King Mob A Critcal Hidden History

A highly personal, deeply political, coldly analytical and achingly optimistic account of what some consider to be one of the most important English political groupings of the 20th Century and beyond. The psycho-mythological legacy left behind by King Mob, nowadays often tied up with its assumed influence on Malcolm McLaren/the Pistols and Punk Rock (and via it's wider Situationist context, Factory Records and the Hacienda) far outweighs the physical imprint they left behind in the form of six glued together copies of it's often wildly and deliberately provocative publication, and the iconic graffiti left up around West London and beyond.  From a radical working class perspective, Dave Wise (helped by brother Stuart and longtime collaborator Nick Brandt) gives a first hand account of the (loose) formation of King Mob after their core members were excluded from the Situationist International by the schism-happy Debord in 1967. (Not, unfortunately, as the story used to go, after Debord came to London looking for the crack squad of pro-situ streetfighters he'd heard about, and found Dave and Stuart W. sat in front of Match of the Day getting on the lager- it never happened). "A Critical History ." celebrates their attempt to move "from the Situationist salon to the street," whilst not shying away from identifying tactical, strategic and theoretical holes in the groups day to day actions, as seen by brothers Dave and Stuart. Plans to blow up waterfalls, getting arrested on demos dressed as pantomine horses (the back end got off in court, on the grounds he didn't know what the front end was doing seriously), sharing oversized baked bean costumes with ultra-Maoists on Vietnam marches.  Getting high and hungrily devouring Coleridge, De Quincey, Rimbaud, Marx, De Sade, Breton, Joyce and Hegel. Pissing over the lectern whilst declaring the death of art at the 1968 English Surrealist convention, being (falsely) put in the frame for the 1969 Newcastle School of Art firebombing; perhaps most infamously dressing up as Santa Claus in Selfridges toy dept, Xmas 1969, and watching the chaos of consumerism unfold before them as crying children had the King Mob freely-gifted toys wrenched from their arms by confused and desperate employees. There was never any danger of King Mob withering quietly on the vine of ritualised opposition, but the downturn of the early 1970's and the apparent end of any hope for imminent social revolution as the "forthcoming horror of a totalitarian free market society of pseudo-individualism" hoved into view, hit some of them harder than they could have imagined. As more financially independent King Mob individuals drifted off into the warm embrace of various strands of bourgeois counterculture, others faced up to the harsher realities of the "capsized utopia." Some didn't make it through, as an at times unintentionally moving epilogue here recalls. Dave Wise spent the next thirty five years combining casual work on the buildings with travel and immersive writing on everything from the Portugese Revolution to Punk, from deep-ecology to the Inner City Riots of 1984. As he continues with this "maimed praxis" into his seventies, "A Critical, Hidden History" is a living, breathing account of a brief moment in time, when the light got through the cracks in the wall, and a new world felt possible. As we career into the 21st century, with Capitalism apparently in semi-permanent crisis and new (often transient) zones of opposition appearing by the month, the relevance of the playful, life affirming, non-hierarchical, anti-capitalists King Mob seems as great today as it ever did."

“I met a prostitute – Angela W – from the fishing port of Grimsby on the mouth of the Humber in the North of England. I instantly fell in love with her in an all consuming way. The pain inside my body, so massively accumulated with the death of hopes for the social revolution...was wrenched away from me as she slowly...shambled towards me.” So begins Dave Wise’s first hand account of King Mob, the late 60s London based political grouping formed after core members were excluded from the Situationist International. From a radical, working class perspective, Wise recounts their attempts to move “from the Situationist salon to the street”, whilst frankly outlining identifying tactical, strategic and theoretical holes in the groups’ day to day actions. Plans to blow up waterfalls, getting arrested on demos dressed as pantomine horses (the back end got off in court, on the grounds he didn’t know what the front end was doing...), sharing oversized baked bean costumes with ultra-Maoists on Vietnam marches. Getting high and hungrily devouring Coleridge, De Quincey, Rimbaud, Marx, De Sade, Breton, Joyce and Hegel. Urinating over the lectern whilst declaring the death of art at the 1968 English Surrealist convention, being (falsely) put in the frame for the 1969 Newcastle School of Art firebombing; perhaps most infamously dressing up as Santa Claus in Selfridges toy dept, Xmas ‘69, and watching the chaos of consumerism unfold before them as crying children had the King Mob freely-gifted toys wrenched from their arms by employees. As the downturn of the early 1970’s approached, and with it the apparent end of any hope for imminent social revolution, some of King Mob drifted off into various strands of bourgeois counterculture, whilst others faced up to the harsher realities of the “capsized utopia”. Some didn’t make it through, as an at times unintentionally moving epilogue here recalls. “A Critical Hidden History” is a living, breathing account of a brief moment in time, when the light got through the cracks in the wall, and a new world felt possible. As we career into the 21st century, the relevance of the playful, life affirming, non-hierarchical, anti-capitalists King Mob seems as great today as it ever did.

This book tells, for the first time, the story of the Situationist International’s influence and afterlives in Britain, where its radical ideas have been rapturously welcomed and fiercely resisted. The Situationist International presented itself as the culmination of the twentieth century avant-garde tradition — as the true successor of Dada and Surrealism. Its grand ambition was not unfounded. Though it dissolved in 1972, generations of artists and writers, theorists and provocateurs, punks and psychogeographers have continued its effort to confront and contest the ‘society of the spectacle.’ This book constructs a long cultural history, beginning in the interwar period with the arrival of Surrealism to Britain, moving through the countercultures of the 1950s and 1960s, and finally surveying the directions in which Situationist theory and practice are being taken today. It combines agile historicism with close readings of a vast range of archival and newly excavated materials, including newspaper reports, underground pamphlets, Psychogeographical films, and experimental novels. It brings to light an overlooked but ferociously productive period of British avant-garde practice, and demonstrates how this subterranean activity helps us to understand postwar culture, late modernism, and the complex internationalization of the avant-garde. As popular and academic interest in the Situationists grows, this book offers an important contribution to the international history of the avant-garde and Surrealism. It will prove a valuable resource for researchers and students of English and Comparative Literature, Modernism and the Avant-Gardes, Twentieth Century and Contemporary History, Cultural Studies, Art History, and Political Aesthetics.

Art, Politics and the Pamphleteer brings together a collection of text-based and visual essays, commissioned artworks and graphics. This richly illustrated book responds to the concept, aesthetics and function of the political pamphlet. It is diverse in content, interpreting the 'pamphlet' in the broadest terms, and encompassing a number of case studies that offer historical or specific examples of contemporary pamphleteering practice that can be seen to perform 'a clear political implication' or protest. Besides exploring the radical history and diverse cultures of the pamphlet, it also celebrates the rich visual rhetoric, typography and contemporary relevance of the format for both artists and activists. Contributions include an historical overview and essays by: Andy Abbott, Angeliki Avgitidu, Aziz Choudry and Désirée Rochat, David Murrieta Flores, Michelle Kempson, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Rachel Schreiber, Jane Tormey, Gillian Whiteley; visual contributions by Gary Anderson and Steven Shakespeare, Ruth Beale, Ami Clarke, Common Culture, Jeremy Deller, Freee, Patrick Goddard, Gavin Grindon, Ferenc Grof, Marc Herbst, Joanne Lee, Josh MacPhee, Manual Labours, Mark McGowan, Minute Works, Chris Morton, radicalreThink, Hester Reeve, Oliver Ressler, Greg Sholette & Christopher Darling, Laura Wild, Andrew Wilson. As the book was conceived as predominantly visual from the outset, the book concept has been a collaboration with The Little Riot Press (Phil Eastwood and Chris Dunne). Overall, an aesthetic of protest and propaganda was considered integral to the design to reiterate the generally handmade, analogue techniques found in political pamphlets. The Little Riot Press have thus approached the illustration and overall visual cohesion from the perspective of the radical artist pamphleteer. www.thelittleriotpress.com

Guy Debord, the Situationist International, and the Revolutionary Spirit presents a history of the two avant-garde groups that French filmmaker and subversive strategist Guy Debord founded and led: the Lettrist International (1952-1957) and the Situationist International (1957-1972).

In this rigorous study, Marcus Collins reconceives the Beatles' social, cultural and political impact on sixties Britain.

Now into their late 60's, and still working the buildings with the same London gang they’ve been with since the late 70's, key King Mob faces Dave and Stuart Wise have never stopped writing and agitating, and this, a companion volume to last years' warmly received 'King Mob: A Critical Hidden History', pulls together polemics, reflections, and righteous rants from the last 30 years. Opening up with 'Like A Summer With A 1000 July's' extensive, sideways look at the wave of urban insurrection that swept inner city UK in 1981; debunking punk’s ‘situationist myth’ in 'The End Of Music', and a brief, but definitive look at the glorious ‘King Mob/Father Xmas at Selfridges’ prank of 1968. 'Nietzsche: Revolutionary' looks at the much revered/contested philosopher as "a reluctant communist", "proto ecologist" and "brother Hegelian. Separate chapters look back with affection and honesty at old friends, comrades and English Situationist founders Ralph Rumney and Alexander Trocchi respectively. Along the way, shards of surrealism cut through: the assault on art "in the great mod battle of Keswick”, when “a travelling theatre was again torched,” or the Dadaist guerrilla flavoured August ‘81 bank holiday attack when "the model railway station at Brighton was molotoved by white youths." And whilst an unwavering ideological perspective firmly rejects the stasis of the post war 'revolutionary left', just as it recoils in disgust at encroaching Neo Liberal barbarism, Dave Wise never shies away from reflecting on the personal, via the prism of the political : "Guy and Michele broke up around 1970.....everybody's relationship did, including my own; a break up...I never got over, and I've thought about my beloved Anne Ryder every day of my life since. These break-ups weren't about sexual difficulties or inadequacies nor about not being able to relate or even love, but finally about history and how the most profound revolt ever experienced failed so utterly, and the essential by-product of such failure was a psychosomatic pain so desperate it seemed in need of therapeutic treatment; a treatment simple warm cuddling and quiet affection couldn't match. We stormed and smashed open the gates of paradise to let in every exploited nutter who cared to join in... yet on the brink of utopia we were refused entry and where, just where, could you go from such a point of no return?"

"In this highly accessible social and intellectual history of American anarchism in the United States, Andrew Cornell reveals an amazing continuity and development across the twentieth century. Far from fading away, anarchists dealt with major events such as the rise of Communism, the New Deal, atomic warfare, the black freedom struggle, and a succession of artistic avant-gardes stretching from 1915 to 1975. This book traces U.S. anarchism as it evolved from the creed of poor immigrants militantly opposed to capitalism early in the twentieth century to one that today sees resurgent appeal among middle-class youth and foregrounds ecology, feminism, and opposition to cultural alienation"--Provided by publisher.