Ha! You've been Nobaconed!
New page, February 10 1998
(Evening Standard, February 10 1998)
There was no plan. The 1998 Brit Awards, huge industry schmooze, massive television audience. We'd heard Prescott - the British Deputy Prime Minister - had turned up, and so decided around an hour before we played to change the words to "Tubthumping". To have Dunst replacing "He sings the songs thatremind him of the better times..." with "New Labour sold out the dockers/Just like they'll sell out the rest of us". We wore shirts carrying industry buzz-words: SHIFT UNITS, LIMITED EDITION, that sort of thing. Dunst's shirt read "SOLD OUT". We were playing in front of a film displayed on a huge screen, a filmed collection of footage from riots, protests, football matches, raves, street parties.
All
suggestions of "doing a Jarvis" (the awards ceremony was livened
up in 1996 by Pulp's Jarvis Cocker crashing the stage during Michael Jackson's
hideous 'Jesus Amongst the Children' act) were refuted before the show;
we recognise our reputation for pulling stunts, and didn't want to act up
to order. We were doing interviews telling people that we were going to
play and leave. So. There was no plan.
That was before we saw Prescott hanging out at his £500-a-seat table near the front, clapping along to The Spice Girls and clocking up those Labour Party Cool Points. The words "champagne" and "socialist" come to mind, although "socialist" is stretching it a bit - since New Labour's instatement in government, they've managed to decimate every socialist ideal they could get their nice clean hands on. An end to free education; erosion of pensions; tacit approval of strike-breaking; penalisation of single mothers; the cutting of legal aid. New Labour have out-Toried the Tories.
We'd already spent part of the evening trying to get passes
for people outside who were protesting against the treatment of workers
by Polygram, a record company employing people at practically slave labour
rates in the UK. Security with bow-ties and red faces were scanning the
seated arena for any sign of trouble. Walkie-talkies were spitting and crackling.
Danbert and Alice decided to have a quiet word with Mr Prescott and his
party, bent on steering the conversation around to New Labour's despicable
treatment of the 500 sacked Liverpool dockworkers who had only a few days
earlier were forced to end their picket and accept a derisory pay-off.
The bucket of iced water at Prescott's feet was unfortunately too tempting. Taking his cue from the infamous custard-pie attacker in Belgium who had recently covered the visiting Bill Gates in yellow goo, Danbert carefully aimed the whole thing at our Great Leader's Understudy and, with the words "this is for the Liverpool dockers", poured the whole lot over his New Labour suit. His tie was ugly, anyway.
Danbert was immediately seized by security and led away by cops. Mass panic everywhere. Head plain-clothes cop seeing his Head Of Security promotion going down the drain. People laughing. Cops not knowing what to do. "What's your name? Who are you with?". John Prescott, of course, decided not to press charges (Danbert was formally charged with "Criminal Damage To Mr Prescott's Suit", then promptly 'de-charged') in order to avoid the debacle of a court case where the second-highest political figure in the country tries to sue someone for wetting his suit.
The next morning we wrote a press release to explain why the Deputy prime Minister had been "attacked".
"CHUMBAWAMBA POUR ICE-COLD WATER OVER THE IDEA THAT NEW LABOUR ARE ANY BETTER THAN THE OLD TORIES
"If John Prescott, Deputy PM and representative of the government, has the nerve to turn up at such events as the Brit Awards in a vain attempt to make Labour seem cool and trendy, then he deserves all we can throw at him.
"This wanton act of agit-prop is dedicated to single mothers, sacked dockworkers, people being forced into 'workfare', people who will be denied legal aid, students who will be denied the free education that the whole Labour front bench benefitted from, the homeless, and all of the underclass who are now suffering at the hands of the Labour government.
"Chumbawamba, 10/2/98"
A couple of things more. Firstly, some of the newspaper
reports describing the event quoted John Prescott's son as saying that "the
women at the table were terrified by this aggressive act... it was a cowardly
attack which terrified the women". (It didn't scare Prescott Minor,
of course, oh no, he's a big boy). What rubbish. Danbert not only made it
perfectly clear as to his reasons and target before the dousing, he also
made sure that his aim was true - by standing only inches away from John
Prescott. It wasn't some mad, random spraying.
Secondly, this band does not do what it does for "self-publicity" (one of John's ill-advised quotes). People who use direct action to make a point, to open up debate, to bring attention to a situation, don't do it to publicise themselves. People in Chumbawamba have always actively supported the idea of people taking action for themselves instead of relying on those in power to do everything for us via a visit to the ballot box every five years. Not just now, but long before we were in the band.
Thirdly: it was a good laugh. Ridiculing the fat cats in government is a good exercise in not having the required respect and adulation for people who take decisions which ruin people's lives. No-one got hurt. Everyone likes to see the school bully being tripped up, likes to deflate the po-faced egos at the top.
And lastly... being called "Utterly contemptible" by a man who has sideswiped whole sections of the population is, indeed, an honour. Thankyou John. See you at the cleaners.
splashing right back to
THE FIRST CHURCH OF CHUMBAWAMBA