26 September 1985 Marxism Today

THE LIVE AID CONCERT gave a num­ Live Aid was a remarkable international institution by the relatively rich ber of fabulously rich people the opportun­ ity (at the cost of a few hours of their time) of the North for the desperately poor of the South. to parade their compassion in front of one of the largest television audiences in his­ tory. Among them were a number of performers known for their highly dubious opinions - including both the stars whose reactionary remarks led to the formation of Rock against Racism. Top of the the American bill was a former protester now turned born-again Christian, and the Brit­ ish line-up was headed by a former Beatle WHY last in the news for tearing up a striking teacher's leaflet. The organiser of the event - whose stage act used to include the projection of pornographic films - owns properties in Chelsea and Kent, and has ID CAME been nominated for a prize founded by an arms manufacturer and given in the past to Henry Kissinger and Menachen Begin. Not surprisingly, the event was almost totally lacking in any political content, and indeed began with the showing of a special­ ly recorded video in which two multi­ LIVE millionaires announced that 'the time is right for dancing in the streets' (try telling that to the starving of Ethiopia, or for that David Edgar matter the five million unemployed!). And the jamboree ended (in Britain) with the communal singing of the ethnocentric 'Do

contemporary Conservative portrait of the And finally, this condition was blamed on Live Aid gashed a great modern malaise. (and also, by a subtle sleight of hand, gaping hole in the Since the riots of 1981, the Conservative extended to) those adult groupings who leadership has regarded the state of the were held at one and the same time to be contemporary conservative nation's youth as a matter of particular setting children a bad example (Sir Keith portrait of the modern concern. Initially, this took the form of Joseph's constant refrain to the teachers) cabinet committees solemnly considering and to be themselves in the position of malaise how children could be taught to manage greedy children, unable to restrain their their pocket money; then Mrs Thatcher clamorous demands on the paternal state. they know it's Christmas' and (in America) and her ministers began to complain (in As Mrs Thatcher remarked in April, of with the presumptuous 'We are the the context of the riot, and with increasing humanity in general and the British popu­ World'. frequency) that children were no longer lace in particular, 'you don't get the best Much of the above is true. So why didn't given the clear rules they need and indeed out of them, unless you are really rather 1 it feel like that? Why did it feel that despite want, and without which they cannot learn firm'. the tarnished reputations of Bowie, Clap­ the ancient and necessary virtues of disci­ ton, McCartney, Dylan el al, for once they pline and self-restraint. Increasingly, such Heysel Stadium were on the right side? Why indeed, amid notions were associated with the baleful This model was reiterated with consider­ all that undoubtedly blatent commercial­ effects of the welfare state - which was able force - if not positive glee - in the ism, and indubitably mawkish sen­ supposed to foster in the young (along with immediate aftermath of the tragedy of timentality, was it impossible to prevent the insidious propaganda of left-wing the Heysel stadium in Brussels. In the the odd tear creeping into the corner of at teachers and social workers) the idea that Spectator, Richard West wrote that 'the least one eye? their every appetite was an entitlement, collapse of teaching and discipline in our and that they bore no personal responsibil­ schools, thanks largely to Shirley Wil­ Clear rules and bad examples ity for the amelioration of their condition. liams, is nowhere more evident than in Before answering that question it's useful, Further, the argument ran, the decline Liverpool . . . (where) a whole generation I think, to pose another, which is why the of religious, social and familial sanctions - of pampered, undisciplined children has reaction of the Right to Live Aid was so and the promotion of 'morally relative' and grown up with the habit of petulance, embarrassed and half-hearted. And the 'permissive' ideas in the educational and envy, greed and wanton cruelty - as seen answer to that, I think, is that by its very communications media - led to a situation last week on the television screens of the 2 existence, let alone its triumphant success, in which any denial of gratification was world'. In the same publication, Auberon Live Aid gashed a great gaping hole in the viewed as a legitimate excuse for violence. Waugh identified the hooligans as 'our September 1985 Marxism Today 27

Burgess' dire warnings about the inevit­ ably atavistic nature of mobs, this gather­ ing was completely, one might almost say eponymously peaceful. Indeed, it was en­ gaged in what is (for the Right) the most laudable of purposes - voluntary charit­ able endeavour. As was pointed out by a left critic of Live Aid (Mark Lewis, in ), the event could well be com­ pared with those Victorian philanthropic activities 'so vigorously encouraged by both Thatcher and Reagan', even if the nineteenth-century do-gooder donated his own wealth, and often chose to do so anonymously.11 And although Mrs Thatcher's sterner economic gurus might in fact have a bit of trouble with the general concept of overseas aid, even if donated from private sources, surely it was better for 70,000 young persons to be throwing teddy bears at each other rather than beer cans, singing and swaying rather than slinging and slaying?

The new Right and rock V roll So why in the event was the response so incredibly muted? Why did the columnists and leader-writers not queue up behind ' Richard Williams to proclaim that 'the Wembley leg of Saturday's ex­ traordinary Live Aid concert felt like the wonderful, overpaid "workers" on a been the motto of the age'.9 spree'3, and in the Sunday Telegraph de­ for the contemporary British manded that from now on the 'Calibans' be Wembley and Philadelphia Right. . . the 60s served up kept 'locked up in their caves'.4 In the But it was that pre­ the poison in a peculiarly Guardian, pointed the sented the model in its starkest form. finger of blame at 'the soft-centred, self- Attesting that 'in matters of public be­ concentrated and virulent interested, liberal-humanist sentiment haviour great improvement occurred be­ form which has beguiled our universities, tween the middle of the last century and schools and indeed churches' and which the middle of this one', the paper's leader- healing of our own nation', proving that, now 'has demanded a terrible price in writers went on to argue that 'the post- despite Heysel, 'young people could human delusion and consequent 1945 settlement embodied a reversal' of gather peacefully in large numbers, drawn suffering'.5 this trend: 'it became fashionable among as much by a "good cause" as by the chance In the Daily Mail, Anthony Burgess the middle classes to sneer at family, to worship the gods of popular asked 'what has gone wrong with the lower respectability and middle-class values, entertainment'?12 Indeed, apart from Wil­ orders'6, a question answered by Lynda premarital chastity, social disciplines, liams and (initially) two put-downs in the Lee Potter, who defined the message of the neatness and thrift'. As a consequence, Guardian, there was hardly a murmur in 'gratification society' as follows: 'If you're 'they should not have been surprised when the feature pages at all, and while every lazy, go on social security; if you lust after what the Victorian middle classes called serious daily ran a leader on Heysel, only children, rent an obscene video; if you're "the lower orders", but to whom they had one (the Daily Telegraph) commented on depressed swallow valium ... if a fellow a sense of responsibility, took those who Live Aid, which was described as 'wholly worker dares to defy you, chuck a load of set intellectual and political fashions in this concrete at him; if you don't like the look country at their word . . . They failed to 1 London Standard 11 April 1985. of a rival football supporter, kill him'.7 For understand that ordinary people need sim­ 2 Spectator 8 June 1985. Brian Walden (in the London Standard), ple rules to live by, and that without a 3 Ibid. Heysel showed that if 'the working classes framework of social discipline they can 4 Sunday Telegraph 2 June 1985. 10 5 Guardian 10 June 1985. in our cities ... are not restrained by very easily become brutalised'. 6 Daily Mail 31 May 1985. Christian morality, then they are not res­ Less than two months after that was 7 Daily Mail 5 June 1985. 8 trained at all', while for George Gale (in written, there was another international 8 London Standard 4 June 1985. the Express), 'we have positively and event, also involving large numbers of 9 Daily Express 31 May 1985. enthusiastically endorsed indiscipline' 10 Daily Telegraph 3 June 1985. young people, assembled in (on this occa­ 11 Guardian 15 July 1985. in a period when 'permissiveness has sion) two sports stadia. Despite Anthony 12 Times 15 July 1985. is September 1V85 Marxism Today

London: Down and Outs. admirable in its intent', but only in con­ indeed become mindless when stuffed and article after article, Mrs Thatcher and trast with the pop industry's more usual with the trash poured out by the pop her supporters have specifically blamed 'venality, greed and corruption'.13 industry every day, without restraint, the 'permissive society' of the 1960s for the The reason for both the reticence and without control, without decency, without undermining of authority and tradition, the carping appears at first to be a matter of discipline'.17 and the consequent collapse of social and taste. As the anti-libertarian writer Mary individual discipline, in the years that Kenny wrote in the Sunday Telegraph, 'it The spectre of the 60s followed.20 Within the last months, in­ seems churlish indeed to utter objections Such lacunae have been listed in such a deed, the chorus has been joined by voices to the very charitable accomplishment of context by other commentators too. In as various as Victoria Gillick ('the Gillick Bob Geldof, but, churlish or no, it was 1983, Colin Welch wrote in of parents see themselves as specifically in none the less 'a pity that so much of the a world from which certain virtues are rebellion against the 1960s and the changes rock music sound is so horrible'.14 Similar­ completely missing, those virtues includ­ in society it spawned'21) and Norman ly, though in reverse, Auberon Waugh was ing 'all fidelity, restraint, thrift, sobriety, Tebbit (who blamed 'the end of National forced to acknowledge that 'this is not 'he taste and discipline',18 and the world being Service and the emergence of flower power occasion to sneer at the horrible, boring that evoked, as he saw it, by the work of and the permissive society of the sixties' noises these people made or shudder at the Beatles. And like Gale, Welch is sure for promoting social violence22). their dreadful appearance. If a single Afri­ that it was not just the Beatles, but the era can life is saved by all this caterwauling, it in which they flowered, which was at Geldof s project 15 is obviously a good thing'. But this desperate fault: And it is this analysis of the root of the objection to Live Aid goes way beyond the national malaise which gives the Right merely formal. Anyone reading the social To define the world of the 1960s is to adum­ problems with Live Aid's content as well authoritarian Right in the post-riot era will brate the damage it did and is still doing. It was as its form. Not only have commentators have been struck by the importance of rock a world in which hallowed connections were like Welch and Gale condemned the music music in its demonology. severed or weakened: between crime or naughtiness and punishment; between effort, as the transmission belt of anarchy, no­ It's not just that Mary Kenny doesn't skill, accomplishment and reward. It was a thing less than the very virus of the plague; like rock music; she is clearly highly con­ world in which all the laws which make in political terms, too, they confront a cerned that 'this noisy, tuneless, rather civilisation possible were damned as oppressive potent expression of the 60s in defiant and barbaric performance is the culture that . . . From this world were banished as hostile indeed triumphant flower. For, despite its 16 the aged, the past and all the mentors who enfolds our children'. And in his post- 19 generational breadth, it was surely obvious Heysel Express piece, George Gale made it spoke therefrom. that the day belonged to the Jaggers, pellucidly clear why the new Right is The fact is that, for the contemporary Bowies and Baezes, not because they're inherently and implacably hostile to sex, British Right, while the whole of the better people than the Spandau Ballets and drugs and rock and roll: adjuring those postwar era might have been polluted and the Whams, but because for them such who think that 'violence is confined to enervated by the sickly syrup of welfarism, unalloyed idealism was a familiar accom­ political extremists' to 'listen to the pop the 60s served up the poison in a peculiarly paniment of the music. Who can doubt "music" that is thrust into the eager ears of concentrated and virulent form. In the indeed that in its commitment to the power our children and grandchildren . . . Minds years since 1981, in speech after speech of will and the politics of conscience, Live September 1985 Marxism Today 29

Aid was consciously attempting to evoke mobilisation, but one a million miles re­ tional left mobilisation since the Spanish Woodstock and conjure the Concert for moved from the clammy, deadening form Civil War. And like that campaign - and Bangladesh? of that idea traditional on the Left, notably unlike Spain - its international context can And who can doubt either that even as because the culture through which people only be understood through the technolo­ an act of philanthropy Live Aid departed were being mass-mobilised has genuine gy and vocabulary of electronics - the in significant respects from the accepted mass appeal. Indeed, it reminds us of the global village not only of the jet aeroplane Victorian model. Non-governmental it immense resource of rock and roll music - but also of the communications satellite. may well have been, individual and private the only popular form with the faintest Live Aid began with Bob Geldof watching it certainly wasn't. And despite Mrs radical credentials that has ever gained a television programme, and ended up Thatcher's last-minute message of congra­ significant purchase in the working class. with him making one. tulation - rushed by motorcycle from And of course, one of the reasons why a Number Ten, and praising Geldof for, fabulously rich rock musician is not the North and South guess what, setting a good example to the same as an even moderately wealthy prop­ And third, of course, and most important­ young - it was clear from their broadcast erty speculator is precisely because ly, Live Aid sought culturally to mobilise confrontation over EEC food surpluses throughout its history rock music has billions of people, all across the northern that Geldof's project is to shame govern­ consistently returned to its origins as hemisphere, on behalf of the tens of bil­ ments into higher aid spending. In that working-class protest music, and whenev­ lions of the south. By definition, the event sense, Geldof and his lieutenants were far er it has temporary slipped into being was about the relatively rich extending from being long-haired Nuffields or Bar- anything else, it's a sure sign that a new their hands to the absolutely poor, and it nardos in blue jeans. As Hugo Young burst of oppositional energy - punk in the demonstrated dramatically the energies pointed out in his perceptive Guardian late 70s, the Beatles in 1963 - is going to come along to drag it, twisting and shout­ 13 Daily Telegraph 15 July 1985. ing, back to its roots. 14 Sunday Telegraph 21 July 1985. rock and roll music - the Second, the event was by definition 15 Spectator 20 July 1985. 16 Sunday Telegraph 21 July 1985. only popular form with the internationalist, though once again, not in 17 Daily Express 31 May 1985. any traditional sense. Part of its interna­ 18 Spectator 17 December 1983. faintest radical credentials tionalism rested precisely on its shared 19 Spectator 20 October 1984. that has ever gained culture, of course, and, in that, it was 20 See my 'Bitter Harvest' New Socialist Septem­ directly comparable with the youth upris­ ber 1983. significant purchase in the 21 Sunday Telegraph 7 July 1985. ing in support of the Vietnamese revolu­ 22 Daily Mail 25 July 1985. working class tion, surely the most significant interna­ 23 Guardian 18 July 1985. piece (a welcome if belated antidote to Terry Coleman and Mark Lewis), Live Aid has given the lie to the notion that overseas aid is at the bottom of the public's priority pile. It has challenged the Govern­ ment's own aid programme (more accur­ ately, de-programme) by demonstrating that 'the crisis which governments take least seriously is the one which, in certain circumstances, the people take most seriously'. In that sense, Live Aid was, for Mrs Thatcher and her supporters, truly 'a message from the prince of darkness'.23

Learning the lessons So what should the Left learn from Live Aid? Should it indeed (for there is no more double-edged slogan than 'my enemy's enemy is my friend') learn anything at all? It seems to me that if there are lessons to be learnt, they are lessons that have been on offer, in one form or another, for the best part of 20 years; ever since, indeed, that period whose continued influence so disturbs our leaders. In other words, de­ spite some tart words on World in Action, Live Aid is an event with its roots in the 60s in more ways ever than the Right is aware of, and that was one of its particular virtues. First of all, Live Aid was a mass cultural 30 September 1985 Marxism Today that can be unleashed on behalf of others, arguments viewed with the deepest suspi­ If there has been one theme running energies which, Hugo Young argued, cion. However, the conventional wisdom through all the debates that have occupied could be mobilised to such an extent for no that people are best mobilised around their the Left since 1983, it has been that the other imaginable cause. This is not to say own oppression - or at least on behalf of socialist vision of the 1945 government, that Live Aid's cause was soft or bland - their own collective self-interest - is by no once so potent, has now run its course. The indeed, for socialists, it must be welcome means fully confirmed by recent history. true message of Live Aid for the Left, it to see an idealistic campaign that seeks to From getting the Americans out of Viet- seems to me, is that there is another period confront the arbitrary cruelties of nature of rather more recent history, which with the exercise of collective human orga­ undertook experiments in democratic, nisation and will. Rather, it provided a Live Aid began with Bob egalitarian and collective political forms potent challenge to the strenuous efforts of even more radical than those of the 1940s, contemporary Conservatism to create a Geldof watching a television and whose principles and ideas still inform commonsense rationale for selfishness and programme, and ended up the best of what is happening today, from individual greed on all fronts. with him making one municipal decentralisation and green poli­ In this sense, perhaps, Hugo Young is tics to the continued creativity of femin­ being unduly pessimistic about the power ism. Shortly after the Woodstock Rock of the spirit of Live Aid to infect the nam to stopping the South African cricket Festival of 1969 - the apogee of 60s domestic as well as the international arena. tour of Britain, from the Anti-Nazi League idealism, the moment when the politics Clearly, it would have been impossible to to Greenham Common, campaigns for and the culture finally embraced - a similar mobilise anything like as extensively for others (or on behalf of the species as a event was held in Altamont, California, the miners. However, if Live Aid has whole) have proved remarkably success­ during which at least four people were triumphantly demonstrated that {pace the ful, and indeed resilient. And it's perhaps brutally killed by Hells Angels, providing traditional right-wing argument) charity not completely coincidental that it's been by comparison a potent symbol of the need not begin at home, it surely doesn't those movements - rather than more con­ flower generation going murderously sour. imply that it can't be reimported. If - ventional industrial mobilisations - which In the wake of the 13th of July, however, contrary to Thatcherite superstition - peo­ have shown the greatest imagination in perhaps it is less fanciful than it was to ple can care for strangers, cannot the same their use of form, from the poster and believe that the 60s found their enduring well-springs sustain the poor within our badge art of the antiwar movement and the form at Woodstock rather than Altamont, gates? Anti-Nazi League, to the powerful theat­ and even the 80s not so much in the Heysel I am aware that much of points one and rical symbolism of the practice of the new Stadium, as in those of Wembley and two, and almost all of point three, are peace campaigners. Philadelphia.