This page updated October 18 1997
Here's the complete texts which were omitted from the booklet in the USA CD of Tubthumper. The quotes, dialogue and explanations printed below were taken out of the booklet at the behest of lawyers threatening "probable" libel action. Seems that absolute clearance was required for every quotation; For instance, the reprint of part of a talk by Tony Blair was deemed unacceptable unless we had written agreement from the speaker (Blair himself) to use this quote, in this context. Pathetic.
T U B T E X T S
TUBTHUMPING
"Tubthumping" is Shouting to Change The World (then having a drink to celebrate).It's stumbling home from your local bar, when the world is ready to be PUT RIGHT...
"Don't let my unseriousness make you think it isn't serious..." Phil, anti-road protestor; From The Observer, January 1997 +
"It is essential to be drunk all the time. That's all: there's no other problem. If you do not want to feel the appalling weight of Time which breaks your shoulders and bends you to the ground, get drunk, and drunk again. What with? Wine, poetry, or being good, please yourself. But get drunk. And if now and then, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass of a ditch, in the glum loneliness of your room, you come to, your drunken state abated or dissolved, ask the wind, ask the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, ask all that runs away, all that groans, all that wheels, all that sings, all that speaks, what time it is; and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, will tell you: 'It is time to get drunk!' If you do not want to be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk, always get drunk! With wine, with poetry or with being good. As you please." Charles Baudelaire, 1866 +
"I declare a permanent state of happiness" Grafitti, Paris 1968 +
"DRUNKENNESS, noun: A temporary but popular cure for Catholicism." Charles T Sprading +
"Knock hard, life is deaf." Mimi Parent +
Yorkshire TV Interviewer: "It's said that you're sick on stage, you spit at the audience and so on. I mean, how could this be a good example to children?" Malcolm McLaren: "People are sick everywhere. People are sick and tired of this country telling them what to do." YTV, 1976 +
"Don't let the bastards grind you down." Joseph Stilwell, translation of 'Illegitimati non carborundum' +
"In 1990 McDonalds sued two London Greenpeace activists, David Steele and Helen Morris, for distributing a leaflet critical of McDonalds. The two were denied both legal aid and a jury trial; and it was quickly revealed that McDonalds had used spies to collect information on them before the trial. The trial became the longest in British legal history. Despite the Judge ruling against the McLibel Two - but awarding McDonalds only a tiny fraction of their costs - the trial showed that two anarchists could take on one of the biggest capitalist corporations in the world and come out with the vast majority of public opinion on their side. This, in effect, was where the trial was won - as a showcase victory for the notion of People Against Profit." Sally Skull, 1997 +
"I'm a human being and I've got thoughts and secrets and bloody life inside me that he doesn't know is there, and he'll never know what's there because he's stupid. I suppose you'll laugh at this, me saying the governer's a stupid bastard when I know hardly how to write and he can read and write and add-up like a professor. But what I say is true right enough. He's stupid, and I'm not, because I can see further into the likes of him than he can see into the likes of me. Admitted, we're both cunning, but I'm more cunning and I'll win in the end even if I die in gaol at eighty-two, because I'll have more fun and fire out of my life than he'll ever got out of his." Alan Sillitoe, from 'Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner', 1959
AMNESIA
A change of Government is no guarantee of getting policies which put people before profit... as proved by the British Labour Party's past record. Short-term solution, long-term procrastination. +
"A dozen former ministers, from David Mellor to Douglas Hurd, have decided not to declare income from lucrative directorships in the first register of members' interests which requires MPs to disclose outside earnings. Roy Hattersley, the former Labour deputy leader, emerges as the top earner, receiving £104,300 from two contracts with the Mail on Sunday and The Guardian - in a guide to MPs' outside earnings. Others include Patrick Nicholls, Conservative MP for Teignbridge, who receives nearly £60,000 from his directorships, and Sir Dudley Smith, Conservative MP for Warwick and Leamington, who earns £45,000. Some 40 Conservative MPs and a handful of Labour MPs have not declared earnings. Journalism aside, the going rate appears to be between £15,000 and £25,000 for a banking consultancy and up to £10,000 for other work. Jack Cunningham, Labour's national heritage spokesman, earns up to £30,000 from three consultancies." Press report, 1996 +
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch" Anon +
'Michael Foot (Leader of the Opposition): "The Government must prove by deeds, not words." Edward Du Cann (Tory backbencher): "There are times in the affairs of our nation when the House should speak with a single, united voice. This is just such a time. The Leader of the Opposition spoke for us all." Press report, April 3rd 1983, the day after the start of the Falklands War. +
"I woke up at 6am and started working till 2am. I wanted everybody to do the same. I saw relaxing as a personal attack on the campaign. I started saying to people: 'You're not serious.' I started kissing babies and shaking every hand I could catch. I had no time to get stoned. I began to look at people as 'votes.' The people who were voting for me were the finest people who ever walked the earth. The people who weren't voting for me were my enemies. People were either pro-Rubin or anti-Rubin. I was never seen without my white shirt, long tie and new suit. On election night I was super confident. Then the votes started pouring in: Johnson. Rubin. Johnson. Johnson. My heart sank deeper. There was a 'Rubin' here and there but I was getting creamed. I finished second, 7385 votes, 22 per cent and won four precincts, all in the campus community. I got slaughtered in the hills and a few votes in the black community. I learned the hard way that you can't build a new community while scrounging for votes in elections. To succeed in electoral politics you must be dishonest." Jerry Rubin, from 'Do It!' +
"The punishment which the wise suffer, who refuse to take part in government, is to live under the government of worse men." Plato +
"Labour's unspoken election promise is that they can run capitalism for the rich better than the Conservatives can. New Labour portray themselves as a management team waiting to take over an ailing company. What we've got, and what we've always had, is two parties supporting the status quo. Our democracy is but a name. We vote. What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats; We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee." Helen Keller, 1911 letter to British suffragists +
"The struggles of the youth, already divided by the propagation of multi-culture, had also taken off in different directions. The trouncing the police received at the hands of the Afro-Caribbean youth at the Notting Hill Carnival (1976) had only led to a more sophisticated, mailed-fist velvet glove approach to policing. The tactic of using the media to legitimise the criminalisation of black youth, first begun under Police Commissioner Robert Mark, was continued by his successor, David McNee - only he, taking to heart his nickname 'The Hammer', now brought riot shields to the 'defence' of his force. And increasing police authoritarianism itself found legitimacy in the policies of a Labour government which, with an eye to the forthcoming elections, had begun to back-pedal on its anti-discriminatory programme (however ineffective) and rely on the forces of law and order to smother black discontent." A. Sivanandan, Race and Class, 1985
DRIP, DRIP, DRIP
Nobody chooses to live in slums - but some make a good living from renting them out. +
"The interest of the landlords is always opposed to the interest of every other class in the community." David Ricardo +
"Jack Linden lived in a small cottage in Windley. He had occupied this house ever since his marriage, over thirty years ago. His home and garden were his hobby: he was always doing something; painting, whitewashing, papering and so forth. The result was that although the house itself was not of much account he had managed to get it into very good order, and it was very clean and comfortable. Another result of this industry was that - seeing the improved appearance of the place - the landlord had on two occasions raised the rent. When Linden took the house the rent was five shillings a week. Five years after, it was raised to seven shillings, and after a lapse of another five years it had been increased to eight shillings. During his thirty years of tenancy he had paid altogether nearly £600 in rent, more than double the amount of the present value of the house." The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist, Robert Tressell +
"Landlords have no rights - they forfeit them by engaging in a criminal enterprise, for which seizure of dwellings by those who actually live in them, and complete discontinuance of paying "rents" are the only remedies." From 'Rent: An Injustice', Fred Woodworth +
"It's a typical fudge. (The new laws concerning strict controls on gas appliances) means landlords are ripping out gas fires so you have no heating at all. Or, if the tenant gets a fitter to put the gas fire back, then the landlord can say it's nothing to do with him. In that case you have the crazy situation where technically speaking the safety of the appliance is the tenant's responsibility - it's a very grey area and we're talking about people in poverty who can't afford to get their appliances and chimneys checked; or they can't afford to get into a tussle with their landlord about it if they want to keep the roof over their heads. Worse still, most people I come across don't even know there's a danger." Gas fitter, Leeds 1997 +
"An English priest was on a visit to a remote part of the north of Ireland. A local farmer offered to show him the sights. 'That's Devil's Mountain,' said the farmer. 'Over there is Devil's Dyke. Devil's Wood starts on the other side of the river.' 'The Devil seems to own a lot of property in these parts,' smiled the priest. 'Aye,' agreed the farmer, 'and like most other landlords he seems to spend most of his time in London.'" Old Irish tale +
"Landlord,landlord, My roof has sprung a leak - Don't you 'member I told you about it way last week? Landord, landlord, these steps is broken down. When you come up yourself it's a wonder you don't fall down. Ten Bucks you say I owe you? Ten bucks you say is due? Well, that's Ten Bucks more'n I'll pay you till you fix this house up new. What? You gonna get eviction orders? You gonna cut off my heat? You gonna take my furniture and throw it in the street? Um-huh! You talking high and mighty. Talk on - till you get through. You ain't gonna be able to say a word if I land a fist on you. Police! Police! Come and get this man! He's trying to ruin the government and overturn the land! Copper's whistle! Patrol bell! Arrest. Precinct Station. Iron cell. Headlines in press: MAN THREATENS LANDLORD. TENANT HELD NO BAIL. JUDGE GIVES NEGRO. 90 DAYS IN COUNTY JAIL." Langston Hughes, 1940 +
"Johnny Rotten - the man who once screamed about Anarchy in the UK - has booted squatters out of his luxury West London Flat. John ... was furious when squatters moved in at the same time his flat went on the market. Says a spokesman; 'Yes they were punks, but they're not there any longer. I am not sure how John got rid of them. John may have been a punk himself, but he's an upstanding citizen now. I am sure he never had to squat anywhere." News cutting in Raising Hell Fanzine 1987 +
"LetÕs lynch the landlord!" Jello Biafra +
"Consider the igloo: maximum enclosure of space with minimum of labour. Cost of materials and transportation, nil. And all made of water. Nowadays, of course, the eskimos live on welfare handouts in little northern slums. Man no longer houses himself: he is housed." Colin Ward, 'Anarchy In Action'
THE BIG ISSUE
It's plain mathematics: for the rich to get richer, some of us have to stay poor. But in 'I'm alright Jack' England, reason is in short supply. Everything is blamed on the individual. You lost your job! Lazy bastard! You lost your home! You inadequate bastard! Blaming homelessness on the homeless is as stupid as blaming poverty on the poor. +
Shelter estimates that there are 1,928,300 homeless people in the UK, while the Empty Homes Agency estimates that there are 820,000 empty properties in the UK. Figures from The Big Issue +
"It (begging) is not acceptable to be out there on the street. There is no justification for it these days. It is a very offensive problem to many people... We think aggressive begging is a menace. Action has been taken against aggressive begging for some time and will continue." John Major, May 28 1994 +
"We do not want people begging on the streets... I often drop my kids off in the morning at King's Cross and it's quite a frightening place. I'm saying we have to make our streets safe for people." Tony Blair, Jan 6, 1997 +
"Those among you who have the good fortune to enjoy shelter, warmth and the comfort of a good home, I would ask you to consider just one thing: what would you do if you saw your wife and children condemned to live for years in a single room? I know what you would do. You would move heaven and earth to get something done, and if you knew there were large numbers of empty places which could be used you would protest against it by every means within your power, and so would I. That is what we have done... I, with thousands of other Londoners, want to see something better for our people, and what we claim for ourselves we feel it our duty to find for anyone else." From Ted Bramley's obituary, by Margot Heinemann, 1991 (Ted Bramley played a leading role in the organising of the squatters' movement, when (in 1946) hundreds of families took over empty blocks of luxury flats, demanding that local councils use their powers to requisition all such empty properties. He was tried with four others at the Old Bailey on a catch-all charge of 'conspiracy to incite trespass', where he conducted his own political defence; challenging the crowded court with the above characteristic personal appeal to heart and conscience. The defendants were found guilty, but surprisingly were only bound over instead of the prison sentences they expected; and the requisitioning of homes for the homeless notably increased.) +
"(There's) a hidden army which is squatting or living in unsuitable bed and breakfast accomodation. A national inquiry commissioned by charities suggested that there may be 250,000 people aged 17-25 alone in this group." The Guardian +
"It was only in the aftermath of Jack Straw's speech in Autumn 1995, urging a crackdown on aggressive beggars, winos and 'squeeze merchants' as part of a New York police style 'Zero Tolerance' campaign, that there was serious cabinet discussion about government policy. Michael Howard, the home secretary, pushed to update the vagrancy laws with what became known in Whitehall as the "sluice 'em down" policy to force beggars off the streets." The Guardian January, 1997 +
"Since 1979, spending on housing has been more than halved, and fewer houses are being built today in Britain since at any time since the Second world War. Put another way: in 1975 equal amounts were being spent on defence and housing; in 1984 five times as much was spent on military services and on war material. Britain no longer has a national housing programme. While this policy has created more and more homeless people, a phenomenon has emerged. It is the British-Welfare State bank rolling the exploiters of the homeless and the unemployed to the extent of more than £120 million a year. This windfall now enriches owners of so-called hotels and hostels, most of them squalid, where victims of the recession are sent by local authorities and by the Department of Health and Social Security. These are the workhouses of the late twentieth century." From ŌHeroesÕ, John Pilger +
"Shelter announced their 'NATIONAL HOMELESSNESS WEEK' in Febuary '96. They asked the public to 'wear a badge or send a postcard to aid the homeless'. JUSTICE? in Brighton responded with their own self-help campaign against homelessness; they opened a squatted Estate Agency. Its window displayed empty properties complete with helpful information: "Three bedrooms, nice garden, window open at the back". The Labour Brighton Council rushed an eviction order through the courts, so that an Eviction Notice was served on the building within hours of opening." Paraphrased from Schnews, Brighton
THE GOOD SHIP LIFESTYLE
"Lifestylism" is the practise of wrapping yourself in a blinkered, self-perfecting, idealogically-sound cocoon. The captain of The Good Ship Lifestyle rarely leaves his bedroom. He makes pronouncements on how other people should live but doesn't keep his own rules. His idea of politics is not to Fight The Power but to fight the imagined enemies on his own side... +
"Nothing like the cocoon of unreality when your life's fucked." Answer Me! Magazine +
"If someone gives me a forum to express myself, I will use it. If that means using 'mainstream' channels to do it, then that's all for the better. If you really believe in what you're doing, then why not? By being too cool to publicly talk about these things, we only perpetuate the silence that already exists." Outpunk (taken from Zines, RE SEARCH) +
Stalin, Kruschev and Brezhnev are travelling on a train. The train breaks down. 'Fix it!', orders Stalin. They repair it but still the train doesn't move. 'Shoot everyone!' orders Stalin. They shoot everyone but still the train doesn't budge. Stalin dies. 'Rehabilitate everyone!' orders Kruschev. They are rehabilitated, but still the train won't go. Kruschev is removed. 'Close the curtains,' orders Brezhnev, 'and pretend we're moving!' Anon +
"Most plans for creating a more just society focus on ameliorating human misery. They address unemployment, hunger, illiteracy, class-based inequity, unequal access to medical care, pollution, overpopulation and discrimination based on sex, race, age, or membership in other devalued groups. While I care about all of those problems, I also wonder why so many of the proposed solutions make me shudder with dread. Perhaps it's because people who take on such enormous political chores are usually suffering from burnout. There's no room in their brave new worlds for fun, creativity, ornamentation, play and desire. I am sceptical of utopian schemes that don't take into account the human need for adventure, risk, competition, self-display, pleasurable stimulation, and novelty. In fact, many theoretical utopias are dreamed up by people who are afraid of diversity and deeply conservative about sex. ... The first duty of a revolutionary may be, as Abbie Hoffman said, to survive. But it's pretty difficult to survive without the nurturance of an all-consuming fantasy about where you are headed and what all this hard work is for." Pat Califia from 'Public Sex - The Culture of Radical Sex' +
"Consistency is highly over valued. don't be afraid to change your mind for fear of being branded an inconsistent hypocrite." From Splatterspleen, quoted in Zines, RE SEARCH +
"Waves do not actually travel, in spite of appearances. The water only moves up and down; it is the force that travels. The simplest way to demonstrate this is to throw a stone into a pond with a paper boat in it... Although the waves appear to travel outwards, the boat merely bobs up and down." Anon +
"A worrying development among some committed political activists is their insufferable righteousness. These zealous politicos appear as nothing but fundamentalists in a religious quest, where self-made rules become doctrine and other, less worthy activists are cast out. Born again in the fire of insecurity and guilt, these people create a heaven where none but themselves truly keep the faith... a world of rigid doctrine and self-imposed commandments. And in time, these political fundamentalists take on the aspects of church clergy: Indolence, pride, superstition, bigotry, persecution and ignorance." From 'Educating Us About You', 1996 +
"WhatÕs the difference between a lifestylist and a supermarket trolley? - A supermarket trolley has a mind of itÕs own." Anon +
"In our fear to make an effort to tear ourselves away from the conditions which ruin us, only because the future is not quite certain to us, we resemble the passengers of a sinking ship, who, for fear of stepping into a boat which is to take them to the shore, retreat to their cabins and refuse to come out from them..." Leo Tolstoy +
"The policeman on patrol has got inside our heads and his attitudes continue to be reinforced by the values of a police-loving society." Class War, from 'No Justice, Just Us' 1997 +
"Revolution will be built on the spread of ideas and information, on reaching people, rather than on our habit of creating ghettoes within which to stagnate. It's no use standing outside shouting. We have to start kicking down the doors!" From sleevenotes to first Chumbawamba single, 1985
ONE BY ONE
Dedicated to the striking Liverpool Dockers who are taking on the Merseyside Docks Harbour Company and the British State without 'official' union support - to all workers who take on bosses...and to those who fight with them. +
"Fellowship is heaven, and a lack of fellowship is hell; fellowship is life, and a lack of fellowship is death; and the deeds that ye do on earth, it is for fellowship's sake that ye do them." William Morris - The Dream of John Ball +
"Scabs are scum" Traditional +
"The dockers are represented by the Transport and General Worker's Union, one of Britain's biggest trade unions, whose leaders have maintained that because the dockers' action was technically against the law, the union cannot make the dispute official. But had the TGWU launched a national campaign challenging the circumstances and the justice of the dockers' dismissal along with casualisation, it is likely that the battle would have been won there and then. As it turned out, the union's failure to act unceremoniously closed more than a century of struggle to achieve civilised working conditions on Britain's docks. Moreover, the company is clearly delighted with its "good relationship" with the union and boasts that it runs 'the only unionised port in Britain'. "We show the TGWU far more respect than the (sacked) men." It is hardly surprising that, at Transport House, the TGWU headquarters in Liverpool, the dockers use a bust of Ernest Bevin, the union's pre-war General Secretary and pillar of the right wing of the Labour Party, as a coat-rack. For much of its history, the TGWU has been, as one labour historian wrote: "an encrusted, complacent, bureaucracy" which, in containing the anger of its ordinary members at the injustices imposed on their working lives, has served the aims of the British establishment." John Pilger, excerpts from They Never Walk Alone (Guardian article on the Dockers, November 1996) +
"When I see an actual flesh and blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to say which side I am on." George Orwell +
"Over the past months I have discovered many things about myself and about the laws of this land which I have been led to believe was the finest legal system in the world. But now I can only fear for the working class people of this country. If a mighty trade union can be fined a vast amount of money, and then building workers arrested, tried and sentenced for picketing, will the day come when it will be a crime in itself to be a member of a trade union? Who can tell? The sentence passed on me today by this court will not matter. My innocence has been proved time and time again by building workers of Wrexham whom I led and indeed by building workers from all over the country who have sent messages of support to myself, my family and my colleagues. Messages have in fact come from many of the very Lumpers whom I picketed during the national stoppage and I thank them all, each and every one, for their moral support. I know my children, when they are old enough, will understand that the struggle we took part in was for the benefit and interests of all building workers and their families because we really do care. One could complain of the methods used in this trial, of the identification by photograph. Just one bearded man on all the photographs, yet on my coach alone, beards were worn by at least half a dozen chaps. Statements were thrust on witnesses minutes before they entered the court to give evidence, whether they asked for them or not. Once again is this normal procedure in just an everyday criminal case? I think not. Police officers prompting and priming witnesses with what to say before entering the witness box. I would like to ask if the fantastic police enquiries and mammoth statements taken and the thousands of pounds spent on this spectacular are the usual diligent efforts used in an ordinary criminal trial? I look forward to the day when the real culprits - the McAlpines, Wimpeys, Laings and Bovises and all their political puppets are in the dock facing charges of conspiracy and intimidating workers from doing what is their lawful right - picketing." Eric Tomlinson, one of the building workers tried in 1973 for conspiracy to cause damage to a building site; he was jailed for two years. +
"No more Bosses versus Workers. We are on the same side, the same team." Tony Blair, Labour Party Conference, Blackpool 1996 +
"How could I indifferently stand by, and behold some of the very best of my fellow creatures cruelly treated by some of the very worst?" Richard Parker, Leader of the Nore Mutiny, executed 1797
And on to the second batch of texts from Tubthumper...
Don't quote me on that - just take me back to THE
FIRST CHURCH OF CHUMBAWAMBA