CRASS
numbers in some bizarre lottery game and when your number is called run like fuck, but beware, they’ll probably have a print-out on where it is that you’re running to. “As the authorities increase military expenditure, the money for the so-called ‘social services’ is decreased.We are expected to live on less and less as the government spends more and more on their ‘war games’. In Great Britain, 1982, there are people who are suffering from malnutrition because they can’t afford food; they are almost freezing to death, many actually are dying, because they can’t afford heat; they are being made homeless because they can’t afford the rent; they are being moved into half-way houses because the councils can’t afford decent homes, where they are suffering from malnutrition because they can’t afford food; they are almost freezing to death, many actually are dying, because they can’t afford heat; when the deprivation finally makes them ill, they are being moved into hospitals where the authorities can’t afford to properly treat them. They’ll probably die young, but most people die eventually anyway. Meanwhile, Her Majesty’s Government is spending twelve and a half thousand million pounds this year, 1982, on the military alone and that doesn’t include the other thousands of millions on war-related expenses, from communications systah, blah, blah, blah, hello, hello, is there anybody there?” Penny Rimbaud – Last Of The Hippies As well as Penny’s unforgettable piece, there was a startling diatribe from Pete Wright about education and mind control and a considered essay on pacifism and its strands of anarchism from Mick Duffield. It was the most effective of all the Crass multimedia efforts and Last Of The Hippies in particular had a profound effect on many people who read it. Whatever the influence or artistic merit of Christ – The Album, the band felt an acute sense of failure at having been overtaken by events. By the time of its release, the Falklands War had been started and finished, complete with the needless death of 1,100 young men. In March 1982, Argentina occupied the Falkland Islands, to which it had long claimed ownership. Margaret Thatcher duly sent a task force and a war was fought with Britain emerging victorious by June. Neither side had actually declared war, so like Ireland, Thatcher was fighting a war that dared not speak its name. The tabloid press, particularly The Sun, was disgusting in its jingoism.
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