'Bill Drammond is a cultural magician, and

GIMPO AND ME AND THE FABIAN SOCIETY

30 September 1997

I can feel the anger banging about in my head, trying to smash its way out. An unfocused rage. I don't do much kicking at the pricks, but something has to be done, even if the only outcome of it is that the rage subsides and I get some sort of a night's sleep. All I can do is get my notebook and pencil stub out, attempt to document the past few hours and hope to make some sense of my anger.

Gimpo and I are on the last train back from Brighton. Gimpo is ripping up a cold cooked-chicken he bought on the platform and we are shoving handfuls of the meat into our faces. We've got nothing with which to wipe the grease off our hands and cheeks.

Early this afternoon, Gimpo and I jumped a train for Brighton. The Face had got us a couple of forms that would supposedly get us into the Labour Party Conference, their first held in power in the last one hundred and eighteen years and all that, and certainly the first party conference of any persua­sion that Gimpo or I had ever attended. The two of us have a date - Tony Blair's big speech - and we are running well late.

We need passport photos to get our passes. The photo booth at Brighton station is out of order, and kicking it only hurts my ingrowing-turned-septic big toe toenail. We belt down the hill looking for Boots. The booth delivers its goods, and vanity pre­vents me from looking for more than the fraction of a second it takes to check that the ageing face is mine. Not only is the Prime Minister of our country younger than I, so is the leader of the Conservative Party. These are strange times and uncharted territories for me.

Next, to the accreditation office to get our papers stamped, our photos laughed at and, we hope, our passes handed over. We find the place up Dyke Road. But such things aren't instant, it's going to take at least half an hour to have our papers processed. Our money-burning, car-nicking, cop-killing back­grounds checked. Time for a pint.

We are cleared. Passes dangling around our necks, we bomb down to the conference centre on the seafront. Security is heavy. Cops at every turning, ring-of-steel style. Even a tem­porary crash barrier around the place to stop any would-be kamikaze-type car bombers. The entrance is via an under­ground car park. We follow a long line of posters, posted alternately: New Labour, New Britain, New Labour, New Britain, New Labour, New Britain, New Labour, New Britain, New Labour, New Britain. The mantra goes on and on, and I've got a feeling that, like all good mantras, it works.

But as we reach the entrance, happy, smiling, glowing people are pouring out. We've obviously missed Tony's Big Talk to the new rank and file, the new world and the new millennium. 'Fuck it! Fuck it! Fuck it!' is my reaction, but Gimpo is unfazed. He's already getting acquainted with the crusty beggars outside, plying their trade by working on the guilt of the New Labour faithful.

The Grand Hotel seems to be the place where everybody is heading, so we go with the flow. Not too late for afternoon tea. Gimpo and I are obviously the scruffiest blokes in the place. New Labour, New Suits. My jeans and boots are still splattered with the paint job that me and Jimmy did on the National Theatre a couple of weeks ago. '1997 - What The Fuck's Going

On?' I can't see a Dennis Skinner or a Tony Benn anywhere. I know champagne socialism has been an easy target for right-wing journalists for the past twenty years, but all this is taking a bit of getting used to. 'The tunes they are a-changin"; for example a couple of the striking dockers who took part in our Fuck The Millennium thing are filling their workless days by attending Media Studies courses at Liverpool University. Now that's what I call New Labour, New Britain. We spot the odd front-bencher, but I'm hoping to see Clare Short, get her auto­graph for the family. Now there's a real woman, still shaggable after all these years, and not because she's had a tit job or a face lift but because she is made of the Right Stuff.

Cream tea done. Gimpo is collecting the flyers advertising fringe meetings. He suggests we should check out the Fabian Society, and reads from the leaflet: '5.45 p.m. - Lights! Camera! Action! The New Creative Economy. Old Ship Hotel, Paganini Ballroom. Sponsored by Polygram Films.' Note the capital N for New - those things get slipped in under the guise of irony and before you know it, it's for real.

5.35 at the Old Ship Hotel, and I'm in a state of shock. The last face I was expecting to see in a place like this was that of Rob Dickins, one of the most charming men on the planet. Somebody whom I have both loved and loathed. I was his pro­tégé and I let him down. But I let myself up. A great part of the drive behind The KLF's international pop success was my desire to prove him wrong. The trouble is, it only proved him right. Next to Rob is Alan McGee. Fellow Scot, fellow ex-Hun (can one be an ex-Hun?) and fellow man with a mission to do the wrong thing. The conversation is stilted, as I'm pouring with sweat and ringing with fear. I can hear words come out of my mouth, but they are nothing to do with what's going on in my brain.

Of course, Dickins wants to know why I am here. As I don't know myself, I am unable to give him any sort of satisfactory answer. He tells me he came down with Mick Hucknall, how they watched Big Tone do his thing together. How Big Tone had total class, like a great pop performer who knew how to communicate to a mob-filled arena but still make it all ring true. Rob throws in a revelatory anecdote; the last time he saw Tony Blair was when he took him to a Simply Red concert. They sat together admiring Mick Hucknall's voice, stage pres­ence and professionalism, and chatted about all-time great singers and the great prospects for New Britain. I ask Rob if he came to last year's Labour Party Conference. He gives me a look as if to say, 'Don't be stupid'.

In an attempt to steady my nerves I grab a glass of red from the white-linened table laid out with mineral water, orange juice and wine. The Paganini Ballroom is upstairs and at the back of the hotel. It's not that grand, in fact it's long and narrow and a bit grubby, with a small proscenium-arched stage at one end and a few dozen chairs in rows. Gimpo and I take to ours. Less than half the others are sat upon. Rob sits directly behind me. The sweat pours down my back.

Five speakers sit behind the table on the stage, carafes of water in front of them. The chairperson gets up and proceed­ings proceed, but my attention is elsewhere. Gimpo nudges me, and I'm thinking what he's thinking. She's sitting alone a couple of rows in front of us like a teenage Brigitte Bardot: long blonde hair, a black fitted cocktail dress, body to match. Her face angelic, sensual; naturally pouting lips, her eyes large and innocent as if her cocksucking days are yet to come. I know that Gimpo and I are both thinking, 'What the fuck is this girl doing here alone?'

I attempt to drag my mind back from this dark alleyway to the words of the woman chairing the meeting; she is now doing her introduction bit. I check my Fabian Society flyer and see that she is Carmen Callil, co-founder of Virago Publishing. Gimpo and I turn our attention from BB to one of the most influential figures of the women's movement over the last thirty years, as she welcomes us all. There's an irony here, but I attempt not to wallow in it.

Callil is introducing us to the man at the far left of the top table. He turns out to be Chris Smith, our Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. All I know about him is that he is the first totally out-of-the-closet-and-into-the-cabinet gay that the country has ever had. No mean feat. I like him. Warm and friendly. His words are agreeable, silky but not oily - the gen­eral drift being that as we slip into the twenty-first century, it is our creativity as a nation, our culture (both contemporary and historical) that will be the big wealth creators for our econ­omy. He bandies some facts about: how already the music business generates more cash than British Steel.

A pang of anger surges through me.

I spent my teenage years growing up in the steel town of Corby. A '60s Mecca for Scots to find work and a bright future, all new and prosperous and filled with hope, away from the desolation and poverty of central Scotland's crumbling tene­ment slums. Come the '70s, successive governments decided that it made more sense to buy our steel from overseas - and closed the whole place down. 12,000 workers were put on the scrap heap. Yeah, I know I sound like some blinkered old sod from the SWP. But don't start giving me the 'music biz creates more wealth than the steel industry' bit when it was a Labour government that had a big hand in shutting ('scaling') the latter down.

Chris gets his applause and sods off. A busy man, I presume. A woman called Jude Kelly, the artistic director of the West Yorkshire Playhouse, stands up and bores us about something or other. Next up to speak is Stewart Till, President of International Polygram Filmed Entertainment. Polygram International are the sponsors of this meeting. I wonder what that means. Did Polygram pay for the wine, water and orange juice? Hire the hall? What do Polygram get from this?

I hate Stewart Till. My hatred is not rational. It is based on one meeting I had with him sixteen years ago. He was Head of Marketing at Warner Music - WEA in those days - and I was the manager of Echo and The Bunnymen. He laughed at my ideas and proceeded to blow his marketing budget on some­thing trivial. Madonna, probably. Now he is spouting New Labour-friendly platitudes, quoting 'British film industry -bigger than British Steel' facts. Polygram is a Dutch-owned multinational corporation; most of the steel used in the UK now has been made in Germany. I am a very pro-European person, but. . .

The mike is passed to Alan McGee, who is introduced by Carmen Callil with a line about 'a minute's silence in honour of Oasis'. McGee fumbles with his papers. He's not sure whether to sit or stand. In the end, he goes for some position in between. He's not wearing one of his now customary suits, and seems to lack any sort of public-speaking confidence. He reads from the page, monotone style. I warm to him instantly, which isn't sur­prising as I like him anyway, and agree with most of what he has to say. Up from the shop floor, with his vision intact.

The speakers have now all done their bit, and Carmen Callil is trying to draw questions from the sparse audience. Ah yes, the audience. Other than the baby Bardot, they all seem to be journalists scribbling notes, or infamous Labour-supporting culture workers: Jeremy Irons, Richard Attenborough, Alan Yentob, David Puttnam.

The meeting is over, the young Bardot lookalike is up and off into the night before anyone can ask her what's the big attrac­tion that drew her to a Fabian Society fringe meeting. Gimpo and I get out before we get waylaid by anybody looking for con­verts, questions or even polite conversation.

As we make our way back up the hill, away from the sea and towards the station, I become aware of this uncomfortable sen­sation roaming my brain. It's got something to do with all those fine words I've just heard. The ones that I nodded in agreement to. Even the stuff McGee had to say. The government in power getting in tune with contemporary arts and youth culture - I'm not aware that this has ever happened before in our country,

other than in the most obvious and patronising way. Harold Wilson handing out gongs to The Beatles, et cetera.

Then I remember a friend of mine telling me that when the invites went out from Number 10 to the chosen few in the music business for that soiree, they were seen as the ultimate backstage pass, and hung and framed by everyone that got one. The music business is just play power. All that light, smoke, reverb - just make-believe. As for those movers and shakers, the A&R men, publishers, agents, managers, pluggers, etc - just a bunch of playtime moguls living out some film script fantasy. However unglamorous politics may seem to us, we all know that that is real power. The power to start and stop wars. The power to shape and create history. The power to make the world a better place, not just sing about it on a charity record or two.

We are all seduced by power, each and every one of us. Don't let anybody ever try to tell you they are going to corrupt/ change/destroy the system from within. They will be the ones who will be corrupted, changed, destroyed, long before the system knows they are even inside it.

Back into present tense proper, and I'm still trying to cope with the seething anger. But now it is becoming somewhat more focused. Yes, I was pleased when the Tories got swept from power - especially the fact that they got totally kicked out of Scotland. And yes, I hope that New Labour can shorten hos­pital waiting lists, cut down on unemployment, raise standards in our schools, make the streets safer places to walk and all those other things.

But the contemporary arts, be they techno, rock 'n' roll, per­formance, film, those lot down at the 'Sensation' exhibition or wherever the farthest shore of creative exploration is found, should never have anything to do with the establishment. If the contemporary arts are to fulfil any positive function, other than as some sort of therapy for the artist involved, it is to provide an indefinable cultural Opposition. To keep alive the dreams, research and development of Utopia. To be involved in anyway with the political establishment is to be an unwitting hand­maiden to their PR machine. The only interest governing powers can have in the arts is what the arts can do for them.

That's not some conspiracy theory paranoia. It is in the inter­est of the governing power for London to be the swingingest, grooviest, coolest capital in the world, because that attracts wealth into the country. It's the contemporary arts/youth cul­ture thing which defines that groovy coolness. New Labour know this, far better than their predecessors did. They make no bones about telling us so. They even tell us, in patronising tones, that they think we should be proud of being such a grown-up and important part of the UK economy. Vital to our nation's future prosperity. Bigger than the steel industry. Never forget this fact: bigger than the steel industry. Bigger than the steel industry. Who the fuck ever wanted to explore the dark corners of those farthest shores to be bigger than the steel industry?

Gimpo catches my eye. He looks concerned. He can see the smoke rising from my pencil stub - always a giveaway sign of my unbalanced emotional state. He engages me in a convers­ation about how he thinks he, Z and I should attempt to sail to the moon. My man!