Fear and loathing in Lancashire, Part One: A weekend at and in Rebellion
Why Blackpool is the most appropriate place for a festival of music born out of 70s dissastisfaction and deprivation...
An unexpected bonus:
This is the feature I spent this weekend writing in Blackpool. It was meant to be published elsewhere but was deemed “too specific”. So here is part one. Part two will be subscriber-only (to begin with) so if you like this part and want to help me make the reporting pay — I had expected a fee for this! — hit the button below to upgrade:
Next: Fear And Loathing in Lancashire (Part 2): Any metaphor to escape reality
We were somewhere around Preston, on the edge of some promenade, when the pints of bitter started to take hold. I remember saying, “I feel a bit rum; maybe you should check Google Maps…” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of huge Bette Lynchs…
– with apologies to Hunter S. Thompson (1937 - 2005)
The town was full of punks; more mohicans than a radical hairdressing convention; more black leather jackets than Lemmy’s wardrobe. It was like a computer game about the late-70s had been clumsily programmed and now characters – all variations on the theme of punk rock, anarchy, and being quite annoyed off with your dad – were spawning like crazy in the centre of a broken-down seaside town. Blackpool is great because it knows what it is and what it was and what it might be next. It’s all faded and very little glamour, but it has charm, the kind of charm that can borrow a £5 off you and get let off because the chat was good.
I’m in town for Rebellion, a family-run, extremely friendly punk rock festival that draws bands both new and… uh… vintage. Perhaps The Damned were too vintage as they cancel as the headliners on the first night to be replaced by Oi! hellraisers Cock Sparrer. The crowd – also somewhat vintage generally – are not too bothered; the pints are flowing and I see a decent number of Cock Sparrer t-shirts in the crowd as myself and my associate – a man who tends to the more shirt and chinos approach to apparel – take in the panzer attack set delivered by UK Subs, another 70s era punk outfit that continues the mardy march around the venues of Britain and beyond.
On a side street earlier, as we ambled past somewhat battered B&Bs, we encountered a pair of German punks, happily chatting away in German about various bands they intended to see, among them, of course, their countrymen, 80s Düsseldorf rockers Die Toten Hosen.
Die Toten Hosen take their name from German slang – tote Hose – which means “nothing happening”, and that’s the underlying dissatisfaction that feeds all good punk: A sense that the world is stolid and broken; too slow while too quick to punish you. Punk is a sensational soundtrack to spending time in Blackpool, a town that has been left to moulder by central government but which has a spritely, snarling, spectacular spirit. Blackpool doesn’t want your pity and nor does it deserve it but plenty of its residents are suffering.
The ones that live in the Blackpool (South) constituency are suffering from Scott Benton, an MP alleged to have indulged in such incompetent corruption that even the Conservative Party decided it was a bit much and suspended him. He was caught on video, by Times reporters, appearing to offer to lobby ministers on behalf of gambling investors. Since Blackpool and the surrounding areas are absolutely blighted by the gambling industry – slots and fixed odds emporiums sit in high streets like rotten teeth – this was particularly grim.
Benton, now sitting as an independent, was subsequently censured by parliamentary standards authorities for issuing a press release attacking his potential Labour rival in the next general election. To say that Benton – aged just 36 – is a disgrace to Parliament would be a gross understatement; he’s the sort of person who could get disqualified from the human race for pushing.
Benton’s most recent outburst in the chamber was a speech calling for the BBC licence fee to be abolished. It makes sense: Even the hint of journalism or public scrutiny is terrifying for a man of Scotty’s limited talents and tastes. When the people of Blackpool hoy Benton back into the general population, I predict he’ll turn up on GB News – a channel he retweets with depressing constancy – or as a ‘legit’ gambling industry lobbyist. What he won’t do is make a difference for Blackpool.
It’s notable that Benton, who’s from Newport and went to university in Nottingham, mentions that he supports Spurs in his Twitter bio. He can’t even pretend that he supports Blackpool F.C. – a club that currently plays in League One, having been relegated from the Championship in the 2022/23 season. Supporting Blackpool would give Benton a great example of going down with class, something it’s unlikely that he’ll do when he’s turfed out at the next election.
The definition of punk is always disputed territory. People are always certain that others are less punk than them or simply not punk at all. And before it meant a style of music and a mentality, it was an insult, something you chucked at gangsters and low lives. Then Legs McNeil – aged all of 19 – and his pals, the cartoonist John Holmstrom, and the writer Ged Dunn created Punk magazine from where the music ended up getting its name.
McNeil got his inspiration from an episode of Kojak, in which Telly Savalas calls a n’erdowell “a lousy punk”. There are many of the original kind of lousy punk in parliament. They’re the people who have left Blackpool burdened with a crappy economy, entrenched poverty, and a drug problem that makes Sid Vicious look abstemious.
The punks of the Rebellion festival bring something good to Blackpool: A spirited desire to live loudly and authentically. People like Benton only take. It was always thus. As Robert Christgau wrote in 1981:
Hippies were rainbow extremists; punks are romantics of black-and-white. Hippies forced warmth; punks cultivate cool. Hippies kidded themselves about free love; punks pretend that s&m is our condition. As symbols of protest, swastikas are no less fatuous than flowers.
I’ve seen no swastikas at Rebellion but I saw lots of protest; much of it of the kind that the government and opposition object to in rhetoric and law.
There was no fear or loathing in Blackpool caused by Rebellion but there’s plenty to go around in Britain these days.
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Next: Fear And Loathing in Lancashire (Part 2): Any metaphor to escape reality
"Too specific"? I''m sorry I have questions.
Scott Benton went to university?