Crass were an English art collective and punk rock band formed in Epping, Essex in 1977[1] who promoted anarchism as a political ideology, a lifestyle and a resistance movement.

Crass spray-painted stencilled graffiti messages in the London Underground system and on advertising billboards, coordinated squats and organised political action.

The band expressed its ideals by dressing in black, military-surplus-style clothing and using a stage backdrop amalgamating icons of perceived authority such as the Christian cross, the swastika, the Union Jack and the ouroboros.

Other early Crass performances included a four-date tour of New York City,[17] a festival gig in Covent Garden[18] and regular appearances with the U.K. Subs at The White Lion, Putney and Action Space in central London.

[24] Conceived and intended as cover artwork for a self-published pamphlet version of Rimbaud's Christ's Reality Asylum,[25] the Crass logo was an amalgam of several "icons of authority" including the Christian cross, the swastika, the Union Jack and a two-headed Ouroboros (symbolising the idea that power will eventually destroy itself).

[26][27] Using such deliberately mixed messages was part of Crass's strategy of presenting themselves as a "barrage of contradictions",[28] challenging audiences to (in Rimbaud's words) "make your own fucking minds up".

[23] The words were a critique (from an anarchist-pacifist perspective) of the traditional Marxist view of revolutionary struggle and were partly a response to violence marring a September 1979 Crass gig at Conway Hall in London's Red Lion Square.

[42] Crass later argued that the leftists were largely to blame for the fighting, and organizations such as Rock Against Racism were causing audiences to become polarised into left- and right-wing factions.

[45] "Rival Tribal Rebel Revel", a flexi disc single distributed with the Toxic Grafity [sic] fanzine, was also a commentary about the events at Conway Hall attacking the mindless violence and tribalistic aspects of contemporary youth culture.

It featured more complex musical arrangements and female vocals by Eve Libertine and Joy De Vivre (singer Steve Ignorant was credited as "not on this recording").

[55] The band's fourth LP, 1982's double set Christ – The Album, took almost a year to record, produce and mix (during which the Falklands War began and ended).

As a group whose primary purpose was political commentary, they felt overtaken and made redundant by world events: The speed with which the Falklands War was played out and the devastation that Thatcher was creating both at home and abroad forced us to respond far faster than we had ever needed to before.

(To Be the Mother of a Thousand Dead)" and "Sheep Farming in the Falklands" and the album Yes Sir, I Will) saw the band's sound return to basics and were issued as "tactical responses" to political situations.

[57] From their early days of spraying stencilled anti-war, anarchist, feminist and anti-consumerist graffiti messages in the London Underground and on billboards,[58] Crass was involved in politically motivated direct action and musical activities.

On 18 December 1982, the band helped coordinate a 24-hour squat in the empty West London Zig Zag club to prove "that the underground punk scene could handle itself responsibly when it had to and that music really could be enjoyed free of the restraints imposed upon it by corporate industry".

On the "rather clumsily" forged tape, they appear to discuss the sinking of HMS Sheffield during the Falklands War and agree that Europe would be a target for nuclear weapons in a conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union.

[66] The U.S. State Department and British government believed the tape to be propaganda produced by the KGB (as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle[67] and The Sunday Times).

[68] Previously classified government documents made public in January 2014 under the UK's 'thirty-year rule reveal that Thatcher was aware of the tape and had discussed it with her cabinet.

[52]The band had also incurred heavy legal expenses for the Penis Envy prosecution;[55] this, combined with exhaustion and the pressures of living and operating together, finally took its toll.

[52] On 7 July 1984, the band played a benefit gig at Aberdare, Wales for striking miners, and on the return trip, guitarist N. A. Palmer announced his intent to leave the group.

Crass Records was closed in 1992; its final release was Christ's Reality Asylum, a 90-minute cassette of Penny Rimbaud reading the essay that he had written in early 1977.

At Queen Elizabeth Hall on London's South Bank, Your Country Needs You included Benjamin Britten's War Requiem and performances by Goldblade, Fun-Da-Mental, Ian MacKaye and Pete Wright's post-Crass project, Judas 2.

Stations of the Crass followed in October, with new editions of Penis Envy, Christ – The Album, Yes Sir, I Will and Ten Notes on a Summer's Day released in 2011 and 2012.

[88] Ignorant's lineup for the tour were Gizz Butt, Carol Hodge, Pete Wilson and Spike T. Smith, and he was joined by Eve Libertine for a number of songs.

[92] Vaucher's painting 'Oh America', featuring an image of the Statue of Liberty hiding her face with her hands, was used as the front page of the UK Daily Mirror newspaper to mark the election of Donald Trump as US President on 9 November 2016.

During the exhibition, Penny Rimbaud, Eve Libertine, and Louise Elliot performed "The Cobblestones of Love", a lyrical reworking of the Crass album "Yes Sir, I Will".

[97] For Rimbaud the initial inspiration for founding Crass was the death of his friend Phil 'Wally Hope' Russell, as detailed in his book The Last of the Hippies: An Hysterical Romance.

Researcher Richard Cross stated: In their own writing, Crass somewhat overstate the contribution that anarcho-punk made to resuscitating the moribund Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in the early 1980s.

The initiation of a new arms race, confirmed by plans to deploy first-strike Cruise and Pershing nuclear missiles across Europe, revived anti-nuclear movements across the continent, and would have arisen with or without the intercession of anarcho-punk.

[107] A notable example is Washington, D.C.'s Dischord Records co-founder Ian MacKaye, who followed some of Crass' anti-consumerist and DIY principles in his own label and projects, particularly with the post-hardcore band Fugazi.