Is New Lennonism a Passing Phase? (1971)

 Is New Lennonism a Passing Phase?

By Chris Pritchard

The Sydney Morning Herald

August 22, 1971

    A dozen burly Scottish shop stewards were reading messages of support for their takeover of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders yards when a messenger walked in bearing a gift wrapped in cellophane. It was a bunch of red roses. A handwritten note said, "Best wishes from John and Yoko." In the next mail came a check for $2,000 --1000 each from the ex-Beatle and his wife, for the militant dockers fighting fund. 

    This week, a full-page advertisement in the semi-underground newspaper Ink reads simply, "Repression is bad for you. John and Yoko, summer 1971."

     Since John went political earlier in the year, there have been many jokes about Marxist- Lennonism. There are plenty of people who blame his metamorphosis on Yoko, but after a long chat with the pair of them, I'm convinced this just isn't fair. There are others who say that, like the days of meditation and the Maharishi, all this talk of revolution is yet another passing phase. Perhaps they are right. We can only wait and see. 

    John's conversion to hardcore left-wing politics was first made public in a Trotskyist newspaper, Red Mole. Across four pages, John and Yoko supported revolutionary struggles around the world, espousing basic working-class radicalism on the home front, and said they took their politics seriously. 

    About the same time, John's record "Working Class Hero" was released, and protesters everywhere were singing "Power to the People", a song more militant than his earlier "Give Peace a Chance." Where demonstrating crowds had a year or so before sung "We Shall Overcome" a dozen times during one protest because it was the only protest song they all knew, they now had the words and music of John Lennon. 

    If one point needs to be made, it's this: John's infatuation with Oz and the underground may well do him a power of commercial good with the youngsters who buy his records, but most of the kids don't give a jot about Clydeside and trade unions, and many of them are something boring that happens at work. No, if Lennon wanted merely to identify with the kids, he would have picked another cause. 

    The background of the four Liverpool lads who strummed together to give birth to the Beatles tends sometimes to be forgotten; they didn't starve. They weren't poor in that sense, but they were from typical working-class English homes where "money doesn't grow on trees, you know," and "take care of the pennies," are comments often heard. 

    As he put it the other day, "Judge Argyle said he wouldn't fine them (the three Oz editors), because they were too poor. But they've got rich friends. Mick Jagger has telephoned me several times, and we both want to help in whatever way we can. Whatever money is needed, we are prepared to find it."