Oi Polloi Quotes

In terms of just making music itself I think politics doesn't have to come into it. I mean, I like plenty music that doesn't have any words you know - just music for its own sake - none of us would say that we would only listen to music with an anarchist message or whatever - that would be pretty over the top. When it comes to our own music though that is a different story. As we are not an instrumental band and we have words with almost every song, that means that each song is an opportunity for us to say something constructive and positive that could maybe make people think or educate them or inspire them to do something positive. If you are going to sing something you might as well sing something constructive rather than just "Hey, baby come on out on the dancefloor with me tonite" or whatever. We started this band for fun and to have a laugh, not to spread any particular message but as we have songs we want to sing something sensible so that is what we do. We are anti-political in the sense that we do not want anything to do with party politics - politicians are all full of shit but we are not "non-political" as that is just impossible. Politics with a small p comes into every part of life - if you get paid fuck all while your boss gets a fortune that is politics, if you have to wait ages for a bus while some fucker cruises past in a Roller that is politics, if the tax on beer goes up so the government can buy more bombs that is politics, if your local hospital gets shut down or the cops try out their new gas spray on you or whatever that is all
politics. I can sympathise with folk who sometimes feel that everything is too heavy and that they just don't want to think about it all and just get drunk but that is exactly what the government want you to do. 


I think I should point out here that we were never ever all skinheads at the same time - the band was always a mixture of punks, skins and herberts and we liked it that way as we have always been all about unity. In the early 80s in Scotland there wasn't much difference between the punks and the skins - we all hung about together and it wasn't really something we thought about too much - we were all into the same kind of music and having a laugh, getting bevvied etc as well as organising gigs and going on demos, marches etc. especially during the miners' strike where there were loads of us involved as it really brought so many sections of the working class together against the cops who had a lot of the mining towns up here under virtual military occupation. I think most of the time I personally was a kind of herbert - you know, harrington, sta-press or combats and boots, Fred Perry etc and I have had a shaved head many a time but we never ever made a big thing about how you had to be a skinhead or something. Our big thing was punks and skins being united. Some punks gave us grief about this thinking that it meant that we wanted punks to hang out with nazi boneheads but that was not the case at all - we don't consider these bonehead fuckers as real skinheads at all - they are just nazi tossers with shaven heads - fuckin stupid if you ask me. We always remember the fascist National Front guy Webster who said "when we come to power the skinheads will be the first to hang" so I mean what else can you say about folk who still support a wanker like that except that they must be fuckin idiots.