Jon Wiener
London
Guardian
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
When the Dixie Chicks told an audience in London in 2003 that
"We're ashamed the president of the United States is from
Texas", they set off a political storm in the US that echoed
the treatment meted out to John Lennon 30 years earlier. They
were talking about the Iraq war, while
Lennon had been campaigning against the Vietnam war.
The Dixie Chicks got in trouble with rightwing talk radio. Boycotts
followed, and lead singer Natalie Maines ended up publicly apologising
to President Bush.
What happened to Lennon was of course worse. The turning point for
the Beatles came with their 1966 US tour, when they first publicly
criticised the war in Vietnam. As the decade wore on, Lennon was
the target of increasingly aggressive media ridicule, especially
when he began experimenting with new forms of political protest
- such as declaring his honeymoon with Yoko Ono a "bed-in for
peace".
In the next couple of years, establishment hostility turned nastier
on both sides of the Atlantic, as the former Beatle embraced more
serious radicalism, making common cause with Tariq Ali (then editor
of the Marxist Red Mole). In 1971, Lennon joined a march in London
against internment without trial in Northern Ireland and helped
fund the republican cause. By the time he left for New York that
autumn, the knives were out.
In the late 60s, Lennon had been busted for cannabis possession.
He claimed it had been planted by the police, but pleaded guilty
to a misdemeanour charge. Within months of his joining the US
anti-war movement and publicly attacking President Nixon, the
US administration responded with deportation proceedings. Nixon
claimed that Lennon had been ineligible for admission to the US
because of the cannabis conviction in London, but everybody understood
the deportation order was an attempt to silence him as a critic
of the Vietnam war and the president.
Lennon's case illuminates the price pop stars and other celebrities
can pay for taking controversial political stands - particularly
when they oppose American wars. Every pop star needs a cause,
but it has to be one that doesn't offend the powers-that-be -
landmines, or hunger, or Aids in Africa. Lennon's example is almost
unique. Charlie Chaplin was driven out of the US after being charged
with communist sympathies at the height of the McCarthy era, but
such examples are rare.
What exactly had Lennon done? It wasn't just singing Give Peace
a Chance - it was when and where he sang it; 1972 was an election
year, Nixon was running for re-election and the Vietnam war was
the key issue. Lennon was talking to anti-war leaders about doing
a tour that would combine rock music with anti-war organising
and voter registration. That was the key, because it was the first
year 18-year-olds had been given the right to vote. Young voters
were assumed to be anti-war, but also known to be the least likely
of all age groups to vote. Lennon and his friends hoped to do
something about that. Nixon found out about the former Beatle's
plans, and the deportation order followed.
The threat was effective. Lennon's lawyers told him to cool it
and the tour never took place. Nixon won in a landslide, and the
war in Vietnam went on for three more blood-soaked years. Lennon
spent the next couple of years facing a 60-day order to leave
the country, which his lawyers kept getting postponed.
The striking fact is that Lennon could have avoided all of this.
He didn't have to campaign against Nixon. It didn't sell records
or help his career. But Lennon wanted to use his power as a superstar
to do something worthwhile. And the great issue of the day was
the unjust and disastrous war in Vietnam.
In some ways Lennon was naive. When he moved to New York, he
thought he was coming to the land of the free. He had little idea
of the power of the state to come down on those it regarded as
enemies. His claim that the FBI had him under surveillance was
rejected as the fantasy of an egomaniac, but 300 pages of FBI
files, released under freedom of information after his murder,
show he was right. The FBI is still withholding 10 documents -
which we hope will finally be released today - on the grounds
that they contain "national security information provided
by a foreign government": almost certainly MI5 documents
on Lennon's radical days in London.
Lennon never apologised to the president. He fought back in court
to overturn the deportation order. But in the year after Nixon's
re-election, Lennon's personal life fell apart and his music deteriorated.
In the end, Nixon resigned in disgrace after Watergate, and Lennon
stayed in the US.
For 30 years the idea of a tour combining rock music and voter
registration languished - until 2004, when a group of activist
musicians organised an election-year concert tour of battleground
states with a strategy very much like Lennon's. Headlining the
Vote for Change tour were the Dixie Chicks.
For young people in 1972, it was thrilling to see Lennon's courage
in standing up to Nixon. That willingness to take risks with his
career, and his life, is one reason why people still admire him
today.
· Jon Wiener is author of Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon
FBI Files, and served as historical consultant on the film The
US v John Lennon, released last week
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