This year I’ve had a lot of time on my hands. Back in July, I decided to listen to a new album every day. I tried to ensure a mixture of genres and eras, and make sure I was listening to voices outside the straight, white male mainstream. As of typing, I’ve managed to check out about 191 albums. It's also been part of my project to write a book about the protest music of the 2010s.
There’s no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic has stopped bands writing, rehearsing and recording. And there’s no shame for artists unable to be artists in these difficult times. There has been a good wodge of new music though, and some years I post my top albums list.
This year I’ve needed anger and hope more than ever. I’ve been feeling thin. For every surge forward the Black Lives Matter and anti-racism movements make, it feels the Hard Right radicalise more people against an ‘anti-woke’ agenda. The military gets another wad of money while poor children starve. Brexit has made Far Right policies mainstream, and the climate chaos is just around the corner. Still, there’s been some solid musical bangers this year.
If you want anger, from across the pond my top rage-inducing punk album is War On Women’s Wonderful Hell. The album is loaded with righteous anger through acerbic lyrics. The slicing post-hardcore guitar underpin a sharp intersectionality through ‘This Stolen Land’ and ‘Milk and Blood’. A lot of punk can feel timeless, but I think the power of Wonderful Hell is it feels so rooted in 2020, a determined energy from years under Trump’s administration and still riding the explosion of #MeToo and #TimesUp. And born from DIY and grassroots acrtivism. At a time when the alt-right’s voice is amplified, Wonderful Hell’s noise feels like it fills every corner of a room.
Other notable fist-shaking albums include the scathing Growth (Screaming Toenail), the unapologetic Royal Disruptor (Nekra), the all-out assault of We Are Knife Club (Knife Club) and the filthy ska-punk of Harijin’s self-titled debut. I discovered the immediacy of Seamless by Pardon Us, the restlessness of Svalbard’s When I Die, Will I Get Better and the call-to-armness of Svetlanas’ Disco Sucks. Bad Luck by Answering Machine is a indie-pop-punk booty shuffling-inducer. I love Jeff Rosenstock’s No Dream, which sounds like someone having a panic attack during a jam session. I Am Moron is The Lovely Eggs’ latest trippy North West jangle. I enjoyed Billy Nomates’ low-fi, bedroomcore self-titled debut, and although IDLES’ Ultra Mono is their weakest release, it’s still biting and fun. We Fight by Fistymuffs is a rough and raw stomp of an EP. Revolution Spring by Suicide Machines is a good listen if you want a bolt of anger, whilst Peaceful as Hell by Black Dresses is as distrubring as it is rewarding. Untenable (Bad Moves) is a delightful indie-punk-pop bop with the absolute anthem ‘Party With The Kids Who Wanna Part With You’. Telling Truths, Breaking Ties by Millie Manders and The Shutup delivers upbeatness in spades. As we bid farewell to Toots Hibbet of Toots and The Maytals, I’m thankful he left us Got To Be Tough.
As I type this, people across the UK are buying and streaming ‘Comin Over Here’ by Asian Dub Foundation sampling Stewart Lee’s anti-racism parody set. ADF’s album Access Denied is a pertinent collection of stories and songs about migration, race and culture. With all their usual inventive and innovative music fusions, the politics of ADF is the soundtrack to a Brexit Britain. ADF are able to look at a wider compelx picture of colonialism and borders, and tear it apart.
There’s been some emotional releases from this very hard year. I went for a long walk and listened to Climbing Frame by Gecko. It really sat neatly in my skull in York’s outskirts, surrounded in trees and fields hearing these gentle and honest accounts of growing up. Especially when I felt like I did a lot of growing up this year. Perkie’s I Let Myself Die To Live Again hits me square in my punky heart. South Somewhere Else (Nana Grizol) is a portrait of strength and gentleness in harsh realms. Young (Erica Freas) is soft and makes me feel fragile but secure. Even In Exile (James Dean Bradfield) is a layered tribute to Victor Jara. Non Canon II (Non Canon) is an insightful antidote. Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters was delightful in it’s melancholy. In the hip-hop camp, Princess Nokia’s two mirror releases, Everything is Beautiful and Everything Sucks are full of dynamite and evolution. Sharecropper Daughter (Sa-Roc) is also a vital release of confidence and defiance. Arrested Development, Run The Jewels and Public Enemy added to their genre-defining canon. Odd Cure by Oddisee was familial and perfectly framed against the pandemic.
My top albums are a tie. Dream Nails’ self-titled debut album is a lovely, bratty mixture of fun, bouncy pop-punk which masterfully combines the cheekiness of Millennial life on ‘Jillian’ and ‘Text Me Back (Chirpse Degree Burns)’ but also the damning need for intersectional radical feminism on ‘Kiss My Fist’ and ‘Payback’. There’s so much going on here, bouncing between themes and ideas whilst keeping the driving, poppy energy. But a key reason this album has meant a lot to me this year is it reminds me of seeing Dream Nails in October at The Crescent in York. My heart soars when ‘DIY’ comes on, it makes me want to bounce and dance in a sweaty, DIY venue (obviously from the back). It’s been the closest I’ve got in 2020, and I think Dream Nails have really captured that vibe.
Untied Kingdom is the second album from Commoners Choir and is my other top album for the same reason. Not that it makes me want to bounce around (no matter how punky a choir can be). But it reminds me of people. The album came out in February and their launch at the Wardrobe in Leeds and to say it was emotional is an understatement. The lyrics to Untied Kingdom are pure poetry, and make me strive for ways to articulate with language. The lyrics are not just about working class history, but our multicultural present. It’s an album for the national, an album for communities, multiculturalism and our identity here in the 21st century. Nothing sounds to modern but so classic. Time and time again it holds my heart tight and sings truth to power. “It’s where we go from here that will define us.” Fuck me, that lyric on the eve of 2021 with Hard Right Brexiteers running the show hits me hard. But there are a million voices of solidarity behind me.
I’m typing this sat in a very familiar front room. It’s a gloriously sunny December day outside, and the crispness and cloudlessness makes me want to sit on the flat-where-I-pay-rent’s small balcony and read a book. Like I did in the late spring and summer earlier this year. My reference point is Lockdown #1, when I was fully furloughed and generally divided my time between scrolling, reading on the balcony and playing hordes of board games with my flatmate. And a bit of writing.
I say a bit of writing, and that’s pretty generous. Last year, 13 years after I wrote my first performance poems, I feel like I wrote some of my best pieces ever. They became part of a show called Apps and Austerity. But in 2020, I didn’t write anything new for months. And months. I told myself, and other people, you can’t guilt yourself into writing. And yet everyone else in the Entire World seemed to be getting commissions, or writing responses, working on a new play or novel or poem or song. “Obviously that’s not true” I often reprimand my anxious brain.
How can we dare to articulate this difficult time? I’d tell other artists; as we move through a dark tunnel, it’s only on the other side that we can wrestle the experience into a communicable form. But we’re never properly on the other side of a neat metaphor. All these experiences will stay with us, and have changed us. I am not the same person who sat on the balcony back in the summer, and nor am I the same person who performed at live gigs back in January, February and March 2020, and I will never return to being the person who wrote Apps and Austerity in 2019.
So if I want to find comfort and pride, I need to look at modern Henry’s achievements in these circumstances.
I’ve started writing a book about the protest music of the 2010s, tentatively titled Austerity Anthems, with a few extracts on my blog here and here. I’ve sent submissions to a few publishers, but nothing is concrete beyond a rough manuscript and some hope in my heart.
I used Bandcamp Fridays as a handy excuse to record my solo shows from across the decade. You can download them as albums for £3 off my Bandcamp (even though I’m not a band obvs). This was an interesting process, because I thought a lot of these poems were confined to the pages of history, or at least the pages of my 2018 debut collection, and were done and dusted. I wanted to make sure the recordings were solid for posterity, but also had the rough, spluttery, I-can’t-quite-remember-this-line on-tip-toes energy summoned when I perform on stage.
With Say Owt, I am so proud that we managed to hold an actual gig at the Crescent in early December. Sitting here in late December, I am worried that facilitating people coming together in a space during a pandemic was dangerous and ethically dubious, no matter how amazing the Crescent staff were at making the event socially distanced. But making something happen is a herculean effort and the vital energy of performance poetry was potent. That will stay with me all my life.
I’ve been listening to an album every day since July. I’ve been applying for jobs, sadly unsuccessfully. I’ve been reflecting deeply about my career and work. It’s felt like the arts have moved at breakneck speed and I feel left behind. I’ve felt isolated, doomscrolling deep into the night. But also occasionally inspired by the advocacy and activism I see on my social media, and inspired by my friends.
Thank you everyone. See you on the digital barricades.
(here's a photo from February taken by Henry Steel at Say Owt Slam. Look how close we are. Weird.)
(here's a picture I drew from memory of some super-heroes I created when I was a teenager. Look how close they are. Weird)
In the first 2010 televised election debate, the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, declared his Party “can do something new, something different." Tragically for their voters, that “something new, something different” was soon short-lived, and the Liberal Democrats backed the Conservatives increased the cap on tuition fees from £3,290 to £9000, despite an earlier promise to vote against increased fees.
In January 2010, Cameron said: "We've looked at educational maintenance allowances [EMA] and we haven't announced any plan to get rid of them.. . . it's one of those things the Labour Party keep putting out that we are but we're not." In October, the Coalition announced they would scrap EMA in England. Both Conservatives and Liberal Democrats had opposed the Labour policy, which gave young people from low-income households some financial support to attend further education.
M.I.A. references EMA on her 2007 song ‘Hussel’. The track is about M.I.A. ducking and weaving in the industry, making money and surviving in a global marketplace. Guest artist Afrikan Boy tells of life at the street-level, where he wants to work in a corner shop, avoid being deported and claim EMA. Ten years later, Dave’s song ‘My 19th Birthday’ has the artist express his frustrations and dangers. Dave feels rudderless trying to earn and provide in adulthood: “I need this money like its EMA”. In a neoliberal world churning with competition; money, education and status are all linked. Cutting this financial support to attend college was an attack on working class young people in this mediated marketplace.
In an unintentionally prophetic naming, the National Union of Students (NUS) organised a protest called ‘Demolition Day’ on 10/10/10. We all know how it ended, the front face of Millbank Tower (Tory Party HQ) being smashed and Police looking baffled. Grace Petrie’s ‘Tonne of Bricks’ documents the moment Edward Woollard threw a fire extinguisher off the roof. Wollard was instantly and entirely repentant for his action. Grace sings about a system designed to demonise protestors. There’s a secret language of a “nod, a wink, a discreet look and a shake of hands” and the press having a field day in order to make an example of protestors and “show these kids they just can’t fuck with politics.”
Dan Bull was far less sympathetic. The day after the protest, he posted a YouTube rap called ‘Millbank Wankers’ where he berates the activists as “children” and “fucking wannabe anarchists.” Dan sees the protests not as the true working class, but assesses them as people who pay £40 for a Che Guevara t-shirt from Gap. A YouGov poll found 52% of the public opposed the government’s plans, but 69% felt the actions at Millbank damaged the student cause. Some Liberal Democrats said they would have voted against the uncapping of fees, like Dan’s song calling the cause “worthy”. But the Libs Dems planned to abandon their pledge months before, and used the violence as an excuse to harm a generation ‘Millbank Tower Blues’ by The Homesick Hustlers (released 8 days after the event) identifies with the protestors “shouting from the roof” with a sharp, electric blues edge under the lyrics. In the song, a police officer says “you’ll thank me when you’re free” before spraying a protestor in the face with mace.
In 1877, anarchist Paul Brousse coined the term ‘Propaganda of the Deed’, arguing the spark for working class revolution was not relying on books which would only be read by “a handful of literati”, but to teach the peasants and workers “socialism by means of actions and making them see, feel. Touch.” The Millbank images of bonfires and broken glass flew across the country, and subsequent London protests organised by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC) were swelled by school and college students from across the capital’s boroughs. Soundsystems rumbled alongside protestors, transported on the back of bikes or in shopping trollies and trailers. The older middle class university students played dubstep, the genre having gained popular appeal between 2008-2010 on campuses and at student nights. Younger working class London youth preferred grime, and Blackberrys and iPods allowed teenagers to share playlists. Lethal Bizzle’s ‘Pow! (Forward)’ and ‘Next Hype’ by Tempa T featured heavily.
The day of the vote in Parliament, known as E-Day, a dance-off exploded outside the Treasury on top of a bus stop. In the December cold, in the shadow of Big Ben, teenagers raved to dancehall, American R & B, hip-hop, UK funky, dubstep and grime. But it was Lethal Bizzle’s ‘Pow! (Forward)’ that stood out. Originally released in 2004, the grime track is loaded with bravado and threats. Speaking to Dan Hancox in the Guardian about the riotous use of his music at a demo, Bizzle said: “It just shows the power. Who's really got the power? You've got thousands of people running around, destroying London – and [David Cameron is] meant to be the prime minister." Cameron had previously dismissed grime music, claiming it encouraged crime and violence, and that challenging this music was about: "the courage to speak up when you see something that is wrong." Lethal Bizzle said to Hancox: “We don't even realise how powerful we are."
In the aftermath of the vote and protest, Grace Petrie released her album Tell Me A Story on December 10th and Captain SKA released ‘Liar Liar’ on the 11th, with proceeds going towards homeless charity Crisis. An upbeat ska song harking back to the socially conscious two-tone movement of the late 1970s and 1980s, it’s infectious pop chorus attacks the fresh deputy prime minister. The gentle opening organ foregrounds a clip from Clegg talking about his children, before the singer’s soulful melody and catchy chorus of “He’s a liar liar” kicks in. The song then samples Cameron and Thatcher, tying Clegg to the Tories as all one voice on the same team. ‘Crisis’ by Spanner released the next year sampled Cameron’s finger-wagging response to the “tiny minority” who caused violence on the 10th November. ‘Can’t Take Our Freedom’ by Kayem ties the activism to the global struggle: “From Millbank Tower to Tahrir Square.”
Richie Blitz documents the police brutality against protestors on E-Day in his song ‘Parliament Square’. The song paints the protest like a legendary medieval battle, where “on that winter’s day the people came out to protest / thousands were all sharing the same feeling of unrest / they were young and they were old / they were brash and they were bold / lecturers and students all out marching in the cold.” The song talks about the media reporting a riot, but Richie Blitz, as a troubadour story-teller, can only see the unnecessary force of police brutality. The song polarises the Tories and Cameron as “working to protect the elite” with the backing of Nick Clegg. It’s a highly effective and emotive tale which paints the battlelines being drawn both ideologically and literally as “the people wouldn’t take it so they took to the streets.”
Education for the masses / not just for the ruling classes
In the long term, on paper, the increase in fees did not hugely affect the rise in University attendance. The percentage of students studying full-time for a first degree in England who went to a state school has also risen every year since 2010, as has the percentage of children who accessed free school meals. However the number of children who access free school meals who have left education at the age of 18 without the basic benchmark qualifications has risen from 28% to 37% since 2015. The hardest hit by education cuts under austerity were 16 to 19 year-olds who saw real terms cuts of 7% between 2014-2019. In 2020, the National Audit Office claimed that the Department for Education had spent more than £700 million in emergency funding to support individual colleges suffering from financial difficulties.
What this tells me is that there is a narrow path to success in the job market, and the Conservatives have only made this path harder for those trying to tread it. The student protests were a spectrum of voices with various aims, but at it’s centre was the core truth that under austerity, it’s always the poorest who bear the brunt. And now, in 2020, MPs like Ben Bradley say more needs to be done to support working class people in education. A report by the Children Commissioner found the attainment gap between disadvantaged children is widening, and all this is part of a dismissing of young people’s agency and needs. As CAS spits on 2013’s You Might Be Scared: “Tripled uni fees, stopped EMA like it was cool / All that says to me is you don't want poor kids to go to school.”
Ten years later, students are still being sold-out. After a decade of Michael Gove-inspired education restructures and the 2020 classist algorithm, young people are once again suffering from Conservative policy. Students are being treated poorly by certain universities who encouraged them to study in person, only to move teaching online and quarantine whole residences when inevitably Coronavirus made face-to-face learning dangerously unsafe.
Whilst organising and activism is difficult in a pandemic, I hope students look to the winter of 2010 for inspiration. And we who slogged in the freezing cold offer all our solidarity to the students of 2020 and beyond.
I’m writing a book! About music, austerity and the 2010s. In my last blogpost (which you can read here) I talked about Cameron’s music tastes and who ‘owns’ protest music. The following is a chopped-up extract.
Like Thatcher in the 1980s, David Cameron became a lyrical device which summarised all the evils of the Coalition, the Conservative Party and austerity policies. His spearheading confidence and assurance in austerity, Big Society and that “we’re all in this together” became a target for song-writers to parody, lampoon and criticise as a way to rail against the wider Conservative ideology. Cameron had the ability to play a friendly and affable ‘Dave’ with the media, as well as turn on the firm voice of the government against protest. By being such a visible personality, as well as boasting the arch millionaire/Etonian/Bullingdon Club background, Cameron becomes the ever-recurring character and voice in protest music, a sort of inverted folk-devil.
In the punk camp, Cameron is sampled on Magnificent Seven’s ‘Welfare Is A State’, Ravioli Me Away’s ‘Imagination’ and The Relitics’ ‘Whitewash’. Over in the hip-hop camp, Cameron is sampled in Novelist’s ‘Street Politician’ and Dave’s ‘Question Time’. The Smiley & The Underclass song ‘It’s All England’ opens with Smiley declaring “Now this one’s straight to the head of David Cameron and the Houses of Parliament, dedicated to the ones who struggle and suffer and can’t pay their rent.” On Old Radio’s ‘Our Contributions’, the skacore band sing “leaving scraps on the floor / fuck David Cameron / take the fight to the Number Ten door.”
The Skints’ ‘The Island’, written about fallout of the EU Referendum, asks: “Whose idea was this? / Cos I feel the joke is over / But he's only done a runner / And sold you down the river”. At this stage in the music video, a cartoon Cameron makes a Beano-escape dash offscreen. Cameron’s resignation after the referendum is the core of Half Bam Half Whisky’s song ‘A Pig Boy Did It And Ran Away.’ Cameron’s resignation is the crux of Throwing Stuff’s ferocious and undaunted ‘We Wrote This Song Before David Cameron Resigned’. In the song at the final lines screech at quicktime:
“Dodging questions like you know where I’ve been
That dirty smirk couldn’t hide a wedding ring
Tell me how it’s not black and white
Sounds like you gave up the fight
Time’s run out, growing indignation
Raising a toast to your resignation.”
I also think Throwing Stuff’s equally intense punk song ‘How Do You Sleep At Night?’ is about Cameron. I can’t help but think of the 2011 moment presenter Matt Baker asked the Prime Minister the question just as they were wrapping up an interview on The One Show. His co-host, Alex Jones, exclaims a gasp followed by an awkward laugh at the unscripted question. Cameron, to his credit, has a slight flustered moment before ploughing ahead and politely saying “I’ve always been able to sleep OK actually.”
Throwing Stuff’s snappy song opens with the lines “I’d rather be dead than a blue / You march the beat of a familiar tune / A scramble to the top, society’s divider / The bottom continues growing wider.” and concludes lyrically with a throat-wrenching verse: “I’m sick of your trickle down politics / Sick of your flawed free market logic”
To say that Theresa May was the prime minister for almost exactly three years, her role as Cameron’s successor, continuation of austerity policies and key part in the Hostile Environment made her a focal figure for songs in this brief window. Grace Petrie’s ‘Farewell To Welfare’ was written during May’s tenure as Home Secretary. May takes the brunt of this song as Grace foregrounds her queer identity railing against Section 28, searching for her own Harvey Milk and asking if May thinks “that honest people really should be turned away / From IVF and B&Bs just because they're gay.” Grace would perform, and rewrite, this song across the decade, and it gained even more pertinence when May became PM.
May is sampled at the start of Wadeye’s ‘Welfare Warfare’, with a clip taken from her Brexit speech from March 2018. May’s speech is juxtaposed with the ‘Soviet March’ from real-time strategy video game Red Alert 3. In the same punk spirit, the Menstrual Cramps released their high-energy song ‘Tory Scum’ which highlights May’s terrible record for migrant rights, selling arms to Saudi Arabia and “kissing Donald’s ass” with the savage chorus: “we’re getting fucked by Tory scum / we’re getting fucked by Theresa May.” Cabinet of Millionaires released three singles and remixes of Theresa songs in January, May and June of 2019, referencing Grenfell, the Windrush scandal, the refugee crisis, the arms trade and calling on the PM to “give your austerity a rest / save our NHS.”
Thumping electro-pop track ‘Theresa May (Bullshit)’ by duo Cherryade has a goading, childlike quality with the “na-na-na” refrain under a sugary-pop beat and and swaggering lyrics advising the listener to “hide your shit like Theresa May.” East London’s Farai released an affecting track in ‘This Is England.’ In beat poetry-style, she delivers an angry plea to Theresa May asking “Do you know how it feels to count hours and days until payday?” The static energy of producer TONE’s hive-like droning electronic music bristles beneath Farai’s savage howl. ‘This Is England’ is the perfect product of 2010s frustration where clearly nothing is getting better and our politicians not only are the cause, they don’t even care.
Stormzy’s 2019 song ‘Vossi Bop’ became the rapper’s first number one single. The line “I could never die / I’m Chuck Norris / Fuck the Government / Fuck Boris” was adopted by the internet with the hashtag #FuckBoris. Captain SKA collaborated with Rubi Dan and used this term for their 2019 collaboration ‘Fuck Boris’: “Lying and dishonest / This racist idiotic / Things are getting toxic / That's why we hashtag - fuck Boris!” Commie Faggots go through a list of Johnson’s racist language on ‘Boris Johnson Is A Racist,’ a list also featured in samples on dance-rock band Cabinet of Millionaires’ ‘Stop The Coup,’ a song released in protest to Johnson’s illegal proroguing of Parliament.
Other MPs were immortalised in music. Grace Petrie’s MP Song neatly takes it in turns to poke fun at members of the cabinet like they are a sitcom cast. For George Osborne, Petrie sings: “austerity’s working wonders so onwards we will forge / before we sink this ship, take a tip from double dip / No the smart money’s not on George.” This is a reference to GDP shrinking again in 2012 by 0.2%, the first double dip downturn since the 1970s. Ian Duncan Smith and Jeremy Hunt all have verses alongside Liberal Democrat leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.
Captain SKA reworked 2010’s ‘Liar Liar’ for the 2015 general election, this time targeting Farage and Osborne and sampling their speeches. In 2017, the focus was on Theresa May as ‘Liar Liar GE2017’. The BBC refused to play the song, a representative stating: "we do not ban songs or artists, however our editorial guidelines require us to remain impartial and the UK is currently in an election period so we will not be playing the song." The song was again retooled for Boris Johnson in 2019 as ‘Liar Liar GE2019’. An updated ‘Liar Liar’ track to coincide with a general election became something of a tradition across the 2010s!
Composer Kim Halliday loops piano and samples for ‘2010 George Osborne’, making the intertwining of “decades of debt” and increasingly spiralling figures seem all meaningless and abstract. Half Bam Half Whisky’s ‘The George Osborne Stance’ is a comic take about the bizarre way Osborne posed at the 2015 Conservative Party conference, apparently trying to ape an impressive power stance. Danimal Crackers’ ‘The George Osborne Song’ on accordion is reminiscent of rude, raucous knees-up London musical hall numbers. It pulls no punches finding inventive rhymes to call the Chancellor a cunt.
On the similarly-titled ‘The Jacob Rees Mogg Song’ Barnaby Griffins encourages listeners to “check out his voting record on theyworkforyou.com / To see the true cloth that he's cut from.” Even Michael Gove gets a rare mention on Griffins’ disturbing track ‘Torypede’. Gove, alongside Osborne and May, are described as part of a hideous Human Centipede. Not a track to listen to whilst eating.
‘He’s A Tory’ by Fight Rosa Fight starts as a jangly poppy indie-punk account of a friend who changed and aligned himself to the Right. Then the song bursts into a Riot Grrrl call response “Fuck you” for various Right-wingers, including Cameron, Johnson and Osborne. It might be the only song to reference Conservative MPs David Willetts and Eric Pickles, who stood down in the 2015 and 2017 elections respectively. As we’ll see, Ian Duncan Smith has numerous songs written about him for his part in the cruel reforms to welfare, and Andrew Lansly and Jeremy Hunt both represent the Conservative’s underfunding and dismantling of the NHS.
Whilst musicians of the 1980s targeted Thatcher, protest music of the early 2010s ran further with a varied armoury of songs naming, parodying, referencing, highlighting, lampooning and attacking individual Conservative MPs. This plethora of name-checking helped challenge the austerity narrative in two ways. Firstly, the Conservative Government tactically passed the blame to others. As The Skapones neatly summarise at the end of their track ‘Benefit Street’:
“Blame the immigrants and blame the weak
Blame the job that’s getting 64 quid a week
You can blame single mothers and the mentally ill
EU workers till you’ve had your fill”
Punk band Ariel Salad are also conscious of this scapegoating from Cameron, who is name-checked on their scathing track ‘Conservative Thinking’. Even though the song was released in 2017, a year after Cameron’s resignation, it’s still important for the band to highlight his role in this blame culture:
“Cameron’s fingers getting too long now it seems
A raise of hands for everybody’s broken dreams
I don’t see the working class like I use to see it
So you blame the doctors and the teachers,
Blame the poor, blame the homeless, blame the preachers,
As the working cash paychecks don't pay the rent.”
American singer-songwriter, story-teller and activist Utah Phillips once said: “The earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses.” The reason for Britain’s issues was specific politicians in specific roles doing specific, ideologically-driven, jobs. The celebrity nature of the cabinet suggested each MP had their strategic task, and therefore became the figurehead, and target, for songs which refused to accept the legitimacy of austerity.
The Conservative’s hit the decade with a solid mission. Reflecting behind a paywall in The Times in 2019, former PM Cameron would ruminate on austerity:
“I have always thought that the most important job for a prime minister is to do their duty - to tackle the most urgent task in front of them, whatever that might be. In 2010 there was absolutely no doubt what that was: to rescue our economy.”
This Churchillian sense of ‘duty’ implies that the Coalition were not the architects of poverty, but merely enacting what was necessary, like an undaunted surgeon cutting off a wounded limb. The suggestion is, one cannot take the blame for the negative aspects of ones actions if you were merely a vessel for the duty.
Cameron would go on to add: “For me there wasn’t any doubt about how that could be achieved.” A tough, unavoidable medicine to prioritise ‘saving’ the economy, and therefore (by Cameron’s estimation) the country. Musicians constantly challenged this narrative in both unyielding anger and teasing lyrics. As Grace Petrie sings in the MP Song:
“But I’m primarily concerned with Mr Cameron
He seems to have the story wrong
Well Labour didn’t take Britain’s money after all!
It was in the spare rooms of council houses all along
And if we can just squeeze you all a little tighter
I’m writing a book! It’s about Arts & Austerity between 2010-2019!
And I wanted to share part of the music chapter.
This Charming Man: Cameron's music tastes and the dawn of austerity 2005-2010.
David Cameron was a different sort of Conservative leader to his predecessors. He was young by politician standards, having only served as an MP for four years before becoming Leader of his party in 2005. He claimed that the Conservatives would pursue a green agenda and had less of the stuffy traditionalism of his grey precursors. In his Leadership victory speech, Cameron argued “we have to change in order for people to trust us.”
In 2006 when Cameron guested on the BBC’s Desert Island Discs programme, one of his choices was ‘This Charming Man’ by The Smiths. He said that Morrisey appearing on Top of the Pops with an NHS hearing aid was an “iconic moment for people of my generation.” Cameron is the grandson of Sir William Mount, who was a baronetcy and High Sheriff of Berkshire, and his father was a stockbroker and his mother a former Justice of the Peace. Still, something about The Smiths’ kitchen sink style chimed inside the young man. Like countless teenagers of the 1980s, Cameron fell for their forlorn songs of working class life and Morrisey’s both mournful and mocking lyrics. In 2013, The Smiths’ guitarist Johnny Marr commented "I do forbid him to like it. He shouldn't like us because we're not his kind of people."
A young Baby Boomer, Cameron wasn’t shy about his love for 1970s-80s pop and rock. He highlighted‘Eton Rifles’ by The Jam as one of his favourite songs. Released in 1979 a few weeks after Cameron’s 13th birthday, ‘Eton Rifles’ presents a class war against the rugby-playing Etonians, armed with “loaded guns” and “untamed wit”. Ironically at age 13, Cameron started at Eton College following in his father and brother’s footsteps. In the song, The Jam’s Paul Weller sneers "what chance do you have against a tie and a crest?" in reference to the cronyism and class power bestowed by the boys-only boarding school.
Cameron insisted: “It meant a lot, some of those early Jam albums we used to listen to. I don’t see why the Left should be the only ones allowed to listen to protest songs.” Like Marr, Weller (who campaigned against the 1980s Conservative governments) criticised Cameron, saying “Which bit [of ‘Eton Rifles’] didn’t you get? It wasn’t intended as a fucking jolly drinking song for the cadet corp.” Weller added “It's a shame really that someone didn't listen to that song and get something else from it and become a socialist leader instead. I was a bit disappointed really." The Jam’s sharp, socially conscious youthful power pop kicking up against a system would be the exact same music I would listen to when heading off on demos against Cameron’s government.
On the 8th December 2010, before the vote to uncap Tuition Fees, Labour MP Kerry McCarthy ribbed Cameron during PMQs about Morrisey and Marr banning Cameron from liking their music. “If he wins tomorrow’s vote” she put to the Speaker, “what songs does he think students will be listening to, ‘Miserable Lie’, ‘I Don’t Owe You Anything’ or ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’?” Cameron leans against the dispatch box like it’s a Westminster bar, and confidently retorts that if he did turn up, he probably wouldn’t get ‘This Charming Man’ to the amusement of the House.
Why should the political and cultural Left claim tribal ownership of protest songs? Why are musicians, and fans, quick to act as gatekeepers to their music and say “this is not for you?” I genuinely believe if The Smiths and The Jam clicked with Cameron on some level, it’s impossible for me to deny his emotional connection to their songs. However in terms of these songs polarised as protest music, I think Cameron cannot lay claim to their unmuddied message. A protest song has a target. This could be a straightforward attack on a specific individual or policy. Or it could be more symbolic, an attack on a concept or ideology. In this instance, The Jam’s ‘Eton Rifles’is a little of both. The target is, on a superficial level, the literal attendees of Eton. But it’s also a swipe at the institutions of power and the clique of privilege which Eton represents. Eton is a handy short-hand for summarising the centuries-old ideology of a ruling, upper crust.
And this is what gives a protest song it’s identity, and perhaps why Weller and Marr are quick to deny Cameron claim to their music. Protest music may have a broad appeal, and anyone can enjoy a piece of music, but I think we must acknowledge genuine sense of ownership over a piece of music. Cameron can listen to his copy of The Jam’s Setting Sons album, but fundamentally he is ensuring oppressive systems stay in place.
The anti-austerity music of the 2010s tried to be explicit in the targets. It pulled no punches in it’s message. It was not for the young Etonian, inspired by Cameron, May and Johnson, plotting their own career trajectory. It was not for racists blaming budget cuts on immigrant communities. Musicians ensured no Conservative MP, councillor or even voter could ever hold claim to these impassioned songs as theirs.
This was music for those tired of the power and privilege that money, Eton and Oxbrigde affords. Music for people sick of life at the bottom and angry at economic and class injustice. Music for those frustrated by millionaire politicians making decisions which affected the poorest in society, the same politicians who have never suffered a day in their lives. We are not, to invoke Johnny Marr, their kind of people.
As rapper Dave states on his 2017 track ‘Question Time’:
In the last week, various news outlets have ran articles how in 2019, the Police put Extinction Rebellion on a list of terrorist groups. Before anyone misrepresents me, without question I condemn acts of terrorist murder, from the killing of Joe Cox to the Manchester Arena attack. But what is important is the distinction between protesting, Unionising, picketing, direct action and ...terrorism. Many other groups were included in this counter-terrorism list. The UK has no left-wing terrorist organisations prepared to kill for their ideology, unlike the right-wing. And yet Socialist, Communist and Anarchist groups have been included (along with signs and symbols not uncommon with my wardrobe) in this database. I have performed at 0161 Crew's anti-fascist festival in Manchester. I've been to UKUncut, XR and Reclaim The Power actions, I'm in the IWW and I have an Anarchist Black Cat patch.
I find this revelation about the Home Office unsurprisingly, but no less disturbing. Anti-fracking groups were labelled terrorists by Manchester Police in 2018 and spied on left-wing and anti-racist groups throughout the 1990s. Across the pond, a Republican law-maker has called 'the LGBT' a terrorist group. And Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn was continually painted as a terrorist sympathiser for his work finding dialogue towards peace processes. So deep had this misinformation sunk that someone believed that Corbyn had actually been in the IRA.
In the West, the legacy of Blair and Bush's War On Terror continues where the term 'terrorism' can be used to define, or redefine, the narrative. My union, the IWW, are listed in the counter-terrorism training. But next comes Unison, GMB, TUC, UCU and whatever other Unions challenge the Government's grip.
The poetry, arts, music and theatre scenes know all about language. We see the way that the media and the State can spin, so workers rights is 'Communism', anti-racism is 'woke', feminism is 'man-hating', Queer identities are 'paedophilic and predatory' and environmentalism and Trade Unionism is 'terrorism'.
At music and poetry gigs, will these common and beautiful ideas of feminism, LBGTQ+ rights, workers rights and anti-racism be targeted by the counter-terrorism wing of Policing? Are we radicalising?
Is this what the 2020s offers, as flags are waved to celebrate 'freedom' and as more Tories and bankers and billionaires raise their champagne? Slapping each other on the back, seeing themselves as 'the good guys', the one's who defeated the baddies, the Terrorists, whilst any opposition, however moderate, is painted as the Threat.
