Crass - Anarchy in the Uk

In terms of knowledge and commitment to militancy, Crass's contribution to the anarchist movement is equal (and this is no exaggeration) to that of its greatest theorists and propagators, Pyotr Kropotkin and Elisée Reclus, to name just two. In fact, this very period has seen the Crassical Collection release the second reissue, in chronological order, of the band's early vinyl works. The first was The Feeding Of The 5000, now followed in short order by Stations Of The Crass. Even just the covers are extraordinary, especially in the case of the original first vinyl releases. "Sheets" branded in every corner with the collective's distinctive visual style. Black and white as the only colours, in the manner of Käthe Kollwitz. The great German painter, creator of those "unforgettable" weathered faces, those "meaningful" calloused hands of the miners of Silesia and the Ruhr.

The cover art of The Feeding Of The 5000 is sharp, clean. A Northern Irish neighbourhood under siege, with special forces stationed and ready to shoot. Rather dilapidated brick houses. Children playing, crouched down in the street. Hanging on a wall, a large poster depicting the bruised face of a martyr of the Northern Irish independence struggle. A child dressed in black carrying a huge Crass flag. And then the vocals... Constantly punctuated by curses. By rage. Raw, unheard-of, savage, primitive. Terrifying. Blasphemy was expressed in songs like "So What". What's more, and in apparently paradoxical terms for the time, there was an open invitation to pacifist politics in songs like "They've Got a Bomb", complete with the CND symbol (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the British anti-militarist organisation that at the time was waging a fierce battle against the installation of anti-Soviet nuclear missiles on British soil) printed inside the record, alongside the screamed feminist message of "Women".

The first track, "The Sound Of Free Speech", is nothing but a long silence. It highlights the violence (verbal and physical) of the "so-called" majorities towards minorities in Western democracies. England above all. Then comes "Asylum", built around the female voice alone, like "Shaved Women". Sharp words, shrieks both on and off the beat. A tense, "militaristic" musical backing. And then "Do They Owe Us A Living", an anthem. Punk. Full stop. The voice sounds as if it's coming from a flayed throat. Abrasive and furious. Guitar and bass amplify those qualities. The drums relentless and "monotone".

Anti-capitalism too. "Sweeping the factory floor isn't for me," sings Steve Ignorant on "Reject Of Society", propped up by a wall of sound. Then "They've…", a pounding track with the "usual harsh voice" accompanying drums that veer wildly out front. With a surprising, sudden void in the middle of the song, which during live shows was accompanied by a sudden blackout and images of an atomic explosion. As that silence stretched on, it tore apart any sense of rhythm.

Closing the record is "Angels", in which Crass sample radio broadcasts, including the static and interference between stations, among them the following: "I think Jim Callaghan is the more dangerous of the two, because he is more successful." At the time, Callaghan was the leader of the Labour Party. And the less dangerous one? Margaret Thatcher. The lesson of Antonin Artaud!

A man with a gun in place of a head, there to be bitten by a snake, is the central figure on the cover of Stations Of The Crass. An album that follows the previous one by a year. 1979 is, among other things, a pivotal year for the punk movement, which would soon begin splintering into various cultural and musical factions. Crass marks that year in their own way on the inner sleeve of the record. Four punks leaning back against a wall bearing the faces of Queen Elizabeth, Pope Wojtyła, the Statue of Liberty and, dulcis in fundo, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, otherwise known as the Iron Lady.

The album is musically multifaceted. The band experiments with different sounds drawn from disparate influences. "White Punks On Hope" is a direct attack on the Clash for selling out to a multinational major label. The track is a genuine musical revolution. It starts out "punk-style" before suddenly veering into heavy dub bass and reggae guitars. And the lyrics… "The black man's got problems and his own way to deal with them/ so don't kid yourself you're helping with your white liberal shit."

"Big Man" is a rap (!) jabbing away at machismo, at the rampant sexism found even within "revolutionary" ranks. Punk bands included. And on a disco note comes "Walls", a track that opens with, and is defined by, the search for a radio frequency. Joe de Vivre gives her voice a folk-like quality, steering clear of the harsh growls typical of Eve Libertine. The themes are those of women's liberation, "gently denounced". As Penny Rimbaud put it, "'Walls' is a piece of avant-garde disco music. It was at the forefront of experimentation."

What follows, not only physically but also thematically, is "Demoncrats". A hoarse, dull spoken delivery, deaf to the melodic softness of the track before it. Guitars and bass bray, and the drums are claustrophobic.

It was their best-selling album.

The winter of 1978/1979 is better known in England as the Winter of Discontent. Crass captured and recounted it well, both through their music and their live shows. London had a population of over 100,000 squatters. Squatting combined with unemployment benefits was a political choice for swathes of alternative types who morphed into punks. In the May 1979 election, Thatcher trounced Labour, who had alienated the working class by implementing harsh austerity measures (imposed by the IMF) aimed solely at cutting wages and slashing public services. The National Front, meanwhile, was starting to take root in working-class neighbourhoods gripped by unemployment and disturbing outbreaks of racism.

The first clashes began breaking out at gigs by left-leaning bands, provoked by fascists and neo-Nazis. This gave rise to the Anti Nazi League and Rock Against Racism. Crass took part in both. They were not, in fact, simply an anarchist music group, but also a collective, a commune, destined to survive and thrive as a radical underground organisation through Thatcher's bleak, brutal years, producing along the way a wide-ranging and substantial body of cultural texts, happenings, and theatrical and visual performances.

And then there was International Anthem, their magazine: "Support Britain? Fuck Britain. Too many times workers have been asked to make an effort for their country. Their country? Which country? The result of years of ineffective government, of mess, of dangerous, smug and hypocritical lies. The government kills. Right? Ireland. Right? Vietnam. Right? Democracy is a lie. A two-faced totalitarianism. Reality doesn't change. Democracy is a two-headed feudal lord, its horse is a goad choking my throat… This is our fucking music, our fucking time, and no slicked-up, brain-dead manager gets to stick his nose in. The man in the street has finally found his voice."

Penny Rimbaud (Jeremy John Ratter) was its leader. Drummer and author of most of the lyrics — though that word feels out of place in an anarchist melting pot. He currently takes part in the collective (which he helped create) Last Amendment (formerly known as Crass Agenda), formed in the early 2000s following a Crass reunion for a concert against the Gulf War. That night the band was called Crass Agenda, fittingly enough, and featured, among others, Ian MacKaye of Washington D.C.'s Fugazi and activists from Fun Da Mental.

Last Amendment (alongside Gee Vaucher and Eve Libertine, both former Crass vocalists) has over the years offered reworkings of Dada cabaret and interpretations of the Beatnik movement.

But before all of that, there was the Stanford Rivers Quartet, an experimental musical group in which the future Crass sound engineer John Loder (who would later found the independent record label Small Wonder) was already testing his skills at/on the limits of possible/impossible sounds. In the Stanford Rivers Quartet, as in the subsequent Exit, various musicians who would go on to form the band in question spurred one another on through unorthodox scores. Chief among them: Penny Rimbaud and Gee Vaucher.

And so: free jazz, avant-garde music, radical/industrial electronics.

It was already with Exit that the habit began of handing out flyers in the venue and "linking" songs together during gigs with spoken information and political statements. It was also with Exit that the idea was born of projecting video footage in the venue before, during and after the performances. This was made possible by the arrival in the band of filmmaker Mick Duffield, who would stay with Crass right to the end of the adventure.

In 1972 they also helped organise the Ices festival (International Carnival of Experimental Sound), a two-week international avant-garde showcase spread across London, featuring artists from all over the world.

And then came Dial House: the meeting place that gradually turned into a genuine anarchist commune just outside London. It was here that the last pre-Crass band, Ceres Confusion, took shape, somewhere between psych-rock and the least cosmic side of Faust.

In a very short time, Crass managed to create an almost magical aura around their collective way of operating: around how to make music, around music as a tool for communication. Dozens of bands wrote to them every week asking for suggestions and advice, offering to play alongside them whenever it was their city's turn to host a gig, or asking to record with them. Yes, because Crass had turned artistic autonomy and independence into their creed, becoming a model for all the young punk bands of the time, who wanted precisely that: to record with Crass Records, and later with Corpus Christi, the parallel label for musical projects aligned with the Crass ideology.

In May 1980 the band released a split single with Poison Girls, an all-female anarcho-punk band. On one side they recorded "Bloody Revolutions" (classic Crass sound: syncopated bass and drums, nerve-jangling guitar and a shouted lyric), while the other side featured the Poison Girls classic "Persons Unknown". Proceeds from the record were meant to help fund the creation of an anarchist centre in London.

1981 saw the release of their third LP, Penis Envy. The front and back cover are already a thoroughly political statement in themselves: a shrink-wrapped inflatable doll on one side, set against the image on the back of a gutted animal in a slaughterhouse.

This time there are only female voices, so there's no contribution from Steve Ignorant or Pete Wright. The project amounts to a genuine feminist challenge to every cliché going. "Bata Motel" is a punch in the gut: it's women's revolt against the role imposed on them by a male-dominated society, all cutting guitar riffs for an angular, all-edges power-punk. On "Systematic Death", Eve Libertine sings: “Povera ragazzina, povera piccina/ le riempiranno la testa di inutili porcherie/ le insegneranno tutti i trucchi… voglio toglierti gentilmente la maschera”. Here the music shows the influence of San Francisco's dark-punk scene, Flesheaters being the obvious reference point.

The album flows with a sound less harsh and jagged than usual, right up to the two closing tracks, "Healt Surface" and "Dry Weather", with Eve Libertine and Joy de Vivre duetting together. The lyrics are brutally hard-hitting, set to music that almost seems to anticipate today's world music.

1981 was, among other things, the year IRA commander Bobby Sands died in prison on hunger strike.

The death of Sands and nine other young men (who, like him, died on hunger strike) shocked the world. Riots broke out across Ireland, and London itself was placed under a state of siege.

That same year saw the launch of the Greenham women's peace camp, which would go on to spark a nationwide anti-militarist campaign that, at its peak, could count on more than a hundred permanent "peace camps".

And at the start of 1982, events began to unfold that would lead to the Anglo-Argentine war over the Falklands/Malvinas.

Prison, peace, war: these were the themes fuelling Crass when, in 1982, they released Christ The Album. A black box set containing two LPs and a huge poster depicting Margaret Thatcher holding a giant "turd" in her hand, along with a 28-page booklet documenting the struggles and riots setting all of England ablaze. It was a declaration of war.

“Major General Despair” is the ultimate expression of anarcho-punk rage against the international arms trade: “Cerchiamo un mondo nuovo, ma cosa vediamo? Soltanto odio, povertà, aggressione, miseria. So much money spent on war when three-quarters of the world is desperately poor. Almost like slam-poetry set to a punk beat.

Then comes "Nineteen Eighty Bore", opening with a snippet of Thatcher commenting on the occupation of Northern Ireland, followed by a sudden, blistering attack of drums and guitar, topped off by Steve Ignorant's feral screams. Next up is "The Greatest Working Class Rip Off", aimed at the English neo-Nazi movement. Pure punk-rock.

Also notable is "British Control", with Joy de Vivre "chasing" Steve Ignorant inside a ring of fire made of stinging guitars and breathless bass.

That's the first of the two LPs. The second is/was supposed to be a live record. Cut-ups, spoken-word declamations, noise recordings... Monte Cazazza?

The last album, Yes Sir I Will, opens with a blunt cover: a duly enlarged clipping from the Sun reporting a conversation between the Prince of Wales and a soldier badly burned in the Falklands War.

The musical through-line shifted once again. A long, almost exhausting monologue over a grating, downright irritating sonic backdrop. There's no communication in the music, with the instruments deliberately reduced to mere "noise-makers" - until a sudden piano, played by Penny Rimbaud, appears in "Did You Know, What Did You Care". It's the only genuinely musical moment, and so the only one that can really be judged, and only on its own terms. Which makes it impossible to sketch an overall verdict on such a forbidding work.

Shortly afterwards Crass would split up. Once again, in step with the times - just like their final, indecipherable record described above. Or maybe not. In 1984 the miners were finally defeated by the Iron Lady after a national strike lasting more than a year. Crass, like many other musicians, had backed them. But now the defeat was deep, irreparable - made of a mute rage. Just like Yes Sir I Will.

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