Outsider

This is the text for this song that was ommitted from the North American version of the "Tubthumper" CD:

Me, you, she, he. For the community of outsiders, misfits, and plain awkward bastards.

"Neo-conservatism contains a theory of human nature in which 'it is our biology, our instincts, to defend our way of life, traditions and customs against outsiders - not because they are inferior but because they are outsiders.' " --Barker, 1981, 'Racism, The City and The State'

"Presley dressed oddly, was painfully shy, and seemed apart from everyone else - the individualistic, ungainly, out-of-place oddball who inhabits every class in almost every school in America. He had a distant, sullen father. He was a mama's boy, raw, dirt-poor, and timid. He learned to play the guitar from a preacher who probably would have fainted had he a clue as to how it would be used. Nobody would ever have voted Elvis most likely to succeed, or even likely to survive." --Taken from A Thousand Points Of Elvis Website

"Heterosexuality isn't normal, it's just common." --Derek Jarman, At Your Own Risk, 1992

"An ageing man living alone in South Armagh, whose only son was in Long Kesh Prison, didn't have anyone to dig his garden for his potatoes. So he wrote to his son about it and recieved the reply, 'For Christ's sake, don't dig the garden up, that's where I buried the guns.' At 4 a.m. the next morning a dozen British soldiers turned up and dug the garden, but didn't find any guns. Confused, the man wrote to his son telling him what had happened, asking him what to do now? The reply: 'Now just put the potatoes in.'" --Anon, Leeds Other Paper, December 1980

"I was on holiday in Wales in 1960, standing in W.H. Smith in Barmouth, and these couple of real freaks came in and I first became aware of the fact that there were people who were seriously different. They had hair down their backs and wore sandals and jeans and so on. This woman turned to me - I was nine or ten years old - and said, 'There you are: that's what you could grow up like.' And I did. I grew up just like that." --David May, Days In The Life, from Voices From The English Underground

"On the first anniversary of the dispute in September, another kind of support was vividly demonstrated. Thousands of youthful activists from "Reclaim The Future" converged on Liverpool: environmentalists and direct action campaigners. At first sight, the disaffected young in woolly hats, with dreadlocks, pierced noses etc, accompanied by drums, fire-eaters and street theatre, seemed a world away from the dockers. But these veterans of Newbury and other campaigns, having come up against repressive laws such as the Criminal Justice Act, understand well the dockers' struggle. Their alignment with the unofficial labour movement could influence the direction of grassroots action - especially as more and more young people are alienated from the 'gentlemen's agreement', as James Kelman put it, of mainstream politics. "Unimaginable a few years ago, their banners, alongside the dockers' traditional union banners, carried messages such as "New Labour, New Wage Slavery..." Before the sun was up on the anniversary morning, they had occupied the gantries in the docks and the roof of the company headquarters, watched with admiration by snowy-haired dockers and their wives. "We saw their banners fluttering over the occupied docks," said Jimmy Davies. "We didn't see the TGWU, whose officers should have been there. Now we know who our friends are; we welcome the young people's support and idealism." --Excerpt from They Never Walk Alone, John Pilger

"Youth culture has always been treated with suspicion by police and state, but rave and travelling culture provokes outright animosity because it questions the two-up-two-down moral values. It's not large scale gatherings that the Criminal Justice Bill hopes to prevent, it's lifestyle dissent. Speculation as to why the rave scene is being victimized has to include brewery losses. Illegal raves don't bring the government revenue but pubs do. Pub profits are down 11 per cent from 1989 and still falling. It's being estimated that £1.8billion a year is now being spent on E's and going out dancing. The pro-booze lobby has a lot of financial clout which always translates into political power... Ravers all over Britain are finding that the police have decided that parties, illegal or otherwise, will not be allowed to happen. The long arm of the law is over-stretching its powers. One free party group, the Exodus Collective near Luton, have had all their gear confiscated by the local constabulary "on the grounds that it might be stolen". The group's collective farm has been raided numerous times. On one occasion 36 people were arrested and the farm was trashed..." --from Herb Garden