"ALL over Britain a plague of yuppies are descending on working-class communities like locusts. The time to resist is now — let's Rock Against the Rich."

With this defiant, if ungrammatical, declaration, a new musical movement has been launched. Class War, the anarchist group with a reputation for hounding yuppies in London's East End, plans concerts under the banner of Rock Against the Rich in 13 towns and cities from Edinburgh to Exeter.

The areas to be visited all have inner-city districts under threat from gentrification apart from Guildford, Surrey, where the lack of oppressed workers has forced Class War to rename its concert Rock Against Stockbrokers.

The first concert will be in Hackney, in run-down east London, where one-bedroom flats now sell for £55,000. Class War hopes that after the bands have toured the country, a National Anti-Yuppie Day will be held on 10 September. The day's main feature will be an open-air concert at Millwall Park on the Isle of Dogs in the heart of London docklands, where it is virtually impossible to find any flat, however small, for less than £80,000.

Rock Against the Rich seems very unlikely to raise anything like the level of support given by musicians and audiences to the anti-fascist Rock Against Racism in the 1970s or pro-Labour Red Wedge rock tours before the last general election.

Joyful Class War accounts of new "taxes" on yuppies — imagined by mugglings and stripping of homes by East End burglars — and the threats delivered through the letter boxes of East End "carpet-baggers" have led even far left-wing parties to regard the 1,000 members of the group as publicity-seeking provocateurs.

But Joe Strummer, formerly a guitarist with The Clash, one of the most successful rock groups of the 1970s, has promised to join the tour, along with other, less celebrated musicians.

Class War sees the tour as an attempt to tap genuine frustration. Tim Palmer, a spokesman for the group, said: "Pensioners are seeing their flats demolished in Tower Hamlets because they spoil the view for a nearby luxury block, there are thousands of homeless people and it's impossible for anyone but the rich to buy a house. We think a lot of people will want to hear our message."

JUST before 6 p.m. on Tuesday, three fire-bombs were planted in London department stores. No one has claimed responsibility. Scotland Yard is seen there in ideology about the Admiral Liberty Front is responsible. Its activities are drawn from the areas of increased its support from a few hundred to a point where many tens of thousands of young people identify themselves as anarchists.

Police round the country have been instructed to keep a close eye on their activities. Our inquiries have shown anarchists are becoming increasingly involved in the vacation such as one by two youths who threw a concrete block through the front window of Neil Kinnock's headquarters in north London, on Thursday.

In recent months: Anarchists beat up Brynley North, leader of Hackney Council's housing committee, after squatters on the Stambold Hill estate were evicted. State of the Sanfuschcast were attacked when the Class War anarchist group accused them of being stop-business sell-outs. Prominent businessmen's homes and cars were attacked after anarchist publications gave their home addresses. Powers of estate agents whoops in inner-city areas have been smashed or daubed with paint or acid.

Anarchist groups are planning a campaign to remove rich scum from such areas. This generation's political rejected such left-wing Germany Party for the year months, whom they feel here failed to challenge the Conservative Party.

Our survey found 16 socialist groups in universities and projections where there were no need to yours ago. The anarchist society at Portsmouth Polytechnic bus made them read another col-here in the town last 30 minutes. Unmuch Desai, an organ-list the black community canord afford."

It is misleading to judge the influence of new anarchist groups by membership. Unlike the left-wing, every move membership is ever-move, anarchism by their nature have more supported than members. Nevertheless there are a bewildering number of groupings.

The most organized is the "Action" and "Birthday" launched in 1979. His 200 members and 500 associates, and its monthly paper Direct Control sells 2,000 copies. In Scotland DAM plays a con-cal role in organizing regis-tance to the old tax.

Many of the new groups are also known as the Animal Liberation Front, whose supports are now undertaken – large number of acts of mini-terrorism against individual and businesses. These range through low-income through losses, through settling free to dis-view, to putting incendiary money, to transfer departments, frequently causing hundreds of thousands of problems worth of damage.

Many Animal Liberation activities who have been killed are often unreliable such as Romate Lee, who is serving 10 years for organizing a fi-bombon campaign.

Class War is the best known of the new violent anarchist groups, with a hard core of 1,000 supporters. Its influence over a large number of disaffected youths has come through its braid bi-monthly tabloid Class War, which sells up to 20,000 copies (compared with Militant: 10,000) and New Statement: 25,000.)

"At that people thought we were just into violence," said Andy Murphy, a 27-year-old American worker. "But we have grown our own political theory. We do not call ourselves anarchists any other. Yes, we want to overthrow capitalism and it has to be violent, that so be it. We are interested in consuming politics, for the country class to stick up for itself."

Class War has been organising an anti-yuppie camping in working-class area. Helped by the former Clash guitarist Joe Strummer, it plans a series of "Rock Against the Rich" concerts, and has designated September 10 as National Anti-Yuppie Days.

The police are concerned about the new anarchists. In 1991 the anarchist Angry Brigade came close, despite its small numbers, to blowing up the then Home Secretary, Robert Carr.

According to a Special Branch source, Scotland Yard has assigned six officers in time to monitoring anarchists in the capital.

Photo: Defiant posture: A squatter on the Stambord Hill estate removes an anarchist flag.

POST-MEDIA glamour Mandela Day, and lacking any colour-supplement superstars, last weekend's Amnesty International event at Milton Keynes was bound to be a Boxing Day of festivals.

The burning question as you scanned the programme's fine words from Jim Kerr, Ben Elton, Bryan Adams, Peter Gabriel, was: So where are you?

Maybe they'd asked: Where's the TV coverage?

They probably had good reasons not to play, but a quick hello between bands, or a message read out from the stage, would have dispelled a lot of cynicism.

As a chilly wind blew the opening slog of limp bands off stage, and news of All About Eve's pull-out spread gloomily, despondency set in and bottle fights broke out among the pitifully tiny crowd.

But a mighty change was on its way!

Billed as The Festival of Youth, the line-up was built around the receding hairlines of the class of '76. The Stranglers headlined Saturday and were dire. The damned headlined Sunday and were die-hard.

Now some punks died young, some died a death but Joe Strummer will die with his boots on, and he saved the whole event.

Foaming at the mouth behind his M.O.T. failure Fender, he led a ropey but suss band, dared to reopen the new ends with a disintegrating signal of crumbling guitar (Alfred Hitchcock meets Howling Wolf), but NMA were dull, dated and dour.

Youngest Roddy Frame, the youngest man on the bill and closest to a real chart star, was taking things very seriously. Worried about his voice, he cancelled a gig to be fit.

Enhanced by its brevity, Aztec Camera's set was fast, friendly and fun. The Blow Monkeys-style Everybody is Number One as the next single and the reissue of Oblivious would secure Roddy as this summer's sound and star.

I couldn't object. Better a nice guy, demon guitarist and quietly political songwriter on the cover of Smash Hits than Sabrina or Bros.

Now on their third album, B.A.D. are still a potentially good idea — but time is running out. The Mick Jones-Joe Strummer reunion everyone hoped for was sensibly avoided, and Jones announced a new number with "B.A.D. like to keep moving forward, not looking back."

A good policy, but they could benefit from some of the energy and excitement that Strummer managed to pump into his Clash retrospective.

When veteran alternative comic Tony Allen joked about starting a movement called Green Wedge he could not have realised what he was letting himself in for. The jibe at consciousness-raising group Red Wedge has been transformed into reality, with its first major event taking place at the Hackney Empire this Sunday.

Green Wedge has been set up to advance Green issues. Its main intention, according to organiser Lee Ferguson, is to "make the media aware of imminent ecological crisis, namely that the eco-system is crumbling. The ozone layer is being destroyed and in 40 years it will be too late to do anything about it."

The group is partly motivated by the way newspapers, television and radio cover ecology demonstrations but remain unmoved by the issues: "Newspapers cover Greenpeace activities at great length but only mention in passing what their protests are about." They hope that a national network of support will help organise a full tour in October.

Sunday's concert demonstrates the diversity of support they have already attracted. Headliner Joe Strummer appears to be assuming the mantle of the benefit king of rock's counter-culture. Following last month's Amnesty International beam, his Green Wedge gigs are a prelude to his participation in the forthcoming Rock Against the Rich tour, organised by anarchist group Class War. At the Hackney Empire on Sunday, the former Clash Lynch-pin is joined by taboo-smashing comic Gerry Sadowitz, versatile folk group the Wise Monkeys and Tony Allen.

Organisations interested in supporting Green Wedge should phone 01-243 0217.

The Institute of Contemporary Arts continues to celebrate 40 years of innovation this weekend with two aggressively programmed mixed-media events in London theatres.

At the Dominion Theatre tonight, David Bowie makes a bid to recover some of the credibility lost after last year's disappointingly extravagant Glass Spider Tour. He will be performing a more modest, specially conceived seven-minute dance routine with Canadian troupe La La La Human Steps.

Also on the bill are two of Britain's most wayward pop groups, The Woodentops and Microdisney, plus postmodern classical/rock fusionists the Kronos Quartet, a band that most succinctly encapsulates the ICA's own ambitions of mixing the known with the unknown, the accessible with the adventurous.

Saturday's line-up at the Cambridge Theatre is equally shrewd, mixing the The latter the crowd-pulling. The latter comes in the form of head Talking Head David Byrne who plays music that he composed for The Knee Plays with the Les Miserables Brats Band. There is also music from Hugo Largo and Manchester's Durutti Column, who are led by guitar virtuoso Vinni Reilly, last heard playing on Morrissey's solo album. Tickets range from £10-250 and go to the ICA's endowment fund for future projects.

Screamin' Jay Hawkins, an eccentrics' eccentric even by rock 'n' roll's standards, makes his first UK appearance for more than five years at the Town & Country Club tomorrow night.

Born just plain Jalacy Hawkins in Ohio in 1929, the laziest comparison might be with our own Lord Sutch (before he went into politics). Hawkins, however, has considerably more musical credibility. He is best known for his timeless, chilling 1956 classic I Put A Spell On You, later immortalised on the soundtrack of Jim Jarmusch's cult movie, Stranger Than Paradise.

Hawkins was one of R & B's first crossover artists on the Columbia Records subsidiary Okeh Records. With the help of rock 'n' roll DJ Alan Freed, he developed a unique stage act, blending voodoo rhythms and tribal chants with blistering panache. As the years went by his act has incorporated coffins, Hammer horror props and his ever present skull on a pole named Henry.

This appearance coincides with the release of a retrospective album on Demon Records, Feast Of The Mau Mau, part of which is a live concert that the label suitably informs us was recorded in "Nineteen Hundred and yesterday".

Photo: David Bowie: dancing for the ICA at the Dominion tonight, see panel

Photo: Joe Strummer: rocking to save the planet.

Joe Strummer and Latino Rockabilly War headline a benefit concert in West London on Saturday to help launch Green Wedge, a new group of entertainers and ecological activists.

Unlike Red Wedge, the Labour Party's rock roadshow of a couple of years ago, Green Wedge claims to be non-political.

It is not linked to the environmentalist Green Party despite its name but does share a common aim to alert the nation to the ecological "crisis" it believes is threatening the world.

"This is not alarmist talk. This is a basic fact. We do believe there is a profound ecological crisis and it has to be addressed," explains Tim Williams.

The Notting Hill-based group plans to do its bit to address that crisis by taking its own Green October Roadshow around the country.

It is now compiling a directory of sympathetic artists, speakers, technicians and crew to join the tour.

In the meantime, a series of green benefits are planned, including Saturday's gig at the Brentford Fountain Leisure Centre, Chiswick High Road. Also on the bill will be Wise Monkeys, alternative comedian Tony Allen and Mark Thomas.

Tim Williams says the best thing ordinary people can do to help Green Wedge's cause is "to go along to the gigs and have a good time".

"There is is no point in taking action until you feel you won't want to," he adds.

Green Wedge can be contacted through Crystal Productions, Lancaster Road, tel. 221-6200.

LEISURE giant Mecca has scrapped a gig in aid of an anarchist group at its glitzy Derby nightspot Confettis. The entertainments empire this week pulled the plug on the Rock Against the Rich concert, saying that with nine days to go advance ticket sales were too poor. Profits from the rock tour — featuring ex-Clash member Joe Strummer — go to the Class War group for distribution to "working-class communities who are engaged in the class struggle."

The Confettis gig on July 14 was to have been the first major event for the fledgling Derby Class War group, which started about three months ago. Class War's charter of aims and principles includes:
● The destruction of capitalism
● Opposition to all states, including communist ones.
● Supporting working class violence, to seize control of the world from the ruling class.

A chief activity of Class War is selling its newspaper of the same name. The latest issue has a story on fire bomb attacks on police with "Nice One!" printed below, and another on the "battered blue line." It reads: "More good news ... a remarkable 17,000 coppers got a good hiding last year; that's a magnificent increase of 20 per cent on the year before."

A Derby Class War spokesman said: "Looking back in history, struggles have been violent. We don't say we wouldn't support violence in that situation."

But Mecca insisted the concert was scrapped on purely economic grounds. Their entertainments spokesman said: "It's unlikely they are going to meet the guarantee of 200 tickets sold. The concert will now not take place."

WHY do pop stars stash away huge piles of cash while moaning about our decadent capitalist society in their songs? Punks were the worst offenders.

Well, wonder no more because the answer has been provided by none other than Direct Action fans Class War — who say they're dedicated to overthrowing capitalism.

The group, which has been much reviled in the tabloid press recently, has chosen ex-Clash basher, Joe Strummer, to headline its Rock Against the Rich Tour — due at Dollars in Merthyr Tydfil on Tuesday. And, concerned that pop fans and possible converts to the Class War cause might be confused by the choice — because Strummer is, they note, 'hardly a pauper,' they have produced this astonishing explanation:

"In this nice capitalist society of ours it's near impossible to become a well-known musician WITHOUT making some money." (Their capitals).

"It's the rich record company bosses who make a fortune doing very little (expletive deleted) who are the real parasites."

Joe Strummer has always shot straight from the hip. Trouble is, from time to time, he hasn't taken the gun out the holster first.

The man with the gravel-edged voice and smashed-up Telecaster could stage 45 revolutions per minute with singles like Complete Control and Straight to Hell.

Then he and his band of rebel rockers would bring it all crashing down around their ears with many of the offerings on the day-long Sandinistaand ridiculous Cut the Crap.

While White Man in Hammersmith Palais is still, in my view, one of the best songs ever written, We Are The Clash is still one of the worst.

Now Strummer's back with a fresh bunch of renegades called Latino Rockabilly War and a new single, Trash City, which knocks spots off anything heard around these parts for quite some time. Joe is having one of his good years, but we're the late Latinos who are rolling into Southampton on Sunday week for the South Coast stretch of the Rock Against the Rich tour.

The gigs have been set up by the group Class War, which has pinpointed Southampton because of its "diminishing docks and growing number of expensive marina developments."

The set will comprise a mixture of old Clash and new numbers, plus a smattering of rock and roll and R&B covers. London Calling, Working for the Clampdown, Bankrobber and, hopefully, the lovely Keys to Your Heart should be on the list.

Tickets for the show, at Southampton Mayfair on July 24, cost £4, and are available through Virgin Records and other Virgin outlets. They go up to £5 on the night.

Photo: Rebel rocker: Joe Strummer who's appearing at The Mayfair next Sunday.

GETTING ex-Clash frontman Joe Strummer to lead Rock Against the Rich is like asking Oliver Reed to promote Perrier.

Six successful Clash LPs in eight years must have yielded him a quid or ten.

Rock v Rich's anarchist organisers Class War glibly try and gloss over this apparent anomaly with the sarcastic spiel: "In this nice capitalist society of ours, it's near impossible to become a well-known musician without making some money".

Wealth, wad and loadsamoney — what a hideous price to pay for a little innocent fame!

The overt violence of Class War's publicity circus for Saturday's Poole Arts Centre gig has already set local protesters squealing.

The anarchists say their anti-yuppy rural riot routine is supposed to be the true spirit of punk, minus the hype and dogma.

But it's basically what was trotted out in the late seventies with a bit of "burn-a-Filofax" repackaging to include the yuppy phenomenon.

Enough of the politics. Most fans are probably going for the music. Ninety per cent would no sooner smash up a Ferrari than they would try buying one.

Strummer has brought in musicians from South America (at his own expense) for new outfit the Latino Rockabilly War.

Much of his stuff has a Hispanic feel but it'll be a lot rockier than his Walker LP, spaghetti western soundtrack to the new Alex Cox film.

The belated minute set will be half new songs with Clash classics and rock 'n' roll R&B covers making up the remainder.

Reggae band One Style MDV support with Lymington's Cropdusters opening the show.

Latino Rockabilly War line-up: Joe Strummer (vox-gtr), Poncho Sanchez (congas), Ramon Banda (timbales), Willie McNeil (dms), Jim Donica (bs), Zander Schloss (ld gtr), Tupelo Joe Altruda (jazz gtr).

*Joe Strummer: Reluctant figurehead: 'Why do they expect me to know everything, to be their leader? I'm just a bloke who plays the guitar — badly'. Class War 29.*

No Bastille — only the lighting fell

FANS dived for cover as lights tumbled into the crowd at Poole's weekend Rock Against the Rich gig.

Poole Arts Centre was plunged into darkness for several minutes after the 10ft lighting rig fell into the front few rows.

Roadies scrambled to relocate the six spotlights and restore power to the stageshow.

No-one was believed hurt and the show progressed peacefully – a riposte to whimpering protestors expecting another storming of the Bastille or Winter Palace.

Was Joe Strummer trying to resurrect the Clash?

So it would seem judging by the predominance of their old songs during the set.

Naturally Clash fans were in heaven and the small crowd reacted accordingly. Recreating past glories pandered to the fans and they enjoyed a good evening. But Strummer's new latin material can stand as tall as his past hits – and it needs an airing.

Lymington's Cropdusters must have pulled as many fans as Strummer judging by the proliferation of the support band's T-shirts.

And it showed in a very smart set that had the fans stomping as faithfully as they were for Strummer. Reggae openers One Style were faced with a virtually empty hall but made a good go of it nonetheless.

Review: Roan Fair, Echophoto: Paul Collins

IT'S 11.30pm in a downmarket, city centre hotel. My companion and I have been on the trail of former Clash frontman Joe Strummer since 3 pm — always managing to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A mixture of beer and boredom is beginning to take its toll. After most of the evening was spent in the hotel bar before sleeping members of the anarchist movement Class War. They were enjoying a day off after the controversial Rock Against the Rich tour, which Strummer is headlining with his new band Latino Rockabilly War.

Contrary to their public image, most of them were like nice boys. They were polite and friendly and John, the dance Belsey's criticism says the previous day's Evening Post, introduced himself with a sly grin: "Hello, I'm John - the Lunchtime Revolutionary," rather than bouncing a brick off my cranium.

Eventually, at around midnight, our hero is handshake and many apologies. I asked Joe what he's been up to over the last few years (look, it was getting late!). I asked Joe the predictable question "What happened to the Clash?" and receives this answer: "We just got fed up with each other really, kinda, got the old bug back."

"I think Mick made a leap into the brave new world, as he saw it, and I thought it's good, it's brave, but I didn't want to do it like that. I want to have an interference. They got nowhere messing with CBS building — years ago, so it didn't enter my direction — so they must be saying why bother with this guy?"

Strummer's involvement with Class War has caused quite a stir with both the press and some left-wing figures, on account of him not being part of a few freshly or unethical freshly. I wondered if he had expected quite as much flak. Joe Strummer... rocking against the rich and deflecting the criticism.

"Yeah, that could be part of it, yeah! You just get sick of them don't you? I'm living in a yuppie paradise and I'm sick of it."

"I just want them to either hear up the suntrack, or shut up and let me get on with it."

It would appear that the difference between success of the Clash was down to Mick Jones' full choice and Joe's reluctance to take their young people's daughters are, in Joe's words, "Make as thieves real little devils."

Finally, I had to ask if he felt like taking a radical change in direction, a "brave leap into Jones brave new world?"

"No, as far as I'm concerned it just carries on ... the beat goes on."

NOT much has changed for Joe Strummer, except people don't spit at him so often these days and he doesn't get quite so much publicity. He still looks like a young rockabilly delinquent as he jerks and twitches at the microphone. He still sings like a walrus with a hedgehog stuck in its throat.

His polemical side continues to rage unchecked. A remark he made to the NME about being proud of British football hooligans was picked up and amplified in the tabloids. Unerringly true to form, Joe chose to answer his critics from the stage, launching into a portentous diatribe which took broad swipes at The Sun, the Metropolitan Police and Radio 1 DJs. Here, as much as in the Clash songs he played, was a glimpse of the true Strummer.

Joe's rebel-romantic mouth often unreels twice as fast as his mind is working. It was this infuriating but oddly endearing characteristic which gave The Clash much of their character, leading them into a string of howling blunders, but also provoking their many brilliant moments.

Strummer's new album, Earthquake Weather, is a bit of a mess, a shambling sequence of crude rockers with nods to funk and reggae on route.

Strummer's songs are fired with imagery of greed, corruption, violence and old-time Hollywood. And you could imagine him scribbling them on the back of cigarette packets in between running guns to Cuba, or drifting round the South Seas like Lord Jim with a Telecaster.

Live, they worked better. Strummer has hired himself a young and violent trio of musicians, driven hard by Jack Irons' drums, featuring the almost-too-virtuoso funk bass of Lonnie Marshall, and led by Zander Schloss on lead guitar. Strummer, meanwhile, flays at his Fender as violently as ever, snapping strings by the handful.

Not all the new songs are salvageable, but the troupe whipped off a dazzling Sikorsky Parts, all shuffling chords and whip-cracking bass, turned in brief and brutal versions of Slant Six and Trash City, and oozed comfortably through Dizzy's Goatee. Schloss, with his CIA haircut and shades, lent the proceedings a satisfactory air of sleaze.

However, it was the Clash material which caused the fans to go mental. As Strummer launched into City Of The Dead a melee of pogoing suddenly erupted at the foot of the stage, with bodies flying in the air and ricocheting off one another, under a storm of flying sweat. This alarming trend continued through What's My Name, then eased off a bit as the band browsed through Police And Thieves.

From here on, it was almost all old stuff, as Strummer dusted off the likes of London Calling, Magnificent Seven, Straight To Hell and a perfunctory I Fought The Law.

Obviously this was what most of the crowd wanted to hear, but the sequencing of the show suggested that Strummer had abandoned any attempt to persuade us that his new material was the equal of the old.

This seemed oddly defeatist, after the band had discharged several volleys of raw power and played the newer songs well enough to make you consider them afresh.

Let us pray, at any rate, that in 10 years' time we shall not be trudging off to Wembley to watch a 15-piece Clash. For now, a convincing new start for Joe Strummer may be at hand.

"CAN WE get any money out of you for this?" asked affable Matt Runacre, before we got down to talking in earnest. "I know it doesn't come out of your pocket." Well, true enough, but I don't think this kind of thing goes on at The Independent. And anyway, what about the free publicity? "Oh, we get free publicity anyway," responded Runacre, with total confidence. And since the spray-can philosophies of Class War, the anarchist group to which he subscribes, may be the most photographed graffiti in Britain ("Mug A Yuppie", "Bash The Rich") he clearly has a point. I muttered a few lofty lines about cheque-book journalism. Runacre gave in gracefully.

"OK, fair enough... I was only talking about a hundred, you know. My impression is that it can be worked out, from past experiences. We've had money off other papers, you know."

Two things that the Class War people know all about are drawing attention to themselves, and the quickest way to redistribute wealth. And in the coming summer weeks they will be doing both of these things in the form of a national music tour, Rock Against the Rich, planned to take in over 20 dates with Joe Strummer, once of punk-rock dignitaries The Clash, as the headline attraction. At the risk of helping to transform the probable into the inevitable, headlines of another type are likely to be inspired by the whole event. But although Class War's disreputable reputation precedes them, the 23-year-old Runacre who, with help, co-ordinated the itinerary from deepest Stoke Newington insists there is more to them than a lot of spit and slogans: "The primary aim is for us to be taken seriously in what we're saying. We have got a serious message, that people do take seriously."

The Strummer connection came about "through beer talk, basically". Another Class Warrior suggested the idea of a benefit gig. Strummer agreed, and the idea ballooned from there. "Once everyone had sobered up", says Runacre, "we had to check with him whether he was really serious about it... and he was." A north London reggae band, One Style, will travel as regular support, and the bill will be augmented from place to place by local artists, many chosen on the basis of the demo cassettes with which Runacre says he has been "inundated" since news of the project was first published.

Another impressive claim is that around half the shows were initiated by sympathisers in the individual cities and towns. Three dates in Scotland - Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen - have been set up in conjunction with a couple of non-aligned anti-Poll Tax groups, just two of the many agitating crews who Runacre pledges will benefit financially from the tour. The most unusual setting will be the Miners' Welfare Hall in the pit village of Brodsworth, just outside Doncaster. Runacre says it was put together for them by NUM members, and a portion of the final tour profits will go to the Sacked Miners' Fund.

Runacre's account of the tour's organisation suggests the existence of an informal network of like minds making connections up and down the land, firming up loyalties between disparate groups who have chosen to disown the political mainstream. Plus, of course, "it's a good way of having a laugh", he says, anxious to defuse any trace of self-importance.

Rock Against the Rich is not the only current case of non-conformist political rock and roll. The amenable Joe Strummer has also volunteered his services free for the benefit of Green Wedge, the environmentalist lobby's answer to Labour's Red original. The figurehead organiser of Green Wedge is Tony Allen, 43, a self-described "post-alternative comedian". The Green Wedge idea was born with a joke about setting up a green anarchists' sect and wanting to save the planet, not just the Labour Party. The dry, mildly-spoken Allen attributes his philosophical position to being basically anti-authoritarian, a late-Sixties posture he has seen no reason to abandon since. "Green issues are gradually becoming the political priority," he says. "It's the new polarity. There is an ecological crisis, and some people are trying to save the planet while others are just giving up."

It is interesting to compare and contrast the possible constituencies of Rock Against the Rich and Green Wedge. While the former promises to feature a wider range of musics than the unstinting punk maelstrom you might expect, the latter have already enlisted the support of sundry New Age artists and the celebrated flamenco guitar duo Eduardo Niebla and Antonio Forcione, who have a strong following among classical music fans. But while Green issues are more likely to transcend the domain of the anti-establishment demimonde, there is still a substantial area of crossover between the two with established traditions which have been widely ignored by the political mainstream.

Self-sufficiency is a key common concept here, expressed either as the desire for informal self-organisation or for new, benign forms of technology. A complementary desire to decentralise and scale things down also informs both sensibilities. Joe Strummer is enthusiastic about the chance to do small shows again. "Why play a huge stadium if you just feel naff about it afterwards? Nothing really happens, nothing is revealed." There is also more common experience shared by the '68 vintage Allen and Strummer, iconoclast of '77, than might be suspected. Both have a Ladbroke Grove squatting heritage, for instance. Also, Strummer recalls playing before massed sleeping-bags at dawn at the Stonehenge free festival with the 101ers, a raw pub rock band he was with before the formation of The Clash. Allen, on the other hand, once toured with anarchist punk act Poison Girls, sometimes arguing from the stage with teenage would-be Nazis who turned up to heckle and wreck the house.

Fascist rock lives on as the antithesis of the libertarian concepts common to Green Wedge and Class War activists. The fact that violent young skinheads have, at times, attached themselves to anarchist bands simply confirms how impressionable under-class youths often are. Rock and roll is what you make it, and descendants of the punk-style skinhead bands that comprised the notorious Oi movement still command a following, functioning beneath the fragmented shadow of Britain's various Fascist splinter groups. A staff member of the anti-Fascist magazine Searchlight reports that the Astoria Theatre in Charing Cross Road recently played host to 3,000 Sieg Heiling supporters of a re-formed Angelic Upstarts. News of such gigs in smaller pubs in London often travels by word of mouth, initially emanating from the traditional mod/skinhead stomping ground of Carnaby Street and its pubs. Few of these smaller venues survive the night intact.

The lessons to be learnt from these diverse activities are first, that significant political energies are being expended quite deliberately beyond the parameters of the parliamentary establishment; second, that popular music continues to be a medium through which old solidarities can be expressed and new ones evolved; and third, that the coming months will once again see the subterranean features of British political life rising to the surface to the alarm of respectable society. It would seem a matter of some importance that someone other than the forces of law and order pays some serious, constructive attention to them. Why, there might even be votes in it.

Green Wedge at Brentford Fountain Leisure Centre, Chiswick Roundabout, on 9 July: Joe Strummer, The Wise Monkeys, Niebla and Forcione. Live Earth Festival and Conference, Craigtoun Country Park, St Andrews, Fife, on 23 and 24 July: Marillion, Rick Wakeman, Jack Bruce, Rose Royce, Dr Feelgood, Captain Sensible. Rock Against the Rich Tour starts at Leeds Irish Centre, Leeds, 13 July.

Photo: Rebels in the yuppie heartland: Matt Runacre of Rock Against the Rich (at right) with members of the reggae band One Style

by Ben Young

Class War has reached Shetland — at least the magazine has. The bi-monthly production sells up to 20,000 copies nationally and is distributed throughout Britain. In Shetland between 50 and 100 copies are taken in and sold by local supporters.

The magazine — and the movement — sprang from a mixture of groups which ranged from the Animal Liberation Front to much lesser known Anarchist groups. Its supporters are predominantly alienated youth, but also include such names as Joe Strummer, formerly of the band, The Clash.

The magazine has been going for some years but is only now beginning to gain a wider recognition. *"It has only really picked up in the last couple of years"* one of the local agents for Class War said. Another supporter is to attend a national conference in Cardiff later this month as a representative from the Shetland group.

Despite this apparent commitment, it is difficult to guage from them exactly what Class War is all about. It seems to range from simple opposition to Thatcherism, to an all-out reaction against the political and social system. What concerns the local branch, if branch they could be called, is the wider movement's tendency towards violence. *"It's frightening,"* said one. The best known example of this was when supporters of Class War attacked stars of the BBC's EastEnders, accusing them of being show business sell-outs.

The magazine has something of an aggressive, tabloid style but, interspersed between calls for direct action and articles on the conduct of police and on the rise of Yuppies throughout Britain, there are reasonable articles on the health service cuts and the social security changes.

ONE of the summer’s biggest musical and media events will be taking place at the Brentford Fountain Leisure Centre on Saturday, July 9, with a huge concert.

It is aimed at focussing our attention on the launch of a new ecological campaign Green Wedge. Topping the bill will be former punk legend Joe Strummer, who made his name with the hugely-successful The Clash.

Disastrous

Given the common concert for the well-being of the planet, I attended the opening night of the campaign in The Crucial Art Gallery, London, where a weird and wonderful mixture of people ranging from Green groups to musicians, artists and media people congregated to lend their ears, support and purse strings to the cause.

Basically, Green Wedge recognises the disastrous state of the planet, ranging from a fast-disappearing ozone layer to appalling level of pollution in every country.

Spokesperson Tim Williams made an impassioned speech for everybody to become aware of the situation, and felt the Green Wedge campaign could co-ordinate the different efforts of various Green groups as well as bring media attention to the campaign as a whole.

On the opening bash at the Fountain and the notable bill-topper Joe Strummer. For the uninitiated, he was the major force in The Clash, a band that took on the mantle of latter-day super-group.

Given the band emerged from the rebellious punk era, this was a contradiction. The Clash overcame by socially-conscious material including a triple album, Sandinista!

Strummer’s involvement therefore is not a total surprise, and a recent spate of appearances on behalf of Amnesty International and even a mini-tour cheekily titled Bash The Rich, show Joe to be well in tune with the problems of the age.

Dynamic

Together with his new American band, The Latino Rockabilly War, Strummer will be rocking the night away at the Fountain along with an array of other bands, including The Wise Monkeys, and various comics, speakers and films. Topping the event will be one of the most dynamic light shows seen in these parts.

In the meantime if you are interested in helping the new fight to save our environment, come along to this huge bash and have tons of fun and help spread the word fast.

Pete Feenstra

AMNESTY International are trying to boost their profile. Last weekend’s Festival Of Youth was the first in what promises to be an annual event at Milton Keynes Bowl perpetrated to define the organisation’s aims more clearly.

Unfortunately equality for all and freedom for "prisoners of conscience" are aims not as easily definable as Ban The Bomb in a Western society which isn’t as blatantly uncompromising and vicious as many other states.

Hopefully though, the thousands of people who attended this two-day event not only enjoyed the variety of bands who appeared but left a little more aware of Amnesty’s worthy and just work.

Surprise of the weekend goes to Aswad who sure know how to get a crowd going. There’s more to this band than the bland pop/reggae that recent singles suggest.

Climbing all over the huge PA system while singing Jailhouse Rock was something I never expected from Aswad. Excellent. A great show.

The aging “Clash of 76” dished out a few surprises too. The Stranglers track record is spotless — but Saturday’s appearance was stagnant. They’re in danger of becoming everything punk condemned, as have The Damned who in true dinosaur rock band fashion managed to reassemble the original line-up (plus Joey Ramone) for Sunday.

Joe Strummer and fellow ex-Clash chap Mick Jones (now fronting BAD) on the other hand still produce good and innovative music. There was no hint of senility in Joe’s performances — he’s still a rock’n’roller.

Which is more than I can say of Howard Jones. Having failed to recapture the inspiration behind his early hits, Howard has now sunken to even lower depths of blandness.

Other highlights included compare Alexei Sayle; New Model Army (a band with bite); Michelle Shocked (too young to have been at Woodstock, but surely next in line to follow Tracy Chapman and Vega into the charts); Aztec Cameras’ Roddy Frame playing a few numbers minus his slick band; Sam Brown — daughter of Joe and a darn sight more talented than Marty Wilde’s daughter Kim; The Daintees and Men They Couldn't Hang.

All in all, a good event. Let’s hope it gains the status of the established festivals and becomes as popular as Reading, Donington and Glastonbury in the future.

POST-MEDIA glamour Mandela Day, and lacking any colour-supplement superstars, last weekend’s Amnesty International event at Milton Keynes was bound to be a Boxing Day of festivals.

The burning question as you scanned the programme’s fine words from Jim Kerr, Ben Elton, Bryan Adams, Peter Gabriel, was:
So where are you?

Maybe they’d asked: Where’s the TV coverage?

They probably had good reasons not to play, but a quick hello between bands, or a message read out from the stage, would have dispelled a lot of cynicism.

As a chilly wind blew the opening slog of limp bands off stage, and news of All About Eve’s pull-out spread gloomily, despondency set in and bottle fights broke out among the pitifully few crowd.

But a mighty change was on its way!

Billed as The Festival of Youth, the line-up was built around the receding hairlines of the class of ‘76. The Stranglers headlined Saturday and were dire, while The Damned headlined Sunday and were die-hard.

Sprinting were some punks die young. Some died a death but Joe Strummer with his hands on, an he’d saved the whole event now.

Fosaming at the mouth behind his M.O.T. failure Fender, he led a ropey but suss band, dared to reopen the file on The Clash, and got away with it. Police and Thieves, London Calling, I Fought the Law were all carried off with verve. People were sprinting down the hills to join in.

The day’s only other talking point was Aswad’s warming brew of warrior charges and playful pop. Only Aswad and Strummer communicated any such interest in Amnesty’s work.

Sunday was musically brighter. Sizzling heat, a big crowd and Strummer and Aswad returning among a better, busier bill.

The Men They Couldn’t Hang and The Bhundu Boys both capitalised on the ‘nice place to be’ feeling.

The Screaming Blue Messiahs and New Model Army have gloomy outlook on life. The Messiahs finish the nerve ends with a disintegrating signal of crumbing guitar (Alfred Hitchcock meets Howling Wolf!), but NMA were dull, dated and dour.

Youngest was Roddy Frame, the youngest man on the bill and closest to a real chart star, was taking things very seriously. Worried about his voice, he cancelled a gig to be fit.

Enhanced by its brevity, Aztec Camera was fast, friendly and fun. The Blow Monkeys-style Freedom is Number One as the next single and the reissue of Oblivious would secure Roddy as this summer’s sound and star.

I couldn’t object. Better a nice guy, demon guitarist and quietly political songwriting on the cover of Smash Hits than Sabrina or Bros.

Now on their third album, B.A.D. are still a potentially good idea — but time is running out. The Mick Jones-Joe Strummer reunion was one hoped for was sensibly avoided, and Jones announced a new number with “B.A.D. like to keep moving forward, not looking back.”

A good policy, but they could benefit from some of the energy and excitement that Strummer managed to pump into his Clash retrospective.

Gospel according to Strummer...

"I'm living in a yuppie paradise and I'm sick of it."

It's 11.30pm in a downmarket, city centre hotel. My companion and I have been on the trail of former Clash frontman Joe Strummer since 3pm always managing to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A mixture of beer and boredom is beginning to take its toll.

Most of the evening was spent in the hotel bar (where else?) with members of the anarchist movement Class War. They were enjoying a day off from the controversial Rock Against The Rich tour, which Strummer is headlining with his new band Latino Rockabilly War.

Contrary to their public image, Class War seemed like nice boys. They were polite and friendly and John, victim of James Belsey's critical piece in the previous day's Evening Post, introduced himself with a sly grin: "Hello, I'm John the 'Lunchtime Revolutionary'," rather than bouncing a brick off my cranium.

Eventually, at around midnight, our hero showed up with a handshake and many apologies.

I asked Joe what he's been up to over the last few years (look, it was getting late!).

Friendly

"After the Clash mk2 split up in '85 I just wanted to get right away, y'know, so I've been doing film work... Sid and Nancy, Straight To Hell, Walker."

But you have been touring with the Pogues.

"Yeah, they played with us at the Brixton Academy in '82 or '83, and I didn't really see them again until Straight To Hell. We got friendly, and they called me when Chevron (their guitarist) got sick, that was last November. I toured America and Canada with them and kinda got the old bug back."

Had he ever really lost it?

"If you get away from it for a couple of years you forget about it somehow. It's kinda like a drug, you're cool if you don't have any of it, but if you get a taste, you're hooked again."

I asked Joe the predictable question "What happened to the Clash?" and received this predictable answer:

"You just get fed up with each other really, no more than that."

A look at the vastly different styles that Joe and his Clash team-mate Mick Jones have adopted in their new projects would suggest a more deep-rooted reason for their parting of the ways.

Jones' Big Audio Dynamite have welcomed everything that modern technology has to offer and the musical styles that come with it, whereas Strummer's LRW are a confirmed guitar band, much closer to the spirit of the Clash.

Diplomatically, Joe saw it like this:

"I think Mick made a leap into the brave new world, as he saw it, and I thought it's good, it's brave, but I didn't want to do it like that. I want to keep as far away from any machines as possible."

"On stage I just go '1-2-3-4' and start playing, and if it's too slow or too fast, well tough. I don't want a machine to show me the correct tempo."

I was surprised to learn that Joe is still under contract to CBS from his Clash days, so why no LRW records?

"I'd like to sort things out with CBS, I still owe them three records, but I want to record with no interference. They know I won't do mainline pop, so they must be saying 'why bother with this dude at all, they've got BROS, Springsteen, Michael Jackson, you name 'em."

Surely touring for Class War won't help matters?

"Well I gave up on the possibility of anything positive coming out of the CBS building - in my direction years ago, so it didn't enter into it."

"I just want them to either tear up the contract, or shut up and let me get on with it."

Strummer's involvement with Class War has caused quite a stir with both the press and some left-wing factions, on account of him not being short of a few bob himself. I wondered if he had expected quite as much flak.

"I hadn't realised just how hysterical Fleet Street are, I mean we're hardly playing Wembley Stadium every night so hysterical."

I asked Joe if he is a member of Class War.

Revolution

"No, I'm not a member of anything, but what I like about it is that we seem to have got nowhere messing around for the last nine years with the Conservatives and Labour, and I'm thinking maybe we should have had a revolution in 1790 like the French did, y'know, got certain things sorted out."

What sort of things?

"The removal of the royal family and the aristocracy."

By what method?

"By agreement." He returns with a broad grin. Surely not the old "bung 'em in a council house with £10 a week"?

"Yeah, that could be part of it, yeah! You just get sick of them don't you? I'm living in a yuppie paradise and I'm sick of it.

"The old one thing for them and another one for you is just getting more extreme, which is why I think it's time to consider alternatives like Class War, who ten years ago you might have written off as loony anarchists."

A contributing factor to the success of the tour (I don't believe I've seen as many people in the Bierkeller since the Eurythmics some time ago) must be the release of the Clash compilation album and re-release of I Fought The Law, was Joe gratified that the records were so well received?

"I was working in San Francisco when they came out, and when I got back I wasn't really ready for them to go down like they did."

Joe tells me that he and Mick Jones are the best of friends these days, indeed, this is what he had to say about the new records:

"I think a lot of the success of the Clash was down to Mick Jones' sense of melody and his arranging, when I listen to the Clash now I always listen to what Mick was up to, which I never used to do."

It would appear that they had little choice but to kiss and make up, as their young daughters are, in Joe's words, "Thick as thieves, real little devils!" A female Clash in the next century? It doesn't bear thinking about!

Finally, I had to ask if Joe had ever, just once, felt like taking a radical change in direction, a leap into Jones' "brave new world".

"No, as far as I'm concerned it just carries on... the beat goes on."

PHOTO: Joe Strummer rocking against the rich and deflecting the criticism.

Word count: 1,174

The lunch-hour revolutionary

'We're small, but we could have a decent game of football if we all came together'

Cartoon: Bash the yuppie: A Class War poster depicting a despised rich thing complete with his Filofax

JOHN, Class Warrior, was in threatening mood as he revealed how he and his fellows would halt "the yuppie invasion of working-class Bristol".

He said: "We don't expect petitions to the House of Commons to get anywhere. We don't expect Bristol City Council to help."

"That means intimidating them. It's happened in the East End of London. It has begun in Southampton. People in Bristol are starting to think about how to do it here."

But before intimidation there has to be fund-raising and that started last night with the visit of the Rock Against The Rich tour to the Bierkeller in Bristol.

It featured a line-up led by the Clash's singer Joe Strummer performing with the Latino Rockabilly War, One Style, Ahnrefn and The Family.

In the interests of promoting the event, Class War, the anarchist-inspired underground movement, swallowed its principles and agreed to meet the capitalist press, which, perversely, chose to publish this interview the day after.

Cloak-and-dagger

Lots of cloak-and-dagger stuff, naturally. The invitation came via a press release which invited would-be interviewers to write to a Bristol number and await a reply from a representative of Class War. My reply came promptly and my contact was John. "No surnames, just John from Class War." He said he'd meet me on the steps of the Colston Hall any weekday between the hours of 12 and 1. His lunch-hour, you see. He told me he was a clerical worker with Bristol City Council but that "wasn't important."

Still, I was interested to learn that even the Cause must bow the knee to the great British lunch-hour, so noon it was. I carried a copy of the midday edition of the Evening Post and felt extremely self-conscious. He looked thoroughly furtive. We adjourned to a greasy spoon cafe in that vicinity. "No photographers, no faces in the paper" was the order. He would only discuss Class War, its achievements and its aims. I have mixed views on Class War. It's been around for a few years, causing ripples of interest on the fringes of politics and it was even flavour of the month among the radical young not so long ago, a fashionable resort for closet revolutionaries. It isn't quite as smart these days.

On the one hand, I rather like its annual Stop The City high jinks in London when alarming-looking punks blow raspberries at equally alarming-looking stockbrokers.

I'm sure most of us approve the sentiment that stockbrokers deserve the occasional raspberry blown in their direction and if Class War are the ones making the rude noises, then so be it.

On the other hand, I am much less happy with some of their more notorious local actions. The bullying of Bristol University's provocative Professor John Vincent and his family a couple of years ago because the historian holds other views than theirs and writes curious columns in Rupert Murdoch's Sun newspaper was nauseating.

Almost as unpleasant and, to the casual observer, totally baffling, was the sight of leather-jacketed, leather-shoe-wearing CW louts trying to frighten staff and customers of Michaels fur shop in Clifton. Both campaigns were more in the tradition of followers of one A. Hitler than good old-fashioned anarchy.

"That's in the past," John snapped when I voiced my feelings. "We don't talk about past issues and I don't care about that." What Class War now does care about, he said, is the 'gentrification' (his word, not mine) of former working-class areas of Bristol, the UDC, the Metro, the poll tax.

"We're talking about working-class people are being forced from their homes by rich people and their yuppie children and we're concentrating our efforts on defending the working-class."

Future

"This isn't just happening in the cities. The rural communities are, if anything, suffering even more and there's a Class War movement in Wessex which wants to do for them what we're trying to do in Bristol." Class War's creed is, he says, straightforward. "We believe the working-class should decide the future of the country."

Would Class War, therefore, be putting up candidates for local elections in Bristol as they did for the by-election in Kensington in London?

"The candidate in Kensington was only there for publicity. We shan't be putting up people here," says John. Class War denies, incidentally, that it was responsible for the violent breaking up of a Tory party meeting during that election campaign. Tories claim otherwise.

So if not the ballot box, how will Class War proceed in their campaign to fight for the workers of Bristol? By intimidation, John repeated. Physical assault? Bricks through windows? Scratches on the bodywork of BMWs, Volvos and the like?

"The graffiti is up already. It is up to people to think up their own ideas. Class War does not give advice. We're not interested in labels, we're not interested in telling other people how to live their lives."

Not that there are that many of them not to advise. I wondered what their following was in Bristol. "We're small but we could have a decent game of football if we all came together."

"Who are we? We're nurses and builders, unemployed people, people on government training schemes. We're clerical workers like me."

"And now we're talking about the real issues, not the issues of the past. It's about defending Barton Hill from the yuppies, defending the health service and what's happened on the City Docks."

The hour of 1pm approached and it was time for the Class Warrior to become clerical worker once more. The intimidation of those classed as yuppies will presumably have to wait.

PHOTO: Under attack... Controversial Bristol University history professor John Vincent faces abuse

PHOTO: Classy symbol... Expensive motors like the BMW range. Are they just disgusting displays of wealth being flaunted in front of the working-class?

LOGO: CLASS WAR

ROCK AGAINST THE RICH concert review – Page 32

Word count: 1,062

ROCK by TREVOR PAKE

New kind of clash for Joe

ROCK and roll may never die. But it is already in serious danger of seeing its inherent rebellion sublimated to the needs of an increasingly consumerist society. The sweat and the passion are giving way to smooth production and precision marketing. The compact disc is just another lifestyle symbol. Rock and roll was never meant to be so sleek.

Joe Strummer knows that. He owns one CD — a Clash album — but has nothing to play it on. He has not "made the changeover yet". The Clash were meant for vinyl, with all its dust and scratches.

As the frontman of the seminal punk group The Clash, Joe Strummer was the archetypal reluctant hero of punk. In the end the band met a rather acrimonious end, torn apart by bitter rows as they tried to conquer the American market while keeping their ideals intact.

Strummer has spent most of the last five years working on film soundtracks. "Something useful to do while I licked my wounds," as he puts it. It was a series of guest appearances with The Pogues last year which finally re-awakened the near addictive appeal of playing live.

Strummer's most recent soundtrack work was on the film Permanent Record, directed by Marisa Silver. For that he worked with the Latino Rockabilly War, a band which includes former members of The Untouchables and cult group The Circle Jerks. And it is with them that he has finally returned to the road, on a tour which snakes its way across Scotland over the coming week.

Most of the group were brought over from America just before the tour began. So they had only four days to rehearse, putting together a set of raw and ramshackle rock which relies heavily on cover versions. Given those circumstances Strummer has been pleasantly surprised by the favourable response to the tour so far.

"I hadn't realised how feeble everything else had become until we started again. There's a limit to what you can learn in four days so we just go in there, bash hell out of it and try to rock it up."

"Obviously people have been missing that."

While the response to the music has been good, the Press reaction to other aspects of the tour have varied from surprise to outright hostility. While other rock stars of his vintage — Strummer is now 35 — have been rocking in aid of a host of undeniably worthy causes, from famine relief to Amnesty International, Strummer has come out in support of a considerably more contentious issue.

The Current Rock Against The Rich tour is a benefit for Class War, an anarchist organisation which wants to "put class politics back on the political agenda". The tour is leading up to National Anti-Yuppie day September 10.

Joe Strummer is not fully convinced by Class War's methods. He describes Anti-Yuppie day as a ridiculous idea — but his doubts are overridden by a respect for the motives and a desire to do something practical about what he sees as an increasingly divided society.

When it comes to points of principle Strummer himself eventually returns to the fact that he is, after all, only a guitar player and ultimately his involvement in Rock Against the Rich is at least as much about rock and roll as it is about rebellion.

• Glasgow Barrowland tonight: Edinburgh Coasters, Thursday; Aberdeen Northern Hotel, Friday.

THE MEN BEHIND THE WIRE

"Amnesty? I knew it had something to do with Peter Gabriel!" Joe Strummer-tongue in cheek-summer '88.

Along with Oxfam and the Red Cross, Amnesty International is the world's best-known non-political pressure group, standing up for prisoners of conscience, and against torture, all over the world, regardless of the ideological hue of the offending regime.

This weekend at Milton Keynes Bowl, a host of British pop names-including All About Eve, Aswad, Aztec Camera, Big Audio Dynamite, The Damned, Icicle Works, Howard Jones, The Men They Couldn't Hang, New Model Army, Runrig, The Rhythm Sisters, So, Martin Stephenson, The Stranglers, Joe Strummer, and World Domination Enterprises-gather to raise awareness of, and cash for, the organisation.

On the next pages, Denis Campbell asks Roddy Frame about his involvement with the two-day bash, while Danny Kelly checks Joe Strummer's reasons for doing both Milton Keynes and the controversial forthcoming Rock Against The Rich tour.

PHOTO: Frame frame: Bleddyn Butcher; Strummer shot: Pennie Smith; The happy couple: Derek Ridgers.

Amnesty International logo

FRAME: "Could you listen to Aztec Camera records and think I was a Tory?"

Roddy Frame is no armchair radical, no professional cynic content to just carp and criticise. When he gets angry, he gets active, giving of his time and talent for causes that strike a deep chord. Like the striking miners of 1984-85, like Action Against Aids, like the 'Stop The Clause' campaign. Like Amnesty International:

"Amnesty's important because it's good to have an organisation around that's fighting for people's rights, who will contest things like the Government going off to Gibraltar and shooting people. That sort of organised execution without trial is obviously something that's fucking crazy.

"It wasn't long after that when that Catholic boy was murdered on his way to work in Belfast," says Roddy, pulling no punches about how 'Loyalist' extremists in Northern Ireland are encouraged by the state's mercenary methods abroad-with fatal results.

The Amnesty festival is loaded with cruel irony. It's meant to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in spirit, wording, and intent a marvellous document, which has become the yardstick by which to measure the human rights record of countries worldwide.

But the reality of the postwar 'people's charter for freedom' has failed miserably to match the profound hopes invested in it. That's why Amnesty exists. Amnesty say that they're now busier than ever before, highlighting injustice, defending victims of state repression, treasuring basic rights and freedoms. And that includes Britain.

Does that mean the climate in Britain is becoming more authoritarian?

"Yeah. It does seem that things that maybe a few years ago would have caused an outcry are now everyday occurrences. Quite a lot of things aren't reported, I suppose-like people being dragged down the police cells and beaten up and shit. That goes on all the time, you hear about it all the time, but it doesn't get into the papers.

"Like a few weeks ago the police raided the Mangrove Club up in Notting Hill near where I live. They were wearing flame-proof suits and riot gear, and they did it at three o'clock in the morning. It does seem that they can get away a bit more with things like that these days."

For Roddy, just getting angry-about Gibraltar, Clause 28, or whatever-is not enough.

"Even though you are angry, sometimes you have to distance yourself from it in a way. You can feel that anger, but there's no point in walking around with it burning inside you all the time. You have to listen to yourself and try and see what you can do to maybe give some positive help.

"If you're in a position where you're not a politician but you can play a guitar a bit and you've a chance of selling some tickets, you should go along and play for these people, like Amnesty. I don't know how musicians can do much more than that."

Aztec Camera were due to appear at last month's International Aids Day concert, which was cancelled after major stars failed to show the support they'd given last year. After the debacle, one concert organiser complained bitterly that the lack of support showed that AIDS was no longer a "fashionable" cause.

Roddy had regrettably reached the same conclusion himself and is scathing about big names deciding to make the Mandela concert their one good deed of the year because of the dizzying projections for the event's worldwide TV audience.

So who needs who the most, pop or politics? And what can they achieve together? What's the most we can expect?

"Pop music does have the power to stir people's emotions. But it depends how you do it... You see, someone like Billy Bragg-for me, I sort of tire of it after a while. I find it a bit grating, a bit crude and sloganeering. I can't be bothered with all that very much. Maybe it's because I went through all that with The Clash when I was 14. But that was ten years ago...

"Then I started to find politics in love songs, things that move you. Pop changes the world for me three or four minutes at a time five or six times a day-Anita Baker can change my world, she's fantastic. Or Sybil's 'Let Yourself Go'-that really gets me. That's the politics of a bass synth playing with drum, you know?"

I suggest that politics (with a small 'p') has always been a largely unnoticed feature of Aztec Camera songs. And I don't mean his version of 'The Red Flag'.

He agrees, citing 'Paradise' and 'Killermont Street' off the current album as proof. "I mean, could you listen to Aztec Camera records and think I was a Tory?" he challenges.

With his gently thought-provoking lyrics, Roddy is far more subversive than Public Enemy could ever hope for. I put him in a much subtler school of 'political' songwriting, which already boasts, for example, Elvis Costello or, more recently, Tracy Chapman.

"'Straight To Hell' was like that. It had such a nice lilt... When you're sloganeering too much in songs, it doesn't leave too much space for nice imagery or anything like that."

What about 'Free Nelson Mandela'-did that succeed as a political pop song?

"Oh yes, that's a good one. It's a good tune, it had a great band playing on it, it sounded great and it's a real chant-it's almost like something you could hear on the terraces. Jerry Dammers has a knack for doing that. Some of The Specials' songs were like that. Like, do you remember the way Terry Hall sang 'Ghost Town'? That's clever, that's smart.

"You see, you've got to entertain a bit as well. I think that's what we're doing at the Amnesty festival really, turning up, putting our name to it, which is good because Aztec Camera is starting to get quite famous because we're in the top three, right?

"I wouldn't feel much use to them if we had a really low profile. I just wish I could get some more really big names to appear, but I don't know any…"

STRUMMER

For Joe Strummer-rock icon, scattergun political orator, king of slogans, and candidate for the title Greatest Living Englishman-these are groovy times.

With a bit of acting here, a carefully composed soundtrack there, and the rediscovery of the howling magnificence of The Clash everywhere, he has finally shaken off the albatross shadow of the last version of that band.

And now he stands on the verge of a burst of activity that will see him re-established on rock's front rank as firmly and uneasily as ever.

For starters, from the soundtrack of a film called Permanent Record, comes a new single, 'Trash City'. Credited to Strummer and the 'stupendously' named Latino Rockabilly War, 'Trash City' is the best 45 Joe's been associated with since, oh, 'Straight To Hell', a bouncing 'bumpabilly' furnished with all the usual JS clutter ('hot dogs from the nightmare zone!') and a viciously primitive production that spits defiance into the face of hi-tech poltroon pop.

And far from deterring him from ever leaving his own front room again, his on-the-road spell with The Pogues has actually whetted his appetite for playing live. So much so, in fact, that he's taking The Latino Rockabilly War to the public. Consisting, on the single at least, of Americans Willie McNeill (drums), Jim Donica (bass), Poncho Sanchez (percussion), Ramon Vanda (timbale), and Tupelo Joe Altruda (piano and organ), LRW will make their debut at this weekend's Amnesty bash at Milton Keynes before taking off on the much-vaunted and highly bizarre Rock Against The Rich tour with which the country is threatened from June 23 onward.

Rehearsals for these various outings found Joe Strummer in New York for most of the last week. When he rang me to talk about both the Amnesty weekend and the RATR tour, it was late evening on America's east coast, and the middle of a drizzly London night.

In contrast to the ranting eruptions of the past, he now speaks in short, considered, slightly knowing sentences. Joe Strummer still fights his corner, but not everyone else's as well…

So Joe, how did you become involved with Amnesty International?

"I don't know really. I just fell into it. They called me up and I agreed to do it."

Had you had any previous involvement with them? "No, not really…"

Or previous knowledge?

"I knew Amnesty was something to do with Peter Gabriel! No, obviously I knew about it as an organisation and the sort of stuff they do…

Everybody would say that they were against the imprisonment of people for their beliefs and against torture in any circumstance. Have you any extra, personal, motivation for doing the Amnesty two-dayer?

"I quite felt like playing... that's about it."

What relevance does Amnesty have in a British context? And to a British audience?

"I think they could feel that they might want to get involved with an organisation that actually has a quite high success rate with the individual prisoner-of-conscience cases it takes up. A lot of people could end up feeling that this was something they'd like to become part of."

If Amnesty's at the one end of the spectrum of efforts being made to improve attitudes to human rights all over the globe, then the weighty mouthings of world statesmen occupy the other. Do you think that the recent meetings of Reagan and Gorbachev will have much effect?

"Yeah, I think they will. I mean, already the Russians are holding press conferences saying that more Jewish people can leave. So doors are opening. Obviously, though, they've got to back all this stuff up, they can't just let it be talk."

Until recently, Amnesty was regarded universally as the perfect cross-party pressure group, but after it criticised the actions of the British military units involved in the shootings on Gibraltar, I noticed one or two Tories-including one long-time member-crawling out of the woodwork and onto the telly to denounce it as having become 'too political'.

"Well, yeah, I read about all that in the papers. Basically, they were gonna bash anyone who tried to throw some light on those proceedings. It wasn't just Amnesty; those people would have given any organisation trying to get to the bottom of that Gibraltar thing a good media bashing.

You'll have heard this question about loads of things with which you've been involved, but what can rock concerts actually achieve?

"Well, they can achieve a pile of dough."

A good start.

"And they can achieve a heightening of awareness of both Amnesty and its efforts. I think both things are appreciated by the organisation."

Looking at things like the various AIDS benefits, the campaign against Clause 28, the huge Nelson Mandela day, and this Amnesty do, it seems that pop music has somehow become the nation's conscience. Do you find that amazing?

"Yeah, it does seem to be that way, and yes, it is amazing. Perhaps it's just a reflection of the mind of everyone else. Perhaps people are starting to think about different issues and support the appropriate event, because none of these events could happen without the support of the paying customer."

Isn't it an indication of a sick and sorry society that pop musicians should be the only ones that are saying what needs to be said?

"Are they the only ones? There's a lot of novelists who'd disagree with you, and playwrights, comedians, and cartoonists... journalists even. Often cartoonists and comedians are the ones who get in the best kinda barbs."

The new alliance of conscience has thrown together some pretty strange bedfellows. Joe Strummer is far more likely these days to find himself agreeing with, say, the Bishop of Durham than he is many of the leading rock groups. Is that tough for an old rebel to take?

"No it isn't, not at all. In fact, I quite often take comfort from that very fact. When I read one of his outbursts in the papers, it feels good to hear those things coming from such so-called respectable quarters as the high church. His outbursts are most enjoyable, a refreshing change... He hasn't been struck by any more lightning, has he?"

From half the songs on the first Clash LP, through the likes of 'Know Your Rights' and even the title track of the much-maligned 'This is England', you've waxed frantic about the social ills of Britain. What has been the main change in the ten or so years that you've been commentating?

"I think the most obvious change has been a very sharp rightward turn."

But ten years ago we were under the yoke of things like the B Specials, the Special Patrol Group, and the notorious SUS law. Many people would argue that the country's actually freer.

"That might appear so on the surface, or on paper, but in actuality, Britain seems a far meaner place. Put it this way-the quality of life has declined, has become somehow more mean-spirited. The general drift has turned toward the individual concentrating more closely…"

Strummer: "Concerts can achieve a pile of dough… and a heightening awareness…"

--

18th June, 1988 New Musical Express-Page 17

REVIEWED BY BARRY EGAN
SINGLES
SINGLE OF THE WEEK (3)

JOE STRUMMER: Trash City (Epic)

Resurrection Joe!!!!!
Resurrection bloody Joe!!!!!!!

Long since given Strummer up for dead-expecting to find him zipped up in a rubber body bag somewhere in Notting Hill! But... but with Lazarus finesse, he is back! Alive and kickin'! A sublime Strummer-on-autopilot affair, tight and punchy. There might not be a riot goin' on, but there sure as hell is a small hooley arockin'! Nobody makes the pulse race better…

Eat the Rich

JOE STRUMMER ONCE AGAIN LEADS THE CHARGE AGAINST INJUSTICE, THIS TIME SPEARHEADING CLASS WAR'S 'ROCK AGAINST THE RICH' TOUR. IAN GITTINS SEES THE CAUSE GET OFF TO A SHOTGUN START AND FOOD TALKS TO STRUMMER AND CLASS WAR ABOUT THE MOTIVES BEHIND THE MANIFESTO. PICS BY PHIL DU NICHOLLS

Poster: CLASS WAR, No 29, ROCK AGAINST THE RICH TOUR 88

'BMWs, Mercedes, Porsches-flash cars of every description have started to appear in the streets where we live, parked in between the knackered old Cortinas and Escorts. Has everyone won the pools? No, it's the parasite YUPPIES moving in, trying to squeeze out the working class, pushing us out of the area-and they use their cars and their stupid status symbols to rub our noses in it. And when we smash up their cars or give them a bit of a kicking they always bleat "Jealousy!" Jealous? We're just ANGRY, it's pure class hatred.' - 'Class War'

"THE time to seize back control of our lives, communities and workplaces, and then ruthlessly hunt down our class enemies, is now. Are you ready to rock?!" - "Class War" newspaper

THE Irish Centre in Leeds is a bit of a dive. A mile or so out of town, and bleak in today's rainstorm, it looks like a particularly primitive early Working Mens' Club. Long tables and plastic chairs are being stacked away in the afternoon gloom by small figures scuttling around. It's not a place you can imagine anything starting from. It's the end of the world.

Yet today is a start, of sorts. You can pick the signs up slowly. The folded grey newspapers being set up for sale, with the skull and crossbones on the cover. The air of purpose heavy all round. The tension. And one particular hero who's due to arrive. When the tour bus pulls up in the car park, all the way from Notting Hill, and a slim figure steps up onto the stage with practised ease, then it all really starts to rock.

It's Joe Strummer, and this is The Rock Against The Rich Tour 1988.

"IT'S a good chaotic idea. I'm not a person who has any sense of responsibility. I'm comprehensively irresponsible, as I suspect most musicians are. So I liked the idea from the word go!" - Joe Strummer

CLASS War are shadowy figures. With little or no media profile, the group are an enigma. They have operations based in London's East End and activists as far as Shetland and Guernsey. A picture emerges, slowly, of a view of the world based on inequality and anger, with a gut belief that extreme social problems need extreme solutions. As stars cluster to do the usual Summer gigs for Amnesty or CND, it's not a name you look to find on the list of popular causes.

It's no surprise. A look at the papers on sale round the club is a real shock. Ranting pieces urging anti-yuppie violence, league tables of police-bashing in different parts of the country, articles called "Piss On The Poll Tax". The Irish Centre's not used to it. Nor is Joe Strummer, padding quietly round the long room, absorbed in his own thoughts. In here, on this damp day, he looks just surreal.

The Rock Against The Rich tour is about to roll through 20 towns over the next month. How it'll go is anybody's guess. Ticket sales for tonight are healthy, yet Derby, the next night, has already had to be cancelled. With a different local support band in every town, Joe Strummer is talking his heart in his hands and launching onto a set of stages with nothing but a guitar and some vague sense of truth. Class War could hardly have found a better figure to go public for them. They can't believe their luck.

Mat Ronacre is the tour organiser. A jerky, nervous EastEnder, he puts the case for anarchy as Strummer's Latino Rockabilly War start on a soundcheck. The rain comes a little harder. Mat tries to make sense. What's the tour about? "It came about just talking to Joe one day, asking if he'd do a benefit. He said he'd like to, then from that it spread to a tour. At first it was just beer talk. But Joe agrees with most of what we do. He knows doing a gig for us ain't like doing Amnesty or Red Red Wedge or whatever. But he's a big name. It's good for us."

What's Class War aiming at?

"A lot of people don't know about us, or have heard the name but don't know what we're on about. It's a chance to get a message across. Thing is, see, a lot of what we say has been proved right, but what's the point if no one hears us? Like, we were the first people to use 'yuppie' as an insult two years ago, now everyone does it."

What makes you hate yuppies so much?

"They look down their noses at you. There's a lot round my way, and they treat you like a lump of dogshit on the bottom of their shoe. That's what I hate most."

It's easy to see how Class War appeal to the idealistic Strummer. The world view they espouse is essentially a romantic one, of direct action to right wrongs. Yuppies, bosses and Tory scum are Out There, the enemy; a brick to the head is the solution. And the police are most hated of all, a state tool to keep unfair order. Is it the politics of anger?

"There's more than that. There's a lot of Old Bill interest in this tour, y'know. We know that. They've phoned a few venues, but luckily for us the venues have turned round and said f** off, we're doing it. But direct action is the point. Why just sit there after a few pints, having all these great ideas about how the world's gonna be, then you sober up? You have to do something. A lot of people in Class War call themselves anarchists. Well, I don't give a f*** what people call us. I dunno. I suppose we're anarchists..."*

A lot of people would say you've got your head in the sand. Isn't "class" dying out as a social division?

"No, you're blind to think that. Look at London, yeah? Walk round Mayfair then walk round Bethnal Green, and then tell me class don't exist. Some people are in posh houses, some in shitty houses. That's what we mean."

Class War are used to being out on the fringes, beyond the pale. This is not to say they don't make a lot of sense. But with this tour, people are going to be looking at you, reading your words. How will you come across?

'People have said in the past that we're right wing. Ha! That's bullshit. We know who our hated enemies are...'

"EVERYDAY yuppies come out of their posh houses and luxury flats to find that some 'mindless vandal' has put a scratch along the side of their pride and joy or a brick through the windscreen. But the people who do this aren't really mindless vandals, they have the right to feel angry about these scum. When the rich move into a new area they put house prices way out of most normal peoples' reach, forcing people out of the areas they've lived all their lives. Then they swan around in Rollers, Mercs and BMWs that cost more than what most people earn in years. So if people decide to get even with a few well aimed bricks...well, that's tough shit for the yuppies!" - "Class War" newspaper

THERE'S a press girl following a few feet behind Joe Strummer round The Irish Centre as the rain comes down. She doesn't want him to talk to us. It's a bit silly. Joe wants to talk, so she might as well forget it. And after The Latino Rockabilly War have jerked and swayed through their soundcheck, we huddle backstage to talk, Joe stringing his guitar as he speaks. He's looking good. He's still the archetypal rock'n'roller, or course, neat in his black leather jacket with collar up and cowboy boots. But more than that, there's an alertness, an air about Joe Strummer which impresses you. There's no pretence, never has been, no attempt as bluster. He'll tell me easily and happily that he's not sure what he's doing with this tour, he's not sure if it's a good move. He's keen to admit he doesn't know. That's okay. Like he says, he's just a guitarist, not an "anarchist or politician".

"Nobody asks tennis players what they think about this and that, so why expect me to know all the answers?" Joe says in the Class War newspaper. But this is his appeal. Joe Strummer is a good figurehead because of his clear sense of doubt, the honesty he'll give to problems, the energy he puts into what he thinks right. His history is one of brave moves, mistakes and coming back. As he sits and ponders right and wrong, he's a superbly flawed rock'n'roll hero. "Rock Against The Rich"? For the next few weeks, his heart is with it.

Do you agree with Class War, Joe? All of it?

"Yeah, I do. Well, most of it. Thing is, if we could imagine Utopia, Class War wouldn't exist there. But it comes out of what people really feel. People want to be able to have somewhere to live, make a living, work out what they really want to do. There's no gap for that. I got involved first helping squatters, cos never forget that if it hadn't been for squatting, I'd never have got a band together, survived..."

What about the violence Class War casually welcome?

"Well, they want a different society. It all depends on peoples' experiences, how much they understand. To a lot of people in secure parts of their life, the idea of London Class War is ridiculous, I s'pose. What you think of it depends on where you've been, what you've done."

Doesn't it appeal to your rebel instinct?

"Yeah, of course! All of that! It also appeals because it seems a bit of fun, far more fun than the average mind-blowingly boring record company exercise. All that stuff is pointless!"

How does this protest compare to what you were doing with The Clash? "I think it's more or less the same. It don't feel so different. One strange thing I notice, though, is that all the songs from The Clash time we're singing now are the covers The Clash used to do. It might seem like we're doing five or six old Clash songs, but if you listen carefully, it's all other peoples' songs that The Clash covered."

There's a pause while Joe fixes an awkward string. A big grin follows. "I dunno what that means, mind!"

ARE you still an idealist? Is this why you're doing this? Joe finds some home ground to answer. "Yeah, I'm not connected with the real world at all. When you read about, I dunno, Keynesian economics or supply and demand in The Guardian or Independent, I can't help thinking what I'm doing is just dancing round in a sandpit, really, compared to all that. We're mucking about in an animated cartoon. But that aside, I still think young people have got more of a decent idea of what the world should be like than old people. At least young people still have time to have ideals and visions, where old people have given up."

Is there something about you that makes you into a figurehead, leads to you being the focus for movements? Joe sighs. "Yeah, I suppose. But-being a figurehead? Most people run away from it, I suspect".

Do you enjoy it?

"No, not really. I want my figurehead to be somebody who's really...something, y'know? Someone special. If it's you that's being mistook for a figurehead, you can't help examining yourself and thinking, well, you don't deserve to be, y'know? That's what worries me about it."

You've hitched your wagon to a strange horse now, with this tour. It may work. But don't you think you're always moved by a vague sense of injustice, of unfairness, more than any concrete politics?

"Definitely. I don't know what to expect from this. I've really got no constructive scheme or plan at all, except this kind of numb feeling."

Has it always been like this? Weren't The Clash fired by more specific anger?

"Yeah, The Clash wanted to see if you could get to be absolutely Number One in the entire world and still have something to say. The answer to that one is no, far as I can see."

You've given your name to Class War now. Their newspapers are on sale at your gigs. In this one, there's a picture of a PC bleeding from the head, with the motto "Hospitalised Coppers: 17,000 Every Year. Ha Ha Ha!" Joe looks with interest. It's the first time he's seen it. "What I really think about the coppers is they've fing lorded it over everyone this last 30 or 40 years, thinking there'd be no comeback. To me, if you add up every person who's been fed over needlessly by a copper, it'd come to... 17 million! They think they can dish it out to allcomers and never get it back. I've got very little sympathy for anyone crying for the cops, cos the things I've seen just being in a rock'n'roll group are just horrible."

Do you share the Class War hatred of yuppies, the thoughtless monied? Do you hate Porsches and BMW's?

"I do feel it when I get that look from the driver of "Uuurgh! What's he doing in my universe? That kind of look, y'know? They really think they've done it and got it all sorted out, and Maggie's their patron saint. But the yuppie idea of a future ain't my idea of a future. Your safe car, and home, and job, and all the time rushing between the three-let's make people feel they can grow up and have some education, some interest in life! That's what counts!"

Have you been surprised how keenly the press have welcomed you back, this time round, doing your rebel thing? The reviews have glowed.

"You're not kidding! I must have been driving round town handing out fivers! But yeah you do think of it, when you contemplate having another go. First you think, you'll lose your voice. Then second you think, they'll slaughter me! But you've got to work hard, so that things are okay. I take notice of criticism, but not if it snaps all my will to continue." Are you really that vulnerable?

"Everybody is, I don't care what they say! Painters, sculptors...it's a vulnerable thing, standing up to recite your poem. It makes strong men quake. If you're down and you get a really vicious kicking, it can really top if off."

So we're here in The Irish Centre, doing Rock Against The Rich. You're not sure why. Is it really just kicking up a bit of mischief, stirring up some fun to see what comes out of it all?

"Yeah, really. I just want to stir something up. I don't even know what I'm doing, to be perfectly clear. But then who does, y'know?"

THE rain has stopped. On stage, Tapestry Skye have just blown through their rock noise and One Style are playing some neat reggae. They're two local bands happy for a small chance. More to the point is the number of folk piling into The Irish Centre. It's out of town, hard to get to, but it's not too far from full, eight or nine hundred people all unsure what to expect. On numbers, it's a big success.

Why they're here is different. There's no doubt Strummer is the big draw. A lot of people here want to hear "White Riot" again. It's amazing how many tell me in asides they know Joe's a "good bloke".

Knowledge of Class War is more patchy, but a few papers are changing hands. I'm told Joe's heart is in the right place, and "Rock Against The Rich" is a nice slogan. As with the best of Strummer, it touches a raw nerve. Irvine from Leeds and Andy from Huddersfield are here for "Nostalgia". The Rhythm Sisters just smile. Then Strummer's on stage. Rock Against The Rich can roll.

"I THINK people expect too much from me. There's a lot of pressure to live up to other people's expectations, be their 'leader' or something. It just can't be done. You end up letting someone down, then you get slagged off. After all, who am I? I'm just a bloke who plays the guitar-badly!" - Joe Strummer

THE Latino Rockabilly War is a good name. Strummer's recent South American musical direction has been noted, and tonight the band start up all taut, jerky Mexican rhythms. It sounds good, a bit like "Sandanista" tied nearer to hand. It's more than just dabbling. Other bits sound like Speedy Gonzales. But it's looking fine, Joe tensing and unwinding as the music unfurls round him. This is why people have come.

"I wonder if Big Audio Dynamite would mind if we kicked the shit out of one of their masterpieces?" he wonders. They break into "Viz" all urge and angles, then go off into "Sightsee MC". There again, him and Jones always were muckers. People are gathering with him, although they're not sure yet what for or where they're going. It just comes down to rock'n'roll, and he's their man.

"Nothing After Nothing" spits and stabs. The crowd warm a little. They're more at home with rock than Latin dabbling. Then the first surprise. Strummer tilts his head back and goes into "This Is England", the one rousing song from that crap comeback two years or so ago. People hop from foot to foot. Somehow, he manages to give it the life and glow of a three-year old, as fresh as the moment. It's not dated.

More covers turn up. "If I Should Fall From Grace With God" turns into a joyous twitch, Joe bawling into the mike like it's his dearest truth. This is his knack, it strikes you, why Class War are so lucky. Joe Strummer could play a benefit gig for the National Front like this and still make you come away believing in rock'n'roll. The Irish Centre are happy, locked in this very human, very rock moment. All eyes are on him, his hands, his guitar. This is how he makes sense.

"Police And Thieves" gets the night's first cheer. People are looking for the history, for what they know. But every corner is bobbing and rocking. "Love Of The Common People" gets less sure reaction, even altered by all Strummer's twists and tensions. "What's Joe Strummer doing singing this?" someone in front of me complains. Old habits die hard, after all. "Bank Robber" is meek and mild, yet the whole place rises with him keen not to lose touch with what's unfolding.

Then it's nostalgia city. The first bars of "I Fought The Law" fire out, pungent and potent, and suddenly a rash of pogoing breaks out. Welsh Ray, the poor ongoing compere, is drenched in phlegm. Joe makes his noise, lost in the rush of guitar, back at the centre of what he feels sure doing. Class War has vanished from all minds for a second, as have The Rich. This is fun.

"Go Straight To Hell" Joe drawls, the gun for hire with his cockeyed, hopeful tilt at things. It's the song maybe nearest to the Cause, a stark, plain tale of Us getting stuffed by Them, power controlling. It's well chosen, not least because, like Class War, you see the truth under the rhetoric and words. He's making rock do a lot. And if it's a fiction, this crowd is more than ready to believe in it, in him. By now he's firing.

So he goes, and comes back, and goes and comes back, and there's only one way to finish. "London Calling" echoes through the years and makes a new sense, Joe spitting it into the mike like he wrote it furiously backstage 10 minutes ago and wants to try it out. The band are there as well, raw and ready. The noise the crowd make swells up, up and on. By the end, he's tired, drained, and can just hold up one hand in thanks. He's drowned in warmth and worship. Really. Revolutions are made of less.

PEOPLE file out. The Irish Centre is empty. Roadies start taking the stage apart. Backstage, Joe is pale and sweating by a pile of "Class War" papers.

"Tonight was like trying to get hold of a slippery ball, yeah? Really hard. You try and get a grip and it keeps slipping away from you." He signs and looks pleased.

"Better get back to London now."

There's a long way to go. The tour is off to a rocket of a start.

Word Count 3,842

JOE STRUMMER fits back in action this summer with plans for a new album and a British tour for an organisation called Rock Against The Rich.

At the moment, however, Strummer is doing battle with Epic Records over their decision to hold back the release of his latest soundtrack album so far this year.

Strummer, currently in the singles chart with The Clash’s “I Fought The Law”, has written most of the soundtrack for the movie “Permanent Record” which deals with teenage suicide. Made in LA, director Marisa Silver’s first feature film includes a cameo appearance from Lou Reed who also supplied the track “Something Happened.”

The film and album are out in America next month. But the release date for the film in this country is April 1989 — and Epic are refusing to put the soundtrack out before that, which means that many fans will be tempted to pay high prices for import copies.

Strummer reflected on the delay: “I’m going to pressure Epic to release the album earlier over here. I want to avoid the import copies and all that stuff. The album is out now. It’s not for next month or next year. The problem here is the ineffective film distribution network. I don’t see why we shouldn’t have films here as soon as they come out in America.”

An Epic executive who supports Strummer’s campaign said: “I personally think that the record should come out now, because it’s current. You don’t shelve an album for a year. Films can wait for a year, but albums I don’t think can. Now it’s matter of pressuring the powers that be at Epic, convincing them that the album should be released as soon after the end of April this year as possible.”

Strummer, who describes his contributions to the album as “all rock”, wrote material especially for the film. Tracks are “Trash City”, “Louisiana Turnpike”, “Nefertiti Rock”, “Nameless”, “Cholo Vest”, “Plymouth Roadrunner”, “Baby The Trans”, “Outta Space”, “Nothin’ ‘Bout Nothin’”, “Detour”, “Japanese Cars And Mexican Beers”, “Search Party” and the “Permanent Record” theme.

Strummer plays rhythm guitar and also sings on “Trash City”, “Nefertiti Rock”, “Cholo Vest”, “Baby The Trans” and “Nothin’ ‘Bout Nothin’”. Lisa Siligh Raven — the receptionist at the recording studio — takes lead vocal on “Louisiana Turnpike”. The remaining tracks are instrumentals.

Recording under the name of Joe Strummer And The Latino-Rockabilly War, the soundtrack band came together in LA. The line-up comprises Strummer, The Circle Jerks’ Zander Schloss (lead guitar), LA jazz fusion musician Jim Donica (bass), The Untouchables’ Willie McNeil (drums), Tupelo Joe Altruda, Tupelo Chain Sex (jazz guitar), and Ramon Banda (timbales) and Poncho Sanchez (congas) from The Poncho Sanchez Octet, one of Los Angeles’ leading Latino jazz bands.

Strummer became involved with the “Permanent Record” while touring America with The Pogues last December:

“Somebody from Paramount Pictures had heard the ‘Walker’ soundtrack and he said to me ‘You’ve gotta come and work in this film’. I was exhausted from doing ‘Walker’ and being unexpectedly asked to do The Pogues, but reluctantly I went along and when I saw the film, I thought it was really good. I agreed to do the soundtrack, and I went straight back to America and wrote the stuff in about two weeks. We recorded it and did the overdubs in a week, and it took another four or five days to mix it.”

Strummer, meanwhile, is putting a band together to “make a rock record outside of the film world.” The format of the band is secret for the time being, although Strummer did comment: “I’m looking for a man with a beard.”

He goes on a British tour in August for Rock Against The Rich, campaigning against the big-money men who are forcing venues all over the country to close down, unable to meet soaring costs or survive take-overs. A one-off date is scheduled prior to the tour in May, at the Hackney Empire, which is currently raising funds for essential restoration work.

Strummer, who’s doing the tour for express only, said: “I’m doing this tour for myself. I can’t pick up the guitar if I’m on an ego trip. I didn’t pick up on guitar to be some commercial bastard. I believe in rock’n’roll. I believe it speaks beyond commercial limits."

“I believe that a limit should be put on these property developers. They’re driving people out of the city centres. There ain’t no place for rock’n’roll. The Marquee is being driven out of the city centre. And someone’s gotta protect the people who can’t afford all these ridiculous prices on their own. There’s gotta be a stop to it. Free enterprise is all right, but I prefer it when you run the street vendors off the streets. And how can your freshly married couple afford a house?”

Looking further ahead, Strummer said: “I’ll tackle the next live from soundtrack. I have so much work on offer in Hollywood, but I prefer to work with the British film industry, but I don’t have any offers from the British end. There’s a lot of work in America. But, at the moment, I’m more interested in recording my own record.”

ARE YOU READY TO ROCK?

At a time when rock music and its surrounding cults and causes are about as threatening as a bowl of marshmallows, Class War has initiated ROCK AGAINST THE RICH in a concerted attempt to put class politics back onto the political agenda—using music as a weapon.

Of course, the idea of using music to bring people together under one roof and pass on ideas is not new. However, protest in musical terms now means little more than a tally-ho collection of former tax exiles regurgitating rhetoric about injustices in some far-off land. And, with the exception of Live Aid, the majority of working-class people have shown little interest.

Unfortunately, the overall political situation is even less inspiring. While the Tory government calls all the shots, the "opposition" is permanently on the defensive. 

With a Labour Party that put the dead into deadwood—packed with more yuppies than a Sloane Square knees-up—and the rest of "the left" proving as relevant as caviar at a miners’ gala, the prospects of credible opposition to Thatcherism seem paper-thin.

Yet from this despair, something utterly ruthless has arisen. Something beyond parliamentary politics... Yes! It’s ROCK AGAINST THE RICH!

We want to take politics back to the grassroots—to the nitty-gritty, to people facing daily struggles. We’re organizing benefits for communities and fighters, not some token leftist gesture. Whether it’s for those robbing coal trains in South Wales or resisting urban destruction by developers and yuppie plagues, R.A.R. will raise money, amplify voices, and plan offensives.

The ultimate impact? NATIONAL ANTI-YUPPIE DAY—Saturday 10th September.

The time to seize control of our lives, communities, and workplaces—and to hunt down our class enemies—is now.

ARE YOU READY TO ROCK?!

The Message Spreads...

CLASS WAR would like to thank all the bands who have offered their services to ROCK AGAINST THE RICH.

We do not have space to list them all, but the response has been extremely encouraging. As well as the National Tour gigs have already been held in many parts of the country.

RAR

The first ever ROCK AGAINST THE RICH gig was in Ayr in Scotland. It was organised by a band called Blam Blam YC who are the support band in Glasgow. The gig there featured The Cataran, Blam Blam YC, the Wilderness Children (support at Aberdeen), Hee Haw, the Flat Stanley, the Salt Cellar, Southern Approach and Memphis Hipshake.

The Welsh band, Anhrefn, as well as being support at Derby, have also organised a RAR benefit in Cafnewydd (Newport) on 4th August, featuring themselves, Cowboy Killers, Heb Gariad and Ffa Coffi Bawb. The venue is T J’s Disco.

Anhrefn are also headlining at a London Class War organised gig at the Tunnel Club on Friday 27th July, supported by Mega City 4 and the Signon Valley Rangers. The week before, on 22nd July, the same venue also hosts a RAR benefit with Culture Shock and Botacco.

A South London band called the Dispossessed have organised a concert on 2nd July in Lewisham featuring themselves and Beethoven.

There have also been gigs in Dover (the Cropdusters, the Four Guns and the Birdhouse) plus, of course, the two Joe Strummer gigs in London; the first in Brixton where the support was provided by One Style and Spartacus R, and the second in Camden with World Domination Enterprises and Chelsea.

Cancelled

On the negative side, we have also suffered a number of cancellations. The most major one is the 12th August date in Dundee Caird Hall. Unfortunately the venue is run by the local council, who are obviously worried about what impact RAR will have in their city, and have banned the Rock Against the Rich concert. However, we have managed to book an alternative concert in Aberdeen on the same night. See elsewhere for details.

Hackney

This cancellation is not too dissimilar from the trouble we had trying to put Joe Strummer on at the Hackney Empire in East London in May. We were told that the venue was “not suitable” for the likes of Strummer because of the expected noise levels. However, surprise, surprise, the Green Wedge organisation managed to put on a benefit there on 3rd July featuring…Joe Strummer. odd that, isn’t it? We wonder whether this is due to Class War promising some of the proceeds to squatters who had only recently been evicted by Hackney Council…who of course fund the Hackney Empire…!

Isle of Dogs

And last of all, a minor set back in the Isle of Dogs, East London, where a free all-day Rock Against the London Docklands Development Corporation gig had been organised for the 9th July at a community city farm. Unfortunately the management committee who run the farm decided to pull out at the last moment following—we think—pressure from the LDDC who threatened their grant.

Still, after all this, ROCK AGAINST THE RICH is still spreading.

We still have a lot of bands who’ve offered to play RAR gigs who have yet to be given a chance to play. If you want to organise a gig in your town then drop us a line as soon as possible and we’ll put you in touch with local bands.

TOUR '88 Featuring

JOE STRUMMER AND THE LATINO ROCKABILLY WAR
ONE STYLE*, PLUS SUPPORT

JULY

• 13th LEEDS – Irish Centre (with Tapestry Sky)
  

• 14th DERBY – Cofettis (with Anhrefn)
  

• 15th LIVERPOOL – Royal Court (with The La's)
  

• 16th DONCASTER – Brodsworth Miners Welfare (with The Way)
  

• 17th SHEFFIELD – Leadmill (with Western Promise)
  

• 18th BRISTOL – Bierkeller (with The Family)
  

• 19th MERTHYR TYDFIL – Dollars Night Club (with Foreign Legion)
  

• 21st EXETER – St. George's Hall (with Vibe Tribe)
  

• 23rd POOLE – Arts Centre (with The Cropdusters)
  

• 24th SOUTHAMPTON – Mayfair (with Flik Spatula)
  

• 25th BRIGHTON – Concord (with The Four Guns)
  

• 26th BRIGHTON – Concord (with 5 Star Rock&Roll Petrol)
  

• 28th SWANSEA – Marina Night Spot (with Ray Moses)
  

AUGUST

• 1st NORTHAMPTON – Roadmender Centre (with Magnolia Siege)
  

• 2nd BIRMINGHAM – Powerhouse (with Kiev Exocet)
  

• 3rd NOTTINGHAM – Rock City (with The Counting House)
  

• 5th MANCHESTER – International 2 (with Bradford)
  

• [Date missing] BRADFORD – Palm Cove Club (with Dhanak)
  

• 7th GLASGOW – Barrowlands (with Blam Blam Y C)
  

• 9th HULL – The Tower (with Death By Milkfloat)
  

• 10th NEWCASTLE – Mayfair (with The Magic Bastards)
  

• 11th EDINBURGH – Coasters (with Oi Polloi)
  

• 12th ABERDEEN – Northern Hotel (with The Wilderness Children and The Pink Death)
  

IT’S COMPETITION TIME !

As most regular "Class War" readers will know, Saturday 10th September has been declared "National Anti-Yuppie Day" We expect a massive response across the country. However, it is likely that most of what occurs will be conveniently "overlooked" by the press so that people think it's a flop. Therefore we are asking YOU, our readers to tell us what is going on in your area.

We want YOU to write a story about anti-yuppie activity where you live, and the best one will earn you a special ROCK AGAINST THE RICH prize, of: a fabulous RAR Tour'88 t-shirt, a copy of Joe Strummer's latest single "Trash City", and a year's free subscription to CLASS WAR. Send you entries by September 30th to: CLASS WAR, P O BOX 467, LONDON E8 3QX.

STRUMMER SPEAKS

Some people would say that it would be pretty hard to find somebody more suited to heading a Rock Against the Rich tour than Joe Strummer. 

As frontman for The Clash, the songs he wrote and sang back in 1977 are probably more relevant now than ever before. 

"White Riot" could easily have been written about the 'rural riots' that have been erupting around the country over the past year or so. 

"Career Opportunities" just about sums up the plight of the youth of the eighties; forced into crappy, low paid jobs and training schemes by Social Security cuts.

Rich

Some people have pointed out that Strummer is hardly a pauper, so what's he doing Rocking Against the Rich? 

However, in this nice capitalist society of ours it's near impossible to become a well known musician WITHOUT making some money! It's the rich record company bosses who make a fortune doing bugger all who are the real parasites.

There have also been a fair number of complaints about how Joe has "sold out" since '77. 

"Yeah, I probably have," he told a Class War reporter. "But then I think people expect too much from me. There is a lot of pressure to live up to other peoples' expectations, to be their 'leader' or something. It just can't be done. You always end up letting someone down and then you get slagged off. 

After all, who am I? I'm just a bloke who plays the guitar - badly! - Why do they expect me to know everything, to be their 'leader'? Nobody asks tennis players what they think about this and that, so why expect me to know all the answers?"

Leaders

This is true. Class War have always decried anyone who puts their faith in 'leaders', whether they be self-appointed spokespersons for the working class, or 'radical' rock musicians. They will always sell out in the end, however good their intentions may be, because 'the System' always manages to either suck them back in, or make them totally ineffective. Capitalism is stronger than any individual leader, and the only way we can ever hope to change anything is by acting collectively, without relying upon any figureheads.

Punk

The trouble with the punk movement from which The Clash emerged, was that it was mainly about clothes and music. "The politics was all a load of rhetoric," says Joe. "There was nothing concrete behind it, no action or anything. 

Everybody thought that wearing certain clothes and playing punk music would change the world, but it didn't." 

And it never can. The system will always try and cash in on any movement that is based upon 'cultural' things like music.

"In '77, all the record companies were fighting each other to sign up every punk band going. In the end, most people ended up being more interested in being rich and famous than changing anything."

Joe hasn't exactly received brilliant coverage from the press for his involvement with Class War and Rock Against the Rich. 

"They're scared that their cushy, middle-class jobs might be at risk. They can handle stuff like Mandela or Amnesty, because it's about things going on in faraway places. None of these things are about people trying to change things here."

Class War

Most of the journalists who have interviewed him - including those in the music press - have tried to imply that Joe is naive or ignorant about Class War's politics. However, he's no fool. 

He told us: "These people (Class War supporters) have been coming to my gigs for years. I know what they're into. I just wanna do something for them now."

He says the tour should provide a platform for people who are trying to do something positive, "fighting back, standing up for themselves and that. I hope it'll encourage more people to do likewise." 

On the music front he thinks it'll give a chance to some of the many good bands around the country to get heard who don't usually get a chance "because they don't make songs like George Michael."

"The record bosses control virtually everything that gets played. I want people to see Rock Against the Rich and realise that they can play what they want and not what they're told to."

Guttersnipes

Back in the seventies, even before Thatcher came to power, Joe Strummer sang about the rich: "They think they're so clever. They think they're so right. But the truth is only known by guttersnipes." 

And in "White Riot": "All the power in the hands of the people rich enough to buy it. While we walk the streets too chicken to even try it."

If Rock Against the Rich is about anything, it's about us - the guttersnipes - showing that from now on, WE AIN'T TOO CHICKEN TO TRY IT!

R.A.R. BADGES

NOW AVAILABLE............

ROCK AGAINST THE RICH BADGES, one inch diameter, black logo on white background. Send 25p per badge plus SAE to LONDON CLASS WAR, PO Box 467, London E8 3QX.

R.A.R. BENEFIT SINGLE

Welsh band ANHREFN are bringing out a ROCK AGAINST THE RICH benefit single on 1st Aug. Side 1: "Be Nesa '89" (What Next '89); Side 2: "Bach Dy Ben" (Cocky Little Twat). Cost is £1.00 from: ANHREFN, Onllwyn, Maesincla, Caernarfon, Gwynedd LL55 1BT. BUY IT NOW!