ABSTRACT
The origins of the King Mob group are shrouded in myth and rumour most of which the group itself began. After his expulsion from the Situationist International (SI) with the rest of the English Section, Christopher Gray formed this new group, named after graffiti found on the walls of Newgate Prison in London after the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of June 1780. King Mob established a new programme for British Situationist practice after the latter had jettisoned the method of negation central to the SI's critique. King Mob was active at protests, happenings, and public stunts, but its identity was constructed through a distinctive textual style. King Mob's admiration for Black Mask and the Motherfuckers played a major role in the redirection of the British Situationist tradition, away from Continental modernism and towards a more vernacular, hooliganistic register. King Mob moved away from the radical sociology of Heatwave and towards a practice more in keeping with the Americans' street-gang posturing.
