Billy Bragg
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I was walking down Sauchiehall Street today past all of these goons lining the streets with union jacks in their hands waiting to cheer on a victory parade of olympic medalists when I noticed Billy Bragg walking past me. He had that look on his face as if to say “I hope all these brothers and sisters recognise me”.
A few paces later I realised I had an old copy of the Standard in my bag and I about turned and ran after him. “Billy Bragg!” I exclaimed. “Yeah Brother?” he retorted (in the style of a working class hero). Christ these people are so full of shit, Anyway whilst thrusting a standard into his hand I said… “Improve your standards of Socialism Billy…read this!, it’s the only Socialist paper worth reading”. He looked at me and laughed then put it in his back pocket and walked off. Not that he will actually read it of course! Cheers Ray
Pity you didn’t have the September issue on you with the article on him. Anyway he knows about it because when sent to him, he replied:
Quote:“Billy Bragg “I’m not a Marxist” shock. This isn’t an article, it’s a tweet.”Billy Bragg? mmmmmmmm, the archetypal new working class leader. No understanding of a possible future society, make cash now, by writing supposed working class, anti-establishment, trite, tripe!Good old billy. what, in North east parlence, we call a, FUCKWIT.And BILLY, if you read these posts, we know you’re not a MARXIST, whatever that means, nor a Socialist. Just an ex worker with NEW cash, being a purveyor of crap.Made you rich, so why get involved in the struggle?And a TWEET? keep chirping dick head.
jondwhite wrote:Lets keep our good manners here on a public forum representing the party please.Lol
I have got to reply to this thread, although I don’t want to.1. Slagging people off personally does nothing. It doesn’t win friends, it doesn’t get points across. It is an embarrassment for the Party and it slurs the socialist message. Slagging people off like this on a personal level is the playing fields of the Sun and the Mirror, of the Tory press.2. I think the article on Billy Bragg was at best silly and at worse, embarrasing and pointless. What on earth does the editorial committee hope to achieve by allowing such nonsense to get into the Standard? It achieves nothing, it makes no political point other than to point out what people know anyway, that Billy Bragg isn’t a socialist based on our understanding. Then again, neither are 99 percent of the working class, so do we slag them off too?It may come as a shock, but many people like Billy Bragg’s music and I suspect many of them read the Standard too. So we have perhaps alienated readers (I know one or too that have been surprised and put off by this article), made ourselves look foolish, upset a musician who is more likely to have been on our side than against (or should I say was) and have acheived precisely what? What has been the single ahceivement of this article? Did we make any concise political point? Have we attacked a facet of the establishment and shown it for what it is? Have we elaborated a particular tenet of socialist thinking? I think we have merely produced a hack’s article. The Socialist Standard is in danger of becoming the Falling Standard with pieces like this.3. When all is said an done, Billy Bragg is only making a living writing and performing songs. His music, I think, is good and the subject matter often close to things I beleive in or at least written from an honest perspective. Most of it is about love and life rather than politics, so I don’t believe he has ever set his stall out as a overtly politicised artist pursuing political ends through music. It is important to bear this in mind. I think that attacking his ‘politics’ in the way that this article does is tantamount to attacking a bank teller for the problems besetting the banking industry – it is simply not justyfied. If he was claiming to be a socialist whilst simultaeneously running sweatshops in India, then we may have had a case, but as he does not appear to be a capitalist then perhaps he should have been cut some slack.There are surely more important and deserving politcal targets in the current landscape than Billy Bragg? The SPGB is already small and on the verge of insignificance, shit like this doesn’t help. WE NEED TO GET OUR ACT TOGETHER.
So accordin to you, SS you “don’t believe he has ever set his stall out as a overtly politicised artist pursuing political ends through music.”
Well thats intereting, as the following suggests,
Red WedgeFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Red Wedge was a collective of musicians who attempted to engage young people with politics in general, and the policies of the Labour Party in particular, during the period leading up to the 1987 general election, in the hope of ousting the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher.
Fronted by Billy Bragg (whose 1985 Jobs for Youth tour had been a prototype of sorts for Red Wedge), Paul Weller and The Communards lead singer Jimmy Somerville, they put on concert tours and appeared in the media, adding their support to the Labour Party campaign.“Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge”, a 1919 lithograph by Lissitzky
The group was launched on 21 November 1985, with Bragg, Weller, Strawberry Switchblade and Kirsty MacColl invited to a reception at the Palace of Westminster hosted by Labour MP Robin Cook. The collective took its name from a 1919 poster by Russian constructivist artist El Lissitzky, Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge. Despite this echo of the Russian Civil War, Red Wedge was not a communist organisation; neither was it officially part of the Labour Party, but it did initially have office space at Labour’s headquarters. The group’s logo, also inspired by the Lissitzky poster, was designed by Neville Brody.
Red Wedge organised a number of major tours. The first, in January and February 1986, featured Bragg, Weller’s band The Style Council, The Communards, Junior Giscombe, Lorna Gee and Jerry Dammers, and picked up guest appearances from Madness, Heaven 17, Bananarama, Prefab Sprout, Elvis Costello, Gary Kemp, Tom Robinson, Sade, The Beat, Lloyd Cole, The Blow Monkeys and The Smiths along the way.
When the general election was called in 1987, Red Wedge also organised a comedy tour featuring Lenny Henry, Ben Elton, Robbie Coltrane, Craig Charles, Phill Jupitus and Harry Enfield, and another tour by the main musical participants along with The The, Captain Sensible and the Blow Monkeys. The group also published an election pamphlet, Move On Up, with a foreword by Labour leader Neil Kinnock.
After the 1987 election produced a third consecutive Conservative victory, many of the musical collective drifted away. A few further gigs were arranged and the group’s magazine Well Red continued, but funding eventually ran out and Red Wedge was formally disbanded in 1990.
So, according to you SS, he never ” set his stall out as a overtly politicised artist pursuing political ends through music.”
The above proves differently. Gonna have to read up on facts before jumping in with boths bfeet MARRA.
He used and uses hi popularity to support the anti working-class, pro capitalist Labour Party and gets and deserves my utter contempt. Thick numpty he is.Oh and johndwhite, I think my post was well mannered, considering what I was actually going to comment about this cretinous moron. And moreover, I,m not representing the party on this site but my own views. If I want to represent the party, I’ll do it on a public platform, at a meeting, or with an article in the standard!
Enuff said!I stand by my comments. If you look and listen to Billy Bragg’s musical output, it isn’t ALL about politics, much of it is about relationships and life aside from the political arena. I am not defending or even particularly interested in BB’s politics TBH, and as a known Labour supporter and ‘reformist’ if he must be labelled, what news is there to report and get upset about? It’s hardly like he has set his stall up as a Marxist revolutinary is it? Red Wedge was hardly the cutting edge of revolutionary politics was it? Billy Bragg ISN’T a socialist as defined by the SPGB, really? Neither is the vast majority of the planet, so don’t stop at Billy Bragg!It seems to me to have been a very misguided article and if the Standard’s editors had planned an attack on a famous person, I would have thought there are far more deserving targets politically than Billy Bragg. And even if this article had some justification, and there was seen by the Party to have been a need to carry out such a character assaniation, then why not have done the smart thing and invited Billy Bragg to interview and dicuss with him his politics and ours and where they diverge and why – would have been a better article, woudl have sold more copies too because lets face some truths – Billy Bragg is infinitely more popular than our politics and Party are.Personal abuse is not the way forward for any discussion and it wins no friends or supporters. Have you personally Steve, ever been won over to someone else’s point of view by them calling you a moron or worse? I doubt it. And whilst you are perfectly entitled to your opinion, thought must be given to how and where it is expressed and the context it i likely to be viewed. Or are the type of individual who wanders into pubs and call the barman a twat because you don’t like his face? I would suggest, and hope, you’re not like this, so why rant and rave at and about people in a forum, a different kind of public place? Rule of thumb is that if you wouldn’t say it out loud in a pub, don’t type it in a forum that’s publicly viewable.So again I ask, what was the point of the article? What did the Party gain by its publication? If the answer is nothing, then it has failed even as a peice of writing. Upsetting Billy Bragg has gained the SPGB nothing in terms of any of our goals, it has not furthered the cause of socialism one iota, but it has possibly upset a few readers and made us look very stupid, very sectarian and very out of touch.We really need, as a Party, to decide where we want to be going. Do we need to be trying to build the Party, recuriting and educating workers as to the true meaning of socialism, and promoting this definition as laid out in the A&O’s or are we going to carry on shrinking into insignificance and spend our time and print taking pot shots at minor celebs and arguing with minor parties of the ‘left’ for hours on end trying to convince a donkey he’s an ass? If its the latter we might as well pack up and go home.
Billy, (nothing really to brag about Bragg) is my class enemy, my political enemy. Red Wedge was specifically set up to get youthful workers to join the, anti-working class Labour party. For this alone, he deserves and has, my antipathy.
If I wandered into a bar and saw Mr Bragg, I would call him a twat, for the disservice he has done to the working-class and by inference, the case for SOCIALISM.
Bragg, may not be a Socialist as defined by The Socialist Party but, he has claimed the label of, SOCIALIST. One more distraction from the real fight and case we need to make.
For this also, he has my complete and utter, disrespect.
I’m not a SOCIALIST to be nice to my class, or poltical enemas, sorry, enemies! I’m here to expose these politically impotent and objectionable fakers, for the frauds they are. Keeping me and mine in servitude and poverty, whilst the wealthy parasites lord it over us.
I have, SS, personally had many people, aggressively opposing the CASE I have expostulated. To the extent, that I have expected them to support their masters with violence! So be it. If they are so deluded AFTER, hearing the case for their own emancipation, that they would profer violence in the defence of the PARASITES! well, I’m not a pacifist!
You can talk and bemoan and expostulate that, BILLY, is no better, nor worse, than a multitude of others of these, intellectually redundant cretins. Then I will deal, as I have ever, with them as they come along.
He had a platform, (and it was not a platform of LOVE SONGS, or songs about life) but a platform that he used to encourage young workers along the well trodden and redundant route of supporting LABOUR. He had a platform, and the evidence was out there, for him, as well as me, a worker, to put forward the case for a SANE AND RATIONAL social system. He chose, in ignorance, to further the aims of LABOUR. I learnt of the case for a better world, why could he not? The evidence of the insanty of CAPITALISM, was all around him! Even now, it’s still there, staring him and other workers in the FACE.
It does not take The Socialist Party to point out this insanity, CAPITALISM. Capitalism does this for us! Rational thought points it out.#
If I have one objection to the article on Bragg, it is that it did’nt go far enough in depth, to his absurd support of LABOUR.
We should expose these shysters for what they are! A hindrance to reaching a sane society.
Personal abuse, you say, is not the way forward, in dealing with the likes of Bragg? Do you really think, he would avail us, SOCIALISTS, the chance to show his proclivity for LABOUR up, for what it is?
I think not. So whether you think my, SPLEEN VENTING, is useful or not, I’ll take it. Sure clears the cobwebs and my angst as a, MERE, worker.Perhaps you make my case for me Steve. If you are admitting that your explanations of socialism have roused other workers to violence in defence of those who rob them, then your whole approach is clearly flawed! And why so worked up over Red Wedge? It was thirty years ago nigh on. Who’s next for a public pilloring for not being a Real Socialist – Arthur Scargill? Jimmy Knapp?Either way the question still remains unanswered (and notably by comrades in the editorial comittee – are you silent on this issue?), WHAT has this article achieved for the Party?
You, SS, are doing as others on these threads have done before, Vis a vis, “Perhaps you make my case for me Steve. If you are admitting that your explanations of socialism have roused other workers to violence in defence of those who rob them, then your whole approach is clearly flawed!” Why use the word, PERHAPS? You’re making it up as you go along, using your presumption of my meaning.
Actually, SS, I was talking, as is my norm, in a calm, considered way. That my fellow, WORKERS, got agitated to the point of violence was in no wit, to do with any aggressive exposition of the SOCIALIST case on my part.
So can I ask, nay tell you and others on this site, don’t fucking put words in my mouth again, and act as if you’ve just proved the existence of some tremendous secret in the process. Quite frankly comrade, I’m getting heartily pissed off with having to explain the meaning of my posts, especially when these posts are quite, self-explanatory.
That workers react this way, to someone basically telling them, ‘they have been conned all their lives’, is something we, who put the case to fellow workers on a regular basis have become used to. Mayhap you do not do this on a regular basis?
I’m not as you say, WORKED UP, over Red Wedge. But I, would ask you, why do you, so vociferously defend RED WEDGE? You worked with this bunch of, two faced hypocritical jokers? Perhaps you’re a promoter organising a NEW Red Wedge tour?
Perhaps the next person I will publicly pillory for not being a REAL SOCIALIST, is you!!! Only kidding there, as I was when I IMPLIED, you dont put the case for SOCIALISM to fellow workers on a regular basis.
Not very nice people making unfounded inferences,about what you say, is it? Or putting words in your mouth!!!!!!
You may cogitate on this, the next time you do the same to me, or others.“Actually, SS, I was talking, as is my norm, in a calm, considered way.””So can I ask, nay tell you and others on this site, don’t fucking put words in my mouth again…”1. Don’t swear at me – I find it offensive and unnecessary and it only undermines your own case. as can be seen. Is this a ‘comradely’ attitude? Is the the way to progress discussion and debate?2. So if others and myself have mistaken your meaning, perhaps the problem lies not in the reading but in the writing, the common demoninator here being the writer…?! Perhaps less use of CAPITALS would help as THIS IS SHOUTING when written on forums. And I have not suggested you were violent or explosive in your case, you did this yourself – I said ‘perhaps’ because I don’t know you, I haven’t met you and so cannot say so as fact. It is an assumption on my part based on your own words, the only course of action available to me. If the assumption is wrong, I’ll admit it but the evidence seems otherwise.3. In answer to your own assumption, no I don’t promote Red Wedge and never have although I have voted labour, am still in a trade union and I do own Billy Bragg records. All I am saying is that it is utterly insignificant, as is the anti-Bragg article and the unamusing anecdotes of comrades abusing other people in the name of the ’cause’.If we cannot remain civil, if we cannot control ourselves and concentrate on promoting socialism rather than attacking individuals for their actions taken over 20 years ago, then we are no better than those that oppress us now.
SussexSocialist wrote:Either way the question still remains unanswered (and notably by comrades in the editorial comittee – are you silent on this issue?), WHAT has this article achieved for the Party?The reasons why the editorial committee published the article were: (1) It was submitted by a member about a radio interview Bragg had given recently, so it was news; (2) we held it over till the Olympics because Bragg has expressed nationalist views and we wanted to say something on this in a period of heightened British nationalism which, unfortunately, turned out to be worse than we had thought; (3) precisely because he is popular as a song writer and singer his political views (such as vote Labour or Liberal) get a wide hearing and so discussing them is a good way to introduce our ideas to people, in fact discussing the political views of a person like him is probably a better way of getting our views across than an article criticising the same views in the abstract. And of course the article was not an attack on him personally but on the political views he had expressed.What have we achieved? Well, we received a letter which said:
Quote:I greatly enjoyed the article on Billy Bragg in the September Socialist Standard. By anyone’s standards, Billy is a great songwriter (if not a great singer!), but it is true to say that he has always been much clearer about what he is “against” than what he is “for.”Okay clearly its me that’s wrong then. However, seeing as nearly everyone and their dog was/are expressing nationlist views during the Olympics, I still think he is an odd target – perhaps we should have had a go at everyone? Seb Coe would probably have been a more deserving.I can see your thoughts behind this but I think it is flawed in that everybody already knows that Billy Bragg isn’t a revolutionary, that he is a labour/liberal supporter and does not represent ‘socialism’ in any way and even he doesn’t see himself in this light! He never to my knowledge has, so apart from the quote from Radio 4, what’s the news here? We might as well submit an article on how labour isn’t really a mass party of the working class, I bet that’ll be news to many.And if the article wasn’t personal, although I remain unconvinced, the views expressed in this thread certainly have been, including between ourselves, which is a shame. I thought we should conduct ourselves as socialists and people with a touch more decorum and leave the abusive shouting to the Trots and spotty teenagers who don’t know any better.
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