This is my response to events in London last Saturday. 

NEVER AGAIN — AGAIN

Lewisham 1977 was my first one 
in a van from Brighton with the Vaultage crowd
The Front said they’d kick their way
into the headlines
and they met their match at Clifton Rise. 
The RAR carnivals showed our strength 
then Thatcher stole the NF’s clothes 
in the 1979 election 
with talk of being ‘swamped’
by an ‘alien culture’
(spawning a great British Asian
punk band 
called Alien Kulture)
and the battlegrounds became gigs 
and football. 

Looking back, it’s incredible —
knowing that there was 
going to be trouble 
BEFORE you got to the gig 
Staring at the rude boys
staring at the boneheads 
in a town called malice 
the ‘No Pub is a Nazi Pub’ gig 
at Skunx, Islington in ‘82 
where my mandolin met my head
and Pixie saved my arse 
from a fascist gang
and arguing with Ian Stuart 
from Skrewdriver
in the middle of one of 
Black Flag’s earliest gigs
at the Hundred Club.

And there was much more — 
countless trouble 
at gigs big and small
from the South East to the North West.
A lot of brave folk stood up and were counted
a lot of battles were won 
and the spectre retreated 
of course it never went away 
but it had lost its street power 
and we thought ‘never again’
meant just that. 
More fool us. 

Now it’s back 
in a different guise 
with the same old scapegoats 
and the same old lies
for the same old reasons 
divide and rule — 
rule by billionaires
for billionaires — 
but now they haven’t just got 
leaflets and posters
they have their own video channels 
and social media ads 
funded by billionaires 
it’s a different world 
a different time 
and a different generation 
has to step up to the mark now 

It breaks my heart 
and makes me so angry 

Never again
Again

And I’m staying in the 1980s for the rest of this column. 

Next Thursday, at the legendary 1 in 12 Club in Bradford, his adopted home town, I shall be doing a tribute to my partner in ranting verse through much of the 80s: the late, great Seething Wells. It is something I have wanted to do for years. 

Swells was a force of nature, had a personality so close to mine we could have been twins, was one of the cleverest, funniest, most lovable and most annoying people I have ever met, and I still miss him loads 16 years after his departure from this Earth. 

I did my first gig as Attila the Stockbroker on September 8 1980, and a while later, having done a few more around the country, I got a letter from someone called Seething Wells who said that he was part of a collective of Bradford poets called the Ranters, named in tribute to the iconoclastic anti-Puritan 1649 sect led by Abiezer Coppe. That was that. I immediately started the southern branch of the Ranters and got to work organising a gig for the two of us in partnership. 

We met for the first time on a Saturday in November 1981, shouting poetry of the back of a lorry at a Right To Work march in Woolwich. That night legendary beat poet and impresario Michael Horovitz was hosting one of his Poetry Olympics events with Paul Weller headlining: we gatecrashed it, Michael gave us five minutes each, we stormed it, got a review from then editor Neil Spencer in the NME, Weller offered us a support slot with the Jam at the Hammersmith Odeon — and a ranting poetry double act was born. 

We did loads of gigs together. Red Saunders from RAR recorded one and put out an EP — Rough Raw & Ranting — Swells on one side, me on the other. John Peel played it loads: it got me a deal with Cherry Red Records and really kickstarted things for me. Then Allen & Unwin did a book featuring poems from us both, The Rising Sons Of Ranting Verse. 

But by then Swells was on a different path. He became a music journalist (as Steven Wells) as roaring and sharp in print as on stage. He wrote for NME, became notorious, started a video production company, then a publishing company, fell in love, moved to Philadelphia, carried on doing his thing, we stayed in touch — and there he died, aged 49, in 2009. 

We did so many gigs together that even after 40 years I still know some of his poems by heart, and I’ll be doing them in his memory. I still miss him.

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