Bloody revolutions, fascist dreams, anarchy and peace: Crass, rondos and the politics of punk, 1977-84

Abstract

On 8 September 1979, the English punk bands Crass and Poison Girls played a benefit gig with the Dutch punk band Rondos at London’s Conway Hall. The gig has become notorious in British punk history due to the violence that broke out between right-wing and left-wing factions, bringing to the fore wider political tensions evident across punk’s fragmented milieu. Not only did it embody the attempts of the far-right and far-left to co-opt punk’s rebellion, but it also brokered a debate as to the nature of punk’s politics and its relationship to existing political movements. In many ways, punk’s politics - especially the overt politics of bands such as Crass and Rondos - was defined against the systematic ideologies of the left and right. Nevertheless, the controversy that followed the Conway Hall gig ended the transnational friendship that had been established between the bands, leading to a protracted debate on questions of political violence, pacifism and anarchism. This article provides a comparative study of punk politics. In particular, it explores the different social and political contexts that informed punk in Britain and the Netherlands, revealing how punk cultures transmitted, mutated and evolved across national boundaries.