Response To Arts Council Article - People Rewriting Our History In Their Own Image contd By Pete Stitt

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We HAD punk bands - my own bands Strangeways and the Revolt (that thisisull's Cilla remembered in an article a couple of years ago), the ZMen, the Sons of the Pope, The Nerve Blocks, Foeticide, The Defectors, Born BC, Lord Mountbatton's Bits and Pieces. We have all been written out of the history of punk in Hull. We were all attracting crowds of between 200 and 500 to gigs whilst those who are remembered in the 'fossil record' were struggling to get 20 people to their gigs!

Similarly, people with very little real knowledge of the Kurdish issue are now 'experts' in the field. Hull University's 'research project' into race relations in the city proved that point beyond any reasonable doubt : unscientific, pompous, uninformed, bad research. History is again being rewritten by people with access to funding, the people who put the hard work in are again being written out of the plot and, again, it is focussing on the arts.

A huge festival is much more high profile than having some poor sod come to your house bleeding from various wounds after having being tortured with a gun held to his head by a criminal gang. My fifteen year old son has witnessed these events as we provided a safe house for various victims within the Kurdish community. I know of only one person within the 'official' asylum industry in Hull who has been that close to Kurdish people and events, Lynn Colley of ARKH, the rest of them have never even smelt the real situation, let alone tasted it first hand and put themselves in the firing line. They are, though, more than happy to accept the acclaim, the awards, the salaries.

Worse than the English exploiters though are the Kurdish 'musicians' and 'artists' that have supported the growth of this clique. As the great man Muhammad Ali would say: They are uncle Toms, nothing more, nothing less. Nothing, resented by their own people, adored by uninformed middle-class English idiots. You want Kurdish music? Listen to the real deal, Zakaria, Sivan Perwar, not some half-assed idiot who could not cut it in Kurdistan.

I really wanted to concentrate on wider Kurdish issues at this time but Hami Kurd's actions have reminded me that you really ought to clean up your own back yard before you drift into the larger picture.

I bumped into an old mate last Monday, Mark Hebblewhite the photographic artist, former lead singer of the Nerve Blocks. His band, like mine, has been erased from the record. It's wrong and it must be contested. I didn't pick this fight but I will support Hami Kurd one hundred per cent. Yes he ignored my advice but, on reflection, he was probably right. I take my orders from my conscience and the Kurdish people. Money means f**k all to me. Still a punk. There's gonna be a rumble. That's actually the name of another one of my bands that has been officially written out of the script!

There can only be one outcome, victory or death, and I don't feel too much like dying right now. www.hamikurd.com

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