No FuturePunk, Politics and British Youth Culture, 1976-1984By Matthew WorleyPub Date October 2017 | Paperback| 480 pp |
“Punk inspired both political engagement and cynicism. It also
encouraged, alongside the industrial culture that emerged
simultaneously,the explorationofsexual,psychologicaland
delinquentextremes;anything to escape the banality of late
twentieth-century living. To understand punk’s politics,
therefore, is not to find philosophical clarity or the basis of a
movement. Rather, the politics of punk resided in itsrefusal and
its practice: a recognition that‘blind acceptance is a sign of stupid
fools who stand in line’”
No Feelings. No Fun. No Future. The years 1976–84 saw punk emerge and evolve as a fashion, a musical form, an attitude and an aesthetic. Against a backdrop of social fragmentation, violence, high unemployment and socio-economic change, punk rejuvenated and re-energized British youth culture, inserting marginal voices and political ideas into pop. Fanzines and independent labels flourished; an emphasis on doing it yourself enabled provincial scenes to form beyond London's media glare. This was the period of Rock Against Racism and benefit gigs for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the striking miners.
Matthew Worley charts the full spectrum of punk's cultural development from the Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks and Slits through the post-punk of Joy Division, the industrial culture of Throbbing Gristle and onto the 1980s diaspora of anarcho-punk, Oi! and goth and recaptures punk's anarchic force as a medium through which the frustrated and the disaffected could reject, revolt and re-invent
About the Author
Matthew Worley is a Professor of Modern History at the University of Reading. He has written extensively on British politics in the interwar period, and more recently on the relationship between youth culture and politics in the 1970s and 1980s. Articles on punk-related themes have been published in History Workshop Journal, Twentieth Century British History, and Contemporary British History. Recent works include Oswald Mosley and the New Party (2010) and, as a co-founder of the Subcultures Network, contributions to books such as Fight Back: Punk, Politics and Resistance (2015) and Youth Culture, Popular Music and the End of 'Consensus'
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