Revolution or Heroin (Live)

Live in The Mean Fiddler, London 10/22/1987

Against all predictions, the fight to release these recordings has finally been won. We fervently hope that there will soon be many more events to add to the growing list of people’s victories and we hope that from the performances here recorded you will
draw increased strength and confidence to sustain your own participation in the struggle.

But we must not permit our joy over the gathering strength of our battered millions to distract our attention from the mounting dangers that Spacemen 3 now face. Consider how immensely the movements for a society without poverty and exploitation will be advanced by the winning of the group’s freedom – in fact, have already been advanced by its fearless stand – and you will have the measure of how much more determined than ever our masters will be to take them from us.

Let us, moreover, in our admiration for their courage, their selflessness and their intelligence, not set Spacemen 3 on some pedestal and idolize them as some sort of superhuman creatures. No matter how extraordinary their contribution, now matter how boundless our gratitude, we must still count them as one of us Workers, Thinkers, Human Beings To Whom Nothing Has Come Without Struggle.

We must fight harder for Spacemen 3 than ever before but our fight for them must not be a merely philanthropic or charitable endeavour. It must be a struggle to the death for that future that has been stolen from all of us and that all of us have the right and the duty to reclaim.

The gathering at which the performances here recorded originally took place was, in no small way, a perfect example of what Spacemen 3 must mean for us. Despite the most careful planning on the basis of advance ticket sales, more than twice as many people as anticipated showed up. We quickly ran out of food and chairs and felt very ashamed not to be able to serve some people the dinner we had promised. Only later did we realize that, in the hearts of most of our fellow freedom fighters, the joy of seeing so many turn out for Spacemen 3 far outweighed the discomfort. We were, after all, all fighting for the same thing.

This is what Spacemen 3 enable us to do. By bringing us together like never before thay lay the basis for all our future struggles. They force us to tear down the walls of lies and ignorance that have kept us fighting each other instead of the common foe. They compel us to recognize that we can move ahead only if we are together. This is how they make us strong!

“Heroin is the government’s most powerful counter-revolutionary agent, a form of germ warfare. They try to destroy us through heroin. We must create a revolutionary movement and community which will give people an alternative to despair and heroin.”