We are the Flowers in your Dustbin

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When the innocence of youth culture collides with the skepticism and sensationalism of mass media.

Synopsis:

This film celebrates the life of punk and the true motivators of the original scene, now seen on camera with their legendary stories of how it all began.   The teenage youth of the 80’s, whose bigger goal was racial harmony and speaking up against the oppressive establishment.  Fighting for a life that’s worth having, as there were no jobs, and utilized music as a way of life and the uniforms set them apart.  However, this uniform also made them a target for the media.  Still to this day street punk and the idea of racial harmony has a distorted reputation.  This film will rewrite the history books with the original icons of the scene.  We celebrate punk almost 50 years, which is still as relevant today as it was then, and has continued to move many generations throughout the world, to speak with an independent voice.  Interviews include Gary Bushel of the gonads and the daily mail, and UKs got talent.  Cass Pennant with celebrated film “football factory” and author of several books. Paul Hallam publisher of old dog books.

Cockney Rejects

Cockney Rejects are an English punk rock band that formed in the East End of London in 1978. Their 1980 song “Oi, Oi, Oi” was the inspiration for the name of the Oi! music genre.

UK Subs

Formed in 1976, UK Subs were among the earliest in the first wave of British punk, with vocalist Charlie Harper, originally a singer in Britain’s R&B scene, the mainstay of the band.

Sham 69

Sham 69 is a punk rock band that formed in Hersham in 1976. The band was one of the most successful punk bands in the United Kingdom, achieving five Top 20 singles.

Specials

The Specials, also known as The Special AKA, are an English 2 Tone and ska revival band formed in 1977,  combining ska and rocksteady beat with punk’s energy and attitude.

Angelic Upstarts

Angelic Upstarts are a punk rock band formed in 1977. The band espoused an anti-fascist and socialist working class philosophy, having released eight studio albums in their first decade alone.

Infa Riot

Infa Riot is a punk rock band formed in 1980 in North London, England by vocalist Lee Wilson and guitarist Barry D’Amery. The name Infa-Riot is an abbreviation for “In for a Riot”.

The Last Resort

The Last Resort are a name synonomous with the Oi! movement both as a shop catering for those of the skinhead persuasion and lifestyle in the ‘80’s.

Sample of Voice Over from We are the Flowers in your Dustbin

Teenage warning:Punk, politics and youth culture

Words are the most important things about punk. If I just wanted to pogo, there’s hundreds of bands I could go and see-that’s just as bad as Disco. What I’m interested in is people who tell the truth. That’s what I believe in.

                                Jimmy Pursey(1977)

The mood was tense even before the violence erupted. As a benefit concert organized on behalf of six political activists arrested in the summer of 1978 for conspiring to cause explosions with persons unknown”, the vagaries of the charge and the drawn-out prelude to the trial-which ran from September 1979 – served only to affirm the seditious and conspiratorial  mind-set of Britain’s anarchist millieu. Among the 500-strong crowd of punks, skinheads and veteran politicos gathered inside London’s Conway Hall, any semblance of a good night out had already been tempered by the politics underpinning the event. his was less a gig than a point of reckoning. The state had conformed to type, it seemed, the “system” was closing in: “Beware, the thought police are coming.

A feminist and libertarian band originally from Brighton; Rondos, a Dutch group of ultra leftists with revolutionary aspirations. Among the audience, meanwhile, a contingent of skinheads aligned to the far-right British Movement (BM) took up position, provoking skirmishes and feeding off the evermore repressive atmosphere descending over the hall. The police came and went, with the gig’s organisers assuring them that the situation was under control, before a call was made to members of the anti-fascist “squads” formed within the ranks of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) to mobilize a response. Come ten o’clock and it arrived: a tooled-up mob of battle-hardened anti-fascists forced their way into the venue to beat the Nazi skins into submission. Bottled smashed, fists flew, and the once bullish sieg heils that had punctuated the evening were stifled amidst the chaos. In the aftermath, with Crass unable to play their set, so the police returned with ambulances in tow to tend the wounded and pick over the debris strewn across a blood-stained floor crackling beneath the crunch of broken glass.

The events of 8 September 1979 may not have constituted a typical Saturday night-out in the late 1970s, but they were sesonant of a time in which youth culture, popular music and politics intertwined in complex, exciting and often ugly ways. Taken altogether, the identifiable subcultural styles (punks and skinheads), the visibility of political “extremes” (anarchists, revolutionary socialists, fascists), the backdrop of perceived crisis and impending authoritarianism, the violence and the meshing of politics and culture all combine to form a recognizable snapshot of Britain on the eve of the 1980s.

What was Punk revolting against, in what ways, why, and to what end?

This film urges historians to take youth culture seriously. If we return to the Conway Hall in 1979 then we find not just a political benefit, a pop gig and a punch-up, but a portal into the construction of personal identities, a forum for expression and dissent; an altenate site of information, communication and exchange. Integral to the current study, therefore, is the positioning of youth culture as a space for social and political development. That is, youth culture should not be understood simply as a model of consumptions, or a product of media invention, but as a formative and contested experience  through which young people discover, comprehend, affirm and express their desires, opinions and disaffections. This, arguably, was made explicit with the emergence of punk, whose early protagonists raised and standard of “Anarchy in the UK” and set themselves but one criterion:”Does it threaten the status quo?”

A musical and stylistic form that redefined popular both in Britain and beyond. If not quite signalling a mythical year zero, then the emergence of the Sex Pistols in 1975-76 offered a critical moment of departure that has since come to shape our understanding of the 1970s. The Pistols tore open the cultural fabric, trashing the past and confronting the present to better refine the future. “A soon as I saw them (the Sex Pistols) I knew!

Directed by

Cast

	Cass Pennant	…	Himself
	Garry Bushell	…	Gonads
	Gary Lammin	…	Ex Cock Sparrer
	Charlie Harper	…	UK Subs
	Neville Staple	…	Specials
	Dave Parsons	…	Sham 69
	Steve Whale	…	The Business
	Micky Geggus	…	Cockney Rejects
	Mensi	…	Angelic Upstarts
	Lee Wilson	…	Infa Riot
	Paul Hallam	…	Odds and Sods
	Tim Wells	…	Punk Poet
	Matthew Worley	…	Himself
	Roi Pearce	…	The Last Resort
	Riaz Khan	…	Himself
	Garry Johnson	…	Punk Poet
	Terry Hayes	…	East End Badoes
	Martin Veneer	…	Himself