On 15th February 2003, two million people marched in London against the Iraq War, at the time the biggest demonstration the country had ever seen. The march is referenced Chris T-T’s ‘The Huntsman Comes a’Marching’ where he swipes that the Countryside Alliance march caused more damage than “when two million normal people / marched against the war.” Other mass demonstrations across the country followed throughout the month of March. I remember vividly seeing the march in Leeds as a teenager (Google tells me this was 15th March 2003). I have a strong memory of punks and goths parading with placards - maybe some seeded deep inside me when I started looking for CDs at car boot sales years later.
A recurring theme across protest music is the jaded sense of history being repeated. A decade earlier, under the command of George W. Bush’s father of the same name and same political party, US forces had invaded Kuwait as the first Gulf War. This jaded sense of history being repeated appears across anti-war music of the 2000s.
Massive Attack sing frustarated “The days of rage yeah nothing's changed” on 2006's ‘False Flag’. Sonic Boom Six sing: “Here we go again, they're talking about a new war / We forgot they never even gave an answer to why we had the last one” on ‘Apathy Begins At Home’, also released in 2006. On their song 'Blood For Oil', this grotesque warfare is summarised as a sequel. Released in 2015, ‘War Games’ by The Defekters rhetorically asks “how many times can they justify their actions against the losses?” In 2018, The Lab Rats simply ask “how long do we have to fight before we stop this war / between the police and the people / between the bankers and the poor?” on ‘Stop This War’.
How long? How many times? How much more?
It’s hard to write the same optimistic songs of the 1960s, or even the jaw-clenching angry tunes of the 1980s, when it feels like history inevitably cycles round and round. So anti-war songs of this era are conscious of their place in history and rock’s cultural legacy. Goldblade called the Iraq War “This generation’s Vietnam” on ‘(War!) Not In My Name’. We couldn’t even have our own unique conflict - from a Western observer’s standpoint, from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan, from lyrics to marches - we’ve all been here before.
The Skints’ heart-breaking ‘Roanna’s Song’ features Marcia Richards singing “I don’t care what you say / Who you are / Nothing is right about war / I don’t care where there’s oil / Who’s your God / Nothing is right about war.” And again, oil is at the centre of another US foreign intervention. But whereas the powers-that-be are painted as liars for claiming WMDs are the motivator for invasion, Trump is brazenly honest. US oil companies will be free to dig deep into Venezuela with or without the people or their government's consent or say-so. The country is on the verge of being a puppet state of the US, with mega corporations at the helm. Whilst Jake Burns of Stiff Little Fingers wrote 'Liars Club' at the height of the Iraq War in reference to politicians, Trump isn't lying. He's literally telling the world - we will take this oil, and we will get filthy rich.
"We’re going to have our very large U.S. oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,"
Drill baby, drill. In someone else's backyard.
