Redskins: the socialist soul punks who were too left for Red Wedge
The 1980s were a febrile time in UK politics. This was the last decade in which the might of organised labour still swung with clout and class-conscious conviction against capitalism’s free-market forces, smarting over the ‘social contract’ concessions made following the post-war consensus.
While the Conservative government’s attack had declared class war on the country’s unions and its rapacious, community-destroying deindustrialisation, the economic dogmas of neoliberalism were still up for question, yet to be cemented as the prevailing economic orthodoxy as solidified by the future New Labour project.
Margaret Thatcher’s landslide re-election victory in ’83 emboldened her economic agenda in wresting control away from labour and firmly into the mercy of the markets, successfully seeing off Michael Foot’s left-wing challenge and the most radical Labour Party manifesto since ’18’s Call to the People. Under the guise of ‘modernisation’, Welsh MP for Islwyn Neil Kinnock stepped up to the leadership role, winning approval from the establishment press who delighted in his expunging of Militant and the left still committed to socialism.
Running parallel to this internal flux within the labour movement were York soul punks Redskins. Formed in the ashes of the prior band No Swastikas, Socialist Workers Party members and stanch anti-fascist skinheads Chris Dean and Martin Hewes sought to channel their Trotskyist principles of international, grassroots proletarian revolution to pop music, recruiting Nick King on drums and playing their first official gig in the London Bridge area following a Right to Work protest in ’82.
Their debut single ‘Lev Bronstein’, the birth name of Leon Trotsky, met with little fanfare, but the introduction of Northern Soul brass sections on follow-up ‘Lean on Me!’ honed the Redskins sound, a hot-blooded white boy funk with punk urgency that looked to the politically charged soul pumped out of Stax and Motown during the Civil Rights era as much as the road paved by The Clash, despite their misgivings about how robust the “only band that matters”‘ left credentials really were.
“Why is rock ’n’ roll exciting? Because it’s got all sorts of different elements – uplifting music, rebellious spirit, sex, style, subversion…” Dean told Sounds in ’83, knowing his music as a contributor to NME under the pen name X Moore. “Political bands are a dirty word since the arse end of RAR (Rock Against Racism), but that’s because they missed the point of what makes great music. James Brown meant a million times more than they ever did. If people aren’t listening to the music, they certainly aren’t listening to the words. ‘A Town Called Malice’, ‘Ghost Town‘, ‘The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum’ – they were all great because they were popular and they had something to say”.
Viewing the pop medium as the ideal vehicle to evoke revolutionary passions in the masses, the greater socialist good of seizing a platform to reach the mainstream saw Redskins sign to Decca’s London Records, prompting a defence from Hewes in Socialist Review shortly before their major label debut ‘Keep On Keepin’ On!’. This reluctant compromise was no corporate, Faustian pact, Redskins performing for free at a ‘Jobs For a Change’ benefit gig organised by the Greater London Council led by future mayor Ken Livingstone, the famous council bulwark against the government’s fiscal savagery, and chasing off neo-Nazi skinheads who tried to attack them during their set. They also landed in hot water with the new label when wishing to release the anti-Apartheid ‘Kick Over the Statues’ as a benefit single, ignoring Decca’s refusal by rush-releasing the song independently and donating all proceeds to the Federation of South African Trade Unionists and the African National Congress.
Redskins’ political and musical trajectory reached its apex during the miners’ strike of ’84-’85. As ‘Keep On Keepin’ On!’ climbed to 43 in the charts, their appearance on Channel 4’s The Tube featured a prepared speech by the National Union of Miners member and impeccably named activist Norman Strike to read a solidarity speech unbeknownst to the production team, who cut his microphone and faced accusations of censorship at odds with the show’s edgy and cutting-edge reputation.
Behind the scenes of the biggest and fiercest industrial dispute in living memory, Labour leader Kinnock distanced himself from the strike for fear of being scapegoated by NUM leader Arthur Scargill should the miners have lost their union battle. Displaying general inaction as part of his steering the party toward the political centre, alleging the lack of a national ballot as a reason for his lack of full-throated support, Kinnock surreptitiously contacted the National Coal Board to deliver coal supplies to Llanwern’s steelworks, directly undermining the NUM’s strike efforts, according to research undertaken by journalists Francis Beckett and David Hencke.
In the aftermath of the Conservatives’ defeat of the miners and anticipating the next election, popular left artists Billy Bragg, Paul Weller, and Jimmy Sommerville formed Red Wedge in ’85, a semi-official arm of the Labour Party designed to educate young people on left politics and convince them to lend Kinnock their vote. ’80s pop was experiencing a political purple patch in bands to choose from, with the charts dominated by bands like The Style Council, The Special AKA, The Smiths, and The The all keen to join the initiative. With Kinnock’s flagrant veer to the centre, it proved tough for Red Wedge head Bragg to bridge the party’s establishment orthodoxy with the militant passions of the youth base they were courting. Naturally, Redskins weren’t interested.
“The Redskins have always done benefit gigs organised by the Labour Party – anti-racist gigs, anti-unemployment gigs… Red Wedge is different,” Dean argued in Melody Maker‘s ‘Red Wedge – The Great Debate’ feature. “Your first priority is to get a Labour government in power… I think Red Wedge can energise a sense of young people’s potential power, but what’s the point if all they elect is someone like Neil Kinnock?” Sharing the opposing side of the debate with Conservative MP Greg Knight, Dean was happy to lose friends in the dogged pursuit of his socialist convictions.
Sharing a bill with the folk activist at various benefits and charity gigs, Redskins would hang anti-Labour banners above his performances and refer to him as “Neil Kinnock’s publicity officer” during their sets, much to Bragg’s chagrin. “They could be a pain in the arse with their sectarianism, but I miss the Redskins for their commitment and energy,” Bragg confessed in a 2020 Facebook post.
By the time their only album Neither Washington Nor Moscow came out in 1986, internal feuds between Hewes and Dean, coupled with a growing irreconcilability with their socialist values and the nature of the music industry, took its toll on Redskins. With the NUM’s demoralising defeat, the band’s spiritual vigour was quashed, and the prior creative vim waned to the band’s eventual dissolution. Hewes pursued a career in music education, and Dean stepped out of the limelight altogether, reportedly pursuing film in France before living a reclusive life with his mother back in his York hometown.
Kinnock lost two elections and opened the door to Tony Blair, and the rest is the ‘end of history’. As capitalism has run apace with all the stifling inequality and social atomisation in its wake, and the wealth disparities grow ever wider and more grotesque, the people’s revolution that will come already has a befittingly insurgent soundtrack with Redskins’ Neither Washington Nor Moscow, an arsenal of passionately Marxist blasts of communal soul punk empowerment that illustrates just how exciting, liberating, and fun socialist emancipation can be.
