The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #101144   Message #2037782
Posted By: The Borchester Echo
28-Apr-07 - 04:59 AM
Thread Name: BS: Justice For England, English protest songs
Subject: RE: Justice For England, English protest songs
DIFFICULT

Difficult?
Good grief, I haven't even started.
Freedom of speech is one thing, and informed discussion of the roots and origins of fascism is important, and an understanding of its etymology would result not least in spelling it correctly.
Providing a platform for racists and fascists, and the resulting injustice, inequality and oppression, is quite something else and is always wrong and will always be opposed.
This is why, in my view, such a vile ad has no place in a music forum.
In common with Woody Guthrie, I'd have my guitar inscribed with 'This machine kills fascists' if I didn't fear it would fall apart.
Whether an indeterminately defined ethnic grouping occupying a specific geographical space should or should not have self-determination in the guise of its own parliament has no bearing whatsoever (unless someone writes a song about it) on the musics played by its citizens.
Music and musicians travel, co-operate and share, uniting peoples and cultures.
And this is the very antithesis of what such a collection of loony far-right tossers want.
Trad music belongs to those who play it with whoever they want and wherever they are, not to those who aspire to a restrictive, coercive state which says 'you will be this colour, live in this way and do what we want'.
I prefer to stay free to play (and think and say) whatever I damn well like (thank you Pete Seeger).
I somehow think I'll be getting rather more universal support over this from US members with their recent cultural experiences than from woolly-minded apologists here in the UK (or should I say, England) . . .