Monday 17 March 2014

Political Education, Stranglers Style

So, tonight I will be getting deafened by the Stranglers at Oxford's O2 Academy on Cowley Road. As the Men in Black are celebrating 40 years of playing together, I suspect it will be quite an event. 

In preparation, I thought it was worth reposting this blog from my Accidental Labour Activist, written in 2011, where I reflect on the Stranglers as political educators. Three years on, I think I'm still as angry about the ConDem coalition. At least we are only a year away from the next election!


What’s really interesting about this activism malarkey is the way it changes your window on the world. Even things that are not, on the surface, political seem to be so once you start to think about it.

So it was that I found myself thinking of the Stranglers as political educators as I got hot, sweaty and increasingly deaf as they played at our local music venue. (For the uninitiated, and probably anyone under twenty-five, the Stranglers are, as Wikipedia quaintly puts it, ‘an English rock music group’.)  

Consider the evidence.

‘Something Better Change’. As the crowd of mainly 40-somethings erupted, I was taken with how, after thirty-odd years the lyrics are peculiarly relevant to the current political scene:

“Something's happening and it's happening right now
You're too blind to see it
Something's happening and it's happening right now
Ain't got time to wait
I said something better change…”

Works for me. 

After all, I spent Thursday lunchtime on our union’s branch committee planning our action for next week’s strike for job security, pay and pensions. Bizarrely, UCU are the first to come out on the issue of pensions, and after my disrespectful comments in previous entries about our radicalism – or lack of it – I feel I ought to apologise. Of course, this radicalism was somewhat tempered by the need to discuss whether it was permissible to cross the picket line to use the loos. But at least that challenges the idea of lecturers being out of touch, too stuck in our ivory towers ('porcelain towers' might be a more appropriate analogy) to connect with such mundane concerns. This strike is just the support act to the main event: the TUC’s ‘March for an Alternative’ on Saturday 26 March. Something Better Change, indeed.

‘No More Heroes.’ Always a welcome if predictable ending to a Stranglers gig, where the ageing crowd gives it one last push before ambling home to collapse with a nice cup of cocoa and the certain knowledge that they won’t be able to hear anything for the next week and a half.

“Whatever happened to Leon Trotsky?
He got an ice pick
That made his ears burn
Whatever happened to dear old Lenny?
The great Elmyra, and Sancho Panza?
Whatever happened to the heroes?” 

Good question in an age when the PM looks airbrushed and political debate seems limited to the repetition of a few ‘good’ sound bites. 

Having said that, I did get to hear my personal hero, Ed Balls, at a Labour Finance and Industry Group dinner this week. Attending this was a bit of a hoot as maths and I have only had a passing acquaintance, and I spent some time trying to think of a clever economics question before giving up. Not my fault, honest – the monkey that plays cymbals in my head whenever numbers are mentioned just wouldn’t pipe down. Thankfully, Ed was more concerned with outlining principles for Labour’s approach to the economy and industry rather than number-crunching, and it was a very enjoyable night. But with all due respect to Ed, the fear of leaving hostages to (media) fortune means that his oration is never free enough to be as powerful as that of the heroes of yesterday like Aneurin Bevan or Michael Foot.

My favourite Stranglers song was also played to complete this short course in political education: ‘Sweden’.   

“Let me tell you about Sweden 
Only country where the clouds are interesting 
Big brother says it's the place to go 
Too much time to think, too little to do 
Too much time to think, too little to do 
Too much time, too little to do 
'Cos it's all quiet on the Eastern front 
Fluctuations at a minimum 
Hypochondriac tombstone 
Sense of humour's gone astray somewhere…” 
The lyrics do, rather, fly in the face of the way my thinking is going, but perhaps that is why I like it so much. Why can’t we be more equitable in the way the Scandinavian states are? Why can’t we accept the need to pay higher rates of tax in order to secure great public services?


Sweden might be boring, according to the Stranglers, but as the cuts start to bite and we enter a summer of discontent and protest, I'm starting to find that self-same Swedish social democratic boredom deeply appealing.