A-Infos (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria #462 - Conflict, This Much Remains (tribute to Colin Jerwood) (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Measuring the time of things means trying, every so often, to do them 
justice. More than four decades after their birth, this piece retraces 
the story of Conflict through two recent, opposing yet dramatically 
close events - an expression of a temporal flow in which every beginning 
is always met by an end, followed in turn by a new rebirth. ---- 
Conflict emerged in South London in 1981, during Margaret Thatcher's 
first government, when the famous Sex Pistols had already risen and 
fallen, while the anarchist collective Crass continued its musical and 
militant activity in full do-it-yourself spirit, rejecting the 
commodification of art and waging an anti-authoritarian struggle 
grounded in alternative practices of production and dissemination of 
radical ideas. Thus was born anarcho-punk: that particular expression of 
punk culture which, through an anarchist lens, embraces and amplifies 
ideals such as social justice, animal rights and environmentalism, 
pacifism and anti-militarism, anti-racism and feminism. Alongside bands 
like Chumbawamba, Flux of Pink Indians and Poison Girls, Conflict 
positioned themselves at the intersection where anarchist principles and 
punk culture converged - turning music composition, production and 
distribution into a direct action against authority itself.

Within this context, Conflict released a striking EP on Crass Records, 
The House That Man Built (1982), followed the next year by their first 
album It's Time to See Who's Who (1983) and the creation of their own 
label, Mortarhate Records. From the very start, the London band 
unleashed a fierce assault on multiple manifestations of power, roaring 
with rage against war, machismo and animal exploitation. The second half 
of the 1980s became their most prolific period: between 1984 and 1993 
they released six albums and deepened their activism; they supported the 
British anarchist group Class War and organized a major benefit concert 
on April 18, 1987 at London's Brixton Academy, titled The Gathering of 
the 5000. This high-tension night, meant to raise funds for groups like 
Animal Liberation Front, Antiapartheid Movement, London Greenpeace, 
Imprisoned Miners Support, Hunt Saboteurs Association and Antifascist 
Action, was interrupted by intimidation from venue security and followed 
by a police ambush as attendees exited, resulting in violent clashes and 
fifty-two arrests. After closing this intense era with Conclusion 
(1993), the band went silent for a decade until There's No Power Without 
Control (2003) - an album inevitably shaped by its time (the Twin Towers 
attack, the second Gulf War, the rise and failure of the 
anti-globalization movement) and reaffirming an unbridled radicalism 
that spilled into uncontrollable anger against social injustice, 
sometimes skirting nihilism and drawing occasional misunderstandings and 
controversies.

This brings us to the first reason for writing these lines. Twenty-two 
years after their previous album, in May 2025 came This Much Remains: 
sixteen tracks and forty-five minutes of solid anarcho-punk, where the 
electric ferocity of Gav's guitar and the voices of Colin and Fiona 
merge with the dark shadows of an uncertain, synthetic future. Facing 
it, the tone becomes calmer and Colin's warm voice revisits a time that, 
though passing, refuses to stop demanding justice, because "it's still 
the same old system / the same old song" (The Collusion Exclusion). 
Notable among the tracks, besides the title song, are Cut the Crap 
(written by poet Benjamin Zephaniah), A Mother's Milk (where veganism 
and feminism intersect to critique the industrial production and 
consumption of animal milk) and Statement of Intent (reasserting: "this 
is not about revolution / it's only about what's right and wrong"). It's 
an album worth listening to in full - if only to once again feel the 
rebellious energy of Conflict, enhanced by high-quality production. A 
work of rebirth and resistance, blossoming as a hope of light, justice 
and unity in a world threatened by war, ecological disaster and 
permanent injustice.

The second reason is the inevitable ending that follows every beginning 
- bitter when time between them contracts unexpectedly. On June 2, after 
a short illness, Colin Jerwood died at sixty-three: singer, founder and 
soul of Conflict, the only member to remain continuously involved 
through the band's forty-four years of musical struggle. The 
international tour meant to promote the newly released record has been 
reduced to a series of tribute concerts, and it's hard now to predict 
the band's future. Yet if it's true that nothing is destroyed and 
everything transforms, time itself will reveal where the suddenly denied 
energy will re-emerge - to shake our lives, pull them from stagnation, 
and renew them into new life. For now, this is what remains: united by 
an unrelenting thirst for justice, a heartfelt tribute to the late Colin 
Jerwood.

Salvatore Laneri

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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