Punks in Parliament: Pussy Riot in Portcullis House

Here are some things that the Henry Jackson Society are interested in: A strong military, the “promotion” of liberal democracy if necessary by the use of said military, “two cheers” for capitalism. And here are some things they aren't: radical feminism, punk rock, grass-roots anarchism, Judith Butler, conceptual art. But the world of politics can sometimes resemble an especially tipsy game of spin-the-bottle and tonight the HJS pay host to Pussy Riot.

To enter Portcullis House you have to put your belt and wallet in a tray and walk through a metal detecting doorway. The airport mood continues once you’re in. With its pot plants, beige walls and the air of bored expectancy that comes with being an adjunct to the action, it is a little like a duty free lounge with the ads for wristwatches replaced by portraits of Margaret Beckett. Up the stairs and inside one of the meeting rooms, the HJS event on Russia is about to begin. By now it is standing room only –it may be that this is always the way with the Society’s events but it might just be celebrity exerting its gravitational drag. Three chairs at the front have “reserved for Pussy Riot” notices placed on them. The audience do not, at first glance, look very punk rock. The floor is unspeckled with gob, faces are unpierced and no one seems to be taking amphetamine sulphate. Tweets from the event mention a coalition of leftists, dissidents, capitalists and MPs but if you had to guess you’d put the latter two in the majority. There are an awful lot of men in suits here, sleekly barbered, comfortable with proximity to power. Women wear unshowily expensive looking dresses. Scarily fresh faced HJS members welcome us with leaflets and smiles. They look like adolescent cult members except with realistic hopes of one day running cults of their very own. It is hard to imagine joining such a group at 22, but then some people save their infantile leftism for their actual infancy and hit ambitious maturity at sixteen. One day they will write op-eds calling for transformative violence –they may even order the violence themselves- but for now they smile winningly, usher and take photographs. Several people look like how you imagine a spad to look. You see someone you think you recognise but then realise you’re recalling a character from the Thick of It.

The host for the event is Chris Bryant MP, a man whose every movement screams that he was once a left-leaning vicar. He has the body language of someone perpetually accepting another cup of tea. It feels a little odd, even now, to see a Labour MP in this company, although not as odd as seeing Pussy Riot. From early bipartisanship HJS has, if wonderfully named ex-member Dr. Marco Attila Hoare is to be believed, declined into a very right wing sect indeed. The chief controversy –and the comings and goings of HJS members rival Pussy Riots’ for complexity- is the appointment of Douglas Murray as Associate Director. Mr. Murray began his career very young, as the author of a biography that sympathetically charted Lord Alfred Douglas’ descent from lovely and promising boy to froth-chopped reactionary. (I mention this without comment). Since this interesting start he has given qualified praise to the English Defence League and called for a total end to Muslim immigration into Europe. Dr. Hoare is a defender of the Muslims of Bosnia and a sympathiser with the Arab Spring. A church broad enough to comfortably fit his views and Mr. Murray’s would be about the size of the Pantheon. But if Chris Bryant feels tainted he doesn’t show it.

The first set of speakers comprises a journalist, an opposition mayoral candidate and environmentalist, a European politician, an anti-Putin businessman and the former Russian Prime Minister. Together they make an eloquent case for a Magnitsky law, named for the murdered oppositionist the event commemorates. This would prohibit Russians suspected of crimes from entering the EU, banking within the EU or sending their offspring for European private schools. About the semi-clad thug who runs Russia the room seems in agreement. At the front, meanwhile, are Nadya and Masha. They are tweeting or texting or, for all I know, playing Angry Birds. With their hair (green rimmed and platinum respectively) and lipstick (deepest red) they are the brightest things in the room, parakeets among pigeons. From the front we hear of Putin’s expansionism, his convenient social bigotry, his environmental destruction, his (successful as a glance at a typical Facebook wall shows) propaganda outfits, his crimes up to and including murder. People begin photographing the backs of Pussy Riot’s heads. Happily, someone mentions Chechnya. Everyone agrees on Putin, if not, perhaps, on what on earth can or should be done about him. Someone asks if he can be made to leave peacefully and seems slightly saddened when told he maybe can.

When the initial talk is over, Geoffrey Robertson QC stands up. He has been attached to good causes since the Oz trial, has an actorly manner and a face the same shade as the contents of a decent cellar. He is also, as you’d expect, a tremendous speaker. He summarises the need for a Magnitsky law in about a minute of florid hand-sawing and gags. “We should punish them through their children,” he says, biblically. “Stop them going to our schools.” He sits back down- you feel he could have done this for hours- and the two members of Pussy Riot head to the front desk, together with Nadya’s husband. 

“Do we sit behind the desk or on it? Or do we stand on it?” asks Masha. But they sit behind the desk.

It’s been possible to wonder if, in the days since their imprisonment, Pussy Riot have been declawed. What Putin couldn’t do to them –shut them up, quell their commitment- looked like it might be done instead by celebrity group hugs and the sudden love of Western figures not known to be fans of, say, Crass. When Russian dissident artists come to the attention of the Reader’s Digest mentality it can be at the expense of everything awkward in their art. If there’s going to be a new Cold War, or, god help us, a hot one, then we’re going to need a Pasternak (we might also need a Pollock, the better to showcase our thriving and enviable weirdness). But in picking a dissident, one must always be cautious. When Solzhenitsyn was invited to the US he promptly alienated his hosts with a rambling denunciation of the very freedoms he was supposed to symbolise. 

Pussy Riot don’t quite do this: they seem exhausted and slightly bewildered. They complain about the microphones, they fidget punkishly. Nadya decides to do an impression of Ali G. She has the look of an overcoated nihilist student, the sort who spent the 1890s lobbing bombs at as many crowned heads as she could. She is by a long way the most charismatic person in this room and probably every other room too. Masha looks like someone about to tell a very good joke. At the far end, next to Masha, Pyotr acts as translator. He looks like a smaller Ed Snowden, only with a beard halfway between Lenin and Lennon. Chris Bryant does not know who he is. The presence of Pussy Riot seems to have sent him straight back into vicarhood. He makes bad jokes, he blusters. He asks them, inexplicably, if Bunga Bunga parties are punk rock. For a moment we’re back on the Bill Grundy show. But will Pussy Riot say something outrageous? Over the last few days they’ve been hosted by Amnesty and the Guardian and taken a St. Petersburg Hermitage’s worth of selfies. And now Masha and Pyotr seem to be getting on each other’s nerves. She questions his translation, grabs the microphone off him. They are possibly bemused. It must be odd to step out of prison and enter this world instead. Still they are pleased at how anti-Putin we are.

“We should say, we know a bit about American prisons,” says Nadya. She speaks with the confident seriousness of someone utterly unhampered by cowardice or doubt. “It’s good that you have these values but you know in America someone from Occupy, Cecily McMillan, she was jailed. And you are right to complain about what Putin does in Ukraine but he can point to what you did in Iraq.” The applause that greets this statement fails to sweep the room.

“We also don’t think you should have the European Extradition treaty,” adds Masha, clutching the microphone. “We met Julian Assange today and we want him to continue his work.” It is fair to say not many present are admirers of Mr. Assange. Geoffrey Robertson lets out a solitary whoop. A glance at Twitter shows Nadya and Masha flanking the former Russia Today mainstay in his strange semi-exile. Next to them he looks even paler, his skin the colour of unbaked pastry.

“Putin knows the West won’t go to war with him,” says an audience member.

“We don’t want an actual war,” says Nadya. It is possibly unfair to say that this disappoints people. Either Pussy Riot don’t know their audience, or they do but haven’t abandoned their trollish commitment to provocation. They don’t seem ready to be anyone’s toy dissident. So what will they become? The title of the meeting –Russia after Putin- might well apply to them. What happens to Pussy Riot when Putin has gone? (two years according to one speaker). The untrained informality that works to wonderfully disrupt the airless atmosphere of a conventional political gathering could easily become mannered, Rottenish. Despite the carnival colourfulness they are essentially serious –serious enough to go to jail- and committed to prison reform, a field in which they might do a lot of good. They have their convictions, in every sense of the word. How they fit this around being adored by Madonna and by Chomsky, by Slavoj Zizek and by neoconservative think tanks, remains to be seen. Their presence and charisma seem to be helping but it is easy to imagine it getting in the way. What will happen when Putin retires, to his dascha or the wrong end of a lamppost and Times op-eds and liberal front benchers lose their newfound love of disruptive protest art? It will be interesting to watch.

Right now they have flesh to press. Nadya stands, upright and tiny in a scrum of looming middle aged men in suits while Masha leans into a Dictaphone, talking softly about prisons.