I knew the song all the way back from 1985 as a sixteen year old, but I did not listen to it with the same purpose as I do now. So in 2026 when I listen to this protest song, its message isn’t lost on me. The message has actually strengthened, not softened. Yes, Paul Weller was ahead of his time, fourty odd years later, the words are even more poignant. Co-founder Mick Talbot of Dexy’s Midnight Runners fame, and later The Bureau is on keyboards.

The music video for The Style Council’s Walls Come Tumbling Down was filmed in Warsaw, Poland, specifically at the Akwarium jazz club. The band recorded the video there on March 11, 1985. With YouTube, I can actually watch the video at my leisure now. I never had the video on demand as a young punk, so I could never view on demand. Now, I can study the video [and the song] and relate the film clip to Warsaw in the mid 80s. Whilst the jazz club is long gone, the rest of the architecture is pretty similar to my brief time in Warsaw in 2018.

The beautiful DC Lee singing harmonies on the track is what makes it stand out for me. Whilst her dance moves are pretty bad, when a girl looked as good as her back then, the dancing is not what you look at. The mood in the club was subdued, I expect the crowd had no idea who The Style Council was, just some strange UK band that floated in. My guess is they did not know who Paul Weller was, just some young skinny punk with a dodgy haircut. The scenes outside the club around Warsaw are very interesting, the trams still operate and The Palace of Culture and Science dominates the skyline, a Stalin era building.