Class War and David Blunkett's crombie

Some early-morning web wandering overnight saw me stumbling from another round of Respect-related pantomime fighting (‘Oh yes you did.’ ‘Oh no I didn’t.’ Oh shut the fuck up, can’t any of you lot see there’s a real-life global ogre coming up behind you?) straight into the arms of Class War veteran Ian Bone.

There’s not much danger of Bone in his dotage mellowing into some sort of cuddly establishment-friendly TV anarchist à la Johnny Rotten (though it would be entertaining to see how they’d cope with him on I’m A Celebrity - Get Me Out Of Here). The man who brought us ‘Hospitalised Copper’ and the Movement Against the Monarchy, and spent many a summer organising ‘Bash the Rich’ jaunts to the Henley regatta and suchlike, plans to mark the 25th anniversary of Class War next May by rejoining the organisation that arose from his paper of the same name.

This week saw him approaching as close to respectability as he’s ever likely to get, with an invitation to speak at a community action conference at Westminster City Hall. Bone takes up the story:

Seeing David Blunkett’s name as another speaker I readily agreed and mugged up on Blunkett’s commercial interests – columns in the Sun and Daily Mail earning him £200,000 a year, for example. Blunkett with two police bodyguards entered the hall just as I was launching into him. I finished by asking the audience to ask Blunkett a question when he finished speaking: ‘Why are you such a fucking greedy bastard?’

Needless to say, this didn’t go down too well with Blunkett’s minders. Bone found himself being threatened with arrest under the Public Order Act and ejected from the conference:

One of the cops shoved my coat at me and I headed for Westminster underground. Feeling for my Freedom Pass I found some tapes in the pocket – which were not mine. I’d only been given Blunkett’s crombie – very like mine – and was swanning round Parliament Square in the former home secretary’s fucking coat!

Some friends sneaked back and swapped the coats over - I didn’t want Blunkett swanning around on my pass - or the inevitable knock at the door which would have followed.