Crass Reflections - Alastair Gordon

CRASS REFLECTIONS – ALASTAIR GORDON

The interesting thing about Crass is that to this day they still continue to generate interest. It's not unusual, of course, for bands to maintain and gain fans over the decades – take the Rolling Stones for an obvious example – this being all down to the quality of the songs and the music. Whilst the same could be applied to Crass there was also, however, something 'other' about them, something apart from the songs and the music that continues to carry them 40 years after they split up. It's that 'other' – that certain 'otherness' – that separates Crass from most other bands though trying to define it is no easy task, many having tried but then many having also failed.

Crass Reflections, written by Alastair Gordon is a revised, revamped and republished version in book form of the thesis he wrote for a University degree in 1994 which he subsequently published as a very limited edition fanzine two years later under the title Throwing The Baby Out With The Dirty Bath Water: Crass And Punk Rock, A Critical Appraisal. Alastair's thesis was the first serious academic analysis of the Crass phenomenon ever written and in that sense was absolutely ground-breaking.

If any band deserved and might stand up to such a weighty and involved study then it would be Crass due to the themes, concepts and ideas they were promoting and tussling with over the seven years of their existence. 'Anarchy, peace and freedom' were the three totems they had stuck their name to and though it might be hard to imagine now, the impact it had upon a generation was incalculable. It's important to bear in mind, however, that this was during the early 1980s when the UK was in political and social turmoil. Whether Crass would have the same impact today if they were to appear is debatable especially now that we have the Internet – though it's a point, of course, that is purely... academic.

When reading Crass Reflections, the fact that whilst the Internet had come into being at the time of first writing the thesis though there was very little concerning Crass and Anarcho Punk on there is, however, an important point and one that Alastair himself highlights. The research he conducted and the information gleaned therefore was gathered primarily from records, fanzines, and the popular music press at that time.

Now that there is much more information about Crass freely available online means the lens through which they can now be viewed is very much wider, subsequently dispelling a lot of the mystique that had always surrounded them. With knowledge comes power, as they say, but so too with age and experience.

In an interview with Jake Black of Alabama 3 some years ago, Jake said that he once visited Crass at Dial House but that looking back on it he thought they were extremely conservative in their politics. 'They were saying the most ridiculous things and I was just a kid so they were things I didn't have arguments against then. Things like 'Capitalism doesn't necessarily have to be corrupt.' It was a complete load of bunk'.

Whilst I wouldn't go so far as dismissing everything Crass spoke about as being 'bunk', in hindsight the totems of anarchy, peace and freedom as promoted by them are somewhat problematic. The espousal of anarchy is all well and good though the Crass version lacked a class analysis and in fact Crass would always dismiss 'class' as being irrelevant. Like it or not there is, however, a bit of a difference between middle class anarchism and working class anarchism.

The promotion of peace is absolutely fine though Crass entangling it with pacifism led only to what Crass bassist Pete Wright later described as 'a sharp cut-off point to what we were prepared to do. Pacifism was a convenience, a safe, assured parking bay'.

And as for freedom as put forward by Crass, this included freedom for fascists to spout their evil under the banner of free speech, which was troublesome to say the least.

Via the numerous interviews with Penny Rimbaud on the Internet nowadays as well, it would appear that he's a bit of a revisionist when it comes to the subject of Crass, which begs the question: Has Penny always been a revisionist? If so, then does this mean the essay that came with the Best Before 1984 album where 'Crass voluntarily blow their own' – and from which Alastair sources some of his information – should be taken with a pinch of salt?

The same goes for Colin Jerwood of Conflict who after the Feeding Of The 5000 gig/riot at the Brixton Academy in 1987 suggested that Conflict had been banned from playing anywhere in the country. Was that really the case, I wonder? Is it a reliable and sound enough fact to cite in an academic dissertation?

I'm sure that Alastair Gordon is fully aware of these flaws and knows that his thesis/book is very much of its time – just like Crass were. The sands have since shifted. The kaleidoscope shaken. Though this doesn't distract none, it should be said, from the fact that Crass Reflections is still a very good book if not one of the best about Crass that has been written.

It was Tony Drayton of Kill Your Pet Puppy fanzine who first wrote about how glad he was when he originally came upon Crass back in 1979 that someone was at last taking punk seriously. The same goes for Crass Reflections and Alastair Gordon's original thesis where at last someone within academia was taking Crass seriously and applying serious consideration to what they had been talking about.

When Crass disbanded in 1984, everything they had ever said became cast in stone but Crass were in actual fact a work in progress. Crass were an organic project. There never was any grand Ten Point Program and to suggest otherwise is absurd. Crass did not have all the answers and actually were on a learning curve themselves. As Penny Rimbaud even once said: 'I knew nothing about traditional anarchism. I thought Bakunin was a type of vodka'. Or was that just further revisionism on his part?

The reason for the failure of the Crass vision is due in some part to the misinterpretation and reinterpretation of the many statements they made. The way that their records sell for such high prices nowadays is testament to that same failure, as is (as much as it's painful to say) the commodification of the Crass legacy by almost everyone, including ex-lead vocalist Steve Ignorant.

Nowadays, all that is really left of the Crass legacy are the unspoken aspects of Crass. The ethics that were not laid down as black and white statements. The core values. The engines that drove them. The very simple and really very innocent things such as the act of sharing with others, making the personal political and vice versa.

During the Queen Elizabeth Hall anti-Iraq war Crass 'reformation' event in 2002, members of Crass handed out bottles of beer at the end - presumably from their rider - to the audience, once again as they had done during their heyday sharing with others everything – and what little – they had. Giving. Sharing. Not taking or selling or wanting something in return. Just sharing and giving, giving and sharing. 18 years after they had last appeared on stage together, this one very small and at first glance fairly insignificant act was the absolute heart of the Crass message. Admittedly, it's not a noisy, angry nor even particularly sexy message but it's the key nonetheless to a better world.

It's really as simple as that but sadly very few people have picked up on it let alone taken it on, perhaps because it's in complete contradiction to everything laissez-faire capitalism is about? In complete contradiction to the way the world is and always has been presented to us? In complete contradiction to how we're told human nature is? Who knows? Not me, for sure, and possibly not even Crass themselves?

John Serpico