The wider political fissures in this area of contemporary music are worth exploring here. The arcane and sometimes bloody ideological warfare on the Left between Trotskyists and Stalinists seems a thing of the past now. Not so in the world of contemporary classical music, apparently. An international conference was held at the British Academy in London last January, entitled "Red Strains: Music and Communism outside the Communist Bloc after 1945." 

With keynote speakers from Harvard, Cambridge and many other universities here and abroad, the gathering explored the nature and extent of individual musicians' involvement with Communist organisations and parties, the appeal and reach of different strands of Communist thought (e.g. Trotskyist, Castroist, Maoist), the significance of music for Communist parties and groups (e.g. groups' cultural policies, use of music in rallies and meetings), the consequences of Communist involvement for composition and music-making, and how this involvement affected musicians' careers and performance opportunities in different countries.

Topics ranged from "Communism's cultural legacy: Soviet realism overseas" to "Marxist-Leninist ideology and British experimentalism." The more eye-catching papers included "A Western Communist as a source for the second Soviet avant-garde: Luigi Nono's first visit to the USSR in 1963 and its aftermath," "Samuel Goldwyn, Aaron Copland, and the United States government: Developing a pro-Soviet aesthetic in Hollywood," and "Left-wing and progressive musicians in the West and their relationship to Eastern bloc dissidents." (It is well-known that many leftist artists, like left-wing Western intellectuals, had long and shameful love affairs with Soviet Communism.)

Cardew eventually rejected the ethos of the avant-garde by setting up the Scratch Orchestra, which promoted a kind of manufactured "music of the people", concentraing on political liberation songs such as "Smash the social contract" and "There is only one lie, there is only one truth." The inspiration for this was the Chinese cultural revolution. This political and aesthetical development was encapsulated in Cardew's 1974 book Stockhausen Serves Imperialism, in which he renounced not only his earlier association with the musical avant-garde but his friendship with Stockhausen himself. 

Cardew was active in various causes in British politics, such as the struggle against the revival of neo-Nazi groups and supporting striking miners and "anti-imperialist  movements in Northern Ireland" (aka the Provisional IRA).