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Such was the cultural impact of punk in late 1970s Britain that mainstream popular music discourse throughout the 1980s was shaped by comparisons with the work and imagery of those performers who had instigated its popularity. In the

introduction to One Chord Wonders, Dave Laing asserts that the term ‘punk’ ‘is used in a way which assumes we know exactly what it was and what it meant.’¹ Further, the canonisation of specific performers and their recorded work has led to its becoming ‘one more convenient landmark in the conventional periodization of recent British musical and cultural history.’² It is used as such in this thesis: if the period 1976-1978 represents the punk era, then we can consider its past ‘pre-punk’

and the years that follow ‘post-punk’. The term pre-punk is used here to

contextualise popular music culture historically. However, post-punk does not only suggest a period of time; the term is also used to describe music that has been influenced by punk. Simon Reynolds’ history of this later period, Rip It Up and Start Again, deals with the various performers who were categorised under this umbrella between 1978 and 1984.

To define a piece of music or a performer as ‘post-punk’ is to assume that ‘punk’

represents a set of aesthetic qualities – whether musical , visual or philosophical – which have formed a basis for further experimentation in any of these areas. As Laing suggests, when ‘a disc-jockey or journalist introduces a record or a new band as “punk”,’ the listener is ‘prepared to be shocked, exhilarated, made rebellious or whatever.’³ Defining aesthetic qualities of punk is problematic: they are too

numerous to condense into a single narrative. Punk instead is defined as opposition, by what it ‘is not.’ As the following chapters will illustrate, the first

1 Laing, One Chord Wonders, p. viii.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid., p. 99.

performers who came to be regarded as punk were characterised by their

opposition to the musical mainstream. This was exacerbated by the exaggeration of their ‘difference,’ which manifested itself in ways that were alien to public morality:

for Reynolds, ‘the sheer monstrous evil of punk was a huge part of its appeal.’⁴

An understanding of punk requires an understanding of its historical context. March 1976 marked James Callaghan’s succession to leader of the Labour Party, and therefore to Prime Minister, following Harold Wilson’s resignation. It was a testing economic time for the country,⁵and as such ‘public discourse in Britain was subject in the mid-1970s to periodic outbursts of “crisis” or “doom” rhetoric.’⁶ The punks dealt with crisis not just in their songwriting, but with their attitude and appearance.

For Dick Hebdige,

they were dramatizing what had come to be called ‘Britain’s decline’ by

constructing a language which was, in contrast to the prevailing rhetoric of the Rock Establishment, unmistakably relevant and down to earth…. In the gloomy, apocalyptic ambience of the late 1970s…it was fitting that the punks should present themselves as ‘degenerates’; as signs of the highly publicized decay which perfectly represented the atrophied condition of Great Britain.⁷

It is in this context that punk can be thought to offer potential for political discourse and protest. This potential lay in the way in which it offered an identity to young people whose lives and desires were affected by this rhetoric. However, punk did not come to dominate entirely the progression of popular culture. While for those who were engaged with it, the punk scene came to be regarded as a ‘year zero’

4 Reynolds, Rip It Up and Start Again, p. xiii.

5 See Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: the Short Twentieth Century (London: Abacus, 1995); Graham Stewart, Bang! A History Of Britain In The 1980s (London: Atlantic Books, 2013); Richard Vinen, Thatcher’s Britain (London: Simon & Schuster, 2009).

6 Laing, One Chord Wonders, p. 30.

7 Dick Hebdige, Subculture: the Meaning of Style (London: Methuen, 1979), p. 87. As written.

concept⁸– a resetting of the cultural landscape – in a wider sense, rather than revolutionising the sphere of popular music, it provided an alternative path for producers and consumers of popular music. While punk undoubtedly impacted on attitudes and operations, the pre-punk values of mainstream rock and pop culture were little different in the post-punk era: the music industries still operated with capitalist ideologies. Ultimately this can be attributed to punk’s fragility: as Laing summarises, ‘statements from “inside” punk rock…clearly do not compose some pure discourse of punk rock, markedly separate from other commentaries on punk rock. There are overlaps and echoes between pro- and anti-punk statements, as well as places where the arguments remain separate.’⁹ The difficulty encountered in attempting a definitive interpretation of punk stems from the differences in opinion between those who supposedly defined it.

For those musicians of the post-punk era who desired to use the various aspects of their performances to engage in political discourse and protest, punk was an

important factor in the development of their musical identities. As such, it is

important here to establish the political issues of punk’s various aspects – much of which took place within a framework of authenticity. While punk has been

considered a ‘year zero,’ it did not occur in isolation. Punk drew much of its music and presentation from the London ‘pub rock’ scene of the mid-Seventies. Where the first of the following chapters will analyse this influence, chapter 4 will examine – with reference to key texts on the meaning of punk – the ways in which producers and consumers of punk rock, and those who engaged with it as a subculture, were able to use it to assert a political identity, and attempt to demonstrate the various signifiers of ‘punkness.’ Finally, before showing through case studies how punk influenced ‘political’ performers in the post-punk era in the next section of the thesis,

8 See Ian Glasper, The Day the Country Died: A History of Anarcho Punk 1980-1984 (London: Cherry Red Books, 2006), p. 8; Dorian Lynskey, 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History Of Protest Songs (London: Faber & Faber, 2010), p. 513.

9 Laing, One Chord Wonders, p. 104.

chapter 6 will examine pertinent issues in the proliferation of independent record labels which played a role in the dissemination of their recordings. While key historical and theoretical texts on punk exist and are referenced here, what follows also utilises evidence of the popular discourse of the time in the form of the

established music press (specifically the New Musical Express) and the homemade, photocopied ‘fanzines’ which came to be emblematic of the era.

Chapter Three