Next week’s must-attend event

There’ll be special guests. It’s Billy Brentford’s non-bourgeois birthday. It’s the best thing happening anywhere. Do not miss this. Get tickets in advance.

Tags: billy brentford, ddrofrnb, half moon, putney

Banned?

We note from the excellent Louder Than War website that Doyle And The Fourfathers (“an indie band with Smiths leanings”… hmmm) have been “banned from the BBC” because their song mentions “austerity” and has a pop at the Olympics.

Obviously we’re glad that peely-wally bedroom-acoustic types are writing relevant songs and are being (in D & The FF’s words) “political” – and their song’s not awful.

However, the BBC does not ‘ban’ anything. They may not play it because it’s rubbish, or there’s swearing on it – there’s very strict codes of good taste that all BBC producers have to adhere to. We had a song all lined up to be played on a major BBC music show, but the Producer pulled it because of Baby Face’s polemic at the end – you didn’t hear us trying to gain publicity out of it and comparing ourselves to the Pistols, Frankie or Gainsbourg. Indeed, we offered nothing but support to the BBC for doing the right thing and protecting itself from unnecessary attacks.

This is because we don’t want to get the BBC into trouble. We don’t want to give the BBC’s commercial rivals such as Sky, the Telegraph, the Evening Standard, the Daily Mail etc. anymore sticks to beat dear ol’ Auntie with. And, of course, we were secretly pleased and amused  that our music is genuinely considered seditious. Other more subtle songs by Thee Faction have been played many times on various BBC music shows before and since.

The BBC’s not perfect, we accept that. The workforce is not properly representative. Because the licence fee pays for it we all feel our opinion counts, and the BBC is very aware of this.

But we love how it gets up the noses of the capitalist press, corporate-owned media and the Tories who think they can control it.

News Corp has fallen out with Cameron, Nadine Dorres ranting from the back benches about ‘posh boys’ was given plenty column inches in the Sun, Murdoch’s tweeting about “toffs” in government. But the Sun loves the next leader of the Conservatives, Boris Johnson, and here’s what he said about the BBC in his Telegraph column last week: “The BBC is unlike any other media organisation in the free world, in that it levies billions from British households whether they want to watch it or not.. in all its lavish coverage of Murdoch, hacking and BskyB, the BBC never properly explains the reasons why other media organsations – including the BBC – want to shaft a free-market competitor”.  Murdoch must love him.

D & The FF’s and all other artists need to up their game and have an analysis. We in the Guild do not write protest songs. We write solution songs.

PS Don’t forget we’re playing in Brixton for free on Saturday night. Do come. It’ll be all comradely and lush.

 

Tags: banned, bbc, doyle and the fourfathers, louder than war

Dear Capitalists. Some advice.

In which the Guild, as concerned citizens, offer the ruling class some advice* on sustaining this daft system of theirs.

Dear Capitalists. You twits. You’ve screwed it up for short-term gain. You did a fabulous job convincing the majority that they too could earn money whilst sitting on their arses, that house prices and shares would go up for ever, that the Internet and knowledge-based organisations are somehow industries. You didn’t listen to us, and now you’re fucked.

So what next?

Socialism probably.

But, do you want to save yourselves? Capitalists? Tories? Time to do some real work.

Pay attention.

Listen Tory**. Shut up about the ‘free market’. This is not the same as entrepreneurialism. There’s no such thing as a free market. There is regulation, plenty of it, mainly designed to prevent immigration. It’s not a science, more a political exercise.  It’s stupid to think that US-style capitalism is the same all over the world. The assertion that if you let markets be everyone will be paid appropriately is a myth.

Listen Tory. Running companies in the interest of floating shareholders is inefficient. Shareholders are just as likely to bugger off as invest – they’re not interested in the long-term future of the company. Managers have seen their bonuses go through the roof; they are encouraged to identify with ‘ordinary’ shareholders, so their wages are linked to dividends not efficacy. The easiest way to profit is to reduce spend through job cuts and minimizing investment.; this leads to big staff turnover, so heightened job insecurity for means workers won’t acquire company-specific skills, thus eroding the company’s potential and costing too much in recruitment. Profits are used to buy back the company’s shares in itself thereby keeping stock prices high and thus indirectly putting even more money in the pockets of shareholders while they sit on the settee. In 1980 less than 5% of US corporate profits went on share buybacks.  Just before the crash share buybacks it was a ridiculous 280% (Business Week 24/8/09). That’s just stupid and you know it.

Listen Tory. The Internet has not and will not ‘revolutionise’ business. Little is made. It’s much less of a paradigm shift than the telegraph or the ‘phone was. In any epoch it’s usually the current advance that everyone gets excited about. The washing machine is a million times more important; millions of women entered the labour market as the time needed for household chores was vastly reduced. By putting the telescope to our eyes backwards and overestimating the new we make all sorts of wrong decisions about national economic policy, corporate policy and our own ‘careers’.

Listen Tory. We do not live in a ‘post-industrial’ age.  More of us work in offices than factories compared with our grand-parents, but the most of the shrinkage in the share of manufacturing in total output is not due to the fall in the absolute quantity of manufactured goods produced but is due to the fall in their prices relative to those services (faster productivity, output per unit of growth etc.).  Today’s rich countries may be post-industrial in a sociological sense but not in an economic one. Manufacture still plays the leading role. (Some is outsourced, so it doesn’t appear on the books of the host nation). Higher productivity = debasement of the product, you can get cheaper shoes but have to wait two weeks for them to be delivered and twenty minutes in the shop to be served.  (Incidentally not ‘everything is made in China’: in 1870 China accounted for 46% of world trade in manufactured goods, it’s now 17%).  De-industrialisation has a negative effect because services are inherently more difficult to export than goods. It’s also crazy to think that ‘developing countries’ are going to just skip industrialisation and jump straight into the service and knowledge ‘industries’.

Listen Tory. Your beloved free-market was not the thing that made rich countries rich. Trying to force every country to do the same is bollocks. Britain and the US got rich off of protectionism, imperialism, war and subsidy. The post-colonial performance in state-led development in ‘developing countries’ in south America and sub-Saharan Africa is superior to the recent dabbling in market-oriented reform.  Yet the rich countries make ‘developing countries’ open their borders and expose their economies to the full force of global competition. Rich countries didn’t do that when they got rich. The conditions of bilateral foreign ‘aid’ and loans from the IMF and the World Bank are simply ideological dominance and intellectual dominance. It’s a case of “do as I say” not “do as I did”!

Listen Tory. You lot assume the worst about people. You think people think of themselves first.  We all have had some experience of unscrupulous traders, of crime, but our personal experience of friendliness and morality is much bigger. If you assume the worst of people you will get the worst out of them.

Listen Tory.  Stop crapping on about ‘macroeconomic’ stability, this obsession with inflation, we can see it’s an illusion and we are sick of it. The world economy is all over the place in case you hadn’t noticed. And don’t use the ‘Germany after WW1’ excuse – when the French occupied the Ruhr in 1923 it was the coal they were after: if it was cash they were after they would have occupied the banks. And the hyperinflation was caused by the demands of the victors anyway. Germany’s paranoia since WW2 has made the European Central Bank ridged even in the face of persistently high unemployment. This protects stocks, shares; gold values for the rich, interest rates can be fixed and guaranteed.  Policies which aim to reduce inflation reduce investment. It’s a free-market myth that this leads to stability and encourages investment. Only interest rates of 8-12% make non-financial investments attractive. The only profitable investment has been high-risk, high-return gambling.  Any growth has not been sustained and the bubble has burst.  In our lives, can we really tell the difference between an inflation rate of 2% or 3%? Remember how Thatcher used to crap on about this? The big destabilising factors in OUR lives are loss of a job or getting our house repossessed or the oil companies doubling petrol prices, not a bloody 1% rise in inflation. The cost of living is a different beast from anti-inflation policy. Inflation has become a bogeyman and the use of it to justify economic policy has benefitted only the very rich at the cost of long-term stability.

Listen Tory. The ‘transnational’ company, with its tentacles in many countries, spreading love and jobs, is a trough of horse piss. The biggies are not nationless companies, they have their HQ and their profit motive established right at home. Enough said.

Listen Tory.  Stop focusing on what goods and services our money can buy.  You’re missing the real story, i.e. the quality of leisure time, job security, access to healthcare, freedom from crime, social welfare and fun. We’re not going to be satiated with imperialist tit-bits forever. The standard of our mobile phones is not what wins elections.

Listen Tory. You think you know better than governments, that they shouldn’t interfere with ‘market logic’.  You point towards white elephants and laugh. There’s been a long standing capitalist joke that countries which go for “integrated steel mills, highways and statues of the president” (Eugene Black, President of the World Bank 1949-63) are somehow Soviet and infantile.  Even the right-wing ones. Well, how about South Korea? In 1965 they were well poor, reliant on fish exports and having a massive punch-up with China. According to the theory of competitive advantage they should’ve stayed well clear of capital-intensive products like steel, and they didn’t have any iron ore or coke like say, Sweden. It was to be state-owned. And they put an army general in charge! The World Bank advised everyone to steer clear. But by 1990 it was the fourth largest steel company in the world.  Yes, there’s been governments who’ve picked losers, of course they have: Britain & Concorde, and we’re still waiting for the Indonesian aircraft industry. But France, Norway, Austria, Finland and Japan have all shaped their economies post-war with government subsidy.  The US has had plenty of successes too with government help for the computer, semi-conductor, and biotechnology industries. Then, of course, business leaders can make some major cock-ups, how about AOL buying Time Warner. Essentially - business interests are not the same as national interests.

Listen Tory.  Making rich people richer does not help society. The argument for ‘trickle down’ economics falls at its first hurdle – pro-rich policies have failed to accelerate growth.  After WW2 capitalist economies grew at about 1.5% per year. Taxes were higher then. When this slowed down in the mid-1970s the free-marketeers managed to convince the voters that the reduction of the share of the income going to the owning class was the reason for the slowdown.  Inequality has risen in 16 of the original G20 countries over the last 20 years. The top 1% of earners in the US have more than doubled their share of national income from 10% in 1979 to 22.9% in 2006 (‘The State of Working America 2008/9’, Economic Policy Institute, Washington DC, 2009, p26). The excuse was that to give the rich a bigger slice of the pie they would invest it. They didn’t. Investment as a ratio of national output has fallen in all of the top 7 economies since the 1980s (World Bank Data, 2009). It’s bloody obvious that in (what the Tories like to call) a ‘downturn’ that the only way to boost the economy is to redistribute wealth downwards as poorer people tend to spend a higher proportion of their incomes. Working class people, if their wages are above subsistence levels, are more likely, surely, to invest in their education, their health, and therefore their productivity. Strikes, poor health, social unrest, more crime disrupt the production process and therefore slash your wealth  - you idiots. It’s in your own best interests. You can’t rely on Simon Cowell and the police for too much longer.

Listen Tory. The managerial class have far too much influence over the political sphere. Managers are rewarded for success but rarely punished for failure. In the aftermath of the 2008 crash the American and the British governments injected mind-boggling sums of tax-payers’ cash into failing financial institutions but few mangers were punished. Have we all forgotten RBS’s Sir Fred Goodwin – the British government refused to do anything about his £15m pension pay-out. Executive pay must not be dictated by the market. This doesn’t lead to optimum levels of performance. Marketeers do not know best.

Listen Tory. The Market is a machine, a mechanism, which is rudderless; it’s like a truck with several drunken drivers fighting for the wheel. There’s several ways of running capitalism, Mr Tory, but this new one has failed. It has bought the economy of western capitalist nations to the brink of disaster. Stop thinking there’s one ideal model. Scandinavia is very different from Japan, which is very different from the US.. etc.

Listen Tory. The complexity of world free-market trade and finance and currency markets, stocks, bonds, knowledge-based ‘industry’ has outpaced your ability to understand it. The western capitalist system has been rewired on the advice of economists who were no better than self-help gurus. We ban other stuff that’s dangerous to society; drugs, airline safety, food standards, why not prevent the long-term harm complex financial instruments do to us?

Listen Tory. We’re not angels but you must accept the best in people. Free-market orthodoxy  is built on the belief that people won’t do anything ‘good’ unless they’re paid for it or fear censure if they don’t.  This view is then asymmetrically reconceived as the belief that the major motivation for the rich is further riches, and the major motivation for the poor is fear of poverty. Self-interest is not our only driver, if it were our society would collapse under the weight of continuous cheating, monitoring, punishment and violence. Anyway, the glorifying of material self-interest by individuals and corporations we’ve created a world where individuals and corporations are absolved of any responsibilities to society. So the very system you love teeters on the brink of destruction with huge job cuts, closed factories, pollution, and the chaos of your precious stock markets. Corporations and governments must reward trust, solidarity, honesty and cooperation – and all of these human qualities must be bestowed with a higher social status.  Market outcomes are not ‘natural’. Children must be given an equal start. If you want true ‘competition’, Tory, then let’s stop giving 1% a massive head start. This isn’t some fucking hippy moralistic argument – by letting short-term self-interest rule you’ve made a total mess and it will be you that suffers when it’s replaced.

Listen Tory. You have to accept that Finance has become the tail that wags the dog. It’s not real. Even the biggest fans of the notions that (i) private finance reallocates resources quickly and the (ii) resolution of investment are seeing that finance, supported by governments,  has lead to instability and job insecurity and that ‘investors’ are simply extracting a larger slice of national income without putting anything back in. Slow down, you cretin. The short-termism, the quick buck, the buying and selling of stocks is going to screw us all. You and yours too. Nokia took 17 years to go into the black. 40 years for Toyota to become an international player. Price comparison websites and currency trading are not part of a real economy. The world economy must not dictate to ‘developing’ countries either.

Listen Tory. It’s a scientific fact that you will not be able to control society via corporations and your friends masquerading as ‘small government’ for much longer. A true democracy is on the way. Your recent crisis-management has failed. The myth that high-tax, redistribution of wealth policies restrict growth has been exposed with its pants down.  The neo-Con bullshit that governments restrict trade has been derailed, most rich countries used government intervention to get rich in the first place. You can’t re-write history.  We need dynamism, industrial policy, a welfare state and stability.

Listen Tory. We are not in a ‘post-industrial knowledge economy’.  The internet’s productivity impact is minimal. Middle-class sensibilities in education can only lead to inability to be productive in a sensible economy where things are ‘made’ not ‘created’.  Obviously the history of humankind has always been a battle for knowledge, a battle with nature – but now we’ve lost interest in machinery, infrastructure, worker training, the comradely workforce, they’re not seen as sexy as mobile phones, advertising, television drama. Consider the notion that Industrial policy needs to be redesigned to promote key manufacturing sectors along the lines of G.D.H Cole’s writing on the notion of Guild Socialism. It’s not as daft as you think, and anyway, you’ve never read it. So read it.

So then. Better get cracking Tories and Capitalists. Time for you to get uncomfortable.

Think you can sort out your own mess?

 

 

*this is not just chutzpah. Let’s be honest. The game’s up. It’s schadenfreude. We’re just revelling in the inevitability of the end of this nonsense, and the fact that it is their arrogance that has hastened the imminent arrival of socialism. That is to say, we could have told ‘em all this any time they’d asked.

**as historical materialists we are not conflating Tories and capitalists here, nor inflating their impact. Of course we recognise that, in the last analysis, political/superstructural arrangements are hardly the point. Indeed, individuals and their decisions are hardly the point. But that is in the last analysis. Up until that point, it’s in the deeds and pronouncements of Tories and capitalists that we recognise ruling class action.

Tags: capitalism, capitalists, ready, revolution, socialism, tories

Back in Brixton – May 19th

 

May 19th sees us return to London’s second most comradely club (after our own DDRofRnB). Comrade Mike Urban’s Offline Club at the Prince Albert in Brixton is always brilliant. And free! And, even better, this one takes place within The Actionettes residency. So we’ll be performing with them. Come to this. It will be all lovely and comradely. And revolutionary. On this occasion, French revolutionary. Ooh la la!

 

There’ll be songs off the new album too. See you there,  brothers and sisters.

Tags: actionettes, brixton, mike urban, offline club, prince albert

Don’t Forget What The Movement’s Done For You

It’s always tempting, on May 1st, to tell, yet again, the story of the Haymarket Massacre, the Second International’s commemoration of those events, the May Day riots, the Amsterdam conference, and the fight for the eight hour day. Trouble is, you all know this stuff, and yet lots of you will have forgotten what links you to those workers in Chicago. Their struggle is our struggle: it’s the same struggle. Now, some will tell you that nothing’s changed. Well, that’s not true. Most of you will benefit from limited working hours, sick pay, health and safety legislation, weekends, national holidays, trade union recognition, minimum wage, unfair dismissal legislation and so on. It’s miles from perfect. But it’s progress, and none of us would want to turn the clock back.

None of this was given to us, brothers and sisters. We fought for every single bit of what we now have. And those that pioneered the struggle got the least out of it, and suffered the most pain.

So let’s remember them today, on May 1st, while celebrating what we now have. And let’s concentrate on following those long gone comrades’ example and fighting hard and uncompromisingly for everything else that we deserve.

There’s a song on our new album called Don’t Forget What The Movement’s Done For You. If you come and see us at the DDRofRnB on June 7th or at Marxism 2012 you’ll probably hear it. If you come to see us at the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival you will definitely hear it. Until then, here are the lyrics, to celebrate this great day, and those that fought hard to get us where we are. Don’t stop fighting.

Don’t forget what the movement’s done for you baby

Don’t forget what the movement’s done for you

Without the Tolpuddle boys and the match-fact’ry girls

You’d have a diffident voice in a different world

Trim the advantage, don’t feel abandoned

Remember your Grandad, don’t take us for granted!

Don’t be a dot in the city

When it’s hot in the city

We’re what you got in the city tonight

We’re a lot in the city

Don’t you rot in the city

We ain’t gonna give up the fight

Your bank holidays, the 1^st day of May

Half Saturdays and the minimum wage

Comradely salutations this May Day, brothers and sisters. We can see a much better tomorrow on the horizon.

Tags: ddr of r'n'b, ddrofrnb, international workers day, may day, minimum wage, thee faction, tolpuddle, tolpuddle martyrs

Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival: the only festival worth attending this summer

Click on the picture to download the flyer for the event

We are honoured and excited to be playing the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival in July. You need to go to it. It’s going to be tremendous. The whole programme of events is just brilliant, and knocks seven colours of the proverbial out of your Glastonburys, Readings and Isle of Wights. Come and celebrate the movement, and what it’s done for you. See you in the marquee on the Saturday night.

Tags: festival, tolpuddle, tolpuddle martyrs

Nightmayor

Thee Faction will be holding their collective nose and voting for Ken Livingstone for London Mayor this week. The Election for London’s Mayor is quite a telegenic, glamorous one, but has a surprisingly low turnout – as local Elections do. It’ll be about a third of the electorate. The ruling class engineers apathy to allow it to continue its agenda. Nothing changes, however much showbiz you inject into it.

The current Mayor, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, is a fascinating character, a massive arsehole who has become popular simply  by appearing self-effacing on the telly. You must agitate among your friends and family. This bastard and his ilk are dangerous.

Here’s the facts:

Boris looks after his own. The clue is in the name of the party he represents. He’s there for the banks, for the super-rich, to protect the interests of the ruling class. He described the £250K he gets for one of his gigs, his daily Telegraph op ed column, as “chickenfeed”. Millionaires are the only ones that can afford to become powerful. Tube and bus fares have gone up to help the assembly’s abacus, hitting the poor in the pocket and making London less efficient.

Both Cameron and Johnson are proper aristocrats, related to the Royal Family, Eton educated, Bullingdon Club toffs. This is why they resent and are suspicious of the working class, or of anyone who’s not their class. Boris is the poster-boy-in-Chief of anti-union laws. Remember, he came to power promising to ‘negotiate’ a no-strike agreement with the unions representing TfL workers. Luckily the movement is too strong for that bullshit.

Remember what he said about the reporting of the Macpherson report into the death of Stephen Lawrence? He said it was “hysteria”.

In 2000 he said there should be laws against what he called “homosexual instruction”.

Johnson said in a press conference that the Guardian’s pursuit of evidence in the phone hacking scandal was “a load of codswallop”.

A defeat for this toss-rag in London will be a major embarrassment for Cameron. Let’s add to their crisis. The Daily Mail said this week that  ”A Johnson win would steady the Conservatives after a month of calamitous collywobbles”. Don’t let that happen. Pile the misery on, London.

Unfortunately, voting for Livingstone is the only reasonable way of getting rid of Johnson. Livingstone’s problematic – we all know that. Are they as bad as each other? As individuals, who knows? The pair of them are pretty grim. But the parties they are standing for are absolutely not as bad as each other, and it would be puerile and daft to argue otherwise. Everyone who voted  Lib Dem in the last general election got busy telling Labour voters that they were doing the real left wing thing, and that politics had changed. How many of them now make those noises, or shout about the new politics and the progressive nature of Clegg’s mob? Labour is the party you vote for to represent our interests. Cos however weak that representation may be, you really feel it when it isn’t there. Like now.

This is the moment to claim a high profile Tory scalp. To take Britain’s capital city off the party of the ruling class and deliver it to Labour. To give the party that emerged from the labour movement a whole city to govern, as a shadow operation to the abysmal job the nasty party are doing with the country as a whole.

Realistically, you’re not going to vote for Johnson. You know that. Voting for any other candidate than Livingstone is a waste of a vote, and will return Johnson to the job. And we can’t have that. The man’s calculated imbecility and buffoonery surely fools no one: he’s just Roderick Spode with a  sense of humour. He cannot get another term.

So hold your nose and vote Livingstone. And once he’s in, let him get away with nothing. Hold him to account on everything. Absolutely everything.

Vote Labour. Smash the Tories. Let this be step one of their destruction.

Boris Johnson: Roderick Spode with a sense of humour

Tags: johnson, labour, livingstone, mayor

Next DDR of R’n'B: June 7th. Half Moon, Putney. Thee Faction with Colour Me Wednesday

Comrades. We have a new favourite band. Or a new favourite new band. They’re called Colour Me Wednesday. We like them so much we have invited them to join us at the DDRofRnB in June. It’s a very special DDRofRnB coinciding, as it does, with Billy Brentford’s non-bourgeois birthday. There will be special guests. But none as special as Colour Me Wednesday. You haven’t heard them? Then press play on their ‘Purge Your Inner Tory’:

Colour Me Wednesday are a force for good. Come and support them at the DDRofRnB. June 7th. Thee Faction are on too, of course. We’ll be playing lots of new songs from the new album. It’s not entirely impossible that copies of the album will be available. But it’s unlikely. It depends whether we can, yet again, demonstrate the efficiency of socialism in the face of slow motion, wasteful capitalism. Let’s see.

Get your tickets in advance. It’s cheaper and more efficient.

We’ll be playing this, of course:

 

Tags: actionettes, colour me wednesday, ddr of r'n'b, ddrofrnb, gdh cole, half moon, half moon putney, purge your inner tory, socialist rnb

Cheers!

 

Interesting to see that the Tories’ plans for minimum booze pricing made the top of the news agenda. It was announced on Friday in the Commons: on Fridays, the Commons is usually deserted. Only three government statements have been released on a Friday this century: the Iraq war, swine flu, and Libya.

This may have been designed to deflect media attention away from the Budget. It was ‘bought forward’, after all.

We in the guild think that Budget-wise Cameron may have been expecting an easy ride from the press barons and their rich middle-class editors, but (even though they were probably wanking in the bogs over their personal windfalls) the ‘papers won’t alienate their readers by justifying the budget’s clear discrimination against the poor and against the pensioners. The press in the UK love their championing of hard-working families and those that they see have worked hard and are saving for their pensions. After all, these folk are the targets of the advertisers that the papers need to attract.

Theresa May was a human shield for the front bench when she was wheeled out to announce this policy of making a half bottle of vodka go up from £3.80 to £4.20 like it was some kind of bloody national emergency. Cameron was in Scotland speaking to the Scottish Tories. Presumably in a very small room.

 

But we in the guild note the attention this policy announcement got. It looked like the Tories were saving you from maurading drunken Northern teenagers who are hellbent on puking in your garden and are costing the NHS billions. What a laugh! They’ve been supported financially by the big brewers and distillers since the year dot.

We wonder how the booze manufacturers and the Tories’ supermarket owning mates will react. The minimum pricing idea is still a long way from draft legislation, so there’s plenty of time, probably 6 months or so, for the booze lobby to put its point across.

Earlier in the week there was this “Public Health Responsibility Deal collective pledge”, the Health Secretary (Lansley) and the booze-mongers announced. So Friday’s policy ‘roll-out’ has made this, and Lansley, look stupid. He said it was the perfect example of the party of business working with business. 48 hours later his party are describing “mayhem on our streets” and “fear in our communities” like we’re in the middle of a zombie movie.

It’s enough to turn you to drink. Perhaps Peter Cruddas is free for a swift half.

 

Booze Britain.

 

 

Mumford & Sons? Loyal to their class.

 

So, you’re a bunch of musicians. You’re getting a lot of stick from journalists and commentators of quality (Simon Price, for example). They’ve spotted that you’re the sons of the ruling class, that you were laden with privilege from birth, and that you’re part of a network of remarkably similar musicians, of remarkably similar backgrounds, who are dominating popular culture. Now, no one has to be all about where they’re from. Marx, Engels, Paul Foot, Tony Benn…even GDH Cole went to the same school as Noah and the Whale, a couple of Mumfords, and George Osborne. It’s not where you’re from. Its where you’re at. But if you’re Mumford & Sons the onus has got to be on you to demonstrate which side you’re on. Surely, at a bare minimum, you must be aware that most of the people buying your bland, meaningless, self-indulgent, therapeutic records share neither your background nor your indifference to economic affairs.   OK, you watch them on the telly playing the festivals and the front ten rows are populated by punters who look like 2014′s fresher intake at Goldman Sachs and McKinsey. But they’re shifting a lot of units, those boys, and they surely feel some responsibility towards the people at the sharp end of austerity Britain who might mistakenly believe that these Mumfords offer a diversion from the crisis. They’re out there meeting people. Are they learning nothing?

‘Cos tonight (14/3/12), comrades, Mumford & Sons are playing the White House. Playing air-banjo out in that audience will be David Cameron, William Hague and George Osborne, proud to see the best of safe, white, ruling class British music on that Washington stage, comfortable that the Brit musicians on the stage will be people they’re easy in the company of, people whose dads are probably friends of theirs. Mumford & Sons playing the White House is the embodiment of the cultural logic of this Tory-led administration, and of British capitalism in general. Musicians are no longer the minstrels the ruling class hire for the occasion. These days they recruit their own. It’s safer that way. They’re part of the racket.

Now you can still choose not to be part of it. These Mumfords fancy themselves as being of the folk tradition. That which brought us Woody Guthrie, say, or Joe Hill. The folk tradition has a long, proud history of facing down power. Is that relevant today? Fucking right it’s relevant today. Just check out Grace Petrie or Steve White and the Protest Family. That’s proper folk music. Mumford & Sons are offered choices. Let’s face it, they’re offered far more choices than most musicians. And they consistently – really consistently – take the wrong ones. In the war of position they had a side chosen for them by upbringing. But they can still choose to change sides. Plenty have. Plenty do. Mumford & Sons don’t.

So tonight they play the White House. While, in July, Grace Petrie, Steve White & The Protest Family and Thee Faction will all be lining up at the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival. You see the difference? You see why Mumford represent everything that’s wrong?

Does it matter? A bit. But not much. Remember, when you’re looking to change the world, don’t call on rock’n'roll. Call on GDH Cole.

Tags: cameron, gdh cole, grace petrie, mumford, mumford & sons, steve white and the protest family, tolpuddle, washington, white house