Bestley, Russ

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Am I an Anarchist? A Tale of AnarchoCuriosityRuss BestleyMy first encounters with punk were similar to manyothers of my generation. Growing up in a small town inthe middle of Kent, exposure to the revolutionary newphenomenon that was apparently all the rage in Londonin the summer of 1976 was limited to reading theshocking reports in my Mum and Dad’s News Of TheWorld. That, and the dramatic stories passed aroundlike secret codes by a couple of the slightly older kids atschool who read the Melody Maker and New MusicalExpress and thereforeconsidered themselves pretty upthere with the latest musicaldevelopments that wereapparently largely passing us bythirty miles away in the capital.As a fourteen year old, suchsnippets of information werecertainly intriguing, especiallycombined with my Mum’soutrage at what was happeningto the youth of the country, but itwas still something of a distantphenomenon. Obviously, someof that was set to change by theend of the year – the Ramones,Sex Pistols and the Damnedreleased records for a start, andit became possible (though still alittle difficult) to actually hearsome of this stuff on the radio ifyou searched hard enough.Stuart Henry’s Street Heat onRadio Luxembourg wassomething of a clandestinenewsreel for me, though I wasn’tto discover John Peel until a little later. It’s strange tothink, with the benefit of hindsight and a modicum ofmaturity, that in fact our town was playing at least asmall part in the birth of punk in the years and monthsleading up to the long hot summer of 1976 – SidVicious had lived two streets away from where I grewup, Joe Strummer visited friends in the town regularlyduring his 101ers days, at least one member of 999lived locally, as did one of the Mark Perry’s earlycollaborators on Sniffin’ Glue, Rick Brown – creditedin SG#1 as “Rick Brown from Tunbridge Wells (Kent’sanswer to Detroit).” Even punk face Shane MacGowan,of Nipple Erectors and later Pogues fame, was born inthe same hospital as me in the late 1950s – who knewour humble little town was so, well, rock ’n’ roll?Records were passed around our group offriends with an increasingly anorakish approach tosubcultural style (and I don’t just mean the futureUndertones fans), though for many that still meantGenesis, Deep Purple, Queen, ELP or (God forbid) Yeswould be doing the rounds rather than this excitingsounding but still rather distant ‘punk’ stuff. Chartsuccess for punk artists during 1977 changed all that –the Stranglers were to become my own main attractionand I pursued their releases withsome vigour, and it soon becamepossible to see and hear otherpunk and new wave bands on TopOf The Pops (step forward X RaySpex, Adverts, Saints, the Jam,the Stranglers, Generation X,Boomtown Rats, Skids, ElvisCostello, UK Subs, Siouxsie &the Banshees, Damned, Members,Eddie & the Hot Rods). Our localrecord shops were limited to theRediffusion television rental andrepair shop (which stocked a fewchart singles), Boots the Chemistand a couple of establishedindependents that were moreconcerned with prog rock than isstrictly healthy and didn't exactlyjump onto the punk bandwagontoo quickly, despite the businesspotential. Luckily, at least thepunk albums that had startedmaking inroads into the chartswere available in my Mum’sFreemans mail order catalogueand I could pay in weekly installments, so that becamea source of vinyl news and information.Anyway, I digress. What I’m driving at, I think,is the process by which I, and many others like me insmall towns, villages (and, I would guess, cities)adopted the punk subculture and began to establish ourown take on the complex system of codes andconventions within it. That meant making a lot ofmistakes, being ‘uncool’ from time to time when wemisread the rules and (anti)social etiquette, buying29records (and shirts, and trousers, and shoes…) that wewould later regret and try to pretend had never existed,stumbling forward and growing up with a ‘punk’identity. We weren’t exactly sure whether we weresupposed to swear and spit all the time, or just at punkgigs, or maybe in the park when we were hangingaround being, you know, punks. Were we supposed towear bondage trousers, leather jackets or swastikas?Was one local lad’s predilection for dressing up in anoriginal German SS officer’s uniform a good idea(probably not)? There didn’t seem to be anyone aroundto tell us the rules, and we were making them up as wewent along. Pretending to be bored, ‘rejectingauthority’ whatever that meant, a bit of petty vandalism,trying to find out the latest punk news and punk trends,nicking ethanol and chloroform from the schoolchemistry labs (for the purpose of drinking, sniffingand/or playing ‘hilarious’ tricks on others that wouldcount as violent assault in any other context), it was allpart of our regular day to day existence. Along with, inmy case, going to school, working part time as a cleanerin the local hospital and delivering the football poolswith my Dad and my brother (which at least coveredthe weekly installments on my growing punk rockrecord collection).And then came anarcho punk. Obviously itwasn’t actually called that at the time – it was just oneof the many developments and fragmented spin-offsfrom the same root cause. New wave, post punk,hardcore, anarcho punk, new punk, real punk, oi!,progressive punk – whatever the journalists were tryingto call these new genres, to all intents and purposes weall saw them as beneath the same broad umbrella thatwas ‘punk’. I bought a few anarcho punk records –partly encouraged by the low prices I would think asmuch as the contents, since money was limited and Icouldn't afford to buy too many each week. Theyweren’t on coloured vinyl, which was a shame, sosometimes the latest release from X Ray Spex, UKSubs, the Lurkers, Generation X, the Dickies orwhoever would take precedent for obvious reasons, butI had a few future anarcho ‘classics’ in the collection,some of which I even quite liked – Bloody Revolutions(and particularly Persons Unknown), Big A Little A…not as good as the Stranglers, or Dead Kennedys, orPiL, or Gang of Four, or Mekons, or Killing Joke, butnot bad nonetheless. I left school in 1981 and moved toPortsmouth – supposedly to go to Polytechnic, havingsecured a last minute clearing place on a MechanicalEngineering course. It was an excuse to get away fromhome, my twin brother had already got a place on hiscourse (coincidentally also in Portsmouth), and we bothgot full maintenance grants from the government. Freemoney. I lasted less than two months at college. Myexcuse has always been that I didn’t get on, and beingtaken to one side by one of the tutors to be told that mygreen hair and painted leather jacket was influencingother students to take drugs didn’t really enamour me tothe place. All true (the tutor’s comments, not the drugdealing), but on reflection and with the benefit ofhindsight, I was an awkward sod with an attitudeproblem and if I was in their shoes I wouldn’t havebeen too happy either. Still, I got to blow my entirestudent grant on records, which was great until I ran outof food. The transition to becoming an anarcho punk (inall but name) was, then, a subtle one. I had drifted intobuying a few anarcho records, and I got to see a few ofthe bands who were beginning to make up this newstrand of punk, but at the same time a lack of money, aslowly developing sense of personal politics and anincreasing awareness of the wider world around mewere shaping my identity. Certainly my engagementwith the local Student Union in Portsmouth was a bit ofan eye-opener. I got a ‘job’ as a humper for visitingbands (a bit like a roadie but far less glamorous), at thePoly and the bigger local venues – the Guildhall andLocarno; carrying amps, speakers and lighting rigs intothe venue first thing in the morning then carrying it allback out again in the early hours of the next morning. Ialso learnt to DJ, becoming a regular fixture at theFriday night Alternative Disco that attracted many local(non-student) punks. The politics of the Student Unionitself provided a steep learning curve – being publiclyreprimanded for calling my brother a cunt provided anintroduction to ‘feminism’, and the difficulties the SUmanagement had with local National Front supportersprovided a lesson in both the left and right of thepolitical spectrum (and, to an extent, the problemstherein on both sides of that great divide). Portsmouth itself was also undergoing someradical changes. The city suffered from increasinglyhigh levels of unemployment as Thatcher’s economicpolicies hardened up, and the build-up and execution ofthe Falklands conflict was felt very, very close to home,since this was the home port for the Task Force andmany families in the area were linked to the military. Itwas all very well taking a stand against this unjust warfrom the safety of your home town in the suburbs or out30in the sticks in the west country, it was another thing toface it in public in a city where it felt like 99% of thepopulation had strong personal and political views insupport of government action and where thousandswould turn out at the harbour entrance to send the shipsoff and (hopefully) welcome them home. Local protest,then, was slightly muted by a fear for personal safetyand the desire to avoid a good kicking.Amidst all this, and following my ‘leaving’college, I moved across the harbour to Gosport (which,for anyone who doesn’t know it, is kind of like adownmarket version of Portsmouth, if that doesn’tstretch the imagination too far) with my girlfriend,Cherry – who had dropped out from Art College aroundthe same time. We set up house in a rundown rentedterrace, complete with one single hot water tap from anelectric heater in the kitchen and an outside toilet at theend of the garden. Now officially ‘unemployed’, wesigned on – though we both continued to work atvenues in Portsmouth humping equipment for cash inhand, and I carried on with my DJ stint at the Poly.Now justifiably (in our own minds, at least) part of thevast unemployed scrapheap caused directly by Thatcherand her nazi government (rather than through our ownchoice or stupidity, naturally), we could begin tolegitimately take part in the anarchist punk scene on ourown terms and our own merit. I became vegetarian,then vegan. I dyed all my clothes black. I got a puppy, alunatic mongrel called Merlin, who proceeded to shit allover the house and eat anything that wasn’t naileddown or locked behind closed doors – carrier bags,loaves of bread, bags of sugar, socks, carpets, furniture.I would cynically go to sign on every two weeksknowing that hundreds of others just like me weredoing exactly the same thing, all innocent victims of theoppressive capitalist state. Do they owe us a living? Ofcourse they fucking do! I went to loads of gigs – working at the localvenues ensured a free pass to pretty much anything ofinterest, and knowing some of the road crews meant Icould sometimes sneak in backstage after bunking thetrain up to London and hanging around in the pissingrain outside the Lyceum or wherever, knocking the doorand insisting for the seventeenth time that Monty orBaz or whoever had promised to put me on the guestlist when they played Portsmouth two weeks earlier. Ifollowed Poison Girls around for a while, and saw theMob, Zounds, Subhumans and others on the circuit,though my tastes were catholic – one week an anarchogig in a local community centre, the next the Stranglersat the Rainbow, Killing Joke at the Lyceum or ViceSquad at the Poly. And, still working on the local gigcircuit, Motörhead, Saxon, Iron Maiden, Stiff LittleFingers, the Clash, Thin Lizzy, David Essex, Dr Hook,Chris De Burgh or the Nolans at the Guildhall. Some ofthose not strictly through choice, naturally.My political ‘awakening’ happened slowly anderratically. I bought and listened to some of the newCrass Records releases, though some I enjoyed far morethan others to be honest. I read the lengthy texts onsome of the sleeves, along with fanzines picked up atgigs or sent with mail order records and tapes. I wasinterested enough to want to find out more, so I boughta copy of George Woodcock’s The Anarchist Reader totry to get my head around it all. Like the anarcho punkmusic itself, I found some of the essays intriguing andsome entertaining, while others were dense, boring andunreadable. I’d grown up, in punk terms, with theStranglers, X Ray Spex, Damned, Sex Pistols, Rezillos,Skids, Undertones, Wire and dozens of others whocould construct a simple message and carry it acrosswith a catchy tune. The anarcho punk bands that I likedcarried on in that manner, marrying a bit of politics to adecent melody, and the anarchist or libertarian texts thatI engaged with and understood were probably more inthe tradition of the great writers and satirists (fromWilde to Orwell) than the turgid theory of Marx and hismates. My dalliance with anarchism was perhaps moretentative than others – less anarcho punk stalwart, more‘anarcho curious’. That doesn’t mean that many of thecore principles of this new form of popular/populistanarchism didn’t strike a chord – a sense of fairness andequality, respect toward other human beings, pacifism,a questioning of authority, direct action and self-assertion all seemed like pretty good ideas to me. Inretrospect, I also recognise that those ‘values’ are prettywidespread beyond any kind of ‘anarchist’ identity – Iremember having a long conversation with a nun on theLondon/Portsmouth train, after she asked about myviews (presumably as a self-identifying ‘punk rocker’)and tried to persuade me that I was, in fact, a Christian,even if I didn’t know it.I guess from the outside the next few years ofmy life may have seemed pretty anarchic, if notanarchistic. I lived in a couple of squats, until I wasevicted by the owner’s (fresh out of prison) ‘security’team – one of those old fashioned evictions that didn’tbother with bailiffs or the police, just a small gang of31men with baseball bats in the middle of the night – andI ended up living on an old fishing boat out in themiddle of the harbour. The boat was owned by a localfamily of travellers who lived on a disused ammunitionbarge moored behind a chemical plant. Interestingly,this led to a few encounters with the Harbour Police:being boarded by the boys in blue was a whole newexperience for me – sun, sea and piracy and all that.Eventually, after a long, cold and uncomfortable fewmonths, that situation became impossible and I endedup living in a housing co-operative, in a condemnedproperty scheduled for demolition to make way for anew supermarket. The supposed political ideals of anearly 80s band of ex-squatters who had managed to setup a co-operative that was officiallysanctioned by the City Council provedquite an eye-opener in the long run, andmy cynicism toward middle classliberals masquerading as ‘socialists’deepened. My frustration grew in directcorrelation to the aspirations of certainco-op members to ingratiate themselveswith senior figures in the local Labourparty while at the same timemaintaining something of an unspokenexclusion zone for genuinely desperatehomeless locals to gain entry to theirempty houses – apparently they weren’tthe ‘right sort’ of people to be part of a housing co-operative, and a variety of rather well-to-do studentfriends of the ‘committee’ were a far better proposition. Of course, life moves on and things changeover time. Following an acrimonious split from thehousing co-op and a shambolic period living in veryshort-stay temporary accommodation, on floors andsofas, I ended up working in a record shop, having afamily and being rehoused by the City Council on theLeigh Park estate outside the city. It’s a long story withmany ups and downs, and it doesn’t need expanding onhere – the key thing at this point I think is to look backat my 1980s experience and to consider what (ifanything) it meant, and how, or whether, myengagement with anarcho punk (or anarchism) affectedme subsequently. Certainly my views remained – andremain – broadly libertarian, and my mistrust of bothLeft and Right is still deep-seated, though I wouldprobably identify more closely with the old Leftnowadays (when it had principles and championed therights of workers, rather that the Labour party’s post-1990s model of neoliberal capitalism).So where does that leave my ‘anarcho punk’experience? Was it a brief flirtation with a ‘political’movement, a natural diversion for an ongoing punkparticipant, or just a part of growing up and discoveringnew and ‘radical’ ideas, much as generations did beforeand after? Perhaps it’s all of those things in some wayor another – and I’m guessing it’s not too dissimilarfrom many other stories from many other people wholived through the same period. It’s been interesting inrecent years to observe punk growing old(er) andreflecting upon itself, through books, magazines,exhibitions, television programmes, countlessanniversaries and landmark events. The 80s punk generation seem to behaving their turn now, in the same waythat the 70s punks held the limelight adecade ago – that re-evaluation of punk’sevolution is welcome and long overdue,though I have to say (as a firstwave/second wave punk fence-sitter) thatthe subsequent and increasingly dogmaticpunk ‘rule book’ approach to authenticitysits uneasily with my passion for theoriginal subculture in all its messy variety(and its lack of bloody rules – for me, oneof the main attractions in the first place).I think we are all a product of our history, ourlocality and our culture, and certainly punk – andanarcho punk – provided me with an awful lot ofcharacter-building experiences: though perhaps it is abroader sense of direct action, independence, criticalawareness and self-reliance that has held sway far morethan an allegiance to any particular political orideological doctrine. Equally, I am still no fan of socialetiquette, particularly when it strays into the realm ofwhat constitute ‘acceptable’ beliefs and opinions, and Icontinue to take something of an oppositional viewwhen I’m told that there are things that I am notallowed to do (or say, or think). That, to me, embracesall aspects of whatever ‘punk’ was, or is, in my terms.To paraphrase Johnny, “Am I an antichrist? Am I ananarchist?” – well, I’m still not sure, though I amcertain that as I get older, I don’t really get too hung upabout it any longer.32

Am I an Anarchist? A Tale of Anarcho Curiosity

http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/10415/3/Russ%20Bestley%2029-32%20V2.pdf

Am I an Anarchist? A Tale of Anarcho Curiosity

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