Pawn in their game

And that’s the way they try and run this land
How they hold you down and keep you in hand
You’re just a pawn in their game.
(Stiff Little Fin­gers, “Law and Order”)

Being noth­ing other than a pawn in their game – who has not some­times woken up in the middle of the night ima­gin­ing this. The Big Other that pulls the strings has vari­ous fig­ures: the national and transna­tional law and order appar­at­uses, the global cap­ital and the alleged eco­nomic neces­sit­ies, bur­eau­cratic and admin­is­trat­ive reg­u­la­tions, the demands of social secur­ity, edu­ca­tional stand­ards, images, ideas and idols con­stantly pro­duced and re-​produced by the mass-​media, and so on and so forth. Things get from bad to worse when one starts to won­der who really is in charge, since today sov­er­eignty is frag­men­ted, which does not make it less per­vas­ive and omni­po­tent. Then again, you may find some com­fort from the fact that this is not your para­noid delu­sion but the real­ity, “the only things we got today” as The Clash already told us in “Hate and War”, which you’ll find from their first LP, The Clash, released in 1977: “An’ if I close my eyes /​They will not go away /​You have to deal with it /​It is the currency”.

How­ever, things were dif­fer­ent then, and also some years later, in 1979, when Stiff Little Fin­gers’ first album, Inflam­mable Mater­ial, was released. The band, which took their name from the Vibrat­ors’ song of the same name in their debut album Pure Mania, was foun­ded the same year The Clash’s album was released in Bel­fast. It was near the height of the Troubles and their man­ager, Gor­don Ogilvie, the Marx­ist journ­al­ist, sug­ges­ted the band to do songs related to their exper­i­ences of the North­ern Ire­land con­flict. When they did so, they were accused by another North­ern Irish punk band, The Under­tones, of sen­sa­tion­al­ising the Troubles.

In July 1979, Stiff Little Fin­gers per­formed at Helsinki’s Kaivopuisto, a gor­geous park in the middle of the city. The sky was cloud­less, some had a pic­nic, some a drink or two and some danced the pogo wildly, recalls Sally Flesh, then a first year law stu­dent with orange spikes and yet-​to-​come gui­tar­ist of The Stompin’ Chick­ens and The Pin Ups. Even if punk attrac­ted viol­ence also in Hel­sinki, and even if the rocka­billy and teddy boys, who later star­ted to hang around at the same clubs with punks listen­ing to bands like The Cramps, The Met­eors and The Stray Cats, attacked punks dur­ing the gig armed with socks filled with sand and stones, one may won­der what the situ­ation in Bel­fast had to do with Hel­sinki. Cer­tainly, “they” were not the same for the lads com­ing from the war zone – where “hate has made you blind /​And you’ve spent the last ten years of your life /​In this emer­gency” (Stiff Little Fin­gers, “State of Emergency”) – and for the Finnish punks, who were raised in the con­sen­sual Finnish wel­fare state.

In spite of this con­tex­tual dif­fer­ence, it was clear to every Finnish punk (actu­ally in Fin­land, which in the end of 1970s was an intol­er­ably oppress­ive and homo­gen­ous soci­ety and an author­it­arian state ruled over twenty years by the same pres­id­ent, punk spread extremely fast, which, in the pop­ular­ity of punk, made it in Europe second only to Eng­land) to whom Jake Burns, the Stiff Little Fin­gers singer, referred to when he screamed “they”. The songs were not merely about Bel­fast but more gen­er­ally about us, Sally Flesh tells, about our com­mon situ­ation and feel­ings, about repres­sion and intol­er­ance we all confronted:

Everybody’s down in the centre of town
Doing noth­ing wrong we’re only hangin’ around
They put you up against the wall
Make loud mouthed jokes just to make you feel small
Laugh at your appear­ance and the clothes you wear
Call that justice just isn’t fair.
(Stiff Little Fin­gers, “Law and Order”)

At the end of the 1970s, the oppon­ent, that is, the one who run the game and pulled the strings, was more clearly iden­ti­fi­able than today: the state and its appar­at­uses. There was the Sov­er­eign, the State and the Police – and all those good cit­izens who were sub­mit­ted to the Sys­tem and Nor­mal­ity. Let us call this com­plex of the legal, social and moral norms, the legit­im­ate rul­ing power, the estab­lish­ment and the insti­tu­tional appar­at­uses, oppress­ive struc­tures, insti­tu­tions and prac­tices as the Law. For the Law, punks were merely: “Just another num­ber you ain’t got a name /​Just a little punk y’know they don’t care” (Stiff Little Fin­gers, “Law and Order”).

Dur­ing those days, things were black and white, good and evil, just and unjust and there was a cat­egor­ical divi­sion between we and they: “Talk­ing bout their law and order /​… /​Law and order /​There’s no justice in it /​None!” (Stiff Little Fin­gers, “Law and Order”). Punk raged against the Law: “So please don’t just sit there /​Let’s try to break out” (Stiff Little Fin­gers, “State of Emergency”).

Brand new beat

When the law break in
How you gonna go?
Shot down on the pave­ment
Or wait­ing in death row.
(The Clash, “The Guns of Brixton”)

The law enforce­ment was there, not merely in South Lon­don, which “The Guns of Brix­ton” told about, but all over European cit­ies, to “crush us” and “bruise us”, as The Clash’s song tells. It served the interest of the Gov­ern­ment, the Cap­ital and the con­ven­tional Mor­al­ity. There exis­ted, if not form­ally at least in prac­tice, a per­man­ent state of excep­tion all over Europe. At least those at the mar­gins of the soci­ety exper­i­enced the situ­ation as total­it­ari­an­ism – not as the total­it­ari­an­ism of Nazism or Sta­lin­ism, but as a new kind of total­it­ari­an­ism, which reg­u­lated every part of your life and which deman­ded uncon­di­tional sub­mis­sion, obed­i­ence and mediocrity in the name of Nation, Eco­nomy, Mor­al­ity and Secur­ity. It was George Orwell’s Nine­teen Eighty-​Four real­ised here and now, or as the Sex Pis­tols defined the state of things: “God save the Queen /​The fas­cist régime”.

People who lived in this kind of per­vas­ive soft total­it­ari­an­ism did not even real­ise – or read­ily ignored the fact – that they were totally sub­jec­ted to the Law:

An’ everybody’s doing
Just what they’re told to
An’ nobody wants
To go to jail!
(The Clash, “White Riot”)

The Law would laugh sar­castic­ally if an excluded punk would start to speak about the equal­ity before the law, the sub­ject­ive rights shared by every­one, the fun­da­mental freedoms and human rights or the ideals of the rule of law and con­sti­tu­tion­al­ism. Then again, punks could not care less about these ideo­lo­gical super­struc­tures which have sig­ni­fic­ance only for the estab­lish­ment: “All the power’s in the hands /​Of people rich enough to buy it” (The Clash, “White Riot”). All these nice prin­ciples of law merely dis­guised and veiled not merely the real­ity of unjust and exploit­at­ive polit­ical and eco­nomic con­di­tions but also viol­ence that was the ulti­mate found­a­tion of the Law and which was present in every legal norm and its inter­pret­a­tion, applic­a­tion and enforce­ment. Punks did not need Robert Cover or any other legal scholar or philo­sopher to tell them about this daily fact. Your being was sur­roun­ded and even per­vaded by legal viol­ence that forced you to the pre-​given roles, pos­i­tions and careers:

They offered me the office, offered me the shop
They said I’d bet­ter take any­thing they’d got
[…]
Career oppor­tun­it­ies are the ones that never knock
Every job they offer you is to keep you out the dock.
(The Clash, “Career Opportunities”)

“Well, I got no choice”, Joe Strum­mer, the singer of The Clash, fin­ishes the song, but there was a choice. As Pete Malmi, the singer of Briard, the first Finnish punk group, sings in their second single: “Fuck the Army”. Do that and dance the pogo, a dance style cred­ited to Sid Vicious, with raised wrists shout­ing “I wanna riot /​White riot – a riot of my own” (The Clash, “White Riot”). Instead of “tak­ing orders” and “going back­wards” they were “tak­ing over” and “going for­wards”, which was pos­sible thanks to “a brand new rock”, “a bad, bad rock, this here revolu­tion rock”.

Every­body smash up your seats and rock to this
Brand new beat
This here music mash up the nation
This here music cause a sen­sa­tion.
(The Clash, “Revolu­tion Rock”)

This here revolu­tion rock did cause a sen­sa­tion, but punk was not a polit­ical move­ment. On the con­trary, it des­pised not only all the polit­ical parties but also the paci­fist uto­pi­an­ism and eco­lo­gical move­ment of the hip­pies. Punk was, first of all, “brand new beat” whose revolu­tion­ary force that would “smash up the nation” did not aim at des­troy­ing the liberal-​capitalist rule of law demo­cra­cies but more to an inten­tional self-​alienation from the dom­in­ant juridico-​politico-​economic order and the main­stream mor­al­ity and cul­ture that were exper­i­enced as total­it­arian and oppress­ive. Some punks were work­ing class lads, some unem­ployed, some edu­cated in art schools and uni­ver­sit­ies, but what was com­mon to them was that they delib­er­ately sep­ar­ated them­selves from careers they were pre­sumed to have.

The songs were about their situ­ation and life in the total­it­arian rule of the Law and nor­mal­ity that reigned over the grey European cit­ies, where “The wind howls through the empty blocks look­ing for a home /​I run through the empty stone because I am all alone” (The Clash, “London’s Burn­ing”). Accord­ing to Pete Shel­ley, the gui­tar­ist and later singer of the Buzz­cocks, their songs were reflec­tions on how they felt, which enabled oth­ers to do that as well: “We gave every­body a voice. You could go on stage and say, ‘Fuck.’ It was word you used if you weren’t hid­ing away from any­thing. It was like, ‘I can do and say any­thing I want.’ It encour­aged people to become cre­at­ive and form bands and do the things they wanted to make their own fun. It enabled people to become act­ive par­ti­cipants in cul­ture, rather than just being pass­ive con­sumers.” Punk was a sub­vers­ive scene, a big refusal to con­form, the abso­lute other of the Law.

Part 2 »>