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Reflections on counter culture

  
 
illmatic
15:42 / 04.04.05
I really like this blog ....

http://greengalloway.blogspot.com/

It's the blog of Alistar Livingstone, and is as he says "...So far mainly memories of anarcho-goth-punk in London in early eighties….”. He's a magician who worked with the Ma'at current, grounding his researchs in the rather cool Encylopedia of Ectasy 'zine, and published stuff in Kaos and early Chaos International mags, as well as being on the old punk squat scene ... may stimulate a few old counter-culture memories for some (I'm looking at you, Stoatie).

It's even stimulated me to start this thread, one I've been meaning to write for ages about the counter-culture in the UK. My basic thesis that there was a much stronger and viable counter culture in the UK, up until about '94 with the advent of the Criminal Justice Bill. What I’d like to do with this thread is basically see if people agree with this argument and maybe discuss where the future of counter-culture/resistance/ whatver you want to call it - might be located.

Firstly, what is a counter culture? Now, there's some argument about that here - with the poster quoted at the beginning seems to be asserting that simply consuming products marketed as counter-cultural (i.e. “The Invisibles” - quelle surprise ) qualifies one for automatic membership. Now, I think if all you’re doing is consuming passively – no matter how radical the material you’re ingesting - you’re basically simply replicating the values of the society we live in. True, this may inspire action – one day – as I’m sure “The Invisibles” has for some people, but you’re much more likely to end up with the ‘trades sitting next to a shelf full of Marilyn Manson action figures. I found this recent Hakim Bey interview fascinating, precisely because he seems to be looking for a similar formulation – something rooted and real - when he states that “I think that a radical life is not something that depends on Internet connections or websites or demos or even on politics, like having Green mayors … if it doesn’t involve alternative economic institution building, it’s not [a radical life]" .

I wonder if we might have had the nascent form of this type of culture in the travelling communities of the ‘80s and early ‘90s in the UK? (Obviously, I’m referring to the so-called “New Age Travellers”, that grew off the back of the 70s festival circuit, not the Romany derived travelling communities who’ve been so much in the news of late). Certainly the former was a very, very different mode of living that went squarely against the values of our society, and made a huge difference to those who were involved with it. I think the fact it was based strongly on core “values of opposition” is why our government(s) were so keen to destroy this culture – simply having a keen eye for the enemy, from the Battle of the Beanfield in ’84 (read about it and puke) right the way through to the Criminal Justice Bill ten years later (remember John Major - “not in this age, not in any age” – fascistic little shit). What’s strange to me, as someone who remembers this stuff – largely from my early raving years - is how completely it’s disappeared ten years later, completely gone from the cultural landscape. I’m pretty certain that another reason behind the CRB/eradication of traveller culture wasthe mass mobilisations of people that happened on the back of early raves – Spiral Tribe at Castlemorton, a 100’000 people out of the blue for 7 days. The Home Office must’ve shit.

So what do people think? Agree/disagree strongly? And following that, where/what is the alternative to the mainstream NOW – not in terms of simply protest (valuable though that is) but in really living your life differently - is it still possible? Is it even desireable?
 
 
Alex's Grandma
19:09 / 05.04.05
Didn't the last UK census ( I'm guessing in 2000, but if not, around then certainly, ) come up with something like half a million people in their Twenties and Thirties who'd apparently disappeared off the official records ? I seem to remember it was quite a big story at the time - Even accounting for bureaucratic error, there was some concern. As in, where were all these people ?

I don't know how sustainable the New Age traveller/Stop The City/Reclaim The Streets etc movement would have turned out to be even if the Criminal Justice Bill hadn't been passed - The latter two aspects were partly a response to the CJB anyway, and for whatever reason, increased police pressure, changing fashions and so on, things seem to have gone a bit quiet on that front in the last few years. Partly I suppose, people got older, and less willing to engage the authorities in open confrontation of a summer afternoon, partly it's arguably now far more effective to have a go at ( insert favourite hated multinational here, ) through the courts or the media, and partly, I think, a lot of people took a long hard look at how things were likely to be under Mr Tony, and simply got out of the country, off to sunnier, cheaper, and more tolerant climes - I stand to be corrected on the census issue, but if nothing else, that particular type of Nineties activism was always pretty hedonistic, so...

If at all, it'll be quite a few years until there's a similar upsurge of feeling in Britain again ( I remember going to a Stop The City demo in about 1998, where a lot of Central London was blocked off by this strange mix of people, old punks, ravers, arrivistes, hippies, it was a bit like the end of Apocalyspse Now outside the Bank of England, there was this pall of dope smoke for most of the afternoon, constant thudding techno, City traders yelling out of the window, police charging in riot gear at around about rush hour, in a haze of red smoke - it was terribly exciting, and unimaginable now, ) and in the meantime I suppose, to the extent that anyone's bothering, I dare say that kind of activity's far more concentrated on small groups of individuals doing art in their flats, plugging away quietly until such time as that sort of thing has legs in the media, again. So probably not until the next recession, would be my guess.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
15:54 / 07.04.05
I think that part of the problem to recognising where the counter culture is now is that in the past it tends to get consumed by the mainstream, digested, and spat out, look at the endless repackaging of their past to the Baby Boomers, the endless safe sixties nostalgia tapes which make them forget it was quite dangerous at the time. And it's also always easier to say that something 'was' countercultural than 'is', I suspect that a lot of the people you describe ten years ago were too busy living.

I have to go with Bey, there were countercultural elements taht started the Internet, or Burning Man, but these days anyone can get their tongue pierced...
 
  
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