Sunday Times Feature

(ST, 13.04.1997)

[Transcript courtesy of Ged Marrinan. Thanks!]

Found this article in last week's Sunday Times. here it is verbatim. RADICAL VOICE OF POP FORCED TO THE FRINGES On polling night Billy Bragg, the pop shouter who has propelled his uncontritely old Labour views into the record charts for the past 10 years, will be performing in the tiny club in north London where he appeared on election night in 1987.       Back then, the east London lad broke down on stage when Labour lost. This time, any rejoicing over a Labour victory will be tinged with anger and regret that, for him and his friends whose political beliefs were forged during the 1984-85 miners' strike, the parade has already passed by.       A decade ago Bragg, a big-nosed former soldier from Barking, was the driving force behind Red Wedge, an unwieldy alliance of Labour-supporting pop stars, including Paul Weller, Jimmy Somerville and Tom Robinson, that toured and campaigned for Neil Kinnock.       It had mixed success: Weller exorcised the ghost of his early support for Margaret Thatcher, but the Labour MPs on the Red Wedge bus found it all a bit noisy. "But what shall we wear ?" wailed a particularly distraught Robin Cook when he boarded the bus. "They look like trendy vicars," muttered the driver.       This election's burst of pop politics has come courtesy of Rock the Vote, a slick organisation set up to encourage young people to vote by spreading leaflets in clubs. It is almost apolitical and Bragg, 37, has shunned it. "It's not for me. It's a generational change and I don't think my political profile would fit in - I'm probably a bit rough for the modern party."       Labour has attracted endorsements and a little cash from the new generation of pop stars, most notably from Oasis and their old Britpop rivals Blur. But Noel and Liam Gallagher of Oasis have not inerrupted their record sessions to campaign for Labour.       This does not surprise Bragg: "Labour would be frightened of another Red Wedge. Tony Blair likes to control things and a bunch of pop stars on the road would be bound to do something that would cause embarrassement for him.       " There has been all this stuff about Blair becoming mates with David Bowie, and I know Blair used to sing in a rock band himself, but there is a general feeling he would rather spend time with the corporate record label bosses than the young musicians. Unlike Neil Kinnock, he keeps his distance."       Bragg has his own distance. Unlike Mick Hucknall of Simply Red who was reported to have said he "exchanges ideas" with Blair on a regular basis - while declining to elaborate on what those ideas might be - he feel a mounting frustration with the Blairites.       "I want them to commit to something, especially more progressive taxation. I want to know that they will care for the poor, that everyone will get good housing and medical care, and I'm not hearing much about that. But I'll vote for them anyway," he said.       He suspects Labour will lose much of the youth vote because young people have been drawn into direct action such as anti-road protests rather than join political parties.       "I would like a political alliance between environmentalists and socialists. For now it may be new Labour, but in the longer term it must be something far more profound."       (John Harlow, The Sunday Times 13th April 1997). Well, pretty lukewarm support for new Labour from the 'big-nosed soldier from Barking'. Still, anything would be better than another 5 years of this God-awful Tory shower. Roll on May 1st. Ged.