“A big shoutout to the communist crowd out there, there’s a whole gang of them! Now don’t stand too close or you might catch a bit of common sense off of them.”
— Charles Hendy on stage, October 2026, O2 Academy Leeds
Earlier in the day, Leeds communists Will Collins and Maya Khan sat down with Charles and Andrew Hendy from the Mary Wallopers, who are touring their new album Paddywhackery.
The discussion spanned a whole variety of themes: capitalism and the decay of culture, if art can change the world, revolutionary optimism, and the historic links between folk music and the communist movement.
Follow @leedscommunists on Instagram for video footage!
Revolutionary optimism
We could’ve spoken for hours about the horrors of capitalism. But what I think stands out about the Mary Wallopers is their optimism.
Charles: They want us to be pessimistic because if we’re always exacerbated and tired and we think “well, the world is fucked… Maybe I’ll just get to McDonald’s and Taco Bell and fucking watch whatever bullshit dragon programme is on Netflix” – that’s handy for them because we just keep spending money!
Andrew: It’s why we try to avoid labels, because it benefits people at the top to push people into groups and make them riot over distracting topics, really, when the real issues are class issues more than anything, you know?
C: I think being hopeful is resistance… Things are all right. Brazil [referring to the mass movement against Flávio Bolsonaro] – that’s pretty good. You know the pendulum has to swing.
A: In France too, Albania as well.
C: The pendulum has to swing! So it’s not all fucked. But if you look at your phone, everything looks fucked. And they’re purposely doing that – so that we’ll all be like “urgh there’s no point”. It’s the biggest friend to the rich. Well then, they can do what they want with you.
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One of the key features of these huge mass movements is their ability to cut across the culture war.
Will: In Spain, the right-wing nearly brought down the government with all of this extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric. Then all of a sudden, there’s a mass protest because the state kills an 87-year-old – and that’s brought down the government! I think it shows the balance of power. There are so many more of us than there are of them.
C: One hundred percent. Most of the anti-immigrant stuff you see on the internet as well, I think is mostly bots. And then in Ireland particularly, I think something like 80 percent of it is from outside Ireland… That’s all bullshit division tactics that are always going to be used. And you know what the most frustrating part about it is? Is that when the right wing starts to get popular, they make everyone in the middle become a little bit more right-wing, the politicians appease the people. So the world gets more right-wing just because they’re throwing tantrums.
A: The far-right lunatics aren’t even as big of a threat as like, the fucking centre…
C: Even talking to people who are so-called ‘right-wing’, [they] are just duped by shite because that’s what most of it is. It’s just people being duped into a simple explanation for why they’re upset.
W: If you go to some of these places in Britain… they’re really deindustrialised. These people have been left behind. And it’s been the Labour Party doing that to them… they just parachute somebody in to cut their youth clubs. Then they say ‘vote for us’. And then the right wing comes in and says: these guys don’t…
C: Give a shit about you! And they’re right! They’re kind of like vultures or something. And once again, the only people that lose out are the people that are suffering, and that are struggling to make ends meet. And they will suffer time and time again under all these fucking politicians. Because actually the reality is none of them give a fuck about you at all! And the only thing that really is a hope is community and looking after each other.
While many draw pessimistic conclusions from the emergence of the reactionary right, we do not. The working class internationally has never been so powerful. When they begin to move, as they have across Europe, the culture war recedes into the background as the class war comes to the fore. As Andrew put it:
“When the masses start sticking together, it’s an unstoppable force.”
Can art change the world?
W: Do you think art can change the world?
C: Yes, one hundred percent! It’s why they’re so afraid of it.
A: They wouldn’t be going around trying to ban gigs and trying to shut off musicians and artists if it wasn’t as powerful as it is. And no matter how much money billionaires throw at propaganda, they’ll never be able to stop the force of an idea that the ordinary masses [can get behind].
Which reminds me of the Victor Hugo quote: “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”
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C: The one thing they will never have is they’ll never be able to be cool. You can see how Elon Musk is desperate to be liked and to be seen as cool. And he’s a fucking nimrod! They will never have that. And so the one thing that the people do have is that we have normality – for want of a better word. We actually know what the world is actually like. So art can absolutely change the world.
The struggle for culture and freedom of expression is something that brings people into the struggle. Great art can communicate with people in a way that political propaganda alone cannot.
This was demonstrated earlier in the interview. Charles put it very well when I asked if they would call themselves communists or socialists:
“I think our job isn’t particularly to [label ourselves], even though we write about it and I think people can deduce clearly what our morals are and what our attitudes are. I think our job is to talk to people who wouldn’t have those ideas about them and reach them sooner than reaching someone who’s already agreeing with whatever we say… I think we have a way of talking about politics that people don’t find that preachy, unless they already hate us!”
Revolutionary art is not something that paints itself red and reels off excerpts from the Communist Manifesto. If you want that, then the best thing to do is read the theory for yourself. The world would be a very boring and grey place if art had to fit into neat ‘Marxist’-shaped boxes.
What made me become a fan of the Mary Wallopers (or any art for that matter) all those years ago was not because they declared themselves communists and lectured me about what I should think. It was ultimately the way their music and concerts made me feel.
It’s clear that they stand on the side of the workers, the poor, and the oppressed – but what makes their music revolutionary is their ability to reveal a truth about the world that you cannot explain through propaganda alone.
