Prole Art Threat

(1)

Pink press threat!
 

MAN WITH CHIP: I'm riding third class on a one-class train.
I'm set at nought like a wimpey crane. (2)
 

I'm a pink prole threat.
 

GENT IN SAFE-HOUSE: Get out the pink press threat file
and Um-brrrptzzap the subject. (3)

MAN WITH CHIP: It's de-louse, recluse time

(now v. bitter) When I get to the safe house
Hanging rhyme
Hang this crummy blitz trad. by its neck
Pink press threat
I escaped the pink prole effect
 

GENT IN SAFE-HOUSE: It's a new prole art threat,
So it's recluse, safehouse time
 

NARRATOR: Then the clan began
Give them nail files soon
Then the clan began
Agenda Item One *

Pink press threat
Get out the pink press threat file
New prole art, the subject
It's safe-house, safe-house time

Everybody hears a hum at 3 a.m. (4)
But in the safe-house, it's not around

Pink press threat
Get out the wet lib file (5)
New prole art, the subject
Safe-house, safe-house tone

That clan has got away with 100 years of sheer brilliance until now

* The lyrics that were published in the Lough Press book continue as follows from this point:
Scene: Safe-house Give them nail files, soon

GENT AND STAFF- And looking at this agenda, we have a bit of
now revealed a problem here
to be m.i.9 Get out the pink press threat file (6)
New prole art threat the subject
It's safehouse, safehouse time
 

(ALL: Everybody hears the hum at 3:00 a.m.)
 

But in the safehouse, it's not around
Pink press threat
 

GENT: Get out and apply the wet lib file
Vs. this new prole art threat
Safehouse, safehouse tone
 

MAN WITH CHIP, That clan has gotten away with 100 years
dissipated and knacked, of sheer brilliance
at home, video reach, --Up till now
stereo bog etc.   (7)

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1. "Pink press" implies a socialist organ; the term "pink" or "pinko" is sometimes applied to someone who isn't necessarily a communist, but is rather a sympathizer or approaches communism on the political spectrum (it can also be used, often in an exaggerated or humorous sense, to paint someone who doesn't actually have communist sympathies as holding views that are de facto socialist or communist in nature). An episode of the cartoon series The Pink Panther is entitled "Pink Press." According to K-Punk,

The song is a complex, ultimately unreadable, play on the idea of Smith as ‘working class’ spokesman. The ‘Theat’ is posed as much to other representations of the proletarian pop culture (which at its best meant The Jam and at its worst meant the more thuggish Oi!) as it is against the ruling class as such. The ‘art’ of The Fall’s pulp modernism – their intractability and difficulty – is counterposed to the misleading ingenuousness of Social Realism. 

However, as the author himself acknowledges later, it is problematic to straightfowardly associate Smith himself with the "threat."

Reformation reproduces sone enlightening remarks from Smith about the song:

In an interview published in NME (November 14, 1981) MES is quoted thus: "Prole Art Threat is...about...the destruction of these ridiculous liberal views which perpetuate the system...they laugh at the skinheads, they laugh at the punks, they laugh at the heavy metal kids, and then they turn round and say the Americans are bigoted and fascist!" 

In TBLY (issue no 8, February 1997) MES, in an unattributed quote, says that the song "actually started as a play, about some commuter type who flips out on leftism and gets caught up with MI5 and that. I just compressed it and made it more of a joke. It was like how everyone's going on about the working class but when they do something it's seen as a threat. It was, like, an anti-intellectual middle class song, do you get my drift?"

From Dan:

The back cover of Slates reprints some of the "play" dialogue, preceded by this: "PROLE ART THREAT

starring 'gent' and 'man' in ASDA mix-up spy thriller"

ASDA is a British supermarket chain.

Dan:

Stephen Dalton, "Not Falling, Soaring", Vox, June 1991, pp. 24-25:
 

The Fall have always distanced themselves from Madchester scenes, but do they qualify as genuine prole culture? 'I wouldn't say so. The working class don't buy it. They're so bloody daft they're watching videos all the time. The working class are bloody stupid and that's what a lot of the songs are about. That's what annoys me -- everybody goes on about Prole Art Threat and that, but those songs are bloody satire!'

Tweeted by Paul Hanley during one of Tim Burgess' twitter listening parties:
 

The drums on Prole Art Threat were my attempt to rip off ‘Milk & Alcohol’ by Dr Feelgood- but I got it completely wrong and instead of a shuffle we ended up with a gallop, but it really fits the song
#TimsTwitterListeningParty
9:10 PM · Oct 18, 2020

^

2. "Set at nought"--to to be disregarded, ignored, dismissed, treated with contempt-- also pops up in "Middle Mass."George Wimpey is the name of a company (and its founder) that operated as a road surfacing contractor in Britain between 1880 and 2007. Wimpey also puts in an appearance in "Ladybird." 

^

3. K-punk likely has the right idea: "The text is presented to us as a transcript of surveillance tapes, complete with ellipses where the transmission is supposedly scrambled."

^

4.I have had the vague idea that this has something to do with either surveillance equipment or something even more sinister. But apparently "The Hum" is what is nowadays called "a thing." From Wikipedia:

The Hum is a phenomenon, or collection of phenomena, involving widespread reports of a persistent and invasive low-frequency humming, rumbling, or droning noise not audible to all people. Hums have been widely reported by national media in the UK and the United States. The Hum is sometimes prefixed with the name of a locality where the problem has been particularly publicized: e.g., the "Bristol Hum" or the "Taos Hum".

It is unclear whether it is a single phenomenon; different causes have been attributed. In some cases, it may be a manifestation of tinnitus.

Willam Burke bears witness:

A possible reference to mysterious hums heard in various places around the globe, most famously in the Taos Hum, in the New Mexico town of Taos in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains? Anyplace with such a hum can apparently have its own "Taos Hum".

Illustratively, I lived in Taos from 2006-2011, and never once heard the Hum until about 5-6 weeks before I moved back east to Virginia. On a hot July night I had the front door open at 3 a.m. (unusual because of the common "witching hour" events at that time, like disembodied voices and whistling, phantom drumming, and one time something that sounded like an immense street-sweeping machine, but nothing visible - needless to say they do NOT sweep streets at 3 am!) and I heard the Hum. Just as described, it sounded like an idling diesel engine at a great distance - paradoxically, at a distance which would be too great to hear an engine!

^

5. "Wet" is English public-school slang for someone perceived as weak and ineffectual. A "wet" liberal may refer to someone who is not staunchly liberal enough, but may perhaps also just be used an intensifier of "liberal" by those who see the position as inherently weak.

The phrase was used in the 1980s Britain by followers of Margaret Thatcher to refer to insufficently hardline Conservatives (thanks to Binyi). These, in turn, began calling the hardcore Thatcher types "dries"...

^

6. MI9 is a division of British military intelligence. A socialist Columbian guerilla movement called M-19 (19th of April Movement) was active in the 1980s; since Smith doesn't actually sing this lyric, it's not certain how he pronounces it, but "em eye nine" is probably more likely.  

^

7. The phrase "stereo bog" also appears in "C'n'C-S Mithering."

^

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Prole Art Threat: Fall Tracks A-Z

K-Punk: "Memorex for the Krakens"