Ian Stuart Donaldson

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Ian Stuart Donaldson (known under the name Ian Stuart ; born August 11, 1957 in Poulton-le-Fylde , Lancashire , † September 24, 1993 in Heanor , Derbyshire ) was a British singer and head of the punk / right-wing rock band Skrewdriver as well Founder of Blood and Honor , a network for the distribution and organizational connection of neo-Nazi bands.

Childhood and youth

Ian Stuart Donaldson was born in Poulton-le-Fylde in the north of England . He grew up in nearby Blackpool with his grandfather and attended the local grammar school . With school friends he founded the group Tumbling Dice, named after a Rolling Stones title. In 1976 he and other band members saw the punk rock band Sex Pistols at a concert in Manchester and then renamed the group Skrewdriver. On the cover of their first single they can still be seen as punks , on their first album All Skrewed Up from 1977 as skinheads . However, All Skrewed Up did not contain any right-wing extremist lyrics.

Skrewdriver beginnings

After the record company Chiswick Skrewdriver dropped, Donaldson moved to Manchester and got by with odd jobs. For the local label TJM Skrewdriver recorded the mini-LP Built Up, Knocked Down there in 1978 . The theme song was a settlement with Chiswick and the record industry. On this recording, Donaldson was the only original member of Skrewdriver, the other bandmates had returned to Blackpool and turned to a bourgeois life. Donaldson later returned there and worked intermittently in a car wash. He began to be interested in national and legal issues and became increasingly involved in the National Front , whose youth department he headed for Blackpool and Fylde . In a letter to the editor to Melody Maker in 1979, Donaldson distanced himself from the National Front, claiming that he had never worked for it and that he had no ambitions to revive Skrewdriver. In fact, he was hoping for a career in the music business that he could never have had with the National Front behind him.

Beginning of the white power scene and re-establishment of Skrewdrivers

Around 1979 Donaldson initiated the Rock Against Communism (RAC) campaign and went to London to look for new bandmates and to re-found Skrewdriver. He found Geoff Williams, Mark French and Mark Neeson through the well-known skinhead scene store The Last Resort . In the vicinity of this shop he recorded the mini-LP Back with a Bang , which was the first to have a clearly nationalist content. Ian Stuart Donaldson befriended Joe Pearce, the organizer of the Young National Front , during this time . Rock Against Communism was featured in Young National Front Bulldog magazine . The record company White Noise Records, which took care of the distribution of legal rock, also came from this environment. According to Jello Biafra , Donaldson was dangerous because he was charismatic, organized, and a "true believer". Several singles and mini-LPs in the same style and content followed, including the programmatic single White Power (based on the key term White Power ) and the piece Voice of Britain , which was to become one of his most famous songs in 1983 .

Skrewdriver 1984-1987

In 1984 Donaldson broke away from the Oi! / Streetpunk and stylistically turned towards hard rock . With a completely new line-up except for Donaldson, Skrewdriver recorded the LP Hail the New Dawn . This was followed by several rock-style records with nationalistic content, some of which were recorded in the private studio of bandmate Mark Sutherland, which meant that these recordings were sometimes worse mixed than the recordings from 1977 to 1983. As the National Front but out Donaldson kept his distance from the neo-Nazi perspective and supported Arab groups like the Nation of Islam or political leaders like Muammar al-Gaddafi (the National Front sold Gaddafi's Green Book in Great Britain). He also felt financially disadvantaged by the record company. In 1987 Ian Stuart Donaldson founded the fast-growing international network Blood and Honor , which included bands like Brutal Attack , No Remorse and Squadron , together with the notorious thug Nicky Crane and some like-minded people . In the years that followed, there was repeated hostility between the National Front and Blood and Honor.

In 1986 Donaldson and Pearce had to answer for the attack on a Nigerian in London and serve several months' imprisonment.

Ian Stuart and Stigger

Around 1987, Stuart met a young musician named Steve "Stigger" Calladine . Along with Stuart, Stigger became the second permanent member of Skrewdriver in frequently changing line-ups. Together with him Stuart recorded several regular Skrewdriver records as well as the series Ian Stuart & Stigger - Patriotic Ballads in the following years . The band also gave some live concerts in front of an audience of this scene, including in Germany . In numerous songs, Donaldson tried to pose as a serious singer-songwriter , with Biafra believing a strong Bruce Springsteen influence is possible.

In the early 1990s Donaldson recorded solo albums as well as some concept albums, including three albums from the Klansmen project, which was possibly partly in cooperation with a former member of the Psychobilly band Demented Are Go . With this material, which stylistically did not fit Skrewdriver, he tried to win over members of other subcultures such as rockabilly and biker cultures for the Blood and Honor movement.

Skrewdriver (1991-1993)

In 1991 Stuart gave several concerts with Skrewdriver in Germany, in the vicinity of which there was violence. The band members were summoned as co-defendants to a trial in Cottbus , but only sent one representative, which ruptured the trial. For the six defendants, Donaldson took on the project album Ian Stuart & Rough Justice - Justice for the Cottbus Six back in England .

Ian Stuart Donaldson himself is said to have spent a few months in prison in Berlin-Moabit at this time after his band and their fans attacked asylum seekers and a youth center. On July 10, 1993, Stuart and Skrewdriver played their last concert in Waiblingen , Germany, in front of sex offenders at a "musical barbecue festival" organized by the Crusaders for about 400 people.

death

On September 24, 1993 , the tire of a car occupied by five people, including Donaldson, burst on an expressway in Heanor, near Derby . The car overturned and Donaldson and another man were killed. Stuart's bandmate Stigger later said the car tires were shot. The police spoke of an accident and closed the file. In the scene there is a rumor of a conspiracy.

influence

Ian Stuart Donaldson has recorded over 30 records in different styles and is one of the co-founders of right-wing rock . In addition to this, as the founder of the Blood & Honor network, he had a major influence on the radicalization of the international right-wing extremist scene. With his death, the right-wing extremist scene in the UK lost its figurehead. Since his death there have been numerous dedications to him as well as references to him on albums by other representatives of the right-wing rock genre. The punk scene also “dedicated” some satirical songs to Stuart, such as Die Ruhrpottkanaken ( The day Ian Stuart died ) and the band Jewdriver , who “ covers ” Skrewdriver songs with pro-Jewish lyrics .

Discography

Skrewdriver

Solo albums

  • No Turning Back (1989, Rock-O-Rama )
  • Slay the Beast (1990, Rock-O-Rama)
  • Patriot (1991, Rock-O-Rama)

The Klansmen

  • Rebel with a Cause (1989, Klan Records)
  • Rock 'n' Roll Patriots (1989, Rock-O-Rama)
  • Fetch the Rope (1991, Klan Records)

White Diamond

  • The Reaper (1991, Rock-O-Rama)
  • The Power & The Glory (1992, Glory Discs)

Ian Stuart & Stigger

  • Patriotic Ballads (1991, Rock-O-Rama)
  • Patriotic Ballads II - Our Time Will Come (1992, Rock-O-Rama)

Ian Stuart & Rough Justice

  • Justice for the Cottbus Six (1992, Rock-O-Rama)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Phil Walmsley Sets the Record Straight - Skrewdriver 1976-78. Archived from the original on October 11, 2012 ; Retrieved June 2, 2010 .
  2. ↑ Stewart Home: Cranked up really high . Codex, Hove 1995, ISBN 1-899598-01-4 , pp. 96 .
  3. ↑ Stewart Home: Cranked up really high . Codex, Hove 1995, ISBN 1-899598-01-4 , pp. 97 .
  4. ↑ Nick Lowles and Steve Silver: From Skinhead to Bonehead. The roots of the skinhead culture . In: Searchlight, Antifaschistisches Infoblatt, Enough is Enough, rat (Ed.): White Noise. Right-wing rock, skinhead music, blood & honor - insights into the international neo-Nazi music scene . series of anti-fascist texts (council) / Unrast Verlag, Hamburg / Münster 2000, ISBN 3-89771-807-3 , p. 21st f .
  5. ↑ a b August Brown: Jello Biafra on 'Nazi Punks' and hate speech. Los Angeles Times , August 9, 2012, accessed September 6, 2014 .
  6. ↑ Steve Silver: The web is spun . In: Searchlight, Antifaschistisches Infoblatt, Enough is Enough, rat (Ed.): White Noise. Right-wing rock, skinhead music, blood & honor - insights into the international neo-Nazi music scene . series of anti-fascist texts (council) / Unrast Verlag, Hamburg / Münster 2000, ISBN 3-89771-807-3 , p. 26 .
  7. ↑ Steve Silver: The web is spun . In: Searchlight, Antifaschistisches Infoblatt, Enough is Enough, rat (Ed.): White Noise. Right-wing rock, skinhead music, blood & honor - insights into the international neo-Nazi music scene . series of anti-fascist texts (council) / Unrast Verlag, Hamburg / Münster 2000, ISBN 3-89771-807-3 , p. 25-26 .
  8. ↑ Stefan Aust , Dirk Laabs : Heimatschutz. The state and the NSU series of murders. Pantheon Verlag Munich 2014, p. 58
  9. ↑ Stefan Aust , Dirk Laabs : Heimatschutz. The state and the NSU series of murders. Pantheon Verlag Munich 2014, p. 59
  10. ↑ a b Margitta Fahr: Odin's heirs. Neo-paganism and Nordic mythology in right-wing rock texts using selected examples from the British band “Skrewdriver”. In: PopScriptum 5 - Right Music. Research Center for Popular Music at the Humboldt University of Berlin, 1995, accessed on June 3, 2010 .
  11. ↑ Skrewdriver. Net against Nazis , accessed June 3, 2010 .
  12. ↑ Klaus Farin, Henning Flad: reactionary rebels. Right-wing extremist music in Germany . In: Archive of youth cultures (ed.): Reactionary rebels. Right-wing extremist music in Germany . Thomas Tilsner, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-936068-04-6 , pp. 29/32 .
personal data
SURNAME Donaldson, Ian Stuart
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ian Stuart
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British musician, singer and “head” of the punk / right-wing rock band Skrewdriver
DATE OF BIRTH August 11, 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH Poulton-le-Fylde
DATE OF DEATH September 24, 1993
Place of death Heanor