They're playing to win

Political musicians have always wrestled with how to make left-wing music. Should music for the common folk be folk music? Do radical singers need new, radical forms? Or should strong ideas be sugar-coated with sweet melodies?

Reigate's red rockers Thee Faction burst through these arguments with all the style of a Ford Granada crashing through a pile of dirty cardboard boxes in an old episode of the Sweeney.

They have built their rock and roll hot rod by crudely, but effectively welding together garage rock and passionate socialist speechifying.

Musically, think Dr Feelgood, or some of the '70s punk bands with a less "year zero" approach to '60s rock like The Saints. For a more recent comparison - The Hives.

But lyrically, Thee Faction couldn't be more direct with songs like Don't Forget What The Movement's Done For You, Baby, a celebration of our successes and their origin, or (Don't Call On Rock'n'Roll), Call On GDH Cole - a grinding guitar boogie with an argument about passive consumption versus active socialism.

It's in your face, but they have a way with words as well as a way with buzz-saw chords.

Thee Faction aren't a new sound but there is something oddly avant garde about hearing emotions which are as common as "my baby's gone" to the thousands of people in unions and campaigns - "let's have a meeting" or "It's only class war if we fight back" - put in song.  

It's not unlike how Billy Childish uses very basic garage rock to express ideas and feelings way outside rock's usual lyrical range.  

The occasional addition of brass gives Thee Faction an early Dexys feel too.

They aren't necessarily for teenagers or for chart breakthrough - although in the right circumstances all things are possible - they seem to have set themselves a different task.

Drawing on strategies from Italian communist Antonio Gramsci they want to fight a cultural war of position through the medium of R'n'B.

This deviation from standard rock routes gives them a bloody-minded intensity that is in itself quite entertaining. 

You get the feeling that they want to build an audience from the bottom up - to bring political commitment to people who came for some basic rock and roll, to give people who are semi-committed a musical reason to feel more committed and to give the fully committed inspiration to stop flagging.

Personally, I think the question of how music should contribute to the class war can be approached outside Marxism.

You just have to see how music contributes to real war. Generals have long known that music is essential to any fighting force. So it's natural for music to be part of social combat.

According to Henry George Farmer's 1912 classic Rise & Development Of Military Music signalling was one of military music's earliest functions.

The ancient Romans had "a host of warlike instruments" to be "employed for signals of every description in war." Getting over a message is one of the prime functions of the military musician - a role Thee Faction grasp with pleasure.   

In the 1800's field music" was used to get soldiers marching in step, although historians say "later fifes or bagpipes were added for melodic interest" because even signals have to be entertaining.

Thee Faction clearly want their riffs to keep us marching. 

Boosting morale away from the battlefield with tunes that were entertaining and uplifting is another long-recognised function of military music.

Britain's Royal School of Military Music was founded in 1865 after an attempt to get the soldiers in the Crimea to buck up by playing the national anthem foundered because none of them knew the tune.

Keeping up the morale of our side with socialist anthems is also a task Thee Faction set themselves. It's important to many of these roles are about keeping people keeping on - they are there to reinforce and reinvigorate the morale of our side.  

A final function of military music goes back to Roman times.

When Caesar's legions arrived in Britain they found the locals were "indifferently skilled in arms." However, "they began their attacks with taunting songs and deafening howls, accompanied by the blowing of a great number of horns and trumpets" which "quite terrified the invaders."

Thee Faction have taken up this final role with their latest release Sausage Machine a taunting song aimed at the enemy, specifically the enemy in the shape of posho-bland, faux-rural rockers Mumford & Sons.

Thee Faction need our help. They have another album ready for released, but need to shift some existing product to finance the new one.  

I urge you to buy their existing three CDs at the bonus price of £15 for the lot from www.theefaction.org.

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I took part in a student occupation against education cuts at Sussex University in 1981, so I'm naturally sympathetic to the current occupation of the university's conference centre.

One thing is obvious - they are doing it better than we did. Back in 1981 we were careful to keep good relations with university workers - like when we had to swiftly move from occupying the refectory to "Arts D" because union stewards told us holding the first building  would delay payslips.

But the current Sussex occupation shows a stronger will to link workers and students. The occupiers are resisting the privatisation of 253 support staff jobs.

The sit-in also shows how occupations can work on a different level from marches and strikes. They raise the most fundamental questions about who controls the space.

Sussex vice-chancellor Michael Farthing - who earns £227k a year - must be feeling in less control every day.

The occupier's leaflets and banners are bright yellow. Farthing looks across campus to see yellow leaflets stuck in staff windows, yellow badges on student lapels. He walks across campus accompanied by security staff, which makes him look weak rather than strong.

He is regularly followed by students but they threaten his dignity, not his security, with their chants of "management, you get out/we know what you're all about: 'Cuts/job losses / money for the bosses'."

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