Stick my neck out

I used to live down the road from Marc Riley. I turned up at his flat a couple of times to buy In Tape releases, and once interviewed him (and Jim Khambatta) for a fanzine which I was vaguely thinking about putting together. (Somewhere I've got the answers Yeah Yeah Noh supplied to a questionnaire I sent them - could be worth a bit now. Or not.)

One of the things we talked about in my 'interview' with Marc was the Creepers' song "Make Joe". The starting-point was Marc's observation that skinheads freak people out: not big skinheads or hard skinheads, particularly, just anyone with a shaved scalp - even if there are normal-haired blokes around who are larger, harder or both. Hence:

Why does a head like a boiled egg make Joe shit himself?

Some years later Marc returned to the topic, in the song "Tearjerker" on the Creepers' last album. It's a great song, really poised - funny and touching at the same time. From memory:

Let me tell you a story of old
About a skinhead with a heart of gold
Who got chased down Dickenson Road
By some people that he didn't even know

Because he had a shiny bonce
Because he had size-ten feet
He was taken for a fascist slob
But a nicer bloke you'd never even meet

The same thing happened to me
I was taken for a racist rat
By a sensitive young journalist girl
Armed with pointed teeth and a cricket bat

But what about my clothes, she said
Visions of me in jackboots in her head
She was in for a terrible fright
In less than a minute I put her right

And serve her right, too.

Skins, though. Even now, there's something about a head like a boiled egg that sets middle-class alarm bells ringing. They're not nice, are they? What I'm saying is, they're not nice people, you know?

One topic that fascinates me, with my academic hat on, is the political management of violence. As a rule one of two things seems to happen: in some cases violent acts are reframed as somehow excusable, not real violence; in others the minority responsible for violent acts is framed as inherently violent, criminal by nature. (And sometimes both tactics are used, side by side.) It's a discriminatory manoeuvre, and as such it can take the shape of any existing form of discrimination: the irredeemable criminal minority may be an ethnic minority or a delegitimised political group, for example.

Or they may simply be a bit common:

Ablewhite was not the tough, independent type his shaven-headed appearance may have suggested. In fact, like many of those on the extreme fringe of the animal rights movement, he is a well-educated, articulate man from a supportive family background.
...
The campaign of intimidation and harassment against the Hall family and their employees began in 1999. Protesters threatened death and destruction, damaged property and sent a letter bomb to Sally Ann Hall, the daughter of John Hall, who runs Darley Oaks with his brother, Chris. Then, in October 2004, the remains of 82-year-old Mrs Hammond - Chris Hall's mother-in-law - were dug up and removed at night from the graveyard of a church in Yoxall, Staffordshire. The remains have never been found. Though the authorities are still not able to prove who was responsible for the desecration of the grave, the police were in no doubt that Ablewhite was at the centre of the campaign of fear.

I do like that second sentence - "In fact", indeed. I have to say, the guy sounds pretty tough and independent to me - and I can't see that those qualities are incompatible with being well-educated and articulate. Unless what the Guardian is really trying to say that, despite his scary appearance, he isn't one of those people. (He can't be, after all, what with being a teacher and having a vicar as his father and so forth.)

I don't feel any sympathy for Ablewhite and his mates - they sound like the kind of people who get into animal rights (to paraphrase the old 'vegetarian' gag) not because they love animals but because they hate people. But I'm struck by the sense of genuine shock expressed in the Guardian article that Ablewhite was a nice, middle-class boy as well as an animal-rights militant, and by the article's utter lack of comprehension of what's actually going on here. Yes, Ablewhite's educated and articulate. No, he's not a mindless thug (even if he does have a shaved head). And no, these statements are not at all surprising. Put it another way, is a clergy house in the rural West Midlands the kind of background you would not expect an animal-rights militant to come from?