We just learned about the death of our activist friend Conflict’s singer and huge example to a generation in Animal Rights activism and punk: Colin Jerwood.
Colin had agreed just a few weeks ago to give us a written interview for Tierautonomie. We had heard that he had problems with his lungs, with his breathing as he let people know via facebook, hence we were worried and thought that he might now nevertheless have a pause, not making concerts for a short while, so we contacted Colin.
And to our astonishment we must say, he agreed to give us a written interview. He did not have the chance to let us know the answers to these questions. But we are glad that that we could even just ask – also as a form to give him a critical feedback and an evaluation of the current situation with activism, anarcho punk and animal rights punk in particular; and with so many people out and about every inch of the maintream, who are more about fame and money in today’s punk spectrum:
Dear Colin,
The course of resistance amidst amassing causes
- Starting the change
Palang: Learning about your work that started in 1981 (after Crass from 1977 onwards kind of initiated the outspoken political social criticalness in what we typically term Anarcho-Punk today) I should say that you, alongside Icons of Filth and other bands, whom you also later featured on your release: “this is the ALF” [1989, reissued with updated tracklist in 1998], that you initiated and stood for Animal Rights in the Anarcho Punk movement. Conflict and the Mortarhate label have been a if not the central driver. How did you get the impetus in the early years to write tracks like Meat Means Murder on It’s Time To See Who’s Who (1983) and later other anthems like Tough Shit Mikey, Berkshire Cunt and Slaughter of Innocence (for which Steve Ignorant joined up with you)?
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- Being inclusive in Anarcho-Punk
Palang: Standing for activism, in a form which maintains spaces of tolerance while being clear cut about messages, seems to be part of the anarcho punk movement. How do you deal with the fact that clear messages unavoidably border on sides, nevertheless, where practical ignorance or carelessness about issues are something that make up societal normalcies, in general. How can we deal with the fact that people can be positive about stuff yet still hardly change anything in their practical daily lives?
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- What about friends/fellow activists, etc. that go along theoretically but not practically
Palang: The big pillars within the Animal Rights movement: Antivivisection, Antihunt/Hunt Sabbing, Veganism with all the Farm Animal issues and just all aspects of instrumentalization of nonhuman Animals – with these issues that drive the Animal Rights movement (on the global and on the local levels), what can we do these days – coming from an angle of being as critical of society and system as possible, with a strong culture of protest which questions power and hierarchies in a fundamental way – how can we prevent our messages from being watered down? Basically everybody considers themselves to be part of some resistance branch in society these days. And everyone praises anarcho punk for being so clear cut about Animal Rights and for being the only movement in terms of music and subculture that outstandingly made Animal Issues a visible issue of an encompassing progressiveness in terms of justice and ethics, yet it seems that people take this part of Animal Rights history for granted. Many people consider themselves to be “informed enough” and stop at that point. People who embrace Animal Rights as part of “the topics they should cover” oftentimes exclude Animal Rights on a personal daily “routine” of protest, like you get people who have thrived on the Anarcho Punk history and subculture but fully exclude practical ethical concern towards Animal issues while believing they also stand for this part of Anarcho Punk. How can we make the connection between causes clearer for people to become more decided themselves, when they basically are open to Animal Rights?
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- Avoiding the cultural industrial complex with a self-run independent label: taking the credible path
Palang: Evading consumerism, evading the music (charts crap) market and the cultural industrial complex was a core part of the idea of resistance, to many things I suppose. People created independent labels, like you with Mortarhate (1983), and thereby showed that it was possible to communicate other messages and content and create other important spaces of communication even therewith. In a parallel contrasting manner we had bands – going along with ideas, that one would make punk accessible “to the masses” and that one would undermine the typical music industry (like mainstreaming punk) – which more or less straight forwardly produced punk content that was integrable with the mainstream. In Germany for instance today the mainstreamed punk is in fact the “kind of punk” that people consider to be the golden standard for being outspoken and even revolutionary in a sense. In the US, as a big “market” the map looks different again, but overall we seem to have virtually a division here: a branch of punk that contained and contains the message of anticonsumerism etc. etc. and another branch that does not consider the critique of the markets even as a point to really discuss it seems. What shall we make of this difference, especially these days with a huge to trend towards leftist thought? I believe consistency matters, but this really seems to be an overlooked thing in Punk. What do you think about this divide in approach?
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- The minority change question and its hardships
Palang: The crossroads of political life that we face these days, again coming from an anarchist standpoint, facing the consequences of the anthropocene and being just an individual, being just a few, being just a perhaps suppressed political and/or social minority and standing against all those factors where we are not able to activate any levers to stop the damages done, yet again everything depends on each one to act up, to boycott, to create change, etc., to not be part of the problem. How can we keep a sensible form of resistance feasable, without having everything swallowed up by people who create questionable levers and who therewith inadvertently disable action from “bottom up”. How can we say our way to go about things makes sense, even when we look powerless in contrast to this and that?
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- The rare alarmed, upset language, that names things as how they are
Palang: Speaking small band projects internationally: Specific examples of Hardcore and Vegan Straight Edge with their relation to the outspokenness of anarcho punk as including Animal Rights – without the basis which political Musician-Activists like you created and the consistency, we wouldn’t be as far as we are today. The political live of protest made up of solid pillars of content is here, but the power and support coming from this will probably be suppressed or watered down by the mainstream once they fully digest anarcho punk history. With this message in music being scattered, and Animal Rights needing to be appropriately expressed and evidently only these kinds of expression and languages are able to do it, do you think that independent political music that conveys Animal Rights with the impetus of resistance toward society can survive after mainstream society finds out that this type of resistance and critique is culturally indigestible in a speciesist world?
Thank you so much for all that you do!