This page updated October 18 1997
Part two of the complete text accompanying the lyrics to "Tubthumper"
M O R E T U B T E X T S
OUTSIDER
Me, you, she, he. For the community of outsiders, misfits, and plain awkward bastards. +
"Neo-conservatism contains a theory of human nature in which 'it is our biology, our instincts, to defend our way of life, traditions and customs against outsiders - not because they are inferior but because they are outsiders.' " Barker, 1981, 'Racism, The City and The State' +
"Presley dressed oddly, was painfully shy, and seemed apart from everyone else - the individualistic, ungainly, out-of-place oddball who inhabits every class in almost every school in America. He had a distant, sullen father. He was a mama's boy, raw, dirt-poor, and timid. He learned to play the guitar from a preacher who probably would have fainted had he a clue as to how it would be used. Nobody would ever have voted Elvis most likely to succeed, or even likely to survive." Taken from A Thousand Points Of Elvis Website +
"Heterosexuality isn't normal, it's just common." Derek Jarman, At Your Own Risk, 1992 +
"An ageing man living alone in South Armagh, whose only son was in Long Kesh Prison, didn't have anyone to dig his garden for his potatoes. So he wrote to his son about it and recieved the reply, 'For Christ's sake, don't dig the garden up, that's where I buried the guns.' At 4 a.m. the next morning a dozen British soldiers turned up and dug the garden, but didn't find any guns. Confused, the man wrote to his son telling him what had happened, asking him what to do now? The reply: 'Now just put the potatoes in.'" Anon, Leeds Other Paper, December 1980 +
"I was on holiday in Wales in 1960, standing in W.H. Smith in Barmouth, and these couple of real freaks came in and I first became aware of the fact that there were people who were seriously different. They had hair down their backs and wore sandals and jeans and so on. This woman turned to me - I was nine or ten years old - and said, 'There you are: that's what you could grow up like.' And I did. I grew up just like that." David May, Days In The Life, from Voices From The English Underground +
"On the first anniversary of the dispute in September, another kind of support was vividly demonstrated. Thousands of youthful activists from "Reclaim The Future" converged on Liverpool: environmentalists and direct action campaigners. At first sight, the disaffected young in woolly hats, with dreadlocks, pierced noses etc, accompanied by drums, fire-eaters and street theatre, seemed a world away from the dockers. But these veterans of Newbury and other campaigns, having come up against repressive laws such as the Criminal Justice Act, understand well the dockers' struggle. Their alignment with the unofficial labour movement could influence the direction of grassroots action - especially as more and more young people are alienated from the 'gentlemen's agreement', as James Kelman put it, of mainstream politics. "Unimaginable a few years ago, their banners, alongside the dockers' traditional union banners, carried messages such as "New Labour, New Wage Slavery..." Before the sun was up on the anniversary morning, they had occupied the gantries in the docks and the roof of the company headquarters, watched with admiration by snowy-haired dockers and their wives. "We saw their banners fluttering over the occupied docks," said Jimmy Davies. "We didn't see the TGWU, whose officers should have been there. Now we know who our friends are; we welcome the young people's support and idealism." Excerpt from They Never Walk Alone, John Pilger +
"Youth culture has always been treated with suspicion by police and state, but rave and travelling culture provokes outright animosity because it questions the two-up-two-down moral values. It's not large scale gatherings that the Criminal Justice Bill hopes to prevent, it's lifestyle dissent. Speculation as to why the rave scene is being victimized has to include brewery losses. Illegal raves don't bring the government revenue but pubs do. Pub profits are down 11 per cent from 1989 and still falling. It's being estimated that £1.8billion a year is now being spent on E's and going out dancing. The pro-booze lobby has a lot of financial clout which always translates into political power... Ravers all over Britain are finding that the police have decided that parties, illegal or otherwise, will not be allowed to happen. The long arm of the law is over-stretching its powers. One free party group, the Exodus Collective near Luton, have had all their gear confiscated by the local constabulary "on the grounds that it might be stolen". The group's collective farm has been raided numerous times. On one occasion 36 people were arrested and the farm was trashed..." from Herb Garden
CREEPY CRAWLING
Wake up at 4am to find your front door kicked in and the television gone. Creeps steal from those who can least afford it. +
"This is a working class area. DonÕt steal from your own!" From sticker, 1995 + "Inequality is the source of all revolutions; no compensation can make up for inequality." Aristotle, Politics +
"Crime is as endemic to modern capitalism as pollution is to industrialism." Class War, from 'No Justice, Just Us' +
"Those who want social justice for all are by necessity anti-police. If we accept that the state is motivated by its own self-interest, rather than by the population's desires and needs, then we must also accept that the arm of the state, the police, is there to protect the state's interests rather than those of the population. But in attempting to push police interference out of our lives and communities, we have to also address the issue of anti-social crime. Corporate crime is rarely classed as anti-social crime because the rich criminals who steal millions, take enormous bribes and live in luxury off the backs of the working class, put a civilised veneer on their actions by never having to associate with the people they are ripping off. Anti-social crime, muggings and burglaries are at their most concentrated in poverty-stricken working class communities. We steal from each other because it's easier pickings than confronting real enemies. The rich can afford to protect themselves and their homes from mugging and burglary. Private security firms, expensive alarm systems, fences and private roads make the rich invulnerable to attack, so we steal from each other, justifying it with excuses about survival of the fittest and Thatcherite 'I'm alright Jack' logic. Crime has become a livelihood and a source of conflict in working class communities. Insider stealing from the most vulnerable has to be condemned by the community as a whole. Crime which attacks the interests of capitalist enterprise isn't a problem, since the enterprise culture is the biggest scam of all. Crime which erodes our sense of community (and as a consequence our ability to organise in groups) and leaves us distrustful of our neighbours has to be dealt with by the community. Anti-social crime shouldn't be seen as something that individual victims are left to deal with. Community spirit is the force that allows us to survive and fight back against capitalism's catastrophic influence on our day to day reality. The striking dockers can continue to fight because they are bolstered by the support of the whole community. Whether it's burglary, violence or the competitiveness of ripping off our neighbours... those tearing neighbourhoods apart have to be ostracised. In recent years frustrated estate dwellers, in communities like Salford, have tried to deal with the expansion of anti-social crime - not by calling out the police but by taking responsibility for their own communities. Not in distrustful vigilante style, but with the interests of the community at heart. The dog-eat-dog ethos of capitalism is sneaking into our homes and making off with our televisions and videos. Those who can least afford it are again bearing the strain." Class War 1997 +
"A society gets all the criminals it deserves" Emma Goldman +
"Do not waste your time on social questions. What is the matter with the poor is poverty; what is the matter with the rich is uselessness." George Bernard Shaw +
'Let's see. I tell you what we'll do. We'll have a vote. We'll sleep in area A, is that cool?' - 'Okay, good.' - 'We'll eat in area B. Good?' - 'Good.' - 'We'll throw a crap in area C. Good?' - 'Good.' Simple rules. So, everything went along pretty cool, you know, everybody's very happy. One night everybody was sleeping, one guy woke up, Pow! He got a faceful of crap, and he said: 'Hey, what's the deal here, I thought we had a rule: Eat, Sleep, and Crap, and I was sleeping and I got a faceful of crap...' So they said, 'Well, ah, the rule was substantive -' Lenny Bruce
MARY MARY
Feminism doesn't mean being anti-sex with a sense of humour by-pass; some of us are demanding the right to be sexual and safe. Saintly womanhood leaves a lot to be desired. It can be boring and lonely on a pedestal. And growing old doesn't mean growing more conventional - women of every age want a revolution they can dance to. +
"Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience and rebellion that progress has been made." Oscar Wilde, from 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism' +
"Women have to go through such a tremendous struggle before they are free in their own minds that freedom is more precious to them than men." Angelica Balabanov +
"While men tend to gain social prestige as they age, the opposite is true for women who are given little real power at any age, and are frequently viewed as one dimensional sexual objects - thus losing our usefulness as we age." Manifesto of Riot Girl (Taken from Zines) +
"My anger knows no bounds; my anger is unlimited. I'm a big lady, I can stand up in front of almost any man and cuss him out and have no fear - you know what I'm sayin'? Because I will go to blows. But when I get older I'm not going to be able to do that, and with my temper - I'm going to have to start carrying a gun! And if I carry one, somebody's ass is going to be shot! Because at the rate things are going... I won't tolerate this bullshit (contrary to some of my colleagues who have mellowed with age). I'm not among them - yet. Maybe I have to go through some kind of biochemical change or menopause - I do not know! I'm trying to come to terms with this, because I'm tired of dealing with racial incidents on a daily basis. Why can't I just leave my house, go shopping, do my thing and come home? Why do I always have to deal with some bullshit?" Wanda Coleman, taken from Angry Women, Re Search +
"DonÕt Liberate me - IÕll Do It Myself" Graffiti, Paris May 1968 +
"Learning to speak is like learning to shoot" Avita Ronnel, from Angry Women, Re Search +
"Some women I talk to are so frightened of growing old. I sense their desperation. They say things like, 'I'm not going to live to be old, I'm not going to live to be dependent.' The message young women get from youth culture is that it's wonderful to be young and terrible to grow old. If you think about it, it's an impossible dilemma - how can you make a good start in life if you are being told at the same time how terrible the finish is? Because of ageism, many women don't fully commit themselves to living life until they can no longer pass as young. They live their lives with one foot in life and one foot outside it. With age you resolve that. I know the value of each day and I'm living with both feet in life. I'm living much more fully... The power of the old woman is that because she's outside the system she can attack. And I am determined to attack it. One of the ways in which I am particularly conscious of this stance is when I go down the street. People expect me to move over, which means to step on the grass or off the curb. I just woke up one day to the fact that I was moving over. I have no idea how many years I've been doing that. Now I never move over. I simply keep walking. And we hit full force, because the other person is so sure that I am going to move over that he isn't even paying any attention and we simply ram each other. If it's a man with a woman he shows embarrassment, because he's just knocked down a five foot seventy-year-old woman and so he quickly apologises. But he's startled, he doesn't understand why I didn't move over, he doesn't even know how I got there, where I came from. I am invisible to him, despite the fact that I am on my own side of the street, simply refusing to give him that space he assumes is his." Barbara Macdonald, from 'Both Feet In Life', Out On The Other Side, Contemporary Lesbian Writing, 1988 +
"It will yet be the proud boast of women that they never contributed a line to the Bible." George W. Foote +
"Too much of a good thing is wonderful." Mae West +
"The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation." Elizabeth Cady Stanton +
"When I'm good, I'm very good but when I'm bad I'm better." Mae West +
"It is much more a lack of fun which batters us than over-abundance and indulgence" Raoul Vaneigem +
"Punctuality, regularity, discipline, industry, thoroughness, are a set of slave virtues." G. D. H. Cole
SMALLTOWN
When you can't change small minds... you have to leave them behind. +
"People act upon their immediate, distorted impulses without thinking. Violence pacifies them. They overpower their victims like a pack of wild dogs. Like a swarm of bees they attack. Fights arise from stupid conversations and silly misunderstandings until someone gets hurt. If a person thinks or looks different, people condemn by reflex. Fuck that! I root for the underdog in all situations." Answer Me! Magazine +
"I think that any time a woman expresses her sexuality in an honest or unusual way , it becomes a political act because we are so discouraged from doing that. It takes guts to openly express aspects of your gender that are "socially unacceptable." And anything that disrupts the status quo and pisses people off is political." Brad Clit, drag king, from "Pucker Up", 1996 +
"the fucking view is fucking vile / for fucking miles and fucking miles / the fucking babies fucking cry / the fucking flowers fucking die / the fucking food is fucking muck / the fucking drains are fucking fucked / the colour scheme is fucking brown / everywhere in chicken town / the fucking pubs are fucking dull / the fucking clubs are fucking full / of fucking girls and fucking guys / with fucking murder in their eyes / a fucking bloke is fucking stabbed / waiting for a fucking cab / you fucking stay at fucking home / the fucking neighbours fucking moan / keep the fucking racket down / this is fucking chicken town" John Cooper Clarke, from 'Evidently Chicken Town' +
"The answers you seek / Will never be found at home / The love that you need / Will never be found at home..." From Bronski Beat's 'Smalltown Boy', 1984 +
"KICK THIS EVIL BASTARD OUT!" Front page headline on news that Snoop Doggy Dog would be visiting Britain, Daily Star, February 1994 +
"'Can I turn the telly off for a minute? I really need to tell you something.' When he said he was gay, there was silence. His mother's jaw dropped and her eyes were full of tears. Then his father went into the hall, chucked Darren his coat, and told him to 'sling his hook'. At the time Darren didn't know any other homosexual people, so he wandered the streets in the city where he lived for three nights, till his mother came looking for him. He went back home but only his mum and one sister talked to him. Two weeks later, after a big family party, when a fight broke out between him and his brothers, Darren wrote a note saying, 'Sorry I'm gay, love son and brother Darren', and took 103 paracetomol tablets. Extraordinarily, he was woken up by an ambulance man because his father had had a heart attack! It wasn't until two days later that he went to a doctor in terrible pain and was rushed to hospital. After three weeks of treatment he had recovered enough to return home to his family. His belongings were packed and waiting for him in the dining room. Darren's father had also recovered, but told his son to leave and never return." When Your Child Comes Out, Anne Lowell, 1995 +
"The world is your oyster... but the futureÕs your clam." Paul Weller, 1979 +
"I yawn, I'm tired, I'm sorry / I sneeze, I blow my nose / I'm so hungry Oh Look! / I ate my food with the wrong knife and fork / I wear my collar undone / I will not wear a tie / They won't let me into their disco / They refuse to tell me why / Because I'm dressed informal / Because IÕm dressed informally - ThatÕs why" Patrik Fitzgerald, 1979 +
"I myself have often wondered why it took so long for anyone to get around to 'taking me in for questioning', considering that I used to waltz along the streets of the West End totally unaware that they were infested by plain clothes coppers. Though they did not arrest me till 1943, they knew that I was in a weak position and constantly threatened me for their own and one another's amusement. Their condescension towards me on these occasions will never fade from my mind. Even now I could never wittingly become acquainted with a policeman; nor would I, except under torture, betray anyone to the authorities. Life is so hard for poor little crooks at the best of times. I imagine that these opinions which I hold so intensely are, in a milder form, fairly common. As a former police chief has himself said, 'If the police were popular there would be something wrong somewhere.'" Quentin Crisp, from How To Become A Virgin, 1981 +
"Habit is probably the greatest block to seeing truth." RA Schwallerda Lipicz
I WANT MORE
This is Tearoom England: the class system in microcosm. The worst bigotry can have the best table manners. +
"The distinctions separating the social classes are false; in the last analysis they rest on force." Albert Einstein +
"There is nothing to which men cling more tenaciously than the privileges of class." Leonard Sidney Woolf +
"What do you think the effect of the Beatles was on the history of Britain?" - "I don't know about the history. The people who are in control and in power and the class system and the whole bullshit bourgeois scene is exactly the same except there is a lot of middle class kids with long hair walking round London in trendy clothes and Kenneth Tynan's making a fortune from the word 'fuck'. But apart from that, nothing happened except that we're all dressed up. The same bastards are in control, the same people are runnin' everything, it's exactly the same. They hyped the kids and the generation. We've grown up a little, a lot of us, and there has been a change and we're a bit freer and all that, but it's the same game, nothing's really changed. They're doing exactly the same things, selling arms to South Africa, killing blacks on the street, people are living in poverty with rats crawling over them, it's the same. It just makes you puke. And I woke up to that, too. The dream is over. It's just the same only I'm thirty and a lot of people have got long hair, that's all." John Lennon, 1970 +
"Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, can never bring about a reform." Susan B Anthony +
"Everybody knows that the influence of social class is much less than it used to be - except that it isn't. Scrutiny of General Household Survey figures shows, for example, that sons and daughters of unskilled workers are no more likely to go to university now than they were two decades ago." Observer, January 26, 1997 +
"With the benefit of hindsight, most historians of sport recognise that the concern with the seperation between amateur and professional was a semantic masking of class divisions. Such segregation served the objective of retaining power over the control and allocation of resources through the exclusion of the majority. The formation of the Amateur Football Association in 1907 - originally called the Amateur Football Defence Foundation - over the issue of admittance of professionals to county football associations, was essentially a southern-based, public school reaction to the growing economic might of the Northern, working-class professional clubs. The amateur/professional debate used language that betrayed a political agenda, the double standards and selective application of the rules were breath-taking in their hypocrisy. The elitist, amateur Corinthians often charged more in expenses to play than the weekly wage bill of their professional opponents; amateur cricketers could receive unlimited income from benefit matches. Amateurs didn't need or want to earn a living from sport. Thus their performance didn't carry the same practical or symbolic value. If they played badly the disadvantages were metaphysical - a loss to pride not to the pocket. Loss of form didn't have the demon material consequences that shadowed the exploits of the working class professional. Shamateur clubs were snobs: They wanted to compete, to use the same devices as professional clubs to build a successful team, but at the same time remain unsullied by the grubby practice of openly paying hirelings to beat opponents." From 'Walter Daniel Tull, 1888-1918: Soldier, Footballer, Black', by Phil Vasili +
"The use of legislation, however, should not be allowed to muffle the noise and directness of class conflict. Indeed, legislation cannot be understood without being seen as part of that conflict. Commissioner of Police, Sir Charles Warren said, in relation to the Feltham fair of 1887, "the abolition of the fair is a class question on which as commissioner of police I can say little beyond the fact that it gives the police trouble to keep order, and while one class certainly enjoy it, its existence is a cause of annoyance to others." Popular Culture and Class Conflict 1590-1914, edited by Eileen and Stephen Yeo, 1981
SCAPEGOAT
At the height of apartheid there were more black men in British jails than there were in jails in South Africa. Britain's mucky colonial past lives on, in the mistrust of anybody who isn't a whiter shade of pale - the State still institutionalises racism knowing that when the Òblack ghettosÓ explode then white society can tell itself that its fear of Òthe otherÓ is justified... +
"There has always been racism. But it developed as a leading principle of thought and perception in the context of colonialism. That's understandable. When you have your boot on someone's neck, you have to justify it. The justification has to be their depravity. It's very striking to see this in the case of people who aren't very different from one another. Take a look at the British conquest of Ireland, the earliest of the Western colonial conquests. It was described in the same terms as the conquest of Africa. The Irish were a different race. They weren't human. They weren't like us. We had to crush and destroy them. No. It has to do with conquest, with oppression. If you're robbing somebody, oppressing them, dictating their lives, it's a very rare person who can say: "Look, I'm a monster. I'm doing this for my own good." Even Himmler didn't say that. A standard technique of belief formation goes along with oppression, whether it's throwing them in gas chambers or charging them too much at a corner store, or anything in between. The standard reaction is to say: 'It's their depravity. That's why I'm doing it. Maybe I'm even doing them good.' If it's their depravity, there's got to be something about them that makes them different from me. What's different about them will be whatever you can find." Noam Chomsky +
"Prejudice, which sees what it pleases, cannot see what is plain." Aubrey T. de Vere +
"Detroit was almost as far north as we ever went, but it was still full of crackers and I was always uneasy. One night Chuck Peterson asked me to go with him to a little backstage bar on the corner and have a drink, but I didn't want to go for the same old reason. But he insisted, and so we did. In a matter of minutes some woman at the bar piped out that she wasn't going to drink in the place if that nigger stood there, making it clear she meant me. Chuck wanted to answer back, but I talked him out of it and we went on to finish our drink. The next thing we knew a man came over and stared after Chuck. 'What the hell's going on?' he said. 'A man can't bring his wife in a bar any more without you tramp white men bringing a nigger woman in.' Chuck wouldn't stand for that, but before he knew it, this guy and a couple more were on him, beating him and kicking him. While everyone else stood around with their mouths open, this guy kept kicking Chuck in the mouth and saying, 'I'll fix it so you don't play trumpet tonight.' Lady Sings The Blues, Billie Holiday (with William Duff) +
"The mind of the bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract." Oliver Wendell Holmes +
"As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever." Clarence Darrow +
"Beware prejudices. They are like rats, and men's minds are like traps; prejudices get in easily, but it is doubtful if they ever get out." Lord Jeffrey +
"Scotland Yard's Immigration Unit burst into Joy Gardiner's London flat at 7 am on the 28th July, 1993. They had a deportation order. Joy Gardiner was bound and gagged by the officers. They wrapped 13 feet of surgical tape seven times round Mrs Gardiner's head. Unsurprisingly, she went into a coma from which she never recovered. The 'official' cause of death was suffocation. Mrs Gardiner had overstayed a six month visa and the Home Office wanted her deported back to Jamaica. She had no legal aid present when the immigration unit raided. The Home Office later admitted that the deportation order was timed so that it arrived at her solicitor's office on the morning of the deportation. They'd deliberately fixed things so that Mrs Gardiner would be caught unawares by the raid. The government refused to launch a public enquiry into Mrs Gardiner's death. Three officers were charged with 'unlawfully killing' Mrs Gardiner; during the trial the judge stressed that: "the case has no political or racial aspect." On July 12, 1995, almost two years after Mrs Gardiner's death, the Police Complaints Authority confirmed that the three Met Officers acquitted of 'Unlawful Killing' would NOT face disciplinary charges." Northern Star, 1995
And don't quote me on that, either - just take me back to THE
FIRST CHURCH OF CHUMBAWAMBA