Reading
through the whole set of R & T what jumps out are the pages on
punk as a revolutionary movement- sexual as well as political.
Punk is
often presented as the antithesis of the counterculture but through
the London squatting scene, which the counterculture revived, its
influence endured to become synthesised as part of punk.
Ripped and
Torn was a key part of that process. As Tony Drayton says
I
moved to London with Skid Kid in the spring of 1977, and begun
writing Ripped & Torn issue five, which was mainly written in a
bed-sit in Willesden Green. Then later that year, from issue seven,
the fanzines were written at number 2 Bramley Road, which was a
squatted pub called the Trafalgar situated within a squatted
community known as Frestonia. At the same time I was having a
cultural explosion in my head, being exposed to a vast array of
underground literature [OZ, International Times] both in the
Frestonia squat, where R&T was produced from 1977-1979, and from
shops like Compendium
The UK
counterculture is often said to have started at the Albert Hall New
Moon Carnival of Poetry event in 1966
‘Rowdyism,
bad language and the breaking of glasses and bottles marked an ad lib
‘poetry event’ at the Albert Hall on Saturday night. The Albert
Hall management made strong complaints to the organisers of the three
hour ‘New Moon Carnival of Poetry’. According to an Albert Hall
spokesman, the event later deteriorated into ‘chaos and obscenity.’
The Daily Telegraph, 20 June 1966
or the
suppression of the Windsor Park free festival in 1974.
The
counterculture then vanishes only to re-emerge at the end of the
seventies as the Stonehenge free festival/ traveller culture which
was to be brutally crushed at the Battle of The Beanfield in June
1985...
Punk
itself is seen as being apolitical, a blank generation which both
left and right tried to recruit. Then came the election of Margaret
Thatcher in May 1979, soon after the release of Crass' first album in
March 1979. The combination of these events is alleged to have given
rise to a politicised form of punk called 'anarcho-punk'.
Ripped and
Torn were the first to interview Crass, in January 1979, but as the
selection of pages pasted below from Ripped and Torn show, punk was
already politically conscious before then.
It is
important to remember that after Sniffin Glue's last issue in August
1977, Ripped and Torn became the leading/ best known UK fanzine - it
was in the mainstream of punk. It was widely distributed and widely
read across the punk community.
These
pages from Ripped and Torn therefore helped to shape and influence
the politics of punk before the election of Margaret Thatcher and
before Crass became influential.
Compared
with the other parish lists, the Balmaghie one is slightly confusing.
However, it does contain one interesting lost farm name- given as
Armanoch- which I disuss in detail at the end.
Taken from
the Register of the Privy Council (Scotland) Third Series Volume 9,
pages 565-6, 572.
3 NX 645
696 Strone ---- Stroan Hill, field system, rig and furrow.
Settlement replaced by Stroan
NX 641
700
4 NX 651
684 Slogary ---- Slogarie
5 NX 642
668 Tormullane, Meikill and Little----- Tormollan Hill. Tormollin
shown on John Ainslie's Stewartry map 1797 and John Thomson 1821 but
not on first OS map, apart from 'old fences' in approximate location.
6 NX 661
678 Crae, Nether ---- Nether Crae
NX 657
685 Crae, Over -----now called Banks of Dee
7 NX 660
658 Cannick---- Kennick, in ruins on first OS map. Now under
forestry.
8 NX 641
650 Lochmebrak ---- High Lochenbreck.
9 NX 624
642 Gropdale ----- Grobdale in Balmgahie (Grobdale of Girthon is 480
metres away)
24 NX 723
658 ?? if Genoch. 1684 Armanoch. See below for details,Pont/ Blaeu
show 'Arnganoch' in Balmaghie near Livingstone. KSCD have 'Erngenoch,
Irongenoch, Arngenoch'. John Thomson 1821 has 'Farngainoch' next to
Broomy Yard. First edition OS maps has Genoch close to Broom Holm,
but later maps do not show Genoch.
25 NX 703
678 Finninsh----- Finniness
26 NX 691
648 Ballimake--- Bellymack
27 NX 682
653 or 685 646 Cultnespy----- Quintinespie, North and Quintinespie,
South
28 Granoch
--- Loch Grannoch now Woodhall Loch
31 NX 725
635 Bamagy, now Mains of Balmaghie, containing:
32 NX 725
620 Camduddell----- possibly Camp Douglas
33 NX 711
619 Glentow--------- Glentoo
34 NX 732
622 Grange--------- Threave Mains, was Threave Grange
also
35 NX ???
???Dam
36 NX
682 656 Polsack---- Pulsack Plantation, first OS map.
37 NX ???
??? Breiry croft
38 NX ???
??? Clahinplukmia. The village of Laurieston was originally called
Clachanpluck. In Tongland parish there is a Pluckhim's Cairn NX
679 563
No. 24
Armanoch 1684.
It was
part of the lands of Livingstone estate.
The
earliest record I have found of a similar farm name in the same area
is Ardannoch, 1 April 1527. It was a 22 shilling land and is
mentioned along with the 16 shilling land of Fynnynische, now
Finniness, which is No. 25, NX 703 678 on the 1684 list.
In the
Kirkcudbright Sheriff Court Deeds 1623-1700 it is recorded as
Arngenoch, Erngenoch and Irongennoch.
John
Ainslie, 1797 has what looks like Erngainoch but on his 1821 map is
more clearly Farnguinoch.
Ainslie 1821, NLS maps
In
Balmaghie kirkyard there is a gravestone "William Palmer late in
Ern-Genoch died 11 Feb 1837 aged 70".
The first
Ordance Survey (six inch to the mile) map, surveyed 1848-51 has
Genoch at NX 723 658 but it then disappears and is not shown on any
later maps.
The
old get old And the young get stronger May take a week And
it may take longer They got the guns But we got the
numbers Gonna win, yeah We're takin' over...
[The
Doors, Five to One, 1968]
Jim
Morrison would be 75 this December... if he hadn't died in 1971.
I
am writing this just as the clock is about to tick over to 30
September when I will be 60. By the time I am finished it will have
done.
The
Doors song came to mind while I was reading 'Cultural Dementia - how
the west has lots its history, and risks losing everything else' by
David Andress.
The
generation who are now 'the old' were 'the young' in 1968. But
confusingly, the rise of the right in the UK, USA and France is a
negation of the revolutionary aspirations of the 1960s/1970s
generation. A contradiction the book does not engage with. Although
it does do a good job of pointing out how the legacy of empire and
slavery undermines any claims made by the right (and, Andress argues,
elements of the left) that the UK, USA and France have ever
represented enlightened civilisation rather than exploitative
barbarism.
As
a child in the sixties and teenager in the seventies. I grew up with
the counterculture. Its combination of music and politics deeply
influenced me. At primary school in June 1969 we had to do newspaper
project. The headlines on mine were 'America Defeated in Vietnam' and
'Scotland Becomes Independent Communist Republic'...
The
early seventies were slightly less dramatic, but the politics of the
period- in Northern Ireland, the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders actions in
1971, the 1972 miners strike, the 1973/4 three day week, the two
elections of 1974 -were pretty exciting. The politics came close to
home in 1974 when my French teacher, George Thompson, won the
Galloway seat for the Scottish National Party against the
Conservatives by 33 votes on a third recount in October 1974. I had
helped with his campaign.
Musically
by 1974 I had gone from T.Rex and glam in 1971 to Yes and prog rock
to Hawkwind and the Pink Faries while working backwards to the
Velvet Underground and Jefferson Airplane. This created a problem
when punk came along in 1976. It took White Riot (the Clash) in March
1977 to convert me.
What
interested me about punk was that it was music inspired by the
present/
everyday life and near future. And it was being made by people my
age.
The
way I saw it, punks were angry hippies with short hair. Why were they
angry? Because the counterculture never had its revolution and now
the forces of right wing reaction were on the rise. A song on the
first Clash album summed up the change in the ten years since the
Beatles sang 'All you need is love.'
Hate
and war
The
only things we got today
An'
if I close my eyes
They
will not go away
You
have to deal with it
It
is the currency...
I
then had a useful bit of political education, working for the London
Rubber Company 1977-1983. Based in the engineering department, I
noticed how it was the workers who ran the two factories I worked in.
But
although they ran the factories, there was no great urge to take them
over, to seize the means of production. There were trade unions, but
they weren't 'militant'. It was therefore a total shock when the new
Conservative (Thatcher) government's economic policies kicked in.
The
Tories had not forgotten the humiliation of the 1970-74 Heath
government by the miners and other trade unions. They were determined
to destroyed the organised labour movement- even if that meant
trashing the UK's manufacturing industry 1974.
The
Tories succeeded and the first factory I had worked in closed in 1982
and the second in 1992.
There
is a Brexit parallel here. It seems pretty clear that a no deal
Brexit will trash what is left of the UK manufacturing industry, but
no-one can quite believe that any government would be so stupid. But,
driven by their free-market beliefs, the Conservatives in the early
1980s were prepared to see hundreds of factories close and thousands
of workers lose their jobs.
Back
then the argument was that trade unions/ organised labour had become
too powerful and were holding back the UK economy. Now it is the EU
that has become too powerful and is holding back the UK economy.
But
to find a time when the UK economy was world class, even wold
dominating, you have to go back to 1851, the year of the Great
Exhibition held in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London, England.
What
was the origin of this Victoria success? Answer: coal.
Coal
is a source of concentrated energy. Burning one ton of coal releases
heat energy roughly equivalent to burning 10 tons of dried wood. In
several places in Britain the coal was close to the surface and often
- eg north east England - near the sea/ navigable rivers. Through
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries coal was used as a
substitute for wood domestically and in industries like brick making
and then iron making. Horse-drawn railways and canals were used to
help move the coal.
The
pre-existing use of coal meant that the industrial revolution in
Britain was an evolutionary process. It took 80 years to develop
simple coal burning atmospheric steam engines to the point where they
could replace water wheels as a power source and 50 years for coke to
replace charcoal in the iron industry.
But
once coal could be used as an energy source across many different
industries, its easy availability allowed rapid economic growth. An
industrial revolution based on wood and water would have been
possible, but much harder to sustain. Ensuring enough water would
have need a massive reservoir building programme and finding enough
timber would have needed a huge rise in imports.
It
was easier to use the millions of tons of coal readily available. The
UK had an annual output of 13 million tons of coal in 1801. By 1851
this had risen to 51 million tons and by 1901 it had reached 225
million tons.
But
by 1900 the UK was no longer the only industrial power. In the 1860s
steel began to replace wrought iron for shipbuilding and
construction. In 1900 the UK produced 5 million tonnes of steel, but
Germany produced 6.6 millions tons and the USA 11.4 million tons. The
UK's moment of greatness had passed. [One steel works- Port Talbot-
can now produce as much steel as the whole UK did in 1900.]
Ironically,
it was the UK's obsession with free trade which destroyed its
industrial strength. Both Germany and the USA built up their steel
and other industries behind protective tariff barriers. The UK hung on
to free trade until the early 1930s. Quotas and other restrictions
were then imposed to save steel and cotton, the UK's other big
Victorian industry.
The
idea was that the government would protect the industries while they
rationalised and re-organised themselves. But that didn't happen. The
industries found that they could continue in their Victorian and
pre-Victorian locations using Edwardian technology and make enough
profit to survive.
They
were still surviving when the sixties rolled around. This presence of
the past was illustrated in 1964 when the Beatles travelled by steam
train from Liverpool to London in 'Hard Days Night' along railway
lines built in the 1830s. In 1964 there was still a British Empire in
Africa and some far flung colonies outlasted the Beatles.
The
relationship between Industry and Empire is confusing. Looking back
it might seem that the colonies provided raw materials for the UK
which were then turned into manufactured goods and sold back to them.
But
when the UK was a developing economy, its main import and export
were Europe and the USA. Cotton was from the slave plantations of the
USA. The manufactured cotton goods were then sold in Europe. The UK
was self-sufficient in coal and iron ore and had large scale coal
(coke) using iron furnaces while other countries- including the USA-
still used charcoal. Pig-iron and wrought iron were exported. As
Europe and the USA began building railways wrought iron rails for the
trains to run on were a major UK export.
Before
the unification of Germany in 1870, Prussia was a major exporter of
wheat to the UK- after the Corn laws had been repealed in 1845. One
of the motives for German and French industrialisation was the fear
that they would become British colonies. Building railways, coal
mines and iron works was seen as being in the national interest.
Rather
than the spread of the free-market economy, it was state-directed or
state sponsored capitalism mixed with state ownership. The UK's
'free-market' was viewed with suspicion. Because the UK was the first
industrial power, it could mass manufacture goods more cheaply than
its rivals, effectively preventing them from developing industrially
by undercutting prices.
Even
the UK had protected its industries in the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries until they were advanced enough not to need such
protection. This awkward fact was forgotten very quickly by the
Victorian free-traders who convinced themselves that it was free
trade which had made Britain great.
Which
brings me back to David Andress and 'Cultural Dementia'. It seems to
me that, in the case of the UK at least, history has always been
transformed into myth by the power of ideology. There is not a
history that has been forgotten- it was never remembered in the first
place.
