ANARCHISTS IN THE UK

EXACTLY 45 YEARS AGO, CRASS, THE ANARCHIST ACTIVIST COLLECTIVE, WERE FINISHING PIVOTAL SECOND ALBUM, STATIONS OF THE CRASS.

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RENOWNED FOR GROUNDBREAKING PUNK AND EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC, ART, POETRY AND FILM, THEIR BASE AT DIAL HOUSE IN ESSEX WAS THE EPICENTRE OF THE BRITISH ANARCHIST MOVEMENT. PHIL ROSS MEETS FOUNDERS PENNY RIMBAUD AND STEVE IGNORANT TO UNRAVEL THE PHENOMENON, FROM THEIR BLASPHEMOUS MINDSET TO THEIR EXHAUSTED IMPLOSION FOLLOWING A BENEFIT GIG FOR STRIKING MINERS IN 1984.

Penny Rimbaud’s trauma and Steve Ignorant’s first visit to Dial House in 1973

Born in 1943, Jeremy Ratter changed his name by deed poll to Penny Rimbaud shortly after co-founding Crass in 1977, as a symbolic mark of dedication to his anarchist beliefs. The drummer-songwriter tells Record Collector about one of his earliest memories, when as five-year-old Jeremy, his fingers traced the silver Star of David embossed on the cover of a heavily bound black book, unaware of the horror awaiting him as he turned the pages.

Some 76 years later, he trembles as he recalls the most traumatising and formative moment of his life. It was a book about the Holocaust belonging to his father, Colonel John Ratter CBE, who had served through WW2 as a Royal Engineer. The trauma he experienced seeing photos of dead bodies in Auschwitz lying in pits, at such a young age, scarred the young Rimbaud, pressing upon him a bleak vision of the world. For the remainder of his life, the childhood trauma would influence his work as Penny Rimbaud: philosopher, poet and leader of Crass. After discovering Zen Buddhism as a teenager, he refused to go to church, and his devout Anglican parents eventually accepted it.