Crass and Communal Living: Blending the Subversive into the Everyday in Epping Forest

Born from the debris of first-wave punk, the anarcho-punk scene was a conscious shift from the rhetorical – almost nihilistic – notion of the anarchic; from the Pistols’ shouts of ‘chaotic’ intent, towards the building of a subculture built upon co-operation and complicity. In this paper, I wish to examine this re-appropriation of ‘anarchy’ through an exploration of the anarcho-punk band Crass who, living in ‘Dial House’, a communal/collective living space in Epping Forest, were able to enact the complex relations between the musical, the artistic, and a radical lifestyle encompassing ‘anarcho’, feminist and pacifist ideals. Through highlighting the connection between artistic process and communal locale, one may distinguish a ‘space’ where punk was transformed into a seemingly theoretical anarchistic way of life; embracing a sense of political/social idealism and organised dissent, the intertwining of the political and the real, and the blending of the subversive into the everyday.