Who Knows A Rock Band Can Be So Political?

Combat Rock(1982). Photo by CBS

35 years ago, an English band The Clash released its fifth studio album Combat Rock. It was the group's best-selling album, being certified double platinum in the United States. It contained two of The Clash's most popular songs, the singles "Rock the Casbah" and "Should I Stay or Should I Go", familiar to the millennials’s ears after revitalized by the Duffer Brothers in the hottest Netflix series of 2016, Stranger Things.

Biographer Pat Gilbert described many songs from this album as having a “trippy, foreboding feel”, just like any normal rock band would do. But there was one song that took a different turn in their music. The Clash used its influence to voice out on social injustices that happened in that era through the song "Straight to Hell": unemployment spanning generations, and abandonment of children in Vietnam fathered by American soldiers during the Vietnam War.

Following the footsteps of another famous rock band from the same era, Pink Floyd, who came up with songs “Another Brick in The Wall” which criticizes how children were taught in school, and “Us and Them” which also described social injustice, The Clash took us a tour of what happened in that time that the people should be paying attention of.

The first verse refers to the shutting down of steel mills in Northern England. Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government, elected in 1979, sets out to cut British Steel’s losses at a time of overcapacity in the industry, rising energy prices and a deepening recession. 1980 begins with the first national strike by steel workers for more than 50 years, over pay and the threat of plant closures. A deal is eventually struck after nearly 14 weeks, but in May the government appoints Ian MacGregor as British Steel chairman to drive through its savage rationalisation programme and by the end of the year Consett, Corby and Shotton steelworks have closed, with the loss of more than 20,000 jobs. As a result of capitalism, total employment in the industry almost halves between 1979 and 1981, from 156,600 to 88,200.

The second verse expressed their political view about the Vietnam War that happened the previous decade when this song was released. The War was protested by many, with the like of Muhammad Ali, who also refused to join the military and focused on the racial injustice in America at that time.

The Clash’s motif was the impact and aftermath of the Vietnam War. Children fathered by American soldiers to Vietnamese mothers and then abandoned. The “Amerasian” children were left, and would spent their whole lives with identity crisis (“Lemme tell ya ‘bout your blood bamboo kid, it’s not Coca-Cola it’s rice”).

“Social justice is a concept of fair and just relations between the individual and society. This is measured by the explicit and tacit terms for the distribution of wealth, opportunities for personal activity and social privileges. In the current global grassroots movements for social justice, the emphasis has been on the breaking of barriers for social mobility, the creation of safety nets and economic justice” (Clark, Mary T., 2015).  “Straight to Hell” was thrown to the groups responsible towards the social injustices created because of their irresponsibility and abuse of power.

“Social justice assigns rights and duties in the institutions of society, which enables people to receive the basic benefits and burdens of cooperation. The relevant institutions often include regulation of markets, to ensure fair distribution of wealth, and equal opportunity” (Rawls,1971). The Clash made a point that some people still would not understand the meaning although it is generally accepted by many. Some people just would not think of the massive consequences with the actions they had made.