I was clearing out some old papers yesterday. I am the worlds worst horder, and I found a box of very old lyrics from the earliest days of the band, back in very early 1979. Back then, like today, there was politlcal chaos, the country seemed as if it was literally falling apart. I was a sixteen year old at Orange Hill School and I'd just formed the False Dots with Pete Conway. We were obsessed with Punk and bands like Crass, anarchists who believed that the whole system was rotten. They were a brilliant live band, one of the best I've seen and many of their political messages resonated with me (many still do "Fight war not wars" being the best example). When we started the band, we wrote "The False Dots manifeso" which was directly influenced by Crass. The songs we wrote were like very bad Crass songs. I think our hearts were in the right place, but our musical abilities were very limited and in truth trying to sound like Crass was very much a dead end for us. By the end of 1979, our tastes and talents had moved on. We binned all of the overtly political songs and started again.
I was a sixteen year old at Orange Hill School when the band started. My knowledge of the world, politics and life was shaped by punk rock attitudes, Rock Against Racism and The Anti Nazi League. Incidents like when we reacted badly to Eric Claptons racist comments, that launched Rock Against Racism shaped our mindset. Clapton had been known as "God" by Hippies in the 1960s, but to quote Monty Python, he wasn't the messiah, he was a very naughty boy. We decided that we'd never want to be like him (I still don't). The Callaghan government of the day was useless, we had the winter of discontent. Thatcher seemed like a malignant demon, set to rip apart society and put us paupers in our place. She talked of smashing union power. To us, Unions represented the people. Do you really want to smash your own people? was the obvious question for me. She talked of privatisation. That was taking things owned by the people and giving it to profiteers which just seemed plain wrong headed and still does. Her manifesto said "We need more compulsory attendance centres for hooligans at junior and senior levels. In certain detention centres we will experiment with a tougher regime as a short, sharp shock for young criminals.". As Punks, this seemed aimed at us. The term hooligan was one that had all manner of connotations at the time. We took it to mean people that Thatcher didn't like the look of.
Having written the False Dots manifesto, we wrote a song that encapsulated it. The song was simply called "Wrong". It was one of the songs we abandoned at the end of the year. It has sat in a box ever since. Unused and unloved. Until yesterday. I read it, with the benefit of fourty five years distance. I was transported back to 1979 and the death of the Callaghan government and the rise of Thatcherism. And reading it, I had to ask myself "Who was wrong"? In many ways, 2024 mirrors, but reverses the scene in 1979. An encumbant government that has all but collapsed and run out of energy, up against an alternative that offers little hope for young people. The big difference between Starmer and Thatcher is that Thatcher was shouting from the rafters what she wanted to do. Starmer has nothing to say at all. Does he plan a Thatcher style dismantling of the Tory legacy of the last fourteen years? To be honest, the more I look at it, the less legacy there is to dismantle. We just need things to start working properly. Maybe what we need is an unabitious, competent manager? Maybe a Thatcher style bonfire of the last 20 years will finish us off.
One big difference between now and then is the access to information. There was no internet and only three TV channels. People got news from the papers. You read the papers that reflected your views. In my house, my Tory Dad read The Daily Express and my Socialist Mum read The Guardian. I read both. I was always struck by how two different, supposed honest papers could present news about things in such different ways. In truth, I preferred the populist, less wordy approach of the Daily Express, with it's comic strips such as James Bond and Jeff Hawke and snappy football coverage. I tended to agree more with the Guardian, but being dyslexic, found the wordy style a bit offputting. I perservered and still get both. One day, I sat down with Pete Conway to write new songs. We started comparing stories in the Express and The Guardian and noticed the difference. The Express was demonising 'lefty unions'. The Guardian was sympathetic to downtrodden workers. But it was clear that neither side was telling the whole story. We speculated as to what the ordinary man could possibly make of it all. The first verse of Wrong summed up our view of this truth deficit.
Bear in mind, Pete and I were sixteen. The song is about the attitude of authority and power to ordinary people. They hide the truth from us, spin stories and tug on our heart strings. The Tories rely on our personal greediness to win votes, Labour rely on exploiting our good nature, Reform scare us with tales of the tiny percentage of immigrants who are not nice, The Lib Dems leap into lakes full of shit to catch our attention. But no one is saying "As a nation, we are fucked unless we spend a lot more money on health, social care, roads, railways, education and the environment. All of this lying has lead us to a situation where we rely on other countries for electricity and food. There has been more debate about whether women can have penis's in this campaign than how we can ensure the elderly members of society are safe and secure. Who decided that we'd ignore the fundamental problems facing the UK? In 1979, we had really limited channels of information. Now we are deluged. In some ways, we get less now, because it is so much easier to live in an echo chamber.
It is imperative that we all vote. I will be crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. I may sound very despondent about the choice. The truth is that I do have hope, but I am prepared for it to be shattered. Whatever comes next must be better than the last few years, mustn't it?
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The False Dots are playing at 5pm at Fortune Green Park in West Hampstead this Saturday for the 50th Annual Jestefest.
If you need a pick me up, come down for a party!
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