King Mob

For other uses, see King Mob (disambiguation).

King Mob
Years active1960s–1970s
LocationLondon
Major figuresDavid Wise, Stuart Wise, TJ Clark, Chris Gray, Donald Nicholson-Smith
Influences

King Mob was an English radical group based in London during the late 1960s and early 1970s.[1]

Influences on the group included the Situationist International and the New York City group Black Mask / UAW/MF. It derived its name from Christopher Hibbert's 1958 book on the Gordon Riots of June 1780, in which rioters daubed the slogan "His Majesty King Mob" on the walls of Newgate Prison, after gutting the building.[2]

Background

On 21 December 1967 Timothy Clark, Christopher Gray and Donald Nicholson-Smith were excluded from the Situationist International. Charles Radcliffe had resigned from the SI a couple of months before this.[3] These four had constituted the English Section of the SI and subsequently formed King Mob with twin brothers David and Stuart Wise, who had recently arrived in London from Newcastle.[2]

Activities

The group published five issues of its journal King Mob Echo[4] as well as many posters and leaflets.[5]

One of the first actions of King Mob took place in April 1968. Members of the group, including one dressed in a gorilla costume and two in a pantomime horse outfit, led a procession of local people to Powis Square where the fences enclosing a private garden space were demolished in protest at a lack of play areas for children in the area.[2] Several arrests followed, but the action resulted in further protests culminating in the local council purchasing the square for public use.[6]

In December 1968, inspired by the New York-based Black Mask's "mill-in at Macy's", King Mob entered the Selfridges store in London, with one member, dressed as Father Christmas, attempting to distribute all of the store's toys to children.[7] Police subsequently forced the children to return the toys. This action involved Malcolm McLaren who reputedly applied the group's situationist ideas in the promotion of the Sex Pistols.[8]

King Mob also allegedly made plans for series of other actions, including blowing up a waterfall in the Lake District, painting the poet Wordsworth's house with the words "Coleridge Lives", and hanging peacocks in Holland Park, London.[9] However, none of the aforementioned plans were executed.

Graffiti attributed to King Mob was observed in many places, particularly in the Notting Hill area, including, "I don't believe in nothing - I feel like they ought to burn down the world - just let it burn down baby." The most celebrated graffiti attributed to King Mob was the slogan which was painted along a half-mile section of the wall beside the tube (railway) commuter route into London between Ladbroke Grove and Westbourne Park tube stations in west London:

"Same thing day after day – tube – work – dinner – work – tube – armchair – TV – sleep – tube – work – how much more can you take? – one in ten go mad – one in five cracks up."[10][11]

Legacy

Pink Floyd's Roger Waters claimed that the "Same Thing Day After Day" graffiti inspired the song "Time" which appeared on the group's 1973 Dark Side Of The Moon album.[11]

In their book, Sex Pistols: The Inside Story, Fred and Judy Vermorel assert that King Mob had a significant influence on the punk group:

"But if the Sex Pistols stemmed from the Situationist International, their particular twist of radical flash and burlesque rage was also mediated through a band of hooligan pedants based in the Notting Hill Gate area of London. This was King Mob."[12]

King Mob was the inspiration for the principal character of the same name in the 1990s comic strip series The Invisibles by Grant Morrison.[13]

See also

References

  1. ^ "The mob who shouldn't really be here: King Mob". Tate Etc. 1 May 2008. Retrieved 26 August 2023.
  2. ^ a b c Wise, David. "The late 1960s and King Mob". Libcom. Retrieved 3 December 2024.
  3. ^ "Internationale Situationniste #12: The Latest Exclusions". Libcom. Retrieved 3 December 2024.
  4. ^ Vague, Tom (2000). King Mob Echo: English Section of the Situationist International. Dark Star. ISBN 1 871 692 07 5.
  5. ^ "King Mob poster and image gallery". Libcom. Retrieved 3 December 2024.
  6. ^ "Powis Square". The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Retrieved 3 December 2024.
  7. ^ Wise, David. "King Mob, Santa Claus and Selfridges: Christmas 1968". Libcom. Retrieved 3 December 2024.
  8. ^ "The Assault on Culture by Stewart Home chapter on Punk".
  9. ^ Cooper, Sam (1 March 2013). "The Peculiar Romanticism of the English Situationists". The Cambridge Quarterly. 42 (1): 20–37. doi:10.1093/camqtly/bft010. ISSN 0008-199X.
  10. ^ "A Hidden History of King Mob (Posters/Cartoons)". Archived from the original on 22 March 2016.
  11. ^ a b Petridis, Alexis (3 February 2015). "Spraying the 70s: the pioneers of British graffiti". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 December 2024.
  12. ^ Vermorel, Fred & Judy (1987). Sex Pistols: The Inside Story. Omnibus Press. p. 222. ISBN 1846090660.
  13. ^ Singer, Marc (2012). "The Invisible Kingdom". Grant Morrison: Combining the Worlds of Contemporary Comics. Great comics artists. University Press of Mississippi. p. 298. ISBN 978-1-61703-137-3. Retrieved 3 December 2024.

Sources

  • "The End of Music", a pamphlet written by David and Stuart Wise in the mid- to late-1970s and published in Glasgow. The text was later reprinted by AK Press in the 1990s as part of Stewart Home's book What is Situationism? A Reader.
  • King Mob. Nosotros, el Partido del Diablo, Spanish compilation of King Mob texts, edited by La Felguera Ediciones in 2007
  • The Situationist International in Britain: Modernism, Surrealism, and the Avant-Gardes (Routledge 2016)
  • King Mob : A Critical Hidden History by David Wise, Stuart Wise and Nick Brandt (Bread and Circuses 2014)
  • Lost Texts Around King Mob by Dave and Stuart Wise with contributions from Ronald Hunt, John Barker, Fred Vermorel, Chris Gray and Phil Meyler (BPC Wisebooks Series No. 1 2024 ) ISBN 979-8882191145
  • Dialectical Butterflies: Ecocide, Extinction Rebellion, Greenwash and Rewilding the Commons - an Illustrated Dérive by and Stuart Wise (BPC Wiseebooks Series No. 2–12 March 2024) ISBN 979-8326044242
  • King Mob: The Negation and Transcendence of Art: Malevich, Schwitters, Hirst, Banksy, Mayakovsky, Situationists, Tatlin, Fluxus, Black Mask bt Dave and Stuart Wise (BPC Wiseebooks Series No. 3 2024) ISBN 979-8326156655
  • A Newcastle Dunciad 1966-2008: Recollections of a Musical and Artistic Avant Garde by Dave and Stuart Wise (BPC/Wisebooks Series No. 4) ISBN 979-8340181282
  • Introduction by David Black to King Mob: The Negation and Transcendence of Art. By Dave and Stuart Wise