UNFORTUNATELY the result probably won’t be in until after we go to press, but I’d describe the mood as “quietly confident” — not just of her winning her seat again but of us finally removing the ghastly Tory majority on Adur Council which has festered there for decades like a pair of mouldy underpants.  

We’ll see — I’ll send the news through when we have it, and maybe it can be squeezed onto the end of this week’s column. The Tories’ voter-ID trick really is disgusting, especially the bit which says that OAP bus passes and Oyster cards are valid but student ones aren’t.

Naked voter suppression in action.

The Men They Couldn’t Hang are one of my favourite bands of all time, a huge inspiration to my own work and a lovely bunch of friends I’ve shared stages and beers with countless times since the very beginning of their 40 years together.

Last Saturday I charged back from a Labour benefit gig in Weston Super Mare for their 40th anniversary gig at the Shepherds Bush Empire in London, and it is an honour to write this tribute to them.

Our first meeting is a memory so distant it hardly registered at the time but has grown more vivid over the years. One of their very earliest gigs. Mid-1984, Camden Dance Centre: probably a miners’ benefit, so much was that year! My 1980s co-conspirators The Newtown Neurotics, myself and, first on, a brand new bunch of punky-folky buskers bearing the memorable name.

No stage. A lot of enthusiasm, a couple of memorable tunes … and then, a few months later, the name erupting back into my brain as I listened spellbound to Peel playing their debut single, a version of Eric Bogle’s Green Fields of France so exquisitely moving that it brought tears to my eyes.
 
My father fought in WWI. In his memory, and following their interpretation, I covered it myself from then on. And as they grew in stature on the back of that wonderful single I started to go and see TMTCH, buy their records and play alongside them.

I was always puzzled by the “cowpunk” tag — main songwriter Paul Simmonds is in my opinion our finest classic English storytelling songwriter — but that was the music press back then, always looking for a new “genre.” (I know. I was part of it.)

By far our most memorable gig ever together was the revival of that early line up at the launch of RAR successor movement, Cable Street Beat — named after their epic song Ghosts of Cable Street — at the Electric Ballroom in London on October 8 1988. Different headliners now though. TMTCH, Neurotics, Attila. A thousand people, a powerful message, a new wave of anti-fascist resistance.

And then we toured Canada together, and I introduced them to their Aussie soulmates Weddings Parties Anything at the Vancouver Folk Festival. A lot of beer was drunk that day.

I was there for the final gig in 1991, played fiddle as a very poor person’s Bobby Valentino in the excellent spin-off Liberty Cage and was overjoyed when they reformed and the story carried on once more, surviving co-singer Cush’s tragic and untimely death in 2021.

It must have taken a huge effort of will to carry on after that, but I’m so glad they did. Unbowed, undaunted, unbroken in 2024, 40 years, lots of beers, ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Men They Couldn’t Hang!

And the music goes on. Main TMTCH songwriter Paul Simmonds and angel-voiced Americana singer Naomi Bedford have just released a new album, Strange News Has Come To Town which beautifully showcases their respective strengths and in the opening track Optimist sums up my view of the world. 

“Even in a time a time like this/I find a reason to resist/Falling into a dark abyss/I try to be an optimist.” A brilliant example of the genre.

Strange News Has Come To Town is available to pre order from

naomibedfordandpaulsimmonds.bandcamp.com/album/strange-news-has-come-to-town
 
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