason. But he insisted, and so we did. In a matter of minutes some woman at the bar piped out that she wasn't going to drink in the place if that nigger stood there, making it clear she meant me. Chuck wanted to answer back, but I talked him out of it and we went on to finish our drink. The next thing we knew a man came over and stared after Chuck. 'What the hell's going on?' he said. 'A man can't bring his wife in a bar any more without you tramp white men bringing a nigger woman in.' Chuck wouldn't stand for that, but before he knew it, this guy and a couple more were on him, beating him and kicking him. While everyone else stood around with their mouths open, this guy kept kicking Chuck in the mouth and saying, 'I'll fix it so you don't play trumpet tonight.' Lady Sings The Blues, Billie Holiday (with William Duff) +



"The mind of the bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract." Oliver Wendell Holmes +



"As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever." Clarence Darrow +



"Beware prejudices. They are like rats, and men's minds are like traps; prejudices get in easily, but it is doubtful if they ever get out." Lord Jeffrey +



"Scotland Yard's Immigration Unit burst into Joy Gardiner's London flat at 7 am on the 28th July, 1993. They had a deportation order. Joy Gardiner was bound and gagged by the officers. They wrapped 13 feet of surgical tape seven times round Mrs Gardiner's head. Unsurprisingly, she went into a coma from which she never recovered. The 'official' cause of death was suffocation. Mrs Gardiner had overstayed a six month visa and the Home Office wanted her deported back to Jamaica. She had no legal aid present when the immigration unit raided. The Home Office later admitted that the deportation order was timed so that it arrived at her solicitor's office on the morning of the deportation. They'd deliberately fixed things so that Mrs Gardiner would be caught unawares by the raid. The government refused to launch a public enquiry into Mrs Gardiner's death. Three officers were charged with 'unlawfully killing' Mrs Gardiner; during the trial the judge stressed that: "the case has no political or racial aspect." On July 12, 1995, almost two years after Mrs Gardiner's death, the Police Complaints Authority confirmed that the three Met Officers acquitted of 'Unlawful Killing' would NOT face disciplinary charges." Northern Star, 1995

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