Once upon a time the world was locked in a Manichaen struggle between good and evil. Warmongers in power in London & Washington, wishing to shoo in the second coming, were determined to rack up tension that could take us from here to eternity
( editor's note, this means Thatcher & Reagan, not Blair & Bush ).

People tried to stop the deployment of cruise missiles . Thousands of women symbolically surrounded Greenham Common in the UK, where Cruise missiles had been deployed to freak out the Evil empire ( uh, Soviets in those days, not Iranians/Iraqi's/Afghani's etc)

There were many demonstrations against NATO's massive nuclear escalation. The world stood on the brink.

Gang of Four, aside from playing on the backs of flatbed lorries on demo's and the usual benefit shows, decided to take on these Imperialist crypto-fascists !

This meant:

a) dressing up in DJ's
b) painting Mitt, our guitar roadie, gold all over
c) dressing the golden Mitt in a Ronald Reagan mask, gilded skiddies and dog collar c/w chain and instructing him to wander around on all fours and scoff hamburgers
d) exhibiting ourselves as a tableau vivant in a hip New York City shop window.

This unanswerable cultural intervention led to a lessening of global tension, glasnost and the fall of the repressive Communist regimes in Eastern Europe.

Mitt was miffed. Geeting the paint off was a dog.