Who doesn’t love a decent Christmas banger? From the inevitability of ‘Last Christmas’ and ‘All I Want For Christmas’, to the traditional carols we all sorta kinda know the words to. Sooner or later, punk bands will make a Christmas tune: from the 70s/80s scene you’ve got UK Subs and the Vibrators on Punk Goes Christmas, through to pop-punk from Reel Big Fish, New Found Glory and Man Overboard. In 2012, we got the Dropkick Murphys 'The Season's Upon Us' and in 2017 Vice Squad added to the canon with ‘Christmas Has Been Cancelled’. My favourite Christmas song is 'I Don't Wanna Fight Tonight' by The Ramones, and an honourable mention goes to The Vandal 'Oi! To The World' and the No Doubt cover.
The Flying Pickets were dedicated socialists rooted in the radical, fringe theatre 7:84. They named their a capella group after the Trade Union tactic which had brought down the Conservatives in 1974. In April 1984 they were part of a picket of Drax Power Station and played benefit gigs for the NUM. Their single ‘Only You’ reached Christmas number one…apparently Thatcher was a fan of the tune. Many bands during the 1984-85 miner's strike played Christmas fundrasiers, and using music to raise money is common from Band Aid to LadBaby. But sometimes punk bands will use their platform not only to raise money at this season of giving, but to talk about poverty and politics. To raise money horizontally for political causes, rather than charitable vertical kindness.
This year, Petrol Girls transformed ‘Restless’ into ‘I’ll Give You Motherfuckers Christmas’ to promote a unique Christmas jumper. Sales went towards Unity Centre Glasgow, Calais Food Collective and No Borders Team providing material solidarity to people stuck at the Poland-Belarus border.
I’d like to focus on two political Christmas songs, one by Shirt Boys (a raucous Halifax punk band) and Joe Solo (a Scarborough folk-punk troubadour).
Shirt Boys wrote ‘Coalition Christmas (we’re all in this together)’ in 2010, a song both grungy in sound and imagery, painting a Dickensian Christmas scene in modern Britain. The track opens with a faint jingle to half-heartedly nod to the season, before churning into a rumbling guitar and barking vocals.
You can listen to the song here: https://shirtboys.bandcamp.com/track/coalition-christmas-were-all-in-it-together
The lyrics present various characters like a warped TV Christmas Special. A matchstick girl reoccurs, harking back to Victorian London and invoking poverty with “a cruel cough” and “touch of TB” and conditions that led to the 1888 Matchgirls Strike. The matchgirl’s illness is blamed on “Dave the toff”, leader of a cartoonish band of villains running rampant across the song. George Osborne is “Gideon” who “swings his axe / Santa is taken down.”
While Osborne is the instigator of violence, the Coalition partners are passive and ineffectual. Clegg “Nick has a nice relax / he eats some Christmas pud / all for the greater good” while Vince Cable is “dancing on TV”, a reference to his turn on Strictly Come Dancing. The song haphazardly flips between scathing punk verses and carol-esque intermissions. Grim, filthy and unhealthy, the song’s world is like a gone-wrong Beano comic, and critically this collection of Tories and Liberal Democrats are the villainous mob all in it together, but in it against us.
'Merry Christmas From Hatfield Main' by Joe Solo and The Hatfield Brigade was recorded on location at Central Club in Stainforth on October 30th 2016. Proceeds from the single went to struggling families in the area. This is a fist-to-the-air optimistic song of defiance, but let’s look at Joe’s 2014 song ‘A Tory Christmas.’ Proceeds from the song went towards Joe’s local food bank.
What does an ideal Tory Christmas look like? Laying off the elves and privatising the reindeer. Once again, Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ is invoked by Joe Solo where the protagonist of the song sings: “sod you Tiny Tim”. Apparently uncle Ebeneezer was right. The character of the song is cartoonishly cruel and greedy, but at his core ultimately individualistic. The poor can have dinner off the food bank shelves. Fuck the rest of you, I’m alright.
The song is rooted in the politics of the early 2010s. Still reeling from the financial crisis of 2008, the Conservatives were riding on four years of ‘tough decisions’ to balance the deficit, claiming Labour had bankrupted the country. And yet organisations like UK Uncut occupied shops to raise awareness of tax-dodging mega-corporations like Vodafone (who had negotiated their tax bill down from £6 billion to £2 billion). In 2012 they held a day of action against Starbucks. So Joe Solo sings “till Hell it freezes over and the banks pay tax / we can all have a Tory Christmas” swiping at both the banking sector, the tax-dodgers and the Tories letting these institutions off the hook.
Both songs are a darkly comic look at a twisted world, but maybe wouldn’t exist today. The stiff-upper-lipness of Cameron and Osborn was forged in Eton and Oxford and the Bullingdon Club. So songs like these unwrap the we-know-best stern mask to reveal the cruel heartlessness beyond. Today, with the Bumbler-in-chief leading a helm of a government tumbling over lies, sleaze, and bodies piling high, it feels all-too-common for them to be painted as incompetant and cartoonish. Gorging on the cheese and wine this Christmas.
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