Gregor Gall introduces his new book, Marxism in Music: Constructing a Communist Contra-Culture with The Redskins, Rock’n’roll and Revolution, published today by Bloomsbury.

After the dispiriting disappointment of the Red Wedge musical initiative to get young people to support Labour in the 1987 general election, its founder, Billy Bragg, recounted on his “Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards” single of 1988 a tale of speaking to a journalist: “Mixing pop and politics, he asks me what the use is” to which he replies: “I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses.”

Bragg was not alone at the time in being in the pop vanguard standing up unsuccessfully against the onslaught of Thatcherism. In addition to Paul Weller and The Jam and then The Style Council, there were the likes of Heaven 17, The Housemartins, The Farm, Fun Boy Three, The Specials, and UB40. These bands made it into the Top Forty singles chart and even some further towards the Top Ten. Unlike Bragg, they did bother the upper reaches of the charts in the early, mid and late 1980s.

But in the 1980s, there were many more bands that were even more left-wing than these ones. But they did not much trouble even the outer reaches of the mainstream charts. They were the likes of The Pop Group, Gang of Four, McCarthy, Easterhouse, That Petrol Emotion, New Model Army, Newtown Neurotics, The Three Johns, and The Men They Couldn’t Hang.

Many of these bands grudgingly succumbed to the disillusionment of Labour defeat and Thatcher’s triumph. But there was an even more left-wing band that sought to consciously spur on and organise resistance and which did achieve some mediocre chart success.

This band was The Redskins. For a time between 1981 and 1986, it was the darling of the weekly music press and a favourite of Radio 1 DJ, John Peel. The Redskins regularly gained the top spots on the indie charts and also popped into the Top Forty singles chart on one occasion. The Redskins’ one and only album, Neither Washington Nor Moscow, released on 12th March 1986, reached No. 31 in the mainstream chart in Britain.

And yet despite The Redskins’ short existence and limited musical output of the aforementioned album and just seven singles, they achieved something that no other rock’n’roll band achieved in Britain in the 1980s. This was to consciously recruit to and sustain the ranks of socialists, especially those of a revolutionary persuasion.

The two main members of the band, lyricist and lead singer, Chris Dean, and bass player, Martin Hewes, were members of the British Socialist Workers Party (SWP).  Therefore, it was no accident that their album was entitled Neither Washington Nor Moscow with the additional words “But International Socialism” adorning both sides of the album’s inside sleeve. “Neither Washington Nor Moscow But International Socialism” was for many years the standfirst underneath the title of the SWP’s weekly newspaper, Socialist Worker.

“Neither Washington Nor Moscow But International Socialism” signified the revolutionary credentials of the SWP’s ‘third camp’ position, whereby it is asserted that only the working-class could emancipate itself and this required an international movement.

This conclusion of considerable influence in prosecuting the case for revolutionary socialism comes not from my own experience as a Redskins fan as a student in the mid-1980s but from the research for my Marxism in Music: Constructing a Communist Contra-Culture with The Redskins, Rock’n’roll and Revolution. 

In the comparative study with two other far-left bands, The Housemartins and Easterhouse, many interviewees and well over one hundred fans and followers who gave testimony told how the lyrics of The Redskins pushed people in a direction of radical and revolutionary socialism. The lyrics were a taster, an introduction, which stimulated fans’ and followers’ interest to know more, whether about the Russian October revolution or the abortive Spartacist German revolution of 1918-1923.

This did not mean they joined the SWP, although many did. Some joined Labour, as I did initially and which then still had a sizeable left-wing, hoping to steer it towards leftwards. Others were already in the SWP or Communist Party or the Militant, the leading Trotskyist tendency in Labour.

The Redskins’ lyrics, set to the uplifting synergy of punk, soul and funk, helped sustain the spirits of these already committed activists as well as giving them something to dance to at parties and discos. “Lean On Me!” and “Keep On Keepin’ On!” are exemplars.

Whether fans agreed with the SWP-style politics The Redskins promoted or not, the exhortation to steer left, stay left and get active was clear and followed by many. The Redskins realised music was a much better way to reach a generation of youth with socialist ideas rather than expecting them to read Socialist Worker or attend SWP branch meetings.

A large part of the reason for the popularity of The Redskins was also their commitment to supporting struggles. It was not just the ideas contained within “The Power Is Yours!” or “It Can Be Done”. Over and above using their profile in the weekly mass music press and the opportunity to speak to audiences from the stage in order to attack the Thatcher and the Tories as well as Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, The Redskins played countless benefit gigs. Indeed, a quarter of the 250 gigs they played were benefit gigs, especially during the year-long miners’ strike of 1984-1985.

The miners’ strike was a watershed event for many and especially so amongst the then youth of the working-class and student milieu. It clearly polarised politics between Thatcherism and the labour movement, often being dubbed ‘a civil war without guns’. The Redskins, along with others like Billy Bragg, threw themselves into supporting the miners by raising money for them and trying to raise their spirits too.

The Redskins were not the only left-wing band of their time but they did have a very clear and identifiable USP.  Apart from The Style Council, The Housemartins were the biggest- selling left-wing band of the 1980s in Britain. They sounded revolutionary. On the inner sleeve of their first album, London 0 Hull 4 of 1986, they exhorted: “For too long the ruling class have enjoyed an extended New Year’s Eve Party, whilst we can only watch, faces pressed up against the glass. [We] say: ‘Don’t try gate crashing a party full of bankers. Burn the house down!’.”

But The Housemartins were radicals and not revolutionaries, highlighted especially by their attraction to Jesus and Christianity. After the aforementioned exhortation, this was followed by the declamation to: “Take Jesus – Take Marx – Take Hope.” They were more like Christian socialists in the vein of Tony Benn.

Easterhouse were associated with the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). Brothers, Andy and Ivor Perry, combined these unorthodox Trotskyist politics with militant Irish republicanism. The music was ‘indie jangle pop’ in the manner of The Smiths while the tone of the lyrics was somewhat downbeat, stemming from the RCP’s perspective that the working-class was no longer a social agency in itself and there was no bona fide Marxist tradition left in Britain. Consequently, they had much less of an appeal and did not become communist contenders as the title of their debut 1986 album suggested they thought they might.

With upful music extolling revolutionary socialist politics, one might have thought that the SWP would have welcomed The Redskins with open arms. According to Attila The Stockbroker, SWP founder Tony Cliff told the band to disband because it was more important to sell Socialist Worker outside factory gates. This was far-fetched but the SWP response did range from agnostic to antagonistic.

This was because for virtually all Communist and Trotskyist organised currents put together, not only are music and culture not appreciated for what they can do for the communist cause, but economism eclipses everything else. This is the worldview that workers, aided of course by the correct vanguard party, will only reach a revolutionary consciousness through strike action. Only then will workers be able to make a revolution.

This party-organised Communist and Trotskyist left has contested capitalism in the economic (through supporting strikes) and political (through standing in elections) arenas but has never contested capitalism in the cultural arena. Sure, it has critiqued capitalist culture but it has never gone so far as to produce its own communist contra-culture. At most, individual communists and Trotskyists have produced politically progressive cultural artefacts and reproduced proletarian culture. The Redskins provided a fleeting glimpse of what could be done.

Forty years on, times may be said to be somewhat different today. The Redskins showed in a Gramscian way that contesting capitalism in the cultural, and thus ideological, arena could credibly bring results in the crusade to help create communism.

Professor Gregor Gall is a research associate at the University of Glasgow.