What happened to Anarchy?In the late 1970s and early 80s anarchy was on people's lips, minds and jackets. Why? And what happened to it?
Almost 50 years on and the Sex Pistols’ debut single, Anarchy in the UK is still such a provocative and dangerous sounding title for a song. Coming of age in the late 70s, the uncompromising concept of punk in general, and anarchy in particular, was a beguiling one and it hit like the proverbial safety pin straight through the un-numbed cheek. As a naive 12-year-old I’m pretty sure I’d never heard the word ‘anarchy’ before. The prospect of anarchy was made even more attractive by its employment of a simple but imposing symbol, a capital ‘A’ encased within a circle. Easy to create by even the most dextrously challenged, it was born to adorn the jackets of a new generation of energised, disaffected youth.
Nowadays, the word has a double meaning: anarchy as an apolitical statement of belief or, anarchy as a form of insult: The two groups of football hooligans were attacking each other, it was total anarchy? I’d argue the latter use of the term as a synonym for disorder or chaos has only crossed over into the common lexicon since The Sex Pistols popularised it. The word is derived from two ancient Greek words av (an), apxn (arkhe), and taken literally means, ‘absence of authority or government.
Anarchy, by its very nature, is subjective and ambiguous at best. It’s virtually impossible to define in one paragraph, but I’ll try: Anarchism is an apolitical philosophy/movement that rejects all forms of authority, seeking to abolish the institutions that maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, namely the state, church and capitalism. Alternatively, stressing the priority of individual judgment, and the belief that there is no authority but yourself.
A mistaken or, more often, deliberately inaccurate interpretation alleges that the libertarian concept means the absence of organisation. This is false: it is not a matter of’organisation’ or ‘non-organisation, but of two different principles of organisation. Of course, say anarchists, society must be organised. However, the new organisation ‘must be established freely, socially, and, above all, from below’. Voline, Russian 20th century anarchist.
The roots of Anarchism are difficult to put into a historical timeline and it’s almost futile to try and pin it down. On the one hand, there is documentation of a fully formed movement originating from 19th-century class conflict. On the flipside, it’s open to propose that those anarchist virtues can be traced back as far as the Neanderthal period. There are elements of anarchism to be found in 60s hippie counter-culture, that I will come to later, but in my own experience, and for the purpose of this article, the gateway to anarchy was opened by The Sex Pistols in November 1976.
Undoubtedly Rotten wrote the lyrics to Anarchy in the UK, but I’d wager (for all the misgivings surrounding him) that Malcolm McLaren planted the initial seed. Along with his collaborators, Vivienne Westwood and Jamie Reid, McLaren was a committed follower of Situationist International, a radical movement steeped in anarchist doctrine. Formed in 1957, it was notorious for its involvement with the Paris riots of 1968. The Situationists believed that modern capitalism cultivated nothing but frustration and discontent and that human fulfilment could be achieved by finding alternatives to capitalist society. They proposed ‘the construction of situations’, utilising avant-garde art, psychogeography and urbanism. To quote French Situationist philosopher, Guy Debord, ‘The world we see is not the real world but the world we are conditioned to see, and the Situationist agenda is to explain how the nightmare works so that everyone can wake up.’
I’m not taking anything away from the band’s raw prowess and originality, but McLaren plundered this Situationist rhetoric and sloganeering to help create The Sex Pistols’ identity. There is no denying the significance of Anarchy in the UK, it brought the idea to the masses, both to the kids that dug it, and the parents and authority figures that felt threatened by it. Nevertheless, it’s fair to say that for various reasons, that I don’t have the column space to go into, despite all their notoriety The Sex Pistols stopped short of taking the ideology to its natural conclusion. Instead, they opted to just play with the edgy romanticism of the subject matter. It’s debatable as to whether they really… meant it, man!
There is some blurred crossover with the timeline, but around the demise of The Sex Pistols, a band appeared on the radar that fully embraced the ideology of anarchism. That band was Crass. If you thought The Sex Pistols, The Clash and Buzzcocks created a moral panic, Crass upped the ante tenfold. Widely regarded as part of the second wave of punk, they were relentless and shocking in every aspect of their approach; the music was harder, faster and more distorted, the lyrics wordy and intelligent.
By 1980, Crass were the Anarcho-Superspreaders. They practised what they preached, lived in a shared commune with an ‘open door’ policy and grew their own vegetables. As an act of autonomy, all band members and associates dressed head to toe in black. Crass possessed an unwavering DIY ethic. They denounced the system and advocated for anarchy and peace at every available opportunity. From my point of view, the majonty of their contemporaries paled in comparison. For example, The Exploited were little more than a cartoonisn caricature of punk thuggery, more ‘Smash The Cistern’ than ‘Smash The System’.
Despite what Malcolm McLaren said about never trusting hippies, it’s hard to dispute that bands like Crass, Flux Of Pink Indians and The Subhumans brought some of the core messages from the 60s counter-culture forward into anarcho-punk. Almost as if the outdated, hippy lifestyle reinvented itself for a new audience.
Things got serious. Never mind the prog rockers, Crass threw a spotlight on the first wave of punk and exposed all the holes. For confirmation of that, listen to, Punk Is Dead from, The Feeding Of The 5000, recorded in October 1978:
Yes that’s right, punk is dead,
It’s just another cheap product for the consumer’s head.
Bubblegum rock on pastic transistors,
Schoolboy sedition backed by big time promoters.
CBS promote The Clash,
But it ain’t for revolution, it’s just for cash.
Punk became a fashion just like hippy used to be
And it ain’t got a thing to do with you or me.
Movements are systems and systems kill
Movements are expressions of the public will.
Punk became a movement ’cause we all felt lost,
But the leaders sold out and now we all pay the cost.
Punk narcissism was social napalm,
Steve Jones started doing real harm.
Preaching revolution, anarchy and change
As he sucked from the system that had given him his name.
Well I’m tired of staring through shit stained glass,
Tired of staring up a superstars arse,
I’ve got an arse and crap and a name,
I’m just waiting for my 15 minutes fame.
Steve Jones you’re napalm,
If you’re so pretty (vacant) why do you swarm?
Patti Smith you’re napalm,
You write with your hand but it’s Rimbaud’s arm.
And me, yes I, do I want to burn?
Is there something I can lear?
Do I need a businessman to promote my angle?
Can I resist the carts that fame and fortune dangle?
I see the velvet zippies in their bondage gear,
The social elite with safety pins in their ear,
I watch and understand that it don’t mean a thing,
The scorpions might attack, but the systems stole the sting.
PUNK IS DEAD PUNK IS DEAD. PUNK IS DEAD.
Previously regarded as cutting edge, neon/punk/new-wave, colour was stripped out in favour of a stark, monochrome aesthetic. The record sleeves were instruction manuals for how to live alternatively. They folded out and were chock full of information. This was about the exchange of ideas, building self-confidence and providing a sense of community and tribe.
Crass were active from 1978 to 1984 and gave a generation of kids the tools to change their own little bit of the world. The notion to think globally, but act locally, was presented to highly impressionable youngsters spending their pocket money on records that were unashamedly and purposely cheap. These kids were unlikely to encounter such ideas elsewhere. I’m not suggesting anarcho-punk bands invented CND, Greenpeace, Hunt Saboteurs or the Vegetarian Society, but it is undeniable they created an environment where these types of organisations could grow. They shaped a ready-made audience that was now informed, inspired and primed for activism It really did make you stop and think. These bands had a tangible influence on the campaigns and protests against Clause 28, the poll tax, the Criminal Justice Act, Stop the City… Modern movements such as Antifa, Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil are all directly linked to that lineage of protest and resistance, ‘anarchy’ not just in theory, but also in practice.
It’s hard to argue that the principles of anarchism are not flawed. The closest example, that I am aware of, of real anarchism would be Freetown-Christiania in Copenhagen, Denmark. An intentional community based at a former squatted military barracks, Badsmandsstrade and parts of the city operated under an anarchist consensus democracy. Over the years, this seeming idyll has been marred by drug and gang-related crime, although probably no more so than in conventional societies. And while anarchism might be flawed, so are the rest of the world’s current societies, often to a much more damaging extent. Other examples of anarchist living in action are Kopi in Berlin, an autonomous housing project and self-managed social centre run by anarchists, punks and anti-capitalist squatted in 1990 and then legalised in 1991. On a smaller scale, the 1 in 12 Club in Bradford has existed for over four decades. Owned and run by its membership as a collective, it’s based on anarchist principles of self-management, mutual aid and co-operation, is a social centre and hosts performing arts.
The ideology I was exposed to at a young age has distilled down and influenced my world view and general outlook. Admittedly, there’s an inherent danger that questioning authority can spiral into conspiracy theorising – as seen in recent years with the threat of Covid being branded by some ‘free thinkers’ as a social construct.
In summary, the John Lennon line, ‘You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one’ springs to mind. For all its failings and contradictions, anarchy has had a positive, lasting impact on my lite. I’m an idealist, which I’d like to think is an admirable quality. I’m happy to be regarded as a liberal-minded, creative, vegan pacifist that abhors all forms of tyranny and oppression, and that’s thanks to discovering Crass as an adolescent.
The hippies now wear black.