They say the past is a different country, but the UK in the mid-seventies was a different continent. As an early Crass poster cried, hanging tattered and torn outside the corpse of the Roxy Club in Covent Garden: ‘Germany got Baader-Meinhoff, England got punk. But it is a history so far shamefully under-recorded. As does capitalism, naming it the ‘gap in the market’.Įnter Crass.
It starts as a fashion statement screamed out of a shop called Sex (latterly Seditionaries) in the Kings Road and evolves into a lifestyle screaming danger gear and rebellion. Because by now, punk is far more than a bunch of alternative music fans. Which leaves a whole generation of punk rockers without a soundtrack. Elsewhere, Astrid Proll is arrested in London and Sid Vicious pogoes off this mortal coil. So, in amongst all the despair, always seeds of hope and a sense of possibility. On a more positive, and perhaps relevant note, there was a benign revolution in Nicaragua, when the Sandanistas stormed parliament and seized power. Ironic perhaps, that it was to be a group of people emanating from the hippy era that would put the trust back into our lives. We giggled at the cheek, unsure as to whether there was a tongue in it. ‘Helen! Never trust a hippy!’ cried McLaren in the Swindle. For people who’d bought into punk as a way of life, ‘this time it’s for real’ was a phrase that could have, should have, meant something. The Swindle may have sought to confuse, and certainly succeeded in entertaining, but the lost tribes of England wanted more than that. What had seemed like a life-line to a generation who increasingly felt like the rubbish left out on England’s streets was being presented by Malcolm McLaren and his cohorts as nothing more than an elaborate illusion – a rabbit pulled out of the hat, a simple act of misdirection.
This time it’s for real! jeered Ronnie Biggs, guest-recording with the remnants of The Sex Pistols on the Great Rock’N’Roll Swindle soundtrack, and the paradox was complete.
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