“Bush Burning” Squat gig in Peckham
January 18th, 2009 at 22:10

I had an amazing day on Saturday, of the type which could only really take place in London. I spent the day at the Centre for Inquiry’s ‘Weird Science’ lectures with my friend Eve. It was pretty excellent – basically Dawkinistas preaching to the choir about how excellent rational inquiry is and how shit creationism is, which is just the sort of thing I like.

The line-up was immense too – there was Richard Wiseman talking about psychic dogs, Chris French talking about psychology and conspiracy theories, Stephen Law, author of the superb Philosophy Gym, explaining how creationism is unscientific and talking about the philosophy of evidence based reason, and ended with Ben Goldacre telling us stories about bullshit science that appears in the newspapers and how I think my job actually makes me partially complicit in it.

This was held at the Conway Hall near Holborn… but it wasn’t the only event being hosted there that day. There was also this:

I assure you that this is 100% real.

The reason I give all of this exposition is because it juxtaposes brilliantly with what I did yesterday evening. Having spent the day surrounded by the most rational people in London, in the evening we – Eve and myself, joined by our friend Sinead – went to a party organised by Eve’s aunt in Peckham, to celebrate the end of the Bush administration. It was a ‘Bush Burning’ party and was being held at a squat. In Peckham.

It was certainly something that a few months ago I’d never have thought I’d do – I mean, a squat… in Peckham? I’d have to be a right plonker to go, right? The chances of being murdered would be ridiculously high.

The bus to Peckham was quite ominous. As we descended further into the depths of the (dare I say) slightly Birmingham-esque south London things became a whole lot bleaker. They say where the trains go prosperity will follow, citing the trans-American railroad or London’s own Metroland metropolitan railway as an example – the opposite seems to be true too. The tube rarely dips south of the river, and as a consequence, Peckham seems pretty grim.

We knew we’d got to the squat when we saw some metal gates that had been hand painted and covered in pictures of sunbeams and the sort of hippy tat that allows a place to be described as unique or having ‘character’. The trouble was the gates were locked. So how else could we get in? On the wall adjoining the gates there was a wooden doorway – like a shed door complete with shed door handle – and we could see the glow of light eminating from behind it. After dithering for a while, we determined that this must be the way in.

Opening the door was quite a shock. Rather than seeing unemployed wasters with scented candles doing some collectivised farming like you might expect at a squat, we instead saw what looked like a very close approximation of a third world sweatshop. Hidden away in darkest Peckham in a building partially constructed inside a railway arch, there were Chinese people manufacturing clothes on large industrial machinery in a rudimentary factory. It didn’t look like the sort of place that would allow the workers to take breaks or unionise. When a rather angry looking manager came over to the three of us, we discovered that his dodgy factory was not in fact part of the squat.

So we waited around outside and just as we were planning to leave, Eve’s aunt, the organiser of the party, turned up to let us through the gates.

I don’t think she was the most “conventional” of aunts. I get the impression that she’s probably never been to a WI bake sale or that sort of thing. What was a little surprising was that she was much, much cooler than her niece (or me, for that matter). Despite obviously being about twice my or Eve’s age, she goths up considerably – big boots, black chains and all – she wouldn’t look out of place in Camden.

She opened up the gates and led us to the squat building. To get there we had to walk through what you might generously describe as a “garden” or “car park”. There were parked cars, caravans and greenhouses (I wonder what they were growing…).  Of course, it was unlit – the perfect place for committing murder (we were in Peckham).

The squat itself is a former community centre that was abandoned by the council so the squatters moved in. If you want to get a feel for it, imagine basically a cross between Byker Grove and a crack den.

Taking a deep breath, and with a great sense of trepidation, we stepped inside. And what we saw was a shock: It was actually pretty cool looking inside. There was a stage, a bar and a proper sound system setup – all without having to go the trouble of worrying about things like live music performance licenses, permits and fire exit that The Man tries to force them to have. Screw the law requiring fire exits to be clearly labelled and lit at all times… that’s just The Man trying to tell us where to go in the event of a fire.

There were sofas around the edge of the room and hanging from the ceiling was a spinning yellow polystyrene “smiley face” on one side of the stage and, bizarrely, a cut-out of the word “innit” spiinning on the other. I’m probably not selling this very well, but essentially it came across as cool and trendy, and untainted by the commercialism of, er, legitimate musical venues. Basically it was punk as fuck. This was underlined by the soundman having a mug that had the Starbucks logo modified to say “Fuck off” on the side.

As you might imagine, it was like a different era – not only were there mentions of the miners strike and the struggle of workers, but people were flouting the ban and smoking indoors. I don’t think they were just smoking tobacco either – there was a horrible stench of drugs that wafted across us with some regularity, and I’m about 60% sure there was a man there who was casually toking on his crackpipe. I don’t know what a crackpipe specifically looks like, but there was a young man smoking a pipe, and he didn’t strike me as the Tony Benn type.

The first act on stage merely confirmed the punk credentials of the squat, as if being a legal-grey area, grassroots organisation full of crackpipes and crackpots was not enough. He was a “punk poet”. Attila the Stockbroker, as he called himself, performed some poems that totally stuck it to the man. I’m not normally a fan of poetry – in fact, I like to think that I’ve built my reputation on the back of my loathing of the so-called “artform”, but Attila won himself an awful lot of goodwill from me when right at the start of the set he denounced literature student-esque poetry as being rubbish (confirming my opinions) and then launching into some good old fashioned left-wingery:

The next people on stage were a succession of acoustic artists who had a common theme linking their songs: they were all about the Bush administration. Much like Attila’s poetry, these hard lefties were not familiar with allegories or metaphors, so the songs were pretty transparently political. Excellent.

After this came the main event of the evening: the purpose of the party. The Bush Burning.

In the garden area a bonfire had been constructed close to a wooden frame containing effigies of Bush, Blair and Brown. As you’ll see in the video, it was actually a lot more disturbing than we were expecting. Whilst burning a Guy on bonfire night is all good fun, there’s something that seems slightly more sinister about implying the death of still living people. What’s more, given the ramshackle nature of the squat, there were a lot of visual echoes of mob justice and lynchings and the like – for people who minutes earlier were singing songs about how international law had been broken and the like, they seemed awfully keen on the extra-judicial killing of these effigies. Sure, it was only symbolism, but it still left something of a nasty taste in your mouth.

That said, the taste could have been the embers raining down on us from the fire that looked as though it could get out of control. I’m no council bureaucrat (though I’d love to be), but I’m pretty sure there must be some rules on starting big fires like that, without so much as a fire extinguisher or healthy and safety officer to hand – London doesn’t have a particularly good record with fires, after all. (This said, if the fire had spread, this blog could make me the new Samuel Pepys).

After this, we all traipsed back inside the squat to see an old-fashioned sounding punk band play some songs. I say “old fashioned” because the members of the band were my parents age, played three chords and had one song where the only lyrics were “money talks” shouted over and over again. It was punk as fuck.

We left shortly after this on the basis that going home any later than midnight in Peckham is almost definitely going to get us murdered. Over all it was an amazing, bewildering and bizarre experience – similar to the rap battle in that respect.

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