15 f Ranting & Reeling I


wish to protest. The problem is find- ing a suitable outlet for my outrage. I know there are marches I could join but all too often they feel like funerals – publicly expressing grief, knowing in my heart that what’s gone is gone and what’s going will surely go. I could stay at home and resign myself to the inevitable. Why get cold?


But I never used to feel this way. If Thatcher achieved anything in her unem- pathic life it was to get a teenage me out of the house. I marched against every- thing she imposed on this country. And I enjoyed it. In the midst of a demonstra- tion I felt I had purpose; believed I could change things. There is power in a union. Where did that go?


I don’t believe there’s any truth in the adage that we get more right wing as we get older. If political idealism can be gauged by how loudly a person shouts at the news then I’d say I’m well on the way to writing a manifesto that’ll make Engels seem like Ed Balls. What will it take for me to take to the streets in anger again?


And then it hit me. What’s missing from my ’80s ire is the music. The only real motivating force in my life since Agnetha


Fältskog’s singing face proved more attractive to my four-year-old mind than building a Lego zoo, and I was lured like a sailor onto the rocks of Top Of The Pops.


Abba never played any benefit gigs for miners. But Billy Bragg did. And con- sequently I attended benefit gigs for miners. And when the Labour Party held their 1985 conference in my hometown of Bournemouth, Billy came too. My par- ents dropped me off at the Pavilion at the same time as a police escort delivered Liverpool councillor Derek Hatton to the gig (looking like a man who expected to be spat on). During the show, Bragg praised the decisiveness of Labour leader Neil Kinnock who that day had announced his intention to root out what would later be called the ‘loony left’. There were boos, probably from Hatton who was expelled from the party the following year. We all sang The Red Flag and didn’t know the words.


Bragg’s activist anthems and truth- fully tender love songs became the rally- ing point of so many moments of massed democracy. On the hottest day of 1986 I swarmed onto Clapham Common with a quarter of a million people to oppose apartheid in South Africa. I watched Billy


there too,


before becom- ing separated from my girl- friend. I never did find her. But it seems I saw Sade, The Style Council and Gil Scott- Heron too, although I don’t really remember.


Boy George sang while strung out on heroin – his face covered in flour. I don’t know what P W Botha made of that.


So maybe all it takes for me to physi- cally register my opposition is agreeable post-march entertainment. I will always be more moved by a song than a speech.


There’s a photo of me and my Dad watching Billy Bragg at the annual Tolpuddle Martyrs Rally, taken in 2010. I’ve been vainly using it as proof that I still stand up to be counted, though it’s clearly not enough in days like these. In the picture you can tell I’m singing. It was The Red Flag. I didn’t know the words.


Tim Chipping


The Elusive Ethnomusicologist I


cannot get exercised about the death of Maggie Thatcher. The reac- tions of people who quite frankly in my opinion should know better are another matter. “She was doing what had to be done, anyone would have done what she did in that situation. She wasn’t all bad.” Well no-one is are they? Hitler was allegedly good to his mother. What is it with the post-yuppie revision- ism? And then there’s the fashion brigade, taking politics by the scruff of the neck, giving it a good shake and honing in on what really matters. All praise to her pioneering popularisation of the pussy-bow blouse, and big if not Ellnet-helmet hair. Purllease… enough already! These are not things to be cele- brated. There is not one person I know who doesn’t now have a less stupid or annoying haircut.


She did, however, galvanise music as political protest, creating a social glue and a society out of those pitted against her, testimony to her lie of there being no such thing – as my esteemed colleague points out above, and as the wonderful Robin Denselow describes in effervescent detail in his book When The Music’s Over: The Story Of Political Pop. I was lucky enough to interview Robin for a feature


you’ll find elsewhere this issue. (A bril- liant thing about this job is that you get to meet people you like off the telly and ask lots of questions without appearing either rude or like a stalker.)


In my Exocet search for the truth, I asked Robin at the end of our conversa- tion if there was anything else he’d like to tell me, any recent conflict he hadn’t been involved in, perhaps? He said that he hadn’t got into Afghanistan, they shut the border as he arrived overland from Pakistan. “They threw rocks at me though, from Afghanistan,” he added cheerfully. It made me wonder how good he is as a travelling companion and whether his lovely wife ever thought twice about going on holiday with him.


And talking about holidays, the head of the household here thinks I’m going on one shortly. I’ve explained that it isn’t a vacation, it’s an arduous fact- finding mission across southern Spain to discover the heart of flamenco, to hear the real deal (much like I did re pizzica in Puglia for fRoots last year). To explore its history and present-day meaning, its cul- tural relevance and resonance, its link with the land and identity and politics. Flamenco is intrinsically political, not just because of the gypsy culture it springs


from, but from its popularisa- tion by Franco, who, unlike Thatcher, noticing that there is such a thing as soci- ety saw the value in using music to pro- mote social cohesion for his own ends.


And of course, there’s the link with the weather! It’s difficult not to think that music from sunny places where peo- ple are more inclined to live in the moment and think about what really matters with less clothes on, is going to express what’s important in life. The weather theory is something I’ve just come up with but it’s one I’m keen to explore, hopefully by being outside in it as much as possible. I’m so girlishly enthu- siastic and inspired by this particular quest (‘journey of discovery’ is so over- used), I can’t tell you. It’s not a holiday but that doesn’t mean I’m not packing the sun cream. Hasta la vista (babies...!)


Elizabeth Kinder


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