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Artist bodies investigate whether they can stop BNP selling music CDs
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 29 May 2009
A number of artists, including Billy Bragg, Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason and Blur drummer Dave Rowntree, are backing a campaign by the Musicians’ Union and Featured Artists Coalition to try to stop the British National Party from selling compilation CDs of British songs and music by British artists via its own online shop, which goes by the name of Excalibur.
The BNP store sells a range of compilations, most filled with the sorts of patriotic songs that might be sung at the Last Night Of The Proms, or some kind of nostalgic World War Two evening, but some feature newer songs, like the ‘Best Of British Folk’. They’re the sort of compilations you’d normally find in service stations or pound shops, it’s just here they are being sold by, and in aid of, the BNP.
Bragg et al object to music being used to help support the BNP without the people behind the music’s permission. The problem is, of course, once an album exists, artists and songwriters have no control over who sells them, and most wholesalers will provide anyone who writes a cheque with stock, especially if they’re sitting on a warehouse full of CDs as shit as most of the ones the BNP are selling.
However, the MU and FAC are investigating whether the so called ‘moral rights’ of a songwriter could be said to be infringed when their songs are sold by a political party, especially one as controversial as the BNP.
It’s the ‘right of integrity’ that the trade bodies’ lawyers would be trying to assert, which only exists in the songs themselves if I remember rightly (ie not the recording). It’s an interesting approach to the problem, though ‘moral rights’ are a bit of a vague concept. Plus the BNP aren’t altering the songs they sell, nor stating, or even implying really, that the writers of any of the songs featured on the records they sell would in anyway sympathise with their political views, so I’m not sure how strong a moral rights case the musicians have. But it will be interesting to see if they decide there is a case worth pursuing and, if so, whether they have any success.
The BNP, however, say they have no intention of taking the CDs off their online store. A spokesman said: “They [the artists] have already made their money, haven’t they? Once that music’s gone through a distributor. They’re politicising themselves to a high degree by doing this and we wouldn’t really be concerned by that. It’s up to us what we sell – we’re not changing. There’s no suggestion through this that artists support the BNP or otherwise. They’re barking up the wrong tree, to be honest”.
Even if the MU and FAC were successful, Excalibur would still presumably be allowed to sell what is surely the most sought after CD in their collection – ‘West Wind’, “a collection of nationalist songs penned by Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party”. I never knew Griffin was so talented – surely we should get him to pen next year’s Eurovision entry?
