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Home , Dee C Lee, Junior Giscombe, Mick Talbot, My Ever Changing Moods, Our Favourite Shop, Paul Weller

 Mining soul deep A lesson in history

Michelle Charlton

Twenty five years ago, battle was joined between Britain’s miners and ’s government. On 12 March 1984 the National Union of Mineworkers began a strike against Coal Board plans to close scores of pits alleged to be uneconomic. The titanic struggle that ensued saw a widespread movement in support of the mining communities’ fight—and some of that movement took musical form. The strike got underway in a busy period for , the band formed by , after splitting up at the height of its success, with and a transient mix of other musicians. Their first British tour started just as the miners’ strike did, with their debut Café Bleu released days later. Their path crossed with the strike when their tour bus was stopped by police on the hunt for flying pickets.1 Their next single, in May, was ‘You’re The Best Thing’, but was released as a double A side with a new song, ‘The Big Boss Groove’. Its call to break with the capitalist way of seeing things—to “step outside the big boss groove”—chimed well with the spirit of the strike: Get up is what we say And don’t wait for judgement day There’s too much going on You may think you’re weak but together we could be so strong In July the Style Council headlined a benefit gig for the miners in Liverpool where £3,000 was raised.2 An even bigger one followed at London’s in September where they shared the stage, not only with the alternative comedians of the day, but with Wham! The appearance of ’s pop group at a miners’ benefit has bemused and amused ever since, but it shouldn’t. In their early days the Style Council and Wham! recorded in studios close to each other, and sang with both bands before becoming a permanent Style Councillor. Wham!’s early music did have a rebellious streak in amongst its poppiness, an urban image of refusing to get a job and conform. Above all, the fact that a band that had gone totally disposable months before (with the truly awful ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go Go’) still wanted to show their support for the strikers underlines how deep the urge for solidarity went. This was a truly popular cause that didn’t just mobilise worthy lefties stroking their chins to meaningful lyrical juxtapositions, but reached out to teenage pop fans too. Anyone organising a strike benefit today should jump at the chance of having, say, on the bill, rather than massaging artistic integrities with lesser-known acts. The politics of the next Style Council single, ‘Shout to the Top!’, often escape listeners to this day. But those who missed its message to answer personal adversity with political revolt were left in no doubt by the promotion. The video featured the band performing in front of a wall painting of the miners’ strike. Adverts announced the single in no uncertain terms: “Make no mistake / this is all class war / fight back / Shout to the Top!”3 It seemed logical to release a single directly in support of the miners’ strike. The year before, Weller had donated his royalties from the single ‘Money-Go-Round’ to Youth CND, a cause always close to the band’s hearts. Their A&R man recalls a meeting “to discuss the

1 next Council single and I could see he [Weller] was clearly moved by the plight of the miners and their families. He decided that rather than just offer money, he would write and record a song about the dispute and donate the royalties to the suffering families.”4 By now, it was clear that the strike would be long and drawn-out, and the realisation that thousands in mining communities faced a bleak Christmas galvanised people to do their bit. The net was cast a bit wider than the Style Council itself. The Council Collective, as the ensemble was called, brought in people they had worked with before—Dee C Lee and rapper Dizzy Hites—alongside bassist Leonardo Chignoli and Vaughn Toulouse rapping, as well as two quite high profile vocalists. had hit the charts with ‘’ two years earlier, seeming to herald a new black before his career inexplicably stalled. , a miner’s son himself, was a Motown veteran most famous for the 1966 standard ‘What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?’ They recorded ‘Soul Deep’ on the weekend of 22-23 September: music on the Saturday, vocals on the Sunday. Right from the first verse, the lyrics pulled no punches: Getcha mining soul deep with a lesson in history There’s people fighting for their communities Don’t say this struggle does not involve you If you’re from the working class this is your struggle too The speed with which the single had to be put together inevitably meant that the lyrics were rushed, and in places it shows. For instance, “If they spent more on life as they do on death / We might find the money to make industry progress” is another example of Weller’s opposition to the arms race, but the sense of the line was sacrificed somewhat to fit the tune. Strangely enough, the strike is referred to as “Going on ten months now—will it take another ten?” But the strike was only six months old when this was recorded, and it was due to be released some time in its ninth month. ‘Eight’ or ‘nine’ are hardly difficult words to find a rhyme for, but Weller must have stuck with ‘ten’ purely because it rhymed with “Just living on the breadline with what some people send”. However, given the haste of its composition, and the fact that a song written for a collective can’t really express the writer’s personal feelings, it does have some very nice touches. “There’s mud in the water, there’s lies on the page” conveys that year’s images of muddy pickets defying riot shields, but also the deliberate media campaign to muddy the waters of the debate. “No pit stops, no closures” simply but originally broadens the meaning of the commonplace motor racing phrase. But the lyrics’ greatest achievement was to confront the difficult big question that the strike was posing. After so long on strike in so just a cause, how come the miners weren’t winning? A couple of weeks before ‘Soul Deep’ was recorded, the Trades Union Congress had met and pledged full support to the NUM, asking unions to boycott all coal and any fuels used to replace coal. If this were implemented—and plenty of workers would have responded to the call—it would have closed Britain’s power stations and ground industry to a halt, forcing the government to give way. Weller was quick enough to realise that the resolutions were unlikely to mean much. “Just where is the backing from the TUC?” asked the second verse, “’Cause if we ain’t united there can only be defeat”. Jimmy Ruffin’s knowledge of bitter battles fought by black miners in the US gave added point to the verse he sang: Think of all those brave men, women and children alike Who built up unions so others might survive In better conditions than abject misery Not supporting the miners is to betray that legacy “But as for solidarity, I don’t see none”, bemoaned the last line of the chorus. “The whole

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record is about Solidarity,” explained Weller, “or more to the point, getting it back!”5 Musically, ‘Soul Deep’ is a fine example of mid-1980s dance music. Although Weller had produced the last Style Council single himself, he brought in Martyn Ware of Heaven 17, acknowledged masters of dance electronica, to mix the single. Bert Bevans (not yet the superstar DJ he was to become at Ministry of Sound) made a ‘Club Mix’ which is funkier and blacker: Weller’s vocals were replaced by Ruffin and Junior, meaning that only black vocalists can be heard on this version. At over six minutes, the track was too long for a single, and so—in time-honoured disco fashion—it was split in two, Part 2 going on the B side. The 12” single featured a full version on the A side, with a fairly unique B side. ‘A Miner’s Point’ was a 17 minute interview with two striking Nottinghamshire miners by Paolo Hewitt, the music journalist who wrote Style Council sleeve notes in the guise of ‘The Cappuccino Kid’ (although getting anyone to admit this open secret is like getting Gerry Adams to say he was in the IRA). The miners, Bob and Chris, tell us they have been out on strike for eight and a half months, so the interview would have taken place around late November, close enough to the single’s release date— which may explain the uneven sound quality. But even twenty five years later, ‘A Miner’s Point’ gives a great insight into the issues of the strike and the beliefs that motivated strikers. Chris, mining since 1980, sounds like a good example of the militant younger miners who powered the strike on the ground, though Bob, with thirty years down the pit, is no moderate either. This is no ordinary strike, insists Chris, but “a class war”, Bob having taken the words out of his mouth. But he is very bitter at miners breaking the strike and the failure of other workers to come out in support: “I can’t understand why we all haven’t stood together as has been done in the past”. Bob puts it down to workers being “in far too much debt” paying off car loans and inflated mortgages: he agrees with Hewitt that “material goods have, like, divided them”. Asked if there would be power cuts that winter, Chris replies: “Hopefully!” While he had no desire to cause people hardship, he maintains that “the only way, I’m afraid, that we’re going to win this strike is if power cuts take place”. ‘Soul Deep’ was due to come out in early December, the royalties going to Women Against Pit Closures. One of the greatest revelations of the strike was the way women in the mining communities came into their own, taking a lead role in organising solidarity. There was no point donating money directly to the NUM, of course, as the union’s funds were being snatched by the courts. A hit record in the run-up to Christmas looked set to raise a tidy sum for the miners, not to mention awareness of their cause. But the project was all but derailed at the last minute.

By late 1984, the increasing isolation of their strike had led some miners to assault individual scabs. “No, it’s not good, is it?” was the verdict of Bob, one of the strikers interviewed for the B side of ‘Soul Deep’. “I don’t believe in that.” When asked if such tactics didn’t play into the enemy’s hands, he agreed that “It’s not doing us any good at all, no.” Shortly after that interview was recorded, on 30 November, two strikers dropped a concrete slab from a bridge on to a taxi driving two scabs to work in Merthyr Vale pit: the driver, David Wilkie, was killed. It was a desperate act born of utter frustration. Scabbing was even more of a betrayal than usual in the close-knit south Wales coalfield, particularly here where 144 people had been killed in the Aberfan pit disaster eighteen years before. The police siege of the area was preventing any effective picketing, and two miners resorted to extremes. It emerged at their trial that another striker was on the bridge trying to persuade them against the act, and we can only imagine the arguments that took place there. Wilkie had been ferrying scabs under police escort for a while, but his death left behind a fiancée and three kids, with another on the way. It did nothing but harm, presenting the miners’ enemies with a gaping open goal. It also allowed to push for the withdrawal of the record due to come

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out in support of the strike. “From the outset, the company was unhappy about releasing ‘Soul Deep’”, according to Dennis Munday who liased between them and the Style Council. They claimed it would alienate the band’s potential audience, but—given that the record- buying public was well aware of where the Style Council stood politically—it just sounds like a corporation supporting its own side in the strike. The killing of Wilkie saw them re- double their opposition to the single, “bringing about immense pressure to withdraw it”, writes Munday. He stuck to his guns, though, forcing Polydor to accept that ‘Soul Deep’ would only be pulled if the Council Collective themselves wanted it pulled.6 Only the most hard-bitten supporter of the strike affected to remain unmoved by the Merthyr Vale tragedy, and those involved in ‘Soul Deep’ did have some heart searching to do. Rumours spread as thousands of copies of the single lay idle in a warehouse, and on 5 December the company announced its cancellation for “artistic reasons”, the standard record industry excuse.7 But after discussions between Paul Weller and Polydor, that thank- fully proved a false alarm. The single would come out, it was announced, with some of the proceeds being diverted: The aim was to raise money for the striking miners and their families before Christmas. In the light of the tragic event last week we will also be giving some of the money to Mr Wilkie’s widow. We still support the strike—because if the miners lose it will mean the end of the trade union movement.8 The lyrics were originally to be printed on the back of the sleeve, but Weller had them removed.9 Presumably he felt it was no longer appropriate to highlight the line “There’s blood on the hillside” in the chorus. The single was released on 14 December. “We just wanted time to think about it”, explained Weller in an interview. “I still think the strike’s got to go on and got to have support, but that kind of violence isn’t going to help anyone.”10 An advance of £9,800 went to Women Against Pit Closures immediately.11 Weller and Ruffin were interviewed on BBC Radio 1, and the Council Collective performed on ’s The Tube. Despite the reluctance of mainstream radio to play the single and the refusal of some record shops to stock it, it entered the charts at number 37, accompanied by a performance on . Given the programme’s subsequent slow demise, it can be easily forgotten how central Top of the Pops once was to popular cultural debate. It set the agenda for schoolyard discussions up and down Britain every Friday morning, the previous night’s performances being cited as proof that were genius, that Duran Duran were wankers, or whatever. The Style Council were notorious for not taking the programme as seriously as the BBC would have liked: deliberately miming badly, playing the wrong instruments, smirking at in-jokes. But the Council Collective were on their best behaviour for the cause, dutifully playing along amidst the moronic dancers and flying balloons. In a slight variation to the single, Weller even joined in the song’s rap, and the result manages not to be embarrassing.12 Later on the same Top of the Pops, Weller joined in the performance of Band Aid’s number one ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, sheepishly miming ’s part as the future knight of the realm must have been washing his mullet that evening. While Weller was fully involved in the single’s aim of publicising and trying to alleviate famine in Africa, it is nonsense to claim that Band Aid “certainly inspired the Council Collective”.13 One of the many reasons ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ is such a dog’s dinner is that it mashes together a sorry hotch-potch of musical styles, whereas ‘Soul Deep’ has an underlying musical coherence to it. Plenty of other musicians could have been willingly roped in—, for example, who had played support on the Style Council tour in March and was performing benefits in miners’ welfare halls across England at the time14—but the Council Collective was kept as a united collective of musicians with a broadly similar style, rather than a random grouping of hitmakers.

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Apart from anything else, ‘Soul Deep’ had been recorded a month before Band Aid was assembled. Despite their mutual dislike, Bob Geldof had gone out of his way to get Weller involved in the project, bringing him into the studio to help put the song together the day before the stars turned up in front of the cameras.15 The Council Collective was not one of the rash of charity supergroups that followed in Band Aid’s wake. In fact, while benefit concerts with various artists were nothing new, and individual musicians had donated royalties from records, ‘Soul Deep’ may well have pioneered the practice of bringing together an ensemble to record a single for a good cause. ‘Soul Deep’ got as high as number 24 and spent six weeks in the charts, selling 100,000 and raising a decent sum of money for the miners.16 In Ireland, seemingly the only other country the single reached, it got to number 11—which goes along with NUM leader Arthur Scargill’s belief that Irish support for the strike was proportionately higher then elsewhere.17 But it was all a drop in the ocean when faced with a state willing to spend twenty times as much to defeat the miners. Those power cuts didn’t happen, other unions didn’t turn sympathy into action, and in March 1985 the miners went back proud but defeated. However, ‘Soul Deep’ had helped ensure that some miners’ families were fed, that some miners’ children got Christmas presents, that thousands of people got the message that their fight had to be supported. The song featured in the Style Council’s live set throughout 1985, but the early part of that year was devoted to recording their second album . Its predecessor was a very eclectic mix, but Weller promised that this would be different: “Though there’s still loads of styles on Our Favourite Shop, it’s more coherent and more confident. We took more time over it too.”18 The tracks do hang together a lot better, but after the instrumental that gives the album its title, it concludes with a track that sticks out: ‘Walls Come Tumbling Down!’ Unlike many of the tracks, its recording date is unknown: it seems to have been laid down late in March.19 Musically, it is noticeably less slick than the rest of the album, and the lyrics are far more rough and ready. The song bears all the hallmarks of being written quickly in response to the defeat of the miners’ strike and recorded soon after. What’s more, the main influence on the lyrics is ‘A Miner’s Point’, the interview from the B side of ‘Soul Deep’. Chris’s point that solidarity from other workers in the energy industry was needed to cause power cuts and bring Thatcher to heel is openly evident: Governments crack and systems fall ’Cause Unity is powerful Lights go out—walls come tumbling down! Bob’s belief that the working class was being weakened by consumerism and debt is also there: The competition is a colour TV We’re on still pause with the video machine That keep you slaves to the HP Their insistence that the strike was more than a simple industrial dispute is echoed too: “Are you gonna get to realise / The class war’s real and not mythologised”. Some of these lyrics sound clumsy. One line refers to those who “dangle jobs like the donkey’s carrot”, with the emphasis on the second syllable of ‘carrot’ just so it rhymes with “not” two lines before. Then follows “Until you don’t know where you are”, which seems to be the work of a who didn’t know where he was when it came to filling in the next line. It’s not that Weller couldn’t write a political song that worked artistically too: the album is full of them, like the blatant call to arms ‘Internationalists’ with no such weak- nesses. It all points to ‘Walls Come Tumbling Down!’ being written in the heat of the moment as a gut reaffirmation of socialist principle.

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And that is the song’s abiding virtue. With the beaten miners’ strike still an open wound, it was a shot in the arm to hear a song that began: “You don’t have to take this crap / You don’t have to sit back and relax / You can actually try changing it”. As many on the left embarked on a long day’s journey into the right, hearing Paul Weller on Top of the Pops insist that the class war wasn’t mythologised stiffened the resolve. On top of that, it was commercially successful, going to number six when released as a single in May, a position no later Style Council single would reach. Hundreds of millions heard it at that July too. For all its shortcomings as a song, ‘Walls Come Tumbling Down!’ was a powerful and necessary political statement inspired by the thoughts of two strikers in Britain’s most important class battle for generations. What is wasn’t was an attempt to slag other musicians. The line “You don’t have to sit back and relax”, claims John Reed’s biography, “alluded to the ‘Frankie Say Relax’ T-shirt craze which followed the enormous success of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s single”.20 Paolo Hewitt takes it further, calling the line “a direct dig at the band Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Their single, Relax, had recently hit the number one spot. The band’s decadent image riled Paul.”21 First, ‘Relax’ was a hit a year and a half before, not “recently”. Second, while Weller was never shy in criticising other artists, no caustic comments on Frankie have emerged. Third, their subsequent single ‘Two Tribes’ was a prominent part of a popular anti-nuclear mood that the Style Council actively promoted. Fourth, when the Style Council played at a rally in February 1985 against compulsory training schemes for unemployed youth, Frankie Goes to Hollywood sent a message of support: “Frankie Say, Don’t Relax—Organise”.22 Fifth, the Style Council embraced the slogan T-shirt themselves, producing one with the line “You don’t have to take this crap” next to a shattered image of Ronald Reagan to promote ‘Walls Come Tumbling Down!’ itself.23 Another contemporary band may have influenced the song, though. ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’ by Tears for Fears was all over the charts in March 1985, and one couplet may have given Weller the idea of linking power cuts with the fate of Jericho: “There’s a room where the light won’t find you / Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down”. The rest of the Style Council’s career saw some great work, much of it still un- appreciated, but the band entered a clear decline after 1985. In part this was musical, with their desire to experiment with new forms often confusing and sometimes failing. In part it was personal, with band members settling down to parenthood and private happiness. In part it was down to a worsening relationship with their record company after the departure of their trusted A&R man, culminating in their 1989 house album Modernism being rejected and the band calling it a day.24 But there was also a political element to it all. It got harder and harder to be a socialist in the aftermath of the miners’ defeat as Thatcher’s offensive on the working class steamrollered along. Being a socialist and expressing it in meaningful music was no easier, especially when the audience was shrinking and retreating. The Style Council’s pivotal role in the Red Wedge project was an admirable attempt to break out of the dilemma, but Red Wedge was always hamstrung by its attachment to an increasingly worthless Labour Party. Paul Weller is still a rightfully acclaimed artist today, but politics don’t feature overtly in his songwriting. Fans of the anti-acquisitive love song ‘You’re The Best Thing’, with its timeless line “I’m content just with the riches that you bring”, were surprised to hear it bringing its author some more riches advertising a blackcurrant drink in 2003! But he has never disowned his political engagement in the 1980s. “It wasn’t a time to be non-partisan”, he said in the sleeve notes to the 2007 re-release of Our Favourite Shop: It was too serious a time, too extreme. I wasn’t waving the Labour Party flag, but the socialist red flag, that’s for sure. …the trade unions were being worn down, we had the miners’ strike, there was mass unemployment: there were all these issues, you had to

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care, and if you didn’t you had your head in the sand or didn’t give a fuck about anyone else. You couldn’t sit on the fence. In 1984 he sang that “I know as much as the day I was born”, but his response then was to “shout to the top”. In 1996’s ‘’—arguably his finest hour as a solo artist —he similarly acknowledges that “The more I know, the less I understand”, but remains “waiting for the bang / To light a bitter fuse”. When that fuse is lit again, a radical Weller may return. The Conservative Party leader remarking last year that he thought The Jam’s ‘Eton Rifles’ was a rather spiffing tune certainly brought forth a visceral response from the song’s author, and a look back in anger at the years of Tory rule: “I think they were absolute fucking scum—especially Thatcher, who I think should be shot as a traitor to the people. I still think that, and nothing will ever change my opinion.”25 There’s nothing left-wing about seeking personal vengeance against individual capitalist leaders, of course, or even thirsting for the blood of the ruling classes in general: if anything, it detracts from the essential humanity that all socialism is founded upon. But Thatcher is an exception. The way she cruelly ground down the British miners, callously allowed Irish hunger strikers to die, ordered the killing of Argentinian conscripts sailing away from battle —it all sets her apart from the run-of-the-mill bourgeois politician. You might think Blair or Haughey were bad, but she has them well in the halfpenny place. A world without her will be an immeasurably better one. Our hopes were cruelly raised and dashed again earlier this year when she turned out to be just ill, but when she does finally go, millions will breathe easier and rejoice. And when those parties get going, ‘Soul Deep’ should be on the turntable. Red Banner 37-38 September-December 2009

Notes 1 Iain Munn, Mr Cool’s Dream: The complete history of the Style Council (Wholepoint Publications 2008), p 57. While Munn’s book is meticulously researched, he seems to have the details of this incident wrong. He has their bus being stopped on the way from Nottingham to Newcastle, but the flying pickets were heading towards Nottinghamshire. They were more likely stopped the day before: travelling from Ipswich to Nottingham, the band could have been caught up in the police operation to prevent Kent miners picketing in the midlands. 2 Ibid, p 66. 3 John Reed, Paul Weller: (Omnibus Press 1997), p 173. 4 Dennis Munday, Shout to the Top—The Jam and Paul Weller: An inside story (Omnibus Press 2008), p 172. A&R (artist and repertoire) is largely concerned with relations between artist and record company. 5 Quoted in Munn, p 71. 6 Munday, p 173-4. 7 Reed, p 174. 8 Quoted in Steve Malins, Paul Weller: The Unauthorised Biography (Virgin Books 1997), p 133. 9 Munday, p 174. 10 Quoted in Reed, p 174-5. 11 Munn, p 71. In terms of average earnings, that would be equivalent to £34,279 in 2008 (www.measuringworth.com/ppoweruk), or about €40,000. 12 The performance can be seen on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEThk7QHcjU. Weller and rap could be an unhappy combination, as proved by his woeful composition ‘A Gospel’ on Café Bleu. 13 Reed, p 175. 14 See Andrew Collins, Still Suitable for Miners. Billy Bragg: The Official Biography (Virgin Books 2002), p 127, 143-5. 15 Malins, p 141. 16 Reed, p 175—though Reed’s figure of £10,000 obviously refers only to the advance: writer and

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performance royalties on 100,000 singles would far exceed that. 17 See Des Bonass, ‘Ireland and the miners’ strike’, Red Banner 22, p 54-5. 18 Quoted in Reed, p 181. 19 The last item for March 1985 in Munn, p 76, refers to it as a “newly recorded track”. 20 Reed, p 178. This is repeated in his Complete Guide to the Music of Paul Weller & The Jam (Omnibus Press 1999), p 121. 21 Paul Weller: The changing man (Bantam Press 2007), p 149. The fact that the word “Relax” had a capital R on the album’s lyric sheet may have confused them, but such use of capital letters is evident throughout that lyric sheet. 22 Collins, p 156. See Reed, My ever changing moods, p 177. 23 Munn, p 79. 24 Incidentally, that album’s opening track features some ad libbing by Jimmy Ruffin from the ‘Soul Deep’ session. See Munday, p 214. 25 Quoted in John Harris, ‘Hands Off Our Music!’, , 18 March 2008.

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