THE REAL G.I. JOE

THE REAL G.I. JOE

LETTER FROM BRITAIN

Penny Valentine

by

Ula./u1|i.^ heard the drums of / When the past was a closing door...”

—“Sean Flynn,” the Clash

The drums of war beat out across our breakfast tables, to our laughter. It was like watching a rerun of The Mouse That Roared with a cast of stereotypical British characters, if it hadn’t got so serious so fast and they actually started shooting each other.

The Falklands. One minute we didn’t even know where they were. Occasionally they were mentioned in weather forecasts (for shipping routes), the next a hysterical British jingoism was brought forth. Dormant since the 40’s, like the generals and admirals. Ireland continues to be our Vietman, a modern war, with technology and computer tracers. Not a declared war like Vietnam, so we are not bombing and strafing with napalm burning, burning. But a secret war of cat and mouse and a testing ground for riot control and public disorder tactics. The admirals and the generals, bored with moving stickers across maps in polished rooms now have a public arena. Their moustaches quiver in indignation at these foreign “devils” the Argentinians who would be so cheeky with us The British popular press reflects an almost-all-party government stand of such hypocrisy it fair took our breath away. For years we have supported the Argentina junta, the right wing, the generals whose secret police have tortured and maimed. People disappear in Argentina in the thousands: factory workers, farmers, lawyers, doctors. Nobody sees them again. Now our government, who sold them the warheads and planes, teach us because it suddenly suits them, this is “a dictatorship” and must not be allowed to get away with such aggression. The trouble is they didn’t play the game. The British hate that more than torture.

Now young British and Argentinian men are killed at sea.

“It’s up to you not to heed the call-up/I don’t wanna die/It’s up to you not to hear the call-up/I don’t wanna kill/For he who will die is he who will kill...“ “The CallUp,". the Clash).

People are no longer individuals; they are “argies” and they should die. Just like the “gook.” De-humanizing is useful in war. It helps people hate. It helps people kill. Wars are man-made. Women politicians are often no different. Power corrupts. Their womanhood is lost.

In the 1980’s, with life imitating the media, computers taking over from human activity, synthesizer music filling in for a range of companionship, an air of unreality looms up about the Falkland war. It is not a sitting room war coming through on our TV screens. The air of unreality is in fact precisely due to this lack of transmission from the South Atlantic waters...

“At every stroke of the bell in the tower/ There goes another boy from another side...”

Hysteria grips a Britain tired of unemployment, bad housing, rotten hospitals, racial tension, police brutality, the rotting system under the “policy decisions.” All frustrations can now turn outward, away from the system, the government. Much of the popular press indulges in obscene schoolboy gestures, revelling in death and “glory,” screaming accusations at those who query our position of blowing ships to smithereens, to be beheaded (at least) for gross treachery. The British never got over loss of empire. It has been a deep hurt never healed. No longer a major world power, no longer able to exploit, rule, conquer. The sun set and truly those who ruled never recovered at losing that title to the Americans.

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“The bulletins that steady come in/Say those familiar words at the top of the hour...”

By Friday the British navy had blown up an Argentinian ship, leaving men to die in icy seas; the Argentinian air force had torpedoed a British ship, leaving men to die in icy seas. Somehow the Ealing film comedy had got out of hand. In Margaret Thatcher’s Britain and the General's Argentinia, a distant war might answer many problems. But when does a distant war grow closer, when someone’s lover, husband, father dies? A woman here whose son was blown up didn’t think the loss worthwhile for this sham principle. Surrounded by pop music re-constructed, like pretty wallpaper, the Clash’s Combat Rock emerges—as they stand on the U.S. mainland and look out, from ghetto to jungle—as hard commentary, a welcome astringent. Amidst the album’s sophisticated melodic structures, iced by Glyn Johns’s perfectly pitched switchboard, and the odd leaps into homage for early rock (a real suprise that the Clash remain the only white band, around who can still cut through).

Not surprisingly, after the critical flak of Sandinista!, their new album is honed to the pitch of a perfect rock ’n’ roll collection. Of course now, in retrospect, Sandinista! is beginning to gain converts here aside from me and Simon Frith and Richard Williams, who reckoned we stood alone in not greeting it as self-indulgent when it came out. Combat Rock is easily accessible, then. Music from the New Bohemians, poets and novelists as much as ex-punks. Still Joe and Mick and all were always art school boys to start with...

“The soldier boy for his soldier’s pay/ Obeys the sergeant-at-arms whatever he says...”

The corruption of western governments, even the oppression of Russian imperialism, the triumph of the people left to their own re volution... the Clash’s themes have stayed peculiarly constant no matter what they say in interview. Sad then that finally Joe Strummer acts like a rock star and runs away. The rock machine makes clones of the best of us...