18. Blitz - Never Surrender (No Future)

One week at number one on 20th March 1982

Thanks to this blog, Gary Bushell has been on my mind a lot lately. While attempting the daily chores such as emptying the dishwasher, hanging out the laundry or walking the dog, my thoughts have often wandered and allowed his bearded visage to emerge in mind’s eye, stoical and almost impossible to read.

It’s not the first time in my life I’ve been bothered in this way. Back when I was in journalism college, my head tutor persuaded me to buy a different newspaper every day of the week – “it’s the only way you’ll learn to adapt your tone for different audiences”. So began the only period of my life where I bought The Sun and faithfully noted its contents, all in the hope that it would get me better grades (I appreciate that some readers may note the obvious irony here, or may share my Dad's concerns about failing to boycott the paper).

Bushell struck me as a strange figure even then, at the very height of his fame; a comedy and light entertainment nerd trapped in the body of a police constable, always one wink and guarded friendly gesture away from an outraged warning bark. Besides rants about immigration, leftie morons and “pillocks” at Channel 4 and the Beeb, he also held very specific and haunting obsessions on unlikely subjects such as the lack of variety shows on television and ageism in the entertainment industry. As I pored over his thoughts on the latter two matters, I realised how out of place they seemed. Most Sun readers probably couldn’t have given two figs about them – they were Bushell’s personal bugbears being given the maximum audience possible at the peak of his career. Whether I agreed with him or not, I had to conclude that he cared, which is more than can be said for many columnists who tend to seek out the most contentious viewpoints to generate "engagement".

Back in 1982 while he worked at Sounds magazine, “Oi!” was another uniquely Bushell-shaped obsession, seemingly born of a desire to make things happen rather than advance his career. While many music journalists have tried to build a name of themselves by creating distinct music scenes, Bushell’s pushing of the “Oi!” banner felt narrower than most. The central idea seemed to be to bring punk rock into the ownership of disaffected working class youth in unfashionable parts of Britain, putting it in direct opposition with most music journalists at that time, who seemed to want to further the aims of post-punk and art-punk bands.

You could argue that “Oi!” played out Bushell’s alternate reality fantasy, the answer to the question “What would have happened if Sham 69 had been the ultimate victors of the punk movement?” while the rest of the writers at IPC Towers were asking the same deluded question about The Fall, Wire or The Slits. Bushell’s argument does have fairness and legitimacy behind it, however; if punk was supposed to have been a tolerant home for all the outsiders, why were the struggling, unemployed youth in dull  towns and cities like Derby, Redcar, Redditch* and Margate often being left out of the media story? 

In answer to this question, the “Oi!” compilation series was born, which took the chemical ingredients of punk, exposed them to a bunsen burner, and boiled them down to their key essence, their remaining powder – anger and amateur three chord rock and roll. Somewhere along the way, the movement also attracted a fascistic element which many of the groups didn’t quite work hard enough to shake off, meaning that as soon as the subgenre is mentioned nowadays, one of the first things journalists feel inclined to do is address the issues it attracted. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this has left enough of a bad taste for the genre to be ignored by almost all the articles or documentaries covering punk rock since.

Suspicions about “Oi!” were big enough by 1982 that the playwright Trevor Griffiths staged (and televised) the production “Oi For England”. The plot revolved around an initially shadowy figure known as The Man offering promising punk bands who fit his own (fascistic) political ideas career-changing slots at a festival. It’s important to note that The Man was obviously supposed to be a representation of the powers-that-be, desperate to cause unemployed and directionless post-industrial youth to fight minorities rather than the system. Bushell’s later career as a well-paid right-wing tabloid hack did make the play seem astonishingly prophetic, though, meaning that when I finally got hold of a printed copy of the script in the early nineties, I assumed it was actually directly about him.

I could be forgiven for this presumption given what a go-to figure he was during the early eighties. Blitz were from New Mills (close to Derby) and initially saw what they thought was an ally in Bushell, sending him demo tapes in 1981 in the hope of getting exposure. Bushell, an avowed socialist at this point, was deeply impressed with their work and offered them a chance to sleep in his family home on a London council estate while attempting to establish their career, also giving them slots on his “Oi!” compilation series.

Despite his help and generous hospitality, the group’s guitarist Nidge Miller did not entirely trust the jovial and unreadable Bushell, stating at a later date in an interview with the "Art Of The State" website: “He was never clear about his political opinions but we suspected that he was a nationalist dickhead - we always talked at length about fucking the system (criminal damage) but Bushell would always edit the strong points out.”

The allegation here seems to be that “Oi!” was, under Bushell’s mentorship and tutelage, not exactly a space where freedom of expression reigned, any more than McLaren had a completely hands-off approach with the Pistols. If I’m naive enough to have once believed otherwise, it’s probably because “Oi!” did feel genuinely chaotic and organic, like a movement too threadbare, back-to-basics and spun on a sixpence to really have any kind of plan behind it.

“Never Surrender” demonstrates this only too well. It’s less than a minute-and-a-half of Motorhead styled riffs which rush past faster than the human brain can handle on the first listen. The lyrics are universal, threadbare, not doing much to expose the group’s politically anarchistic leanings - “Never surrender, never give in/ Never let the enemy win/ Never say why, never say die/ It's always worth another try” they rant, which could just as easily be about surviving your dull day-job as fighting the system (but to be fair, so could Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping”).

You’ve got the idea of the song within ten seconds of it starting, and by the time you’re ten seconds from the end you’re either swept along in the frantic rush of the defiant chant, or indifferent. It’s not entirely typical of the rest of the group’s output, though; the reason they were one of the most successful “Oi!” groups had a lot to do with their flexibility as songwriters and performers. Besides lightbulb-in-the-eye sucker punches like “Never Surrender” they were also capable of releasing singles with bright, almost glammish choruses and surprising left-hand turns.

As for Bushell, his dominance of nineties mainstream culture and subsequent involvement in politics as an English Democrat Party candidate make him feel like a distinctly unlikely character to have ever cared passionately about something like the future of punk rock; but unlike Julie Burchill or Tony Parsons, I seldom find myself doubting that he did, any more than I doubt that he genuinely cares about comedy and light entertainment. His lasting critical legacy is probably encouraging the return of variety in some shape or form to television screens; “Oi!” was, by comparison, a strange dead end on rock’s family tree which felt like the last gasp of one idea of what punk rock could be. 

By his own confession, while punk itself had most of the music press on its side, the “Oi!” bands only had him, for better or worse. There’s a strong chance many of them would have remained unknown without his help, but by getting tied to such a divisive and ultimately conservative figure, it hasn’t been left with much of a media legacy in the UK.

(*Keith Marshall and His Musical Anarchy would thoroughly approve of this point re Redditch, obviously, though I've always suspected he had an undisclosed desk job).

Elsewhere in the Charts

The Higsons are the highest new entry at number 13 with “Conspiracy”, a moment of post-punk-funk surrealism which probably seems just as baffling in 2024 as it did at the time. Opening with a vocal rendition of the Pearl and Dean trailer theme, it shifts into a funky strut questioning who shot Ronald Reagan, authored the Bible and most importantly of all, stole Charlie Higson’s bongos.

I’m none the wiser to this day, but the single climbed to number 3 eventually, and hopefully helped him to get his rightful property returned in the end.





Dead Or Alive enter the chart again at 17 with “It’s Been Hours Now”, a rattling, slapping crawl through a gothic melodrama which manages to sound far closer to Theatre Of Hate than the version of the group who later scored hits.




Leeds group Abrasive Wheels enter at 24 with the gritty buzz of “Vicious Circle” which never shifts a centimetre from being a relentless lo-fi racket. There’s a point where the noise stops for a fraction of a second and there’s a drumfill – while that would be a common event on most records, here it feels genuinely surprising.




The complete charts are available at the UKMix forums.

Number One In The National Chart

Tight Fit - "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" (Jive)