FOR HOW MUCH LONGER DO WE TOLERATE MASS MURDER + WE ARE ALL PROSTITUTES x THE VINYL FACTORY
‘A radical manifesto for the deconstruction of the establishment, skewered on the continuing horrors of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, The Pop Group’s 1980 album For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder? was one of the ’80s great ‘lost’ albums.
Released on their own Y label through Rough Trade, it celebrated antagonism and action, the title track proclaiming “Tolerance is a mark of apathy”. A riot of abrasive post-punk, free jazz and funk, shot through a dubbed-out haze (as heard most brilliantly on the Dennis Bovell-produced ‘We Are All Prostitutes’), the record was like a starter kit for street protest, with tracks titled like resistance anthems and a set of posters that read like placards, ready to be held aloft on the picket lines of Thatcher’s England…
Nestled at the heart of the damning script which hails capitalism is “the most barbaric of all religions” is the phrase “Our children shall rise up against us / Because we are the ones to blame”. Now able to own a copy, this reissue will put For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder? into the hands of those children, who will struggle not to draw parallels.’
(Photography by Michael Wilkin)