Blur and Pink Floyd among artists objecting to songs being on compilation CDs sold to fund party
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 May 2009
Lee Glendinning
Billy Bragg and other British artists want the BNP to stop marketing their music on fundraising CDs. Photograph: Hannah Johnston/Getty Images
Musicians from bands including Blur and Pink Floyd have launched a campaign demanding that the British National party stop selling their music to raise campaign funds.
The BNP is selling folk albums on its website featuring artists who claim they have no control over the fact that the far-right party is using their songs.
The BNP’s commercial partner Excalibur sells compilation CDs with titles including Proud Heritage, Rule Britannia and The White Cliffs of Dover.
An album called West Wind, written by the party leader, Nick Griffin, and featuring songs including Nothing Bloody Works and Colour, is among those being sold. It claims “to incorporate folk and more upbeat tempos to deliver a powerful message of how British people have been dispossessed”.
Billy Bragg, along with Dave Rowntree from Blur and Nick Mason from Pink Floyd, have joined with the Musicians’ Union and Featured Artists’ Coalition in objecting to the BNP’s “politics and morals”.
“In the lead up to the European elections, it has come to our attention that the BNP is selling compilation CDs through its website in order to raise funds for campaigning,” they wrote in a letter published in the Times.
“Many of the musicians featured on these … have no legal right to object to their music being used in this way. We would, on behalf of our joint membership of over 31,000 members, like to have our opposition to the BNP’s politics and morals formally noted.”
Musical performers or composers have little or no ability to prevent retailers selling their work once it is sold by a wholesaler to a particular distributor.
Nigel McCune, a national organiser at the Musicians’ Union, told the Times that musicians needed a safeguard against these sorts of associations.
“There is nothing as it stands to stop the BNP from acting in this way and there is nothing that the performers can do to prevent it. If a moral right came in you would then be able to test how far you could stretch it,” he said.
“Billy Bragg, for example, could find his track New England for sale on a BNP website raising money for something that he has spent his entire musical life campaigning against. We would like to think that there should be a framework in this country sufficient to prevent something like that happening.”
A BNP spokesman said the party had no plans to remove any of the music.
Source: www.guardian.co.uk, 28 May 2009