King Mob was a radical group endeavouring to contribute to worldwide proletarian social revolution

Revolution

A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...

, based in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 during the 1970s.

It was a cultural mutation of the Situationists and the anarchist group Motherfuckers

Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers

Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers was an anarchist affinity group based in New York City...

. They sought to emphasize the cultural anarchy and disorder being ignored in Britain. They derived their name from Christopher Hibbert's 1958 book on the Gordon Riots

Gordon Riots

The Gordon Riots of 1780 were an anti-Catholic protest against the Papists Act 1778.The Popery Act 1698 had imposed a number of penalties and disabilities on Roman Catholics in England; the 1778 act eliminated some of these. An initial peaceful protest led on to widespread rioting and looting and...

 of June 1780, in which rioters daubed the slogan

Slogan

A slogan is a memorable motto or phrase used in a political, commercial, religious and other context as a repetitive expression of an idea or purpose. The word slogan is derived from slogorn which was an Anglicisation of the Scottish Gaelic sluagh-ghairm . Slogans vary from the written and the...

 "His Majesty King Mob"' on the walls of Newgate prison

Newgate Prison

Newgate Prison was a prison in London, at the corner of Newgate Street and Old Bailey just inside the City of London. It was originally located at the site of a gate in the Roman London Wall. The gate/prison was rebuilt in the 12th century, and demolished in 1777...

, after gutting the building.

Actions

King Mob appreciated pop culture and distributed their ideas and political

Politics

Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...

 ideas through various posters and through their publication King Mob Echo, which provoked reaction by celebrating killers like Jack the Ripper

Jack the Ripper

"Jack the Ripper" is the best-known name given to an unidentified serial killer who was active in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. The name originated in a letter, written by someone claiming to be the murderer, that was disseminated in the...

, Mary Bell

Mary Bell

Mary Flora Bell was convicted in December 1968 of the manslaughter of two boys, Martin Brown and Brian Howe...

, and John Christie

John Christie

John Christie may refer to:*John Christie , English footballer*John Christie , author, ski historian, Member Maine Ski Hall of Fame*John Christie , opera festival founder...

. One flyer in particular celebrated Valerie Solanas

Valerie Solanas

Valerie Jean Solanas was an American radical feminist writer, best known for her attempted murder of Andy Warhol in 1968. She wrote the SCUM Manifesto, which called for male gendercide and the creation of an all-female society.-Early life:Solanas was born in Ventnor City, New Jersey, to Louis...

' 1968 shooting of Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

 and included a hit-list of: Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono

is a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...

, Mick Jagger

Mick Jagger

Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....

, Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...

, Richard Hamilton

Richard Hamilton (artist)

Richard William Hamilton, CH was a British painter and collage artist. His 1956 collage, Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?, produced for the This Is Tomorrow exhibition of the Independent Group in London, is considered by critics and historians to be one of the...

, Mario Amaya

Mario Amaya

Mario Amaya was an American art critic, museum director, magazine editor and former director of the New York Cultural Center and the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia . He was also the chief curator of the Art Gallery of Ontario and the founding editor of London’s Art and Artists...

 (who was also shot by Solanas), David Hockney

David Hockney

David Hockney, CH, RA, is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer, who is based in Bridlington, Yorkshire and Kensington, London....

, Mary Quant

Mary Quant

Mary Quant OBE FCSD is a British] fashion designer and British fashion icon, who was instrumental in the mod fashion movement. She was one of the designers who took credit for inventing the miniskirt and hot pants. Born in Blackheath, London, to Welsh parents, Quant brought fun and fantasy to...

, Twiggy

Twiggy

Lesley Lawson née Hornby known as Twiggy is an English model, actress, and singer. In the early-1960s she became a prominent British teenage model of swinging sixties London with others such as Penelope Tree....

, Marianne Faithfull

Marianne Faithfull

Marianne Evelyn Faithfull is an award-winning English singer, songwriter and actress whose career has spanned five decades....

, and IT

International Times

International Times was an underground newspaper founded in London in 1966. Editors included Hoppy, David Mairowitz, Pete Stansill, Barry Miles, Jim Haynes and playwright Tom McGrath...

editor Barry Miles

Barry Miles

Barry Miles is an English author known for his participation in and writing on the subject of the 1960s London underground. He has written numerous books and his work has also regularly appeared in left-wing papers such as The Guardian...

.

The King Mob group allegedly planned a series of audacious actions, including blowing up a waterfall in England's Lake District

Lake District

The Lake District, also commonly known as The Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous not only for its lakes and its mountains but also for its associations with the early 19th century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth...

, painting the poet Wordsworth's house with the words "Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...

 Lives", and hanging peacocks in London's Holland Park

Holland Park

Holland Park is a district and a public park in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, in west central London, England.Holland Park has a reputation as an affluent and fashionable area, known for attractive large Victorian townhouses, and high-class shopping and restaurants...

. However, none of the aforementioned plans were executed. An action that was carried out, inspired by the New York-based Black Mask's "mill-in at Macy's

Macy's

Macy's is a U.S. chain of mid-to-high range department stores. In addition to its flagship Herald Square location in New York City, the company operates over 800 stores in the United States...

", involved King Mob appearing at the Selfridges

Selfridges

Selfridges, AKA Selfridges & Co, is a chain of high end department stores in the United Kingdom. It was founded by Harry Gordon Selfridge. The flagship store in London's Oxford Street is the second largest shop in the UK and was opened on 15 March 1909.More recently, three other stores have been...

 store in London, with one member, dressed as Father Christmas

Father Christmas

Father Christmas is the name used in many English-speaking countries for a figure associated with Christmas. A similar figure with the same name exists in several other countries, including France , Spain , Brazil , Portugal , Italy , Armenia , India...

, attempting to distribute all of the store's toys to children. Members of the London constabulary subsequently forced the children to return the toys.

Graffiti

Graffiti attributed to King Mob was observed in many places particularly in the Notting Hill

Notting Hill

Notting Hill is an area in London, England, close to the north-western corner of Kensington Gardens, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea...

 area, including,
"I don't believe in nothing - I feel like they ought to burn down the world - just let it burn down baby"

The most celebrated graffito attributed to King Mob was the slogan which was painted along a half-mile section of the wall beside the tube(railway) commuter route into London between Ladbroke Grove

Ladbroke Grove

Ladbroke Grove is a road in west London, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is also sometimes the name given informally to the immediate area surrounding the road. Running from Notting Hill in the south to Kensal Green in the north, it is located in North Kensington and straddles...

 and Westbourne Park

Westbourne Park

Westbourne Park may refer to:* Westbourne Park tube station* Westbourne Park, South Australia...

 stations in west London:

Same thing day after day- tube - work - dinner - work - tube - armchair - TV - sleep - tube - work -how much more can you take? - one in ten go mad, one in five cracks up

King Mob was also responsible for various attacks on art galleries and for organizing a battle between local skinhead

Skinhead

A skinhead is a member of a subculture that originated among working class youths in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, and then spread to other parts of the world. Named for their close-cropped or shaven heads, the first skinheads were greatly influenced by West Indian rude boys and British mods,...

s (whom they considered to be "the working class avant-garde") and greasers in central London.

One of King Mob's early actions included Malcolm McLaren

Malcolm McLaren

Malcolm Robert Andrew McLaren was an English performer, impresario, self-publicist and manager of the Sex Pistols and the New York Dolls...

 who reputably applied their situationist ideals towards the promotion of the Sex Pistols

Sex Pistols

The Sex Pistols were an English punk rock band that formed in London in 1975. They were responsible for initiating the punk movement in the United Kingdom and inspiring many later punk and alternative rock musicians...

.

Sources

• "The End of Music," a pamphlet written by David and Stuart Wise in the mid to late 1970s and published in Glasgow. The text was later reprinted by AK Press
  AK Press
  AK Press is a worker-managed independent publisher and book distributor that specialises in radical left and anarchist literature. It is collectively owned and operated.-History:...
  
   in the 1990s as part of Stewart Home
  Stewart Home
  Stewart Home is an English artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist. He is best known for his novels such as the non-narrative 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess , his re-imagining of the 1960s in Tainted Love , and earlier parodistic pulp fictions Pure Mania, Red...
  
  's book What is Situationism.
• "King Mob. Nosotros, el Partido del Diablo", Spanish compilation of King Mob' texts, edited by La Felguera Ediciones in 2007