Redskins: Bring It Down on Fleet Street

Interview·Smash Hits, July 1985

It was the summer of 1985, and the Redskins met the press on Fleet Street — fitting, for a band whose new single 'Bring It Down! (This Insane Thing)' took aim squarely at the tabloids. Skinhead-sharp and card-carrying Socialist Workers, Chris Dean and Martin Hewes were pop's unlikeliest agitators, straight off the picket lines of the miners' strike.

“What do we want to bring down? Well, post-war consumer capitalism really, innit?”

— Chris Dean, explaining the target of the single on Fleet Street.

“it's that lie that we in Britain have never had it so good.”

— Chris Dean, on the tabloids' comforting narrative.

“He wasn't roped in. That makes him sound like a whale or something...”

— Chris Dean, reacting to the idea Alexei Sayle had been pressured into the video.

“We wouldn't be at a garden party in the first place.”

— Martin Hewes, on what they'd say if they ever met the Queen.

Read the original

Originally published as “REDSKINS” in Smash Hits, 17 30 july 1985 (from page 57). The scan below is hosted by the Internet Archive.

View this scan on archive.org