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always got done – even when there was 15 people and 23 cats.The place was never a shithole.” Despite this, Penny says he was unaware of the Commune movement in Britain until the early seventies. “I’ve never accepted that we’re a commune.” He says. “My idea from the start was that we had an open door policy, and that’s how it has operated, and continues to do.This isn’t my home, in the sense that we understand it in the West. It’s where I live, but I never know who’s going to be here at breakfast or even who’s going to be in my bed at night – in the sense that my shed has been moved into by people once or twice in the past. I’ve had to say,‘Excuse me!’ “The place has been designed to accommodate any number of people at any time. Having been in the managerial position for the best part of 40 years, I really have learnt how to manage. I know there are certain combinations of personalities which would be dreadful for everyone concerned. Every hotel manager probably knows exactly how to deal with certain types of people: how to nudge someone into the other bar so they avoid someone else.” When the music press – particularly Sounds – started ridiculing Crass for being hippies, Steve Ignorant would be almost beside himself:“That used to drive me right up the fucking wall! I hated that. I don’t know how people are going to take this, but it used to wind me up more than people thinking we were fascists. I can understand people mistaking us for fascists because we wore black, and the symbol and everything. But the hippy thing used to drive me mad because I never was a hippy and never will be. I mean, I had long hair when it was fashionable, then I had a David Bowie haircut, then punk came along. Before that I was a skinhead. So that used to really bug me, because it took it away from being punk. It took away my thing. “But I won’t knock Dial House, a lot of it I liked. It was a gorgeous place to live. There was always food on the table, always a roof, it was always warm, people were always friendly, the door was always open . . . hippies or not, I respect that. Lovely house, lovely garden, always clean. But I hated being called a hippy and I think the way I dealt with that was to put myself over as being even more working class and yobby than I was.”
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