#26: Don’t Want No Reds by the Monks

City: London, ON
Radio Station: CJBK
Peak Month: June 1981
Peak Position in London ~ #8
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Don’t Want No Reds”
Lyrics: N/A

The Monks is a band that formed in 1979. Richard Hudson was born in the Borough of London (in North London) in 1948. He learned to play guitar and sang. In 1967, he became the drummer for the psychedelic rock/soul/blues band Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera. Another member of the band was John Ford, who was born in the Borough of London (West London) in 1948. Ford learned to play ukulele from the age of 9, and soon added guitar to his repertoire. In 1964, Ford formed a band at age 16 named Jaymes Fenda and the Vulcans. The Vulcans released two singles that Ford wrote. In 1966, Ford joined the Soul/R&B band the Five Proud Walkers, who opened for blues and boogie-woogie pianist Champion Jack Dupree.

With Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera, Hudson and Ford were in the recording studio for three of the ‘Opera’s’ albums. In 1970, Ford and Hudson left to join the Strawbs. In 1973, the Strawbs released their hit single “Part of the Union”. In Brian Tarling’s Vancouver’s Charted Songs ’56 to ’78, he details that, “When LG went on Strike in 1975, the union members left the station at about 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, February 1, leaving a continuous tape broadcasting the strike announcement and included the song  “Part Of The Union” by the Strawbs. This lasted for about 1 hour on AM and another hour on FM.” I remember hearing the endless loop of “Part Of The Union” that Saturday morning in February 1975. The BC Labour Heritage Centre reported in an article in January 2019  about the CUPE union strike that impacted DJs who were union members at CKLG. “Management scrambled for hours to obtain an injunction, unlock the studio and turn off the music (endless loop of “Part Of The Union”). Then they hired strikebreakers to keep the station on the air.” Ford, who wrote “Part of the Union”, received an Ivor Novello Award for the song.

In 1973, Richard Hudson and John Ford formed the duo Hudson Ford. They released “Pick Up the Pieces” which became a #8 hit on the UK Singles chart. In 1974, “Burn Baby Burn” climbed to #15 on the UK pop chart.

In 1979, Hudson and Ford resurfaced with a new band called The Monks. Hudson offered lead vocals, bass guitar and synthesizers. Ford provided lead vocals, guitar and synthesizers. They added Brian Willoughby on guitar, mandolin, and ukulele. He was born in 1949 in Northern Ireland in the village of Glenarm in County Antrim. As well, Terry Cassidy contributed vocals, clarinet, and synthesizers. While Clive Pierce became the band’s drummer. Hudson and Ford offered a song they wrote titled “Nice Legs Shame About the Face” to a young band whose management turned it down. But their own rough demo, with 
Hudson banging on a flight case, made its way to a French label that wanted to release it as is. The art department misheard Hudson and Ford’s chosen name for the project, The Mugs (slang for “the faces”), and The Monks were born.

In 1979, the Monks released their debut album, Bad Habits, which included a Top 20 UK pop hit titled “Nice Legs Shame About the Face”. The Monks were viewed as “sell-outs” by punk rockers and their fans in Britain.

Concurrently, Willoughby, Hudson, Ford and Cassidy formed High Society in 1980. This was a British Music Hall, 1930s-style parody band. They released a couple of singles in 1980-81.

Meanwhile, Canadians fell in love with The Monks, seeing them as more laid-back punk-rockers. “Drugs In My Pocket” became a number-one hit in the summer of 1980 in Hamilton (ON) and Regina (SK), and reached #2 in Peterborough (ON), #4 in Toronto, #7 in Ottawa,

In 1981, the Monks released their second album, Suspended Animation. It reflected more of a new wave genre than “commercial punk.”

“Don’t Want No Reds” charted in London.

“Don’t Want No Reds” was a song cowritten by Monks’ bandmates Cassidy, Ford and Hudson. The song is a gentle anti-war song. The bridge states: “Don’t want no war. Can’t take it no more.” The song title is built upon with this refrain: “Don’t want no reds, under my bed.” In the face of a scare about the Soviet Union that was building in the late 70s, the Monks invited listeners to let cooler heads prevail.

When the Russian Revolution took place in 1918, it triggered a “red scare,” and the purging of suspected socialists from American positions in government, unions and public life.

1919 newspaper cartoon depicts “bolsheviks” and
“terrorism” were going to topped the world order.

In 1920, five Socialist Party Assemblymen in the New York State legislature were suspended for being suspected of being “reds.” These were Charles Solomon, Louis Waldman, Samuel Orr, August Claessens, and Samuel Dewitt.

The five were accused of being part of a political party that was “inimical to the best interests of the State of New York and the United States,” and was not really a party, but “a membership organization admitting within its ranks aliens, enemy aliens, and minors.”

In 1924, decorated WWI solider and politician – Charles Dawes (who authored the Dawes Plan dictating German reparations to the Allies) – declared “we don’t want no reds under the beds.” In a campaign stop in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 27, 1924, Democratic presidential candidate John Davis declared that it is “the British lion and not the Moscow wolf that threatens American liberty.” Davis attacked Dawes for spreading the belief that under every bed is a red. The Republicans won the 1924 election, elevating Calvin Coolidge to the presidency and Charles Dawes to become vice-president. On November 7, 1924, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published this cartoon:

With Republicans elected in 1924 to take the White House,
business leaders could be assured there would be
“No Reds Under The Bed Now”

A second Red Scare happened during a period of anti-communist hysteria in the United States between 1947 and 1957. An ‘Iron Curtain’ had been erected with the creation of Soviet satellite nations in eastern Europe starting in 1945. In October 1947, then actor and future president, Ronald Reagan, told the House (Congress) Un-American Activities Committee that there were communists in the Screen Actors Guild in Hollywood.

(While he was president, Ronald Reagan referred in several speeches to the Soviet Union as “the Evil Empire.” On August 11, 1984, Ronald Reagan said in off-the-cuff remarks in front of an NPR microphone before his weekly address, “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” The remarks were denounced days later by Pravda and TASS in Moscow as “unprecedentedly hostile.”)

Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy was at the forefront of whipping up the hysteria which became known as McCarthyism. During this time Americans became intensely paranoid about communist infiltration. In a speech before the Republican Women’s Club in Wheeling, West Virginia, on February 9, 1950, McCarthy said: “The State Department is infested with communists. I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.” During McCarthyism, FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover, repeated the allegation that there were “reds under every bed.” Soviet/communist infiltrators were creeping into the homes of ordinary Americans to spy on them and devise ways to destabilize the democracy.

The ska-infused “Don’t Want No Reds” peaked at #8 in London (ON).

The Monks popularity in Canada led them to launch a 21-city tour of the nation in May 1981. This included Hamilton, Kitchener (ON), North Bay (ON), Ottawa and Toronto. John Ford was interviewed four decades later by the National Post, “It was like The Beatles!” Ford marvels. The Monks were greeted by fans at the airport, and they played venues both respectable (Toronto’s Massey Hall) and dubious. Ford recalls one gig at a Hamilton hockey rink: “There was a trend for so-called ‘punks’ in the audience to spit on the stage. Our bass player used to encourage this by spitting back. … Our singer, whilst trying to dodge all this, threw out M&Ms to the crowd whenever we performed Drugs in My Pocket. So our show could get pretty chaotic. Coupled with the fact that we may have ended a little early that night, we were immediately ushered away from the stage by our security and brought up to the commentator’s box. Sure enough, pockets of fights broke out all over the place. We were given pucks as souvenirs.”

Plans for a third album were mapped out, with about a half dozen songs being cut for it. But due to record label drama, and changing priorities for some of the Monks, it was ultimately aborted.

After the Monks disbanded, Brian Willoughby worked with The Strawbs, Dave Cousins, Cathryn Craig and Mary Hopkin. Richard Hudson was also back with The Strawbs until 2004. He went on to form a band called The Good Old Boys who released an album in 2009.

In the mid-80s, John Ford moved to Long Island, New York. Online there is no trace of what happened to Clive Pierce and Terry Cassidy since The Monks split up in 1982.

In 2012 a Tribute to the Monks album was issued in Toronto by a group of musicians spearheaded by Toronto band, Small Sins, founder Thomas D’Arcy. A live concert was held at the Horseshoe in Toronto on the occasion of the release of the tribute album. John Ford came up from Long Island to perform with the tribute band.

On The Monks Facebook website page, John Ford was touring under the billing “John Ford of the Strawbs” into the fall of 2019.

February 7, 2025
Ray McGinnis

References:
“The Monks: British punks that ruled Canada … and nowhere else,” National Post, July 25, 2012.
Nick Krewen, “The Monks’ Bad Habits hard to break,” Toronto Star, July 25, 2012.
Pascal Treguer, “Meaning and Origin of ‘Reds Under The Bed’,” World Histories, January 25, 2018.
“Ronald Reagan Testifies Before HUAC (1947),” Alpha History.com.
Louis Waldman, “Albany: the crisis in government. The history of the suspension, trial and expulsion from the New York state Legislature in 1920 of the five Socialist assemblymen by their political opponents,” (Boni & Liveright, 1920).
“1950: Senator McCarthy says communists are in State Department,” History.com, November 13, 2009.
Ed Adamczyk,  “Flashback: Reagan jokes about bombing Soviet Union, 30 years ago,” UPI, August 11, 2014.

CJBK 1290-AM London (ON) Top 15 | July 3, 1981