page_title: Crass
section_title: 1984: Breakup
hierarchical_section_title: Crass / History / 1984: Breakup
caption_attribution_description: English: Eve Libertine of Crass, 1984.
context_page_description: Crass were an English art collective and punk rock band formed in Epping, Essex, England in 1977 who promoted anarchism as a political ideology, a way of life and a resistance movement. Crass popularised the anarcho-punk movement of the punk subculture, advocating direct action, animal rights, feminism, anti-fascism, and environmentalism. The band used and advocated a DIY ethic approach to its albums, sound collages, leaflets, and films.
  Crass spray-painted stencilled graffiti messages in the London Underground system and on advertising billboards, coordinated squats and organised political action. The band expressed its ideals by dressing in black, military-surplus-style clothing and using a stage backdrop amalgamating icons of perceived authority such as the Christian cross, the swastika, the Union Jack and the ouroboros.
  The band was critical of the punk subculture and youth culture in general. Nevertheless, the anarchist ideas that they promoted have maintained a presence in punk. Due to their free experimentation and use of tape collages, graphics, spoken word releases, poetry and improvisation, they have been associated with avant-punk and art punk.
context_section_description: Questions about the band in Parliament and an attempted prosecution by Conservative Party MP Timothy Eggar under the UK's Obscene Publications Act for their single, "How Does It Feel...", made them question their purpose:
  We found ourselves in a strange and frightening arena. We had wanted to make our views public, had wanted to share them with like minded people, but now those views were being analysed by those dark shadows who inhabited the corridors of power (…) We had gained a form of political power, found a voice, were being treated with a slightly awed respect, but was that really what we wanted? Was that what we had set out to achieve all those years ago?
  The band had also incurred heavy legal expenses for the Penis Envy prosecution; this, combined with exhaustion and the pressures of living and operating together, finally took its toll. On 7 July 1984, the band played a benefit gig at Aberdare, Wales, for striking miners, and on the return trip guitarist N. A. Palmer announced that he intended to leave the group. This confirmed Crass's previous intention to quit in 1984, and the band split up.
  The group's final release as Crass was the "Ten Notes on a Summer's Day" 12" single in 1986. Crass Records was closed down in 1992 - its final release was Christ's Reality Asylum, a 90-minute cassette of Penny Rimbaud reading the essay he had written in early 1977 that gave him the impetus to form Crass.
caption: Eve Libertine, May 1984
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