<\/p>\n
FLUSHING THE SYSTEM<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2018Your life\u2019s reduced to nothing but an empty media game \/ Big Brother ain\u2019t watching you, mate, you\u2019re fucking watching him.\u2019 <\/em> The conflict that played out across the desolate streets of places such as Brixton, Toxteth, and Handsworth was political \u2013 Thatcher increasingly viewed the police as a means of achieving her objectives (a tactic that would reach its vertex with the Miners\u2019 Strike) and by physically opposing the agents of her ideology, those standing in opposition made clear their rejection of Thatcherism. Back at Dial House, this dynamic did not go unnoticed and several of the tracks that would appear on Christ explored the manner in which the individual is subject to media coercion. Most self-evidently, Penny Rimbaud\u2019s unwittingly prescient \u2018Nineteen Eighty-Bore\u2019 conflated advertising with apparent reportage to expose the media\u2019s predilection for obfuscating facts and burying issues under layers of trivia; \u2018And wasn\u2019t the Holocaust terrible, good thing it wasn\u2019t for real \/ Of course I\u2019ve heard of H-Block, it\u2019s the baccy with man appeal\u2019. Similarly, the relentless pounding nature of the backing, not only served to demonstrate how far Crass were removed from the kind of punk orthodoxy that they hadn\u2019t subscribed to in the first place, but also acted as a concrete metaphor for the insistent nature of the media.<\/p>\n \u2018Beg Your Pardon;\u2019 covers similar territory, aiming disgust squarely at those responsible for peddling lies and false promises, whereas \u2018Reality Whitewash\u2019 explores the role played by the media in reinforcing established gender roles. \u2018You Can Be Who?\u2019 digs deeper, examining the theme of media influence into the individual and collective psyche and finding it to be an illusion \u2013 the track\u2019s final verse being wholly indicative of Crass\u2019 awareness of the increasingly desperate need for opposition and alternatives. Finally, Annie Anxiety\u2019s \u2018Buy Now Pay As You Go\u2019 fixes Christ The Album at its historical point along the previously mentioned line by laying down a marker at the instant where state conditioned consumerism really kicked in; \u2018Work thirty years with one foot in the grave, possession junkie, consumer slave \/ If money buys freedom it\u2019s already spent, your object\u2019s the subject of my contempt\u2019. Similarly, \u2018The Greatest Working Class Rip Off\u2019 and \u2018Rival Tribal Revel Rebel (Part Two)\u2019 set their sights on the burgeoning \u2018Oi\u2019 and \u2018street punk\u2019 subgenres. Entirely predicated upon destructive negativity, these scenes attracted the kind of lagered-up boot boys canonised in Garry Bushell\u2019s weekly Sounds pieces. As became evident in Southall on 4 July 1981, when a concert by three \u2018Oi\u2019 bands resulted in a pitched battle between skinheads and local Asian youths, nurturing such negativity quickly kicked open the doors marked \u2018aggression\u2019 and \u2018violence\u2019. The Exploited may have wanted to fuck the system (as well as \u2018A Mod\u2019 and Angela Rippon), but they didn\u2019t have the first idea what they were going to do in the unlikely event that they did happen to somehow fuck it.<\/p>\n Conceived as potentially being the band\u2019s final statement, Christ The Album clearly reinforces Crass\u2019 genuine desire for revolutionary change. Broadsides aimed at the system, war, church, family and state may have been the \u2018same old stuff\u2019, but these institutions remained as pernicious as ever. The album serves to underline one of Crass\u2019 core ideals \u2013 that there must be something better beyond the high walls and invasive searchlights of the system. What form this better life would take was left to the individual, with the original boxed set included a booklet that provided resources that would potentially assist this process. Although the booklet is not part of the remastered package, it will be made available to downloaded for free from crassarkive.com<\/a><\/p>\n
\nPenny Rimbaud<\/em><\/p>\n
\nIn the immediate wake of Penis Envy\u2019s release, Crass commenced work on what was to become Christ The Album, but by the late summer of 1981 the political stakes had \u2013 not for the last time \u2013 risen once again. As Margaret Thatcher upped the \u2018Law-and-Order\u2019 ante by enforcing a social crackdown predicated upon the application of subjective stop-and-search procedures, urban areas that had already felt the full force of her economic assault erupted in a summer of sporadic rioting. Aside from some minor cynical opportunism, these outbreaks of civil unrest represented a genuine attempt by communities to reclaim their environment, turning the previously academic concepts of \u2018us\u2019 and \u2018them\u2019 into a practical reality.<\/p>\n
\nIn addition to using the police as a political tool, the Prime Minister and her cabinet had become increasingly adept at manipulating a largely sycophantic media. In retrospect, the way in which the 1981 riots, or the H-Block hunger strikes were presented in the mainstream can be viewed as a significant point along a line that began with the media-friendly John F Kennedy overcoming a sweaty and unappealing Richard Nixon, and currently sees us beset by layers of state-sponsored \u2018spin\u2019, disinformation and scaremongering.<\/p>\n
\nIn addition to addressing the way in which the media in general was manipulated by those on the political new right, Christ dealt with specific instances of the music press being used to further other agendas. The opening track, \u2018Have A Nice Day\u2019 opens with an impassioned reading of Tony Parsons\u2019 hysterical attack on the band, taken from the NME. Although Rimbaud\u2019s lyric sets out a rational response to Parsons\u2019 hostility, the strategy of responding so directly to criticism from a journalist who few took seriously and subsequently became the subject of a Viz parody, was questionable as it could easily be interpreted as an unnecessary, reactionary response to subjective criticisms. \u2018Of course it got up our noses,\u2019 recalled Penny. \u2018Had people like Tony Parsons been a little more concerned with radical ideology and a little less infatuated with themselves, perhaps the scale of protest would have been even larger than it was. Regrettably, in whatever form it comes, the media does play a role in (de)forming social attitudes. Dismissing us as \u2018a joke\u2019 was designed to have the same negating effect as claiming that all Greenham women were little more than \u2018dangerous dykes\u2019.<\/p>\n