Lyrics
What yer gonna do when the blacks get you 1
What yer gonna do when the Pakis get you
What yer gonna do when the chinks get you 2
What yer gonna do when the commies break through
Yeah, race hatred
Yeah, race hatred
What yer gonna do when the Yanks get you
What yer gonna do when the Klan get you
What yer gonna do when the Russians hang you
What yer gonna do when the niggers break through
Yeah, race hatred
Yeah, race hatred
What yer gonna do about it, who yer gonna shout about it?
What yer gonna do about it, who yer gonna elect about it?
Race hatred
Listen to the shouts of Chile's dead 3
See those reds that are under your bed 4
Look at the poor, look at the nigger
Look at that gun and your finger on the trigger
Yeah, race hatred
Yeah, race hatred
What yer gonna do about it, who yer gonna shout about it?
What yer gonna do about it, who yer gonna elect about it?
Race hatred, destroy race hatred
The National Front are getting stronger 5
Not a joke any longer
Now the choice is up to you
Destroy these Nazis before they do
Bring race hatred
Destroy National Front
Destroy National Front
They don't want these people here
They don't want these people near
All of you rich, some of you poor
What's that knockin' on your door?
Commentary
You’re not a very good songwriter if you can only write about one dimension of life… You have to write what you feel. One day you might be particularly angry at fascism, have a real gut-reaction like you do when you go on pickets like we do.
But there again, it’s difficult to feel things when you’re away from the original situation, it feels a little forced. Like ‘Race Hatred’, another of our songs – this lot want to rehearse it but I can’t sing about racial hatred again and again till I get it right because I’d lose all feeling for it. And as lyrics they don’t stand up on their own; the song only works when it’s full of live feeling.
Mark E. Smith, quoted in Brazier, 1977, p.9.
The lyrics above are based on the text published in Jolt fanzine in the summer of 1977, with some minor amendments that seemed necessary to me.
(The two gigs referred to in the sideways handwritten note are the North East London Polytechnic (Barking campus) Rock Against Racism gig, with Buzzcocks, on 25 June 1977, and the Vortex gig, also supporting Buzzcocks, on 4 July 1977.)
That this song makes free use of racist epithets will be troubling to many listeners, despite the fact it is avowedly anti-racist. It’s of its time, of course, in that respect. For example, The Dead Kennedys (“Holiday in Cambodia”, 1980) and Elvis Costello (“Oliver’s Army”, 1979), used the n-word with anti-racist and satirical intent in a way that wouldn’t be considered acceptable by modern audiences. “Race Hatred”‘s message is at least clear, compared to the more ambiguous use of racist language in the lyrics of “The Classical”.
The structure of the lyric seems a bit confused. Consider: who is the “you” being addressed? The first verse seems to be directed at a racist supporter of the National Front. But then the second verse mentions some sort of threat from “Yanks”, “the Klan”, “Russians”, as well as black people. Which seems mixed up. Has the “you” switched? Soon the song is talking about the victims of Chile’s military junta, but also “reds under the bed”. And then those final lines, “All of you rich, some of you poor / What’s that knockin’ on your door?” I did wonder if there was a wider point being made here about the nature of fascism, but if so it is undercooked.
Mark E. Smith moved away from writing simplistic (yet arguably confused or confusing) and didactic political lyrics like “Race Hatred” quite quickly, and the song wasn’t played after 1977.
In part this seems to have been a reaction to being pigeon-holed as a “political band” in the music press. And as he said in the interview with Chris Brazier that I quoted at the top of this commentary, “as lyrics they don’t stand up on their own; the song only works when it’s full of live feeling.” There’s two elements to that: first of all, the difficulty of sustaining sincerely furious vocal delivery night after night, when, secondly, the lyrics absolutely require that in order to work at all.
MES seems aware, then, that these lyrics are not very good. And evidently he didn’t think there was much mileage in trying to improve his political writing; he just stopped doing it. From the outset he was much better handling distinctive material like “Bingo Master”.
It should be noted, though, that “Race Hatred” can be traced back before The Fall played their debut gig, indeed before they became The Fall. Tony Friel received a letter from Mark E. Smith dated 20 December 1976, accompanied by a sheet on which MES had written out a proposed setlist for their group, then still called The Outsiders. “Race Hatred” appears at the end in what is timed as a five minute sequence: “Chile’s Dead / Race Hatred / Coupla Punks”.
While MES may have quickly cooled on the song, it sounds as if the rest of the group liked it, which may be why it stayed in the set as long as it did.
The two best gigographies of The Fall, The Fall Online Gigography and The Track Record, are not entirely in agreement on the early live history of the group (things have always been uncertain given the incomplete documentary record, and although recent discoveries via Omega Auctions sales of material from Mark E. Smith’s personal archive have helped massively, they have also created new uncertainties, such as over the date of The Fall’s debut gig). The Track Record lists 24 gigs in 1977, the first gig dated to 16 May 1977. The Fall Online Gigography, on the other hand, lists 26 and dates the debut to either 2 or 9 May 1977.
Of those gigs, recordings exist of just three, plus the two songs that appeared on the Short Circuit: Live at the Electric Circus various artists compilation. Setlists exist for sixteen.
“Race Hatred” appears on the gig recording dated to 23 May 1977 on the Cherry Red The Fall: 1970s box set (but which is arguably more likely 13 June). This is the only recording of the song currently known to exist. In addition to that, “Race Hatred” appears on all the known setlists during 1977 up to and including its last documented outing as an encore at the Rock Against Racism gig at The Squat, Manchester, on 7 October. It doesn’t appear on the setlist for Katie’s on 20 October. So it had an appropriate swansong.
Interviewed in 2009 for the Reformation! webzine, Una Baines was asked what she remembered of early songs including “Race Hatred”. Of the latter, she commented, “Race Hatred was a powerful song I remember very well. It was performed at a lot of gigs I played at.”
Musical debts and echoes
According to Martin Bramah, “Race Hatred” owes something to The Velvet Underground:
“Race Hatred”, we ripped off the “Sister Ray” rhythm riff thing for that, it was a big long jam on two chords.
Bramah, 2016, p.3.
Footnotes
- “yer” is obviously a dialect pronunciation of “you”. I would normally standardise it, but I’ve decided to leave it on this occasion because it reflects what was written down. ↩︎
- “chinks” is a racist epithet for Chinese people. ↩︎
- Salvador Allende’s socialist government had been overthrown by a US-backed military coup on 11 September 1973. Ruled by a brutal dictatorial military junta led by General Pinochet, tens of thousands of Chileans were murdered, tortured, “disappeared”, imprisoned, or forced into exile. ↩︎
- “Reds under the bed” is a phrase coined during the cold war to satirise the “red scare”. It is intended to refer to a hysterical fear of finding communist infiltrators in every corner of society. ↩︎
- The National Front, a fascist political party, was founded in 1967 by A.K. Chesterton (a former member of the British Union of Fascists) in an effort to unify the British far right. By 1977, led by John Tyndall, the party was perceived to be on the rise (coming fourth, albeit with only just over 5% of the vote, in the Greater London Council elections of May 1977). ↩︎
Sources / Links
- The Annotated Fall: “Race Hatred” [Archived]
- Bramah, Martin (2016). Martin Bramah’s Story of Dragnet. Originally sold as part of a PledgeMusic offer. 4pp. Available online at: https://thefall.org/news/pics/MartinBramahsStoryofDragnet.pdf.
- Brazier, Chris (1977). “United They Fall”. Melody Maker, 31 December. p.9.
- Discogs: The Fall: 1970s (disc 5: North West Arts – 23/5/1977). Cherry Red: CRCDBOX121.
- “The Fall”, Jolt, #3, 1977. [p.11]. Undated, but on internal evidence published in the summer, just prior to 13 August (reference to upcoming National Front march in Lewisham on that date – this turned into the Battle of Lewisham [Wikipedia]). [Available online via Still Unusual blog]
- The Track Record: “Race Hatred”
- The Track Record: The Una Baines Interview, originally published 2009 by Reformation! webzine #5.
- Wikipedia: Chink (ethnic slur)
- Wikipedia: “Holiday in Cambodia” (Dead Kennedys song)
- Wikipedia: Military dictatorship of Chile
- Wikipedia: National Front (UK)
- Wikipedia: “Oliver’s Army” (Elvis Costello song)
- Word Histories: Meaning and Origin of “Reds Under the Bed”
- Youtube: “Race Hatred”. Posted by user Alex DarkElf, who mistakenly gives the date as 25 May. Cherry Red labelled it 23 May, but it’s probably 13 June.
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