“They’ve Got a Bomb”: Sounding Anti-nuclearism in the Anarcho-punk Movement in Britain, 1978–84

ABSTRACT

This article explores the links and tensions in Britain between a musical subculture at its height of creative energy – anarcho-punk – and the anti-nuclear movement, including the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. It identifies and interrogates the anti-nuclear elements of anarcho-punk, looking at its leading band, Crass. At the center is an exploration of the sounds of Crass’ music and singing voices – termed Crassonics – in the context of anti-nuclearism: if the bomb changed music and art, what did the new music sound like?

KEYWORDS:

• Anarcho-punk
• anti-nuclear
• punk rock
• protest
• sound
• voice

Acknowledgments

Figure 1, I owe thanks to Chris Beckett for permission to reproduce photography, and for supplying me with a high-resolution copy. Figures 3–5, from author’s collection. Thanks are due to Penny Rimbaud and to Chris Dalton for taking time to respond to my queries. Thanks to Samantha Bennett for making available to me her 2014 IASPM paper on John Loder, Matt Worley for making available a copy of his 2011 article, and to my one-time UEA colleague Yvonne Tasker for comments on a draft of this piece. I am grateful also to the journal’s anonymous readers for thoughtful and detailed reviews of an earlier draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The original Manifesto BUM (“boom”) is a 1952 painting by Italian avant-garde artist Enrico Baj for an exhibition of what was newly-termed “Nuclear Art” in Milan, which figures visual imagery (a mushroom cloud) overlaid by slogans and fragments of nuclear text.

2. The 1984 singles were, in chronological order: Paul McCartney’s “Pipes of Peace” (two weeks), Nena’s “99 Red Balloons” (three weeks), and Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Two Tribes” (nine weeks). According to John Street, whose survey of political #1s ends at 2001, only 1969 comes near, also with three chart-toppers: “The Ballad of John and Yoko” by the Beatles, Thunderclap Newman’s “Something in the Air,” and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising.” But in 1969 the combined weeks at #1 totaled only nine (three for each).

3. Such commercial acceptance of nuclear politics in music is not always the case. For example, Noriko Manabe has shown how, in the post-Fukushima anti-nuclear movement in Japan, few popular musicians are involved: “most artists on major labels (with some notable exceptions) have not spoken out publicly against nuclear power, and much of the music of the antinuclear protest movement thus far has been from independent artists” (Manabe, “No Nukes”). “Furthermore,” she notes, “musicians airing such views can see a reduction in bookings.”

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George McKay

George McKay is Professor of Media Studies at the University of East Anglia, UK. His research interests are in popular music from jazz to punk, festivals, alternative culture and media, social movements and cultural politics, disability, and gardening. Among his books are Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance since the Sixties (Verso, 1996), ed. DiY Culture: Party & Protest in Nineties Britain (Verso, 1998), Glastonbury: A Very English Fair (Gollancz, 2000), Circular Breathing: The Cultural Politics of Jazz in Britain (Duke UP, 2005), Radical Gardening: Politics, Idealism & Rebellion in the Garden (Frances Lincoln, 2011), Shakin’ All Over: Popular Music and Disability (Michigan UP, 2013), and ed. The Pop Festival: History, Media, Music, Culture (Bloomsbury, 2015).  He was a founding editor in 2002 of the Routledge journal Social Movement Studies. Forthcoming is The Oxford Handbook of Punk Rock (Oxford UP), which he is co-editing with Gina Arnold. He was Arts and Humanities Research Council Leadership Fellow for its Connected Communities programme (2012-19). His website is http://georgemckay.org.