No Future Punk, Politics and British Youth Culture, 1976–1984

'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-energised 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. He recaptures punk's anarchic force as a medium through which the frustrated and the disaffected could reject, revolt and re-invent.

List of figures; Acknowledgements; Introduction. Teenage warning: punk, politics and youth culture; 1. What's this for? Punk's contested meanings; 2. Rock and roll (even): punk as cultural critique; 3. Tell us the truth: reportage, realism and abjection; 4. Suburban relapse: the politics of boredom; 5. Who needs a parliament? Punk and politics; 6. Anatomy is not destiny: punk as personal politics I; 7. Big Man, Big M.A.N: punk as personal politics II; 8. No future: punk as dystopia; Conclusion. Alternatives: chaos and finish.

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' (2015).