Oh, you think you’re pretty hard
Cos you’ve just finished college
An old school tie to speed you on your way
Well that’s not gonna help you
Cos this is where you’re going
Cockle picking in Morecambe Bay
Well our story starts in China
Where you can’t feed your family
The people traffickers lend you a hand
Six months in a lorry
Then you end up in Dover
Where natives tell you “F@CK off out this land!!”
My my, hey, hey
Cockle picking in Morecambe Bay
Oh, in the North of England
It’s three to a small bedroom
The landlord takes what’s left of all your cash
Then it’s down the agency
With dodgy ID
Where you’ve really got to try and make a splash
No minimum wage here
You really must be joking
Welcome to the black economy
And on your factory shift
They’ll grudge you a piss
Then you hear of this opportunity
My my, hey, hey
Cockle picking in Morecambe Bay
Well on 5th February 2004
A load of cockle pickers lost their lives
21 people all the way from China
May be gone but guess what still survives?
The migrant labour story
Is really not that funny
Unless you cream it in from off the top
And policies that pit
Worker against worker
Tell me, when we gonna make it stop?
No matter what wonderful political set up you want, we haven’t got around the fact that we need a bunch of hard bastards to make sure enemies don’t come by and stove our heads in. (Anarchists please note: the militias in the Spanish Civil War gave as good as they got).
I wrote this seeing a sort of collateral damage in working class communities I played gigs in, where communities had to pull together to deal with their mates who had come back from serving in the forces and weren’t quite how they remembered them when they left.
At Occupy Oakland in the US, the media made a massive deal of the fact that an Iraqi veteran got seriously injured by cops during demo. Whether it would have been as big a deal if ut hadn’t been a vet, I don’t know. But there seems to be more of a culture in America activist groups working with veterans. In the UK people seem a bit more sqeamish about stuff like this. I feel this may change, though.
I think I kind of bottled this song in some ways.
(To listen to the track, click the play button below. To download it, click on the arrow pointing down on the right bit of the thingy below. To share it on Facebook etc, get the embed code by clicking on the icon on the right bit of the thingy below. For more info see www.cosmoguitar.net).
It’s nearly November 11th – Remembrance Sunday – and British people just LUUUUURVE wearing poppies to commemorate their war dead!
You can usually tell when the build up to this is happening. The gutter press and Facebook rumours start: “Muslims find poppies offensive/are burning poppies/are desecrating war memorials!!!” (This is all deliberately vastly overhyped or just plain bullshit).
Then some big company/institution refuses to let employees wear poppies, or to let the Royal British legion to sell poppies on their premises, (ditto).
This year, FIFA presented indulgees of this annual moron-a-thon with a boon by refusing to let the England football team wear poppies on their shirts in a friendly with Spain. Prince William and David Cameron led the charge and they eventually relented, however. But this didn’t stop nationalist yobbo chancers the English Defence League getting in on the act (quelle surprise!) and protesting at the FIFA headquarters in Geneva.
What can you do when faced with all this?
Antifascism or defending the NHS from privatisation is a great memorial to the legacy of the World War 2 generation. The struggle for a classless society is a reminder how tragic it was that millions of ordinary people died in World War 1 which was essentially a Royal family feud – Queen Victoria, Tsar Nicholas and Kaiser Wilhem were all cousins, ffs!!!Antimilitarism reminds us how it is unacceptable that working people, women and children suffer the most at war, and in this country have to pay for the privilege through charities such as Help The Heroes. Not to mention the Royal British Legion. Glorious it aint. I could mention people that campaign against the arms trade. But that’s enough for now. Let’s just say I find the poppy thing all a bit confusing. Oh, my people, my people!
(To listen to the track, click the play button below. To download it, click on the arrow pointing down on the right bit of the thingy below. To share it on Facebook etc, get the embed code by clicking on the icon on the right bit of the thingy below. For more info see www.cosmoguitar.net).
(To listen to the track, click the play button below. To download it, click on the arrow pointing down on the right bit of the thingy below. To share it on Facebook etc, get the embed code by clicking on the icon on the right bit of the thingy below).
This track has been the hardest to nail down, recording-wise. Finally managed it in this morning’s caffeine rush.
Marco was a bit of a wag, or so I thought when I knew him. He got involved in South Wales Anarchists at the end of the summer of 2005. We were all a bit shell shocked, having been at the G8 mobilisations in Scotland where lots of us got nicked. (We managed to stop the G8 meeting, though, and I wrote a blog of my experiences here).
What we didn’t realise was that Marco was an undercover cop. He bedded down in the organisation and then disappeared in 2009, supposedly off to Corfu to work. We never heard hide nor hair of him again. A while after he’d gone, the group pieced together that he’d probably been undercover but we had no hard evidence to back it up. Then the Guardianouted several deep cover cops that had penetrated the wider UK anarchist/environmental movement. One thing led to another and we were finally able to make a public statement about it last year
The whole outing of deep cover cops has provoked all kinds of reactions from the anarchist community: howls of anger, outrage and defiance; arguments about the best way to deal with what had happened, then legal manoeuvrings to see if the police can be prosecuted for their disproportionate actions. This track is not about any of these things. It’s about picking over the bones of it from a personal perspective, with all the cold betrayal that went down. The perspective is not necessarily my own, and the cop in there is not necessarily anyone I have known. I’ve tried to build a composite picture.
The one thing I remember about Marco was his humour. Here was an apparently bone fide working class geezer who drove trucks for a living. Cue bonding over beers about wussy middle class tossers playing at activism. But, Marco if you’re reading this, I aint no prole. I’m actually an lapsed East European aristocrat who slums it amongst the middle classes. Littlejohn would LOVE me.
Had you there, you f@cking c%@£.
Deep Cover
Since I heard the news I’ve had pictures in my mind’s eye
Like that time we got high before that action near Ross-On-Wye
Up all night, talking shyte like: “Let’s dynamite this pipe!”
But that was before you dumped on us from a great height
Sometimes I feel naive, you know I should’ve thought
Like, how come it was you sorting out transport?
Always on the case, always having cash to splash
But when trouble came you’d hang back or off you’d dash
Other times we were down, completely thick as thieves
Let’s cure this disease, bring the system to its knees
Laughing at those kids who were straight out of uni
You said they talk about oppression but they’re privileged and puny
What the hell would they know what activism is?
A lot more than you mate, and you wrote ‘em off as kids
They put themselves on the line, think outside their good fortune
But you’re paid by the piper and dance to a bought tune
Deep cover
Deep cover – that’s what you are, that’s what you always were
The fact hits me like brute force, my head’s a total blur
Passing information about all the group’s activities
No wonder we were pigged those times, stands to reason, now I see
So who were your paymasters? Cops or corporate interests?
Did you feel you were doing what was best? Ah, what a fucking jest….
After all the pain and the heartache you inflicted
What would you know about right and wrong? You’re so conflicted.
Faking entire friendships, that must take some doing
Not to mention all those comrades you were screwing
How do you think they feel, or don’t you care at all?
I hope you’re squalling in your de-brief, feeling messed up, pathetic and small
My mind’s doing backflips stay clear I’m right skitz
If I see you I’m gonna have a total fit
Or maybe kick the wall or maybe start to cry
And make you look me in the eyes and tell me WHY???
Deep cover
I don’t care about the divisions that you exacerbated
The shit you stirred up constantly, the conflicts you created
I don’t care about the things you know, the intel that you passed
The stuff that left us compromised because you’d gone and grassed
I don’t care about your sick mother cos she never existed
Like your friends from home we never met, how fucking twisted?
I don’t care you know my dark side and my taste in drugs and ladies
I don’t care about your double life, cos mate you’re dead to me
You can’t stop this tidal wave that cresting as I speak
It comes from deep within me and a place you cannot reach
You can’t stop it manifesting though you think you might
You could f@cking kill me but that wouldn’t end the fight
You can’t stop awareness, it’s spreading round the globe
Questioning this system while you just snoop and probe
You can’t stop people acting up to find their own solutions
You can’t stop this revolutionary nor stop this revolution
(To listen to the track, click the play button below. To download it, click on the arrow pointing down on the right bit of the thingy below. To share it on Facebook etc, get the embed code by clicking on the icon on the right bit of the thingy below).
According to Twitter, I last uploaded a track for “Picket Line Party” 67 days ago. So much for my “one track a month for free download” idea!
So what’s been going on? It’s like the world around me has completely changed. The last time I remember having any energy I was Busking Against the Cuts on the main thoroughfare in Cardiff at the end of June. Gigs, strikes, picket lines, song release deadlines…..Suddenly everything takes its toll and it’s off to Cornwall to get rid of this bout of midlatitude psychosis blues. Our rulers and betters have infinite resources, contacts and privileges with which to shaft us, and take holidays in Tuscany to chill out from it all. We have fresh air, excitement and camping holidays!
Just before I leave, a crazy Norwegian fundamentalist Christian shoots up a load of kids at a leftist camp and bombs Oslo to protest against multiculturalism. Why didn’t every living Norwegian and fundamentalist Christian need to explain how they weren’t racists, terrorists and child killers, on pain of being thought of the enemy within? If Anders Behring Breivik had been a Muslim, this would have been different. So it goes…..
Then there’s the ongoing story of cops, politicians and News International clowns like Rupert and James Murdoch, once-triumphant kings and queens of the spectacle, all in it together, falling into a quagmire of corruption and lies.
And now a load of rioting in England has left people seriously freaked out and scratching their heads. What the hell happened there? How did it come to this? Politicisation has crept up slowly as a result, but mostly people have run up against their ill-thought-out prejudices gleaned from the right wing press. It’s been surprising how many friends I’ve wanted to lose on social network sites for spouting nonsense. Already, a 23-year-old has gone down for 6 months for nicking a bottle of water during the riots that cost £3.50. People applaud. And so this kind of hysteria goes on. (This article shows some of the rank class hypocrisy at work). Politicians and bankers get away with looting the country but that’s ok. When the rest of us do it, it’s lockdown. Why are we still at this level in our attitudes? It’s like dealing with people that refuse to grow up.
And against all this backdrop, the world economy goes into free fall!!!!
In Cornwall I found a load of dreams that I thought I’d discarded that still felt vivid and alive. Landscape there has that power. Then there was Abel Paz’s biography of Spanish anarchist hero Durruti with me there too. Durruti helped bring Spanish state come reeling to its knees in 1936 with an alliance of factory workers, temps, mechanics, cleaners, peasants, nutters etc……trying to create a new kind of democracy based on communities, workplaces, gender equality….Hmmmm. If there is hope it lies in the proles? Maybe that’s the missing piece of the puzzle here? In which case, we have some serious work to do!
Every leftist folky dreams of coming across an obscure story of a strike or injustice that has yet to be chronicled in song. In Britain in unlike now, 1907, there was lots of working class solidarity. Strikes, lockouts, arguments down the pub, suffragettes….it was all going on! How do you imagine we ended up having a public service and NHS to serve up to the wanton beasts of capital now? Strike, occupy, resist! Even the entertainers were at it! This is the story of the Music Hall War!!!
Jean Charles De Menezes. Ian Tomlinson. Blair Peach….
It’s a strange thing that the very institution that’s supposed to uphold the law in Britain, the police force, appears to exist in its own lawless vacuum. The three people named above were innocents who died at their hands: the first during a botched counter terrorism operation, and the others during political demonstrations. To date, not one cop has been convicted of causing their deaths.
There are others I could mention - Sean Rigg, Ricky Bishop and Smiley Culture for example – but those incidents above touched me in a direct way. Blair Peach was killed in 1979 at a demo against the fascist National Front. I was a kid at the time but his name has had a haunting ring to it since then, as it was the first one for me ever to be linked to this kind of police brutality. 10, 000 people attended his funeral.
John Charles De Menezes, a Brazilian electrician, was shot in Stockwell in South London in 2005. He was thought to be a suicide bomber. A mate of mine over from Brazil ended up working as a translator for his family, while others I knew were involved in the campaign to get him justice.
I don’t really know what else to say. I think this song pushes the anger button more than any other I’ve written. Sorry, no humour to force down the pill this time.
Who’s Gonna Take The Rap?
(To listen to the track, click the play button below. To download it, click on the arrow pointing down on the right bit of the thingy below. To share it on Facebook etc, get the embed code by clicking on the icon on the right bit of the thingy below).
Did you hear the one here about the cop that got away?
Took a life for free while it all went off in the city
Sat at home on full pay and his future’s looking pretty
Chorus:
Jean Charles De Menezes, Ian Tomlinson, Blair Peach
Their killers rest in places where the law will never reach
But here comes justice fighting on its feet
Who’s gonna take the rap?
Who’s gonna take the rap?
Won’t someone tell me, please
I’m sick of hearing all this crap
(repeat)
Mephistopheles said, “Mate, you couldn’t make this up.
Got to hand it to ‘em they deserve to win the cup.
The boys in blue don’t need us and our black arts to survive!”
Machiavelli gave a smile and both of them high-fived
(Repeat Chorus)
The rocky road is beckoning and those that hear the call
Face the wrath of silence and it’s deadly, deafening wall
It may take a lifetime, but it’s taken lives already
Keep on course for justice, solidarity, hold steady.
(Repeat Chorus)
Also, I’m very please to announce that Tommy Tank has done a remix of the track “IWannaStartACivilWar!” from my album “Costly Pills and Hash.” Check it out, it’s a corker and free to download!
Just a quickie to say thanks to all of y’awl who’ve bought F@ck the BNP online this week. I know charts are a load of nonsense, but it has been great FUN watching this go up the Amazon folk mp3 download bestsellers list, where it reached number 3. Ok, Tracy Chapman kept it off the top spot but it was good to give Simon and Garfunkel, Lindisfarne and Joni Mitchell a run for their money!
For someone who resigned himself years ago to never appearing on Top of the Pops, that’s been just great
But in all seriousness, it’s also good to know that a percentage of profits will go to Welsh Antifa. News is just in that the BNP have polled a staggering 0.8% in the Welsh Assembly elections. Ha! But the ballot box is the last place to fight the far right and the struggle continues to stop their poison in our communities and workplaces.
So many thanks once again to all who’ve bought it and helped promote it as well. The stats can take ages to come in, but when they do I’ll let you know how much we’ve raised.
*a f@ck the royal wedding gig on a barge on the river Cam in front of a boozer,
*a jam at a f@ck the royal wedding party, an anticuts demo (at the beginning and the end!),
*a f@ck the royal wedding poetry slam,
*and finally a slot at an indie gig….then back to Cardiff to chase BNP-Fuhrer Nick Griffin around as he tried to canvass for the Welsh Assembly elections. Thirty of us turned up to do this – not bad for a last minute text around, (see below)! There was also an excellent Food not Bombs action in Cardiff that morning. Phew!
(They seem to be doing an awful lot of f@cking in Cambridge, mind. Marvellous!)
I’m releasing F@ck the BNP this week (1st – 7th May). It’s already number 83 in Amazon. Let’s see if we can get it a bit higher! Click HERE to purchase. Thanks to Edmund and Rebel Arts radio for the photos.
