Kings Research Portal

DOI:
10.1080/03007760802053104
Document Version
Preprint the version submitted for publication
Link to publication record in King's Research Portal

Citation for published version (APA):

Adams, R. (2008). The Englishness of English Punk: Sex Pistols, subcultures, and nostalgia. Popular Music &
Society, 31(4), 469 - 488. 10.1080/03007760802053104

Page numbers
When referring to this paper, please check the page numbers in the published version and cite these.
General rights
Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners
and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.
Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research.
You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain
You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ?
Take down policy
If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to
the work immediately and investigate your claim.

Download date: 05. Jan. 2015

The Englishness of English Punk: Sex

Pistols, Subcultures and Nostalgia
RUTH ADAMS

DrRuthAdams
LecturerinCultural&CreativeIndustries
Culture,MediaandCreativeIndustries(CMCI)
King'sCollege,London
Room6C,CheshamBuilding
Strand
London
WC2R2LS

This pre-print paper is copyright of the author, but it is free to be used for research purposes as long
as it is properly attributed. Permissions for multiple reproductions should be addressed to the author.
This paper is intended to circulate work that readers might not otherwise be able to access. If your
institution does subscribe to the journal, please access it via that link.

Please cite as
The Englishness of English Punk: Sex Pistols, Subcultures and
Nostalgia' in Popular Music and Society, Vol. 31, No. 4, October
2008, pp. 469-488
IMPORTANT: When referring to this paper, please check the page
numbers in the journal published version and cite these.

The Englishness of English Punk: Sex Pistols, Subcultures and Nostalgia' in Popular
Music and Society, Vol. 31, No. 4, October 2008, pp. 469-488

The Englishness of English Punk: Sex Pistols, Subcultures and

Nostalgia

Abstract

This article considers the Englishness of English Punk, or,

more specifically, the Englishness of the Sex Pistols and the
cultural productions associated with them.
whether

the

challenge

Establishment,

that

consensus

they

notions

of

posed

It will consider
to

conventional,

Englishness

has

merely

been recuperated as an entertaining diversion within a broader

hegemonic nationalist history, or whether this challenge has
had a more fundamental impact.

It will argue that the Pistols

facilitated a reframing and a re-imagining of English culture,

and left a legacy, which has been drawn upon by a number of
subsequent art and music subcultures.

Acknowledgements

would

like

to

thank

Dan

Bernstein

for

his

patient

proofreading and constructive critical challenges.

This article seeks to examine the Englishness of English Punk,

or, more specifically, the Englishness of the Sex Pistols and
the individuals and cultural productions associated with them.

It will consider whether the challenge that they posed to

conventional, Establishment, consensus notions of Englishness
has

merely

been

recuperated

as

an

entertaining

diversion

within a broader hegemonic nationalist history, or whether

this challenge has had a more fundamental impact.

It will

contemplate the possibility that the Pistols, to some extent,

facilitated a reframing and a re-imagining of English culture,
and further suggest that the current Grime musical culture is
evidence for punks legacy and enduring influence.

What is without question is that the Sex Pistols, and the

cultural phenomena that they created, generated, and inspired,
were decidedly English.

Although Johnny Rotten was of Irish

parentage, and Malcolm McLaren was half Jewish,i and despite

the fact that the Pistols called for Anarchy in the UK and
attacked the British monarchy, as a consequence no doubt of
the band being born and bred Londoners the culture which they
both

drew

on

relatively

few

and

reflected

was

representations

English.
of

either

They
the

offered
specific

nationalist cultures and issues of the other dominions of the

Union, or those of the regions beyond London.ii

Punk,

as

number

of

theorists,

most

conspicuously

Dick

Hebdige, have noted, was a subculture constructed through a

process of collage, of bricolage.

Bits and pieces of both

officially sanctioned and popular English culture, of politics

and

history

were

brought

together

in

chaotic,

uneasy

admixture to form a new culture; a culture that arguably spot

lit the very institutions that it nominally sought to destroy.
Whatever the still disputed motivations, the Sex Pistols
output and career can only be fully understood within the
context of English history.

This is clearly demonstrated by two films - one contemporary,

one a historical account which sought to offer a critical
commentary on, and context for punk.

Derek Jarmans Jubilee was made in 1977 which, if not the high
point of punk, arguably represented a peak in public awareness
of

the

movement.

repertoire
Elizabeth

of
I

The

English

and

it

film

Heritage;

is

draws

on

the

it

opens

in

significant

that

the

conventional
the

court

name

of

of
the

messenger who guides the old Queen into the future world of
her

namesake

is

Aerial,

Shakespearean

reference.

This

future the present - is an apocalyptic wasteland, the

aftermath of a civil war.

A wasteland in which punks and

police fight running battles in the streets of London, in

which

although

patriarchal

society

has

apparently

been

overthrown the real power lies with a monopolistic media baron

who lives in bucolic splendour on a Dorset country estate.
this

contemporary

setting,

the

references

to

In

English

Heritage are no less apparent than in the opening sequences,

albeit

distorted

and

detourned.

Further

Shakespearean

references abound, and punk celebrity Jordan adopts the guise

of a number of female English icons - Elizabeth II, Britannia
-

which

are

twisted

representations

to

and

lay

politics they occlude.

wrested

bare

the

from

their

ruthless

conventional

and

oppressive

That history is a fictional narrative

written by the victors is made plain, a conclusion that John

Lydon also drew from the various
histories of himself.iii

and rarely accurate

The social chaos portrayed in Jubilee

may have been somewhat exaggerated for dramatic effect, but

the settings are all too real.

The film gives a stark account

of just how derelict and desolate large areas of London were

in the late 1970s; a grey world of bombsites, council blocks,
graffiti and grime.

Such a view is also not absent from Julien Temples 1999

retrospective account of the Pistols story, The Filth and the
Fury.

News footage of blasted urban landscapes, race riots,

industrial

unrest

and

piles

of

uncollected

rubbish

are

juxtaposed with apparently more innocuous aspects of English

culture, such as Michael Fish presenting the weather, Big Ben
and illuminated manuscripts.

This film, even more so than

Jubilee, clearly locates punk within the context of English

cultural history.

Explicitly illustrated are Lydons use of

Shakespeares (or, more specifically Oliviers) Richard III to

create

his

stage

persona,

and

both

his

and

McLarens

employment of Dickensian imagery Oliver Twist in particular

in the construction of the bands image.
the

Pistols

as

his

little

Artful

McLaren describes

Dodgers,

thus

casting

himself in the role of one of the two most notorious Jewish

entrepreneurs in English literature.

The Pistols themselves

are presented less as menaces to society than the inheritors

of the English Music Hall tradition; the heirs to the crowns
of

Arthur

Askey

and

Max

Wall,

operating

outside

of

the

legitimate theatre and characterised by clownish outfits,

silly

walks,

smutty

jokes

and

cocking

snook

at

the

Establishment. The Pistols, it is stressed, were working in

the tradition of English, working class musical theatre, not
Rock

and

Roll,

which

was

like

other

undesirable

rogue

elements such as heroin, Nancy Spungen and a uniform of black

leather jackets an American import.iv

Malcolm McLaren makes this very explicit in a radio programme

in which he comments on Andy Warhols multiple portrait of the
Queen from 1985.

Of Warhols painting he says:

You cant take it seriously; there is no depth of

character.

Its flat; its just an icon.

Its vacuous,

its empty, its just like a Coca-Cola bottle.

If thats

what weve got to consider the Queen as, then in some

respects Id be happy to say that perhaps we wont have
any more queens as we tried to impose, with a thought

about the Queen back in the days when I managed the Sex
Pistols.

We took the Queens portrait, by Cecil Beaton,

we printed it just like a silk screen image no different

from Andy Warhol here, we filled in some colors, but we
put a safety pin through her nose, and we wrote on the
side God Save the Queen, she aint no human being.

We

basically didnt molly-coddle her, we didnt put her up

on a pedestal, we were basically saying this icon is a
joke.

Because right there in the 70s, we were already

demonstrating our resistance against this vacuous,

gilded, Hollywood, American way of dominating culture
with stories that were genuinely untrue.

We were now

trying to authenticate our beliefs, move away from

American culture, resist and fight it and come up with a
culture of our own.

That was punk rock, and we

wrote the song and equally painted a portrait, our

version of the Queen, and got it on the front page of the
Daily Mirror, on Queens Silver Jubilee day! (McLaren
Portrait: Andy Warhols Queen Elizabeth II, broadcast on
BBC Radio4, 14 August 2006)

The Pistols, then, might be regarded as unlikely guardians of

English Heritage, albeit expressing a history which stressed
the popular cultural and the radical dissenting pamphleteering
elements of that heritage rather than the more conventional
(pro)monarchical

and

aristocratic

aspects.

In

this,

the

Pistols were absolutely of their time, given that the 1970s

marked the point in English history when (as a consequence of
furious

lobbying

and

energetic

marketingv)

the

Heritage

Industry from visits to Stately Homes to the immense

popularity

of

Laura

Ashley

became

firmly

established

element of national life.

Christopher Booker has claimed that Never before in history

had

there

been

an

age

so

distrustful

of

the

fearful of the future, so enamoured of the past.

the

significance

of

the

Seventies.

present,

so

Therein lay

(Weight

544)

Representatively, Roy Strong reflected in 1978 that:

It is in times of danger, either from without or from
within, that we become deeply conscious of our heritage
...

within this word there mingle varied and passionate

streams of ancient pride and patriotism, of a heroism in

times past, of a nostalgia too for what we think of as a
happier world which we have lost. []

Our [] heritage is

therefore a deeply stabilising and unifying element within

our society. (Weight 544)

While the Pistols clearly had no intention of being either a

stabilising or a unifying element within society - quite the
opposite in fact - the notion that there might be No Future
was in fact an extremely widespread fear.

If there is nothing

to look forward to then the only option is to

look backwards. If there can be no future then we are all, as

a nation, obliged to live in the past.

As Savage suggests, in

the early 70s:

The country carried all the psychic baggage of a Pyrrhic
victory.
war

Despite the post-war burst of Socialism, the

had

seemed

to

vindicate

the

status

quo.

The

incidence of films celebrating Englands endurance and

victory was in a direct ratio to the refusal of its
people to see the need for change.
static,

full

of

imperial

England was smug and

pretensions...

(Savage,

Englands 108)

Nevertheless, given punks active construction of new social

and aesthetic modes of being, it paradoxically suggested that
there perhaps could and would be an (alternative) future, a
utopian vision that did not depend entirely on wallowing in
nostalgia.

It

is

perhaps

useful

at

this

juncture

to

introduce

the

distinction, articulated by Laurence Lerner, between Eden

and Utopia; two myths that arose and endure within human
cultures to explain and compensate for the shortcomings of
life lived in the present.
neither
they

necessarily

bookend

Although the two concepts are

antithetical

linear

human

nor

history

incompatible
in

both

(indeed,

Marxist

and

Christian accounts) they tend, argues Lerner, to give rise to

differing

conceptions

of

different sensibilities.

the

trajectory

of

history

and

to

The one sees it as going upward,

the other downward, to or from the paradise that transcends

history. (Lerner 76)

The one structures our experience with

sadness, the other with fierce hope.

One speaks an elegy, the

other a call to action. (Lerner 65)

The narrative of Eden

relates a fall from grace, whilst that of Utopia posits the

possibility of a bright future; the former tends to lead to
resignation, nostalgia and quietism, whilst the latter calls
for

zeal

and

programme.

can

be

translated

into

an

active

political

If we transpose this model onto English society in

the 1970s, we can argue that the Edenic position reflects that
of the Establishment and its adherents (i.e. straight or
mainstream

society)

whereas

closely to that of punk.

the

Utopian

position

relates

Such a claim is given credence by

Lerners assertion that

When such zeal fails, we see that it has to, and we
regard

it

with

fear

and

pride.

We

see

that

it

was

exhilarating and dangerous, like a hero so obsessed that

he cannot compromise or accept the limitations of mere
living.

It is out of such passions that tragedy is made.

(79)
This

narrative

has

clear

parallels

with

explosive, yet ultimately doomed existence.vi

Patrick Wright argues that:

punks

short,

National Heritage involves the extraction of history of

the idea of historical significance and potential from
a denigrated everyday life and its restaging or display
in

certain

sanctioned

conceptions.
historical,

sites,

events,

images,

and

In this process history is redefined as the

and

it

becomes

the

object

of

similarly

transformed and generalised public attention. (69)

This might be said to offer a fairly accurate account of the

Pistols career, but what happens when they unavoidably
became the object of a generalised public attention, a part
of history?

Must they suffer the fate of oppositional places

and ideas described by Jane Jacobs, becoming sanitised and

depoliticised

in

their

transit

into

officially

sanctioned

heritage.? (23)

Certainly, if we consider a publication such as Satellite Sex

Pistols, it appears to be symptomatic of the theorists worst
nightmares

of

the

dominant hegemony.

recuperation

of

all

dissent

within

the

The book, while a useful visual resource,

reduces the Pistols legacy to a collectors guide of punk

memorabilia and provides a tourists guide to the streets of
London.

This begins: You are about to go back in time and

revisit key locations in the Sex Pistols story.

So grab your

A to Z, switch on your Walkman and lets go (Burgess 8) In

this publication there is a distinct lack of the awkward,

critical

questioning,

the

self-reflexive

interrogation

that

was a key characteristic of punk; no question of whether being

either a tourist or an anorak might be antithetical to the
projects intentions.

As much is, however, acknowledged by

the former editor of The Filth and The Fury fanzine; while he
admits that he is as guilty as the next fan, he fears for the
obsessives who spend huge amounts of their time and money on
them, theyre not interested in any other bands, or any other
kind of music, theyre stuck in a rut

Exactly the opposite

of what the Pistols were supposed to be about. (Murphy 25)

This could be seen as the apotheosis of a reactionary project

which has reduced the threat of punk through the processes of
mass commercialisation, diffusion and domestication through,
for example, numerous tabloid exposs and magazine articles
featuring

Punks

weddings.

Such

and

their

articles,

Mothers,
as

Hebdige

punk

babies

suggests,

and

punk

served

to

minimise the Otherness so stridently proclaimed in punk style,

and defined the subculture in precisely those terms which it
sought most vehemently to resist and deny. (98)

Arguably

the

band

themselves

Pistols

Heritage

Industry,

have

been

staging

complicit
their

own

in

the

Silver

Jubilee celebrations in the form of a(nother) reunion concert

in

2002

and

licensing

numerous

souvenir

commodities

from

pencil cases to fridge magnets; and this all before Lydon

accepted

place

within

mainstream

ventured into the jungle.vii

celebrity

culture

and

For many of those with a

vested interest in the movement, punk was already history by

1979.

The approach taken by Fred and Judy Vermorel and Julie

Burchill and Tony Parsons in their books Sex Pistols: The

Inside Story and The Boy Looked At Johnny, dating from 77 and
78

respectively,

RocknRoll

Swindle

and

McLarens

is

testament

1979
to

film

this.

The

Dick

Great

Hebdiges

seminal work Subculture: The Meaning of Style, first published

in 1979, also refers to punk only in the past tense.

Punk was

history, finished; the full story could now be told.

However, in the mid 1970s, although it was always considered

probable that punk would have a short (if intense) lifespan,
with a moral panic in full swing the normalising, let alone
memorialising, of this most oppositional of subcultures did
not appear to be a likely fate.viii

Not least because, unlike

the

Punk

mainstream

history,

not

Heritage
merely

Industry,
wallowing

in

was

trafficking

nostalgia;

it

in
was

highlighting what Wright has described as the cheap little

ruse in which history subsequently turned our short-lived
victory [in the War] into long-term defeat. (25)

Nostalgia
Queens

and
Silver

history
Jubilee

explosively
in

1977.

met

head

The

on

during

official

the

Jubilee

celebrations met with unexpected success, with some 90% of the

population giving themselves over to what Tom Nairn called

the Glamour of Backwardness. (Savage, Englands 352) This
was

perhaps

unsurprising

given

the

media

saturation,

the

promise of additional holidays and something to look forward

to

and

celebrate

in

circumstances

opportunities for either.

that

offered

few

Beyond the formal celebrations,

consisting of a service at St Pauls Cathedral and a royal

walkabout, approximately 6,000 street parties were held in
London

alone.

Reports

of

the

celebrations

throughout

the

Union stressed the breaching of class, racial and sectarian

barriers,

and

there

was

much

talk

of

the

rekindling

of

community spirit reminiscent of the discourse of the Second

World War.

However, as Richard Weight suggests: The emphasis

on reconciliation [] was an explicit acknowledgement that

national

unity

had

broken

down.

(546)

This

was

fact

acknowledged even more explicitly by the 10% (of whom the

Pistols were the most notorious and visible members,) for whom
the Jubilee, as Savage suggests,
seemed an elaborate covering of the social cracks with
fading Coronation wallpaper. []
was

the

only

serious

God Save the Queen

anti-Jubilee

protest,

the

only

rallying call for those who didnt agree with the Jubilee
because [] they resented being steamrollered by such
sickening hype, by a view of England which had not the
remotest bearing on their everyday experience. (Savage,
Englands 352-353)

Yet for all its offensive republicanism and the sacrilegious

treatment

of

national

icons

in

Jamie

Reids

accompanying

artwork, God Save the Queen was not, I would argue, per se,
anti-nationalist, or anti-patriotic.
on

particular

monarchical,

version

jingoistic,

of

Rather, it was an attack

English

xenophobic

nationalism,

sense

of

the

superiority,

which despite periods of nominally

Socialist government had been an important aspect of the
post-war consensus.
working

in

In doing so, the Pistols were arguably

another

tradition

of

dissenting,

yet

quintessentially English culture, this time from earlier in

the twentieth century.

Both the Angry Young Men of the

1950s and the satire boom of the 1960s set out to attack the
complacency
attitudes

of

of

consensus

respect

Britain

which

still

and

the

unthinking

predominated

(Carpenter

119).ix

God

Save

negativity,

the

Queen

pointed

likewise,
way

reframing of Englishness.
rather than subjects.

for

towards

all

of

new,

its

more

apparent
positive,

An England, perhaps, of citizens

As Lydon protested in The Filth and the

Fury: You dont write God Save the Queen because you hate
the English race, you write a song like that because you love
them and youre fed up with them being mistreated.
declared war on England without meaning to.

And, We

The metaphor of war was an apt one because, as Mark Sinker

argues:
No Future was never a threat; it was a promise.

It was

it is a moral fact, a fundamental conundrum: how to

behave in the last days, when authority is ended.

Life

during wartime; how to live happily and decently when

this is as good as things may ever get (133).

It was also apt because the Second World War loomed extremely
large in nominally post-war British society.

As Billy Bragg

has noted: The mythology of 1940, fed by heroic war films and
the soft stereotypes of Allo, Allo and Dads Army, is rooted
deeply within our national consciousness. (Savage, Englands
x) This dominance of history (and a historical victory) was,
for many punks, a problem, not least because it was used as a
stick with which to beat the younger generations.

Hence the

deployment of the swastika as the ultimate offensive symbolic

weapon;x however, as Patrick Wright suggests:
Abject and manipulative as it undoubtedly is, the public
glorification of war can express the real counterpoint
which

the

routinised,

experience
constrained

modern everyday life.

of
and

war

has

empty

provided
experience

to
of

the
much

In war and surely not just for

men personal actions can count in a different way,

routine

can

have

greater

sense

of

meaning

and

necessity, and there can be some experience not just of

extremity (avant-garde pleasure), but also of purpose.
In this undoubtedly limited respect war can indeed be
recollected as both more meaningful than normal everyday
life and also as a purification (23).

Given that a major complaint of the punk generation was a

persistent boredom, was it possible that they were, to some
extent,

envious

of

the

extreme

experiences

of

the

older

generations, experiences that they both flaunted and seemed

intent on withholding from the young?

Was punk, perhaps, a

form of symbolic war, to facilitate avant-garde pleasures and

a sense of purpose?

Joe Queenan suggests that such an idea is

embodied by The Clash song London Calling.

By commandeering the legendary phrase London Calling,
previously used as a verbal beacon of hope by the BBC
World Service during the dark days of World War II, the
song expresses the punks contempt for the generation who
defeated the Nazis, and then spent the rest of their
lives reminiscing about it.

With its apocalyptic lyrics:

London calling to the faraway towns, now that war is

declared and battle come down, it captures the punks
desperate, somewhat theatrical yearning to fight the kind
of

pitched

earlier.

battle

their

parents

had

fought

30

years

That is, to participate in a battle that might

lead

to

something

more

lethal

than

head

butt.

(Queenan)xi

In

wartime

also,

there

are

fewer

difficulties

regarding

identity formation, you know clearly which side you are on.
For post-war generations, the defining of us and them had to
be constructed from within. Perhaps also for this reason there
was an almost covetous attitude toward the clear identities
and militant attitudes of some black communities in Britain.xii
Denied a war of their own, punks might still aspire to, in the
words of The Clash, a riot of their own.

Punk also took on a broader significance and purpose through

its association (which reached its peak during the Jubilee)
with the nation as a whole.

As Wright argues:

where so much contemporary experience in this period of

economic and imperial decline can only disappoint or
frustrate, the symbolism of the nation can still provide
meaning.

In this respect the nation works to re-enchant

a disenchanted everyday life (24).

While the blank generation was visibly disenchanted by the

model

of

nationhood

offered

by

the

Establishment,

punk

provided a quasi-nation, a sense of identity and belonging.

Thus, rather than bemoan the apparent facility with which punk
was

absorbed

into

the

nationalistic

hegemony,

perhaps

we

should consider its long-term effects on the English national

identity and particularly for post-war generations.

Punk

offers reasons to be proud of being English that do not rely

on the subjugation of other races or nations, nor of the lower
social classes.

Punk could be argued to be a reframing of

national identity in the image of (certain elements of) the

working classes, rather than that of the ruling classes, of
the (post) industrial city rather than the pastoral fantasy of
the countryside.

In this, punk is again perhaps indicative of

broader trends within national heritage, which

has been expanded in fairly recent years so that it now
includes the local scene alongside the capital city, the
old

factory

alongside

the

municipal

art

gallery,

the

urban tenement or terrace alongside the country house,

the vernacular alongside the stately and the academically
sanctioned (Wright 25).

The break from, and the interventions in the dominant models

of nationhood that punk achieved can be illuminated by the
distinction
between

that

history

historicity.

Wright
(that

(drawing
which

is

on

Agnes

formally

Heller)
sanctioned)

makes
and

Alain Touraines definition of historicity is a

societys capacity to act on itself and determine the order of

its

representations.

Historicity

is

thus

symbolic

capacity which enables a society to construct a system of

knowledge together with technical tools which it can use to
intervene in its own functioning. (Wright 14) In Hellers
conception historicity also relates to questions such as
where have we come from, what are we, where are we going
These

questions

are

answered

by

the

stories

that

we

tell

ourselves and others about our place in society, and may be in

contrast to or conflict with both dominant narratives and the
truth.

This facilitates then, what Heller calls a sense of

everyday historical consciousness which includes a sense of

historical development or change as it impinges on everyday
life:

sense

Historicity
history

then,

and

historical

of

historical

can

way

process,

offer

of
and

both

framing
by

existence.
an
that

extension,

(Wright

individual
within
a

way

the
of

sense

16)
of

broader
reframing

history to take account of individual, personal history and

resist, if necessary, dominant narratives.

The Pistols could

not have failed, to borrow a phrase, to have felt the hand of

history upon them, but also enjoyed an awareness that they
were playing an active role in the formation of history, that
their historicity was shaping history.

It is an interesting,

albeit unanswerable question whether punk would have had quite

such a profound effect on the nation as a whole had it not
been blessed with the opportunity to hitch its star to the
wagon of the Jubilee.

But perhaps more importantly, the Sex

Pistols allowed their fans to also feel as if they were part

of history; Andy Medhurst recounts that he drew sustenance

and prestige from being in tune with the prevailing cultural
aesthetic (228) and there was no doubt a thrill in being part
of

movement

which

was

front-page

news,

however

geographically or socially remote individuals may have been

from the events making the headlines.

Wright argues that this everyday sense of historical existence

not only testifies to radical needs which can be met neither
in present everyday life nor in the complacent grandeur of
official symbolism but also holds out a utopian hope that
everyday historical consciousness might be detached from its
present articulating in the dominant symbolism of the nation
and

drawn

into

different

expressions

of

cultural

and

historical identity. (26) Given the Pistols reliance on such

symbolism,

it

is

perhaps

managed to achieve this.

questionable

to

what

extent

they

As Hebdige observes:

The various stylistic ensembles adopted by the punks were

undoubtedly expressive of genuine aggression, frustration
and

anxiety.

But

these

statements,

no

matter

how

strangely constructed, were cast in a language which was

generally available a language which was current (87).

To some extent this was born of necessity, as punks had no

other language available to them, but even if they had been
able to express themselves with more individual and arcane

symbolism, and not within the common language, their reach and
influence would undoubtedly have been much less widespread and
significant.

To be effective, punk had to demonstrate, whilst

maintaining the critical distance of the outsider, that it was

part of the society it attacked.

Hebdige again:

the punks were not only directly responding to increasing

joblessness, changing moral standards, the rediscovery of
poverty, the Depression, etc., they were dramatizing what
had come to be called Britains decline by constructing
a

language

which

rhetoric

of

the

relevant

and

down

was,

in

Rock
to

contrast

to

the

Establishment,

earth

(hence

the

prevailing

unmistakeably
swearing,

the

references to fat hippies, the rags, the lumpen poses).

The punks appropriated the rhetoric of crisis which had
filled the airwaves and the editorials throughout the
period

and

translated

it

into

tangible

(and

visible)

terms (87).

Despite punks modernist certainties, the new England which it

(at least in its early years) imagined into being was arguably
a

post-modernist utopia, in which difference is celebrated

(often

for

its

own

sake.)

Punk

very

often

ignored

and

transgressed the gender, sexual, class, racial and aesthetic

norms of mainstream society; it created a safe space in which
individual expression and diversity could be given free reign.

Notwithstanding the mistaken accusations of fascism that arose

from the intemperate use of the swastika, punks relationship
with reggae music and West Indian culture more generally was
arguably an early exercise in multiculturalism. The appeal of
reggae for punks was largely, if paradoxically, as Hebdige
suggests, in the exclusiveness of Black West Indian style, in
the virtual impossibility of authentic white identification
(64).

an

aspirational

identity than a parallel, analogous identity.

It was an

alien

Reggae

and

essence,

mainstream

Rastas

foreign

British

proffered

body

culture

less

which

from

implicitly

within

and

threatened

as

such

it

resonated with punks adopted values anarchy, surrender

and

decline.

(Hebdige

64)

And,

as

detailed

above,

the

themes of a state of emergency and war.

Punks advocacy of reggae and Rastafarianism represented a

further rejection of Establishment notions of Englishness:
This

response

movement

embodies

away

democracies,

from

the

the

Refusal:
consensus

consensus

is

it

begins

(and

sacred).

with

in

Western

It

is

the

unwelcome revelation of difference which draws down upon

the members of a subculture hostility, derision, white
and dumb rages (Hebdige 132).

More positively, punks acceptance of reggae as a different but equal - cultural form might be said to represent a shift

from a colonial to a post-colonial orientation.

As Hebdige

observes:
At

one

level,

the

punks

openly

acknowledged

the

significance of contact and exchange, and on occasion

even elevated the cultural connection into a political
commitment.

Punk

groups

for

instance,

figured

prominently in the Rock against Racism campaign set up to

combat the growing influence of the National Front in
working-class areas.

But at another, deeper level, the

association seems to have been repressed, displaced on

the part of the punks into the construction of a music
which was emphatically white and even more emphatically
British (68).

There is then, perhaps, something in Roger Sabins argument

that what punk didnt say about (anti-) racism was often more
important

than

what

it

did.

Specifically,

punks

biggest

failure in the political sphere was its almost total neglect

of the plight of Britains Asians. (Sabin, I Wont 203) In
the late 1970s the focus of both far right activity and more
casual racism tended to be Asians rather than Afro-Caribbeans,
particularly following the arrival in Britain of many Asian
refugees expelled from Uganda, Kenya and Malawi; but this fact
was

largely

ignored

by

punk.

Sabin

suggests

that

punks

failure to respond to this situation was perhaps due less to

an active hostility to Asian immigrants than to the fact that

the issue wasnt a hip one.

Asians simply didnt have

the same romance as Afro-Caribbean youth

especially in terms of the latters reputation for being
confrontational with the policexiii and what was equally
problematic, they had no music comparable to reggae with
which punks could identify.

As fellow rebel rockers

they were a dead loss (Sabin, I Wont 203-204).xiv

Sabin

further

openness

to

contends

other

that

cultural

the
forms

influence
more

of

reggae

generally

has

and
been

exaggerated for positive effect in histories of punk.

This

may be, in itself, evidence of the metropolitan London-centric

nature of many such histories, given that West Indian culture
was

more

widespread

and

visible

(and

thus,

perhaps,

more

accessible and accepted) in the capital.

When reggae acts

supported

and

punk

conurbations

groups

they

outside

often

of

found

London

themselves

indifferent or even hostile audiences.xv

other

large

playing

to

Sabin argues that

The publicity given to Rasta DJ, Don Letts, of Roxy club

fame, has certainly skewed the picture, (Sabin, I Wont 216)
that the fact that punk had a blind spot for anti-Asian
prejudice meant that this was an area that was left open for
exploitation (Sabin, I Wont 213) and this facilitated an
alternative, right-wing, lineage one that continues to be
menacingly

significant,

political

life.

not

(Sabin,

just
I

in

music

Wont

213)

but

in

wider

Nevertheless,

exaggeration notwithstanding, it is certainly true that punk

opened the eyes and sympathies of many young people to musical

and ethnic cultures which they may have otherwise remained
unaware of, or even hostile towards.

The Two-Tone movement

that emerged in punks wake in the late 70s and early 80s
might be said to represent a more thoroughgoing synthesis of
black and white cultures (and personnel.)

Given that the post-war consensus has now been replaced with a
different and arguably equally oppressive consensus, given
that (despite many gains in race relations) the concept of
multiculturalism in Britain is now widely regarded as under
threat, given the poor state of British Rock music which seems
unable to imagine itself other than as endless rehashings of
the progressive, punk and New Wave forms, given that punk
itself degenerated into little more than a uniform style and
stance, how legitimate is it to make radical claims about its
effects

on

the

national

culture

and

psyche?

Perhaps

its

significance lies, as Neil Spencer argues, in part, in the

fact that many cultural phenomena once regarded as beyond the
pale are now commonplace.

He writes:

As the most public face of the punk insurrection of 1976,

Lydons place in cultural history remains secure.

From

todays perspective, the spasms of outrage and delight

instigated by the Pistols are hard to understand.

Noisy

bands, weird clothes and swear words on prime-time TV

dont amount to much in the Eminem age, yet the surge of

creative energy punk released, and its defiance of the

stifling conformism of the times, changed Britain for
good, and for the better.

If the 1977 Jubilee means

anything now, its the Pistols God Save the Queen.

knighthoods here, then (27).

No

xvi

An argument can legitimately be made that the Sex Pistols

pushed the pop envelope so far that they effectively denied
following generations the opportunity to shock in any really
society-rocking fashion.
garde stone dead.

The Pistols killed the pop avant-

Robert Garnett concurs with this view,

arguing that
The

moment

recuperated,

of

punk

passed

reified

or

not

simply

processed

because

by

the

it

was

culture

industry, it passed because the space within which it

operated was closed down.

If punk was simply recuperated

it would not still affect people in the way it does.

After the space within which it existed was closed down,
things like Anarchy simply couldnt be made anymore,
and

nothing

like

it,

nothing

with

the

same

gravity,

nothing so abject has been made since (17-18).xvii

This space was a zone that was neither high nor low; it was
a space between art and pop.

It was probably closer to pop

than it was to anything else, but it was at the same time

something unprecedented. (Garnett 17) Although this lacuna
the only pop detournement worthy of this epithet(Garnett

21) was short lived, it has been, as Garnett implies, lasting

in its effects.

One such effect, he suggests, was the young

British art scene that reached its peak in the 1990s.

For

this

generation

inescapable

cultural

of

artists

fact,

part

punk
of

exists

what

as

defines

an
the

parameters of cultural practice; it is as important as

any recent movement in art.

Again like punk, much of the

work is deliberately low-tech, or is as suspicious of the

grandiose claims made for the art of the 80s as punk was
contemptuous
music.

of

the

70s

reverential

attitude

towards

But, like the best of punk, this aspect of the

new British art amounts to a meta-trash aesthetic, one

that is self-consciously about the low, the base and the
profane.
which

new

More than anything else, it is in the way in

British

art

has

opened

up

space

between

academic high art and the realm of popular culture that

it can be said to form part of the legacy of punk.

And,

as is the case with punk, its singularity can only be

appreciated if it is discussed alongside the categories
of high and low (18-19).

Despite the fact that there have been no moral panics quite
comparable with that generated by punk and the Pistols in the
late 1970s, punk has, nonetheless, spawned numerous musical
offspring.

These are generally considered to be the direct

offshoots of punk such as Oi!, anarcho-punk, the feminist Riot

Grrrl and, in America, Hardcore and Grunge.

Sabin proffers

these as evidence that there is a part of the tradition that

was never fully co-opted, which did develop an agenda, and
which is still thriving today. (Sabin, Intro 4)

However, it is not difficult to argue that such movements are

merely so much old wine in new bottles, and I would suggest
that the true legacy of punk is to be found in other, more
hybrid,

musical

and

cultural

forms,

which

combine

punks

neophilia with an attempt to create a culture and lifestyle

outside

of

and

perhaps

at

odds

with

the

mainstream,

and

dramatise the experiences of often marginalised and excluded

youth.

The ecstasy-fuelled Acid House/Rave culture, which took off in

Britain in the late 1980s and 1990s, is one such.

As Bill

Brewster

and

Frank

Broughton

suggest,

ecstasy

like

subcultures has a powerful ability to make an individual

feel connected to the wider group.
powerful

communal

feelings,

[]

there

But as well as these

was

still

room

for

individual interpretation. (396) Many of the social changes

attributed to ecstasy and Acid House culture reflect those of
the early days of punk.
It made people more tolerant of others, and as young men
dropped their defences and hit the dancefloor, and as
girls

and

boys

learned

to

appreciate

each

other

as

friends and not just alien opposites, it did much to

erode

the

Black

danced

straight.

famously
with

repressed
white

British

danced

with

character.
gay

[]

danced

with

And because it encouraged self-belief and

seemed to unlock possibilities, it launched a great many

people into creative careers (Brewster 396).

It

also

attracted

good

deal

of

fairly

hysterical

press

attention, and when Acid House moved beyond the confines of

clubs and into the English countryside, collecting along the
way a motley crew of anti-establishment groups such as new
age travellers, squatters and eco-warriors (many of whom had
been

or

coverage

still

considered

intensified.

themselves

Attention

punks,)

from

the

the

negative

authorities

was

likewise stepped up, with the moral panic reaching its peak in
1992 when 25,000 ravers converged on Castlemorton Common in
Worcestershire for a four-day party

reminiscent of earlier

hippie festivals, but with considerably louder music.xviii

response,

John

Majors

Conservative

government

passed

In
the

Criminal Justice Bill, a wide-sweeping set of laws which,

amongst other things, overturned the centuries-old right to
free assembly and greatly increased the powers of the police.
(Brewster 402) As Brewster and Broughton suggest:
The CJB was unique in that it was the first time the pop
music

of

prohibited.

youth

culture

had

been

specifically

Its famous legal definition of house and

techno as sounds wholly or predominantly characterized

by

the

emission

of

succession

of

repetitive

beats

showed just how seriously government saw the threat of

dance culture, with its combination of music, drugs and
hordes of lusty young people (402).xix

Like punk, the era of true rave culture was fairly shortlived, due not just to legislation but to other social and
cultural shifts, but its influence and effects again like
punk

have

been

much

longer

lasting

and

widespread.

Festivals, dance music and club culture continue to thrive and

proliferate.

One

notable

proliferation

and
is

more

contemporary

Grime.

Grime

is

example

of

such

predominantly

black

musical form and culture, though it is also very explicitly

British, as the lyrics Round here we say birds not bitches
from

The

Streets

makes

clear.

As

the

prominence

of

The

Streets alter ego, Mike Skinner, also suggests it

does not preclude an authentic white or other ethnicxx
identification,

and

draws

on

wide

range

of

influences

including Hip Hop,xxi Dancehall Reggae, Jungle and Drum and

Bass

(the

revolution.)
underground

latter

two

both

products

of

the

1980s

rave

It is largely performed and distributed via an

network

homemade mixtapes.

of

raves,

pirate

radio

stations

and

Grime shares with punk a birthplace on

the estates of London, an emphasis on the authenticity of

voice

and

subject

matter,

few

obvious

concessions

to

mainstream pop sensibilities, and a usage of whatever material

and media are cheaply available and to hand.

As Chantelle

Fiddy suggests:
Having

adopted

DIY

ethos,

grime

slowly

but

surely

continues to develop its own infrastructure and industry.

Its

also

why

grime

is

often

better

described

as

cultural movement embracing anyone and anything true to

the homegrown cause. (Roll Deep)

Grime has also generated a few minor moral panics, mostly

relating to the perceived association of gun and gang crime
with the culture.

This perhaps suggests that it has not

escaped from the more negative stereotypes of black, urban

culture more generally, but it is nonetheless making its own
positive contributions to multicultural, fusion culture.
grime

artists

publicly

support

Rock

Against

Many

Racisms

successor, Love Music, Hate Racism, and it has spawned a subgenre

known

as

Grindie,

characterised

by

collaborations

between indie rock acts such as Pete Doherty and The Rakes and
grime

producers

and

vocalists

such

as

Statik

and

Lethal

Bizzle.

In an article on grimes first superstar, the Mercury Music

Prize-winning Dizzee Rascal, Lloyd Bradley makes explicit

comparisons between grime and punk.

He suggests that Its

called grime for the same reason punk was dubbed punk:
in order to draw attention to its scuzzy street origins. (56)
Grime is punk for a multi-culti Sony Playstation generation,
but that would be punk as it started, when it still had a
sense of outrage, not punk as it soon became. (54) He
describes the music as sounding like
the noise pollution of its inner city environment.
Ringtones, video game bleeps and traffic noise replace
conventional musical sources [] with oral acrobatics
that defy the mundanity of the favoured subject matter:
life as it is lived on some of Londons bleakest council
estates (54).

However, Bradley also argues that grimes strong and authentic

roots in black culture differentiate it from punk and make it
less likely to be recuperated by the mainstream.
But comparisons with punk begin and end with the shared
DIY ethic because, whatever the cut of its trousers, punk
was white men with guitars, looking to distribute their
music widely and make money by touring.

It made sense to

the mainstream music business and was quickly

assimilated.

By contrast, grimes new underground

remains more self-contained than punk ever allowed itself

to be.

Pirate radio stations are central to this genuine

independence.

In essence, the scene is a 21st century

version of the sound system, the music medium that came

to Britain on the Empire Windrush (56).

Indeed, for grime artists to maintain credibility with their

grass-roots

audience,

it

is

crucial

that

perceived to sell out to the mainstream.

they

are

not

Such a perception

may, in part, explain the scenes current hostile attitude to

Lady Sovereign.

She is a white, female rapper from North

London, whose underground popularity in the UK has declined

sharply since she was signed by Jay-Z to Americas pre-eminent
hip hop record label, Def Jam.

This being as it may, the

Sov has done her bit to raise the profile of the young,
white,

working

classes

in

England.

Refusing

to

regard

accusations that she is a chav and the living embodiment of

the Vicky Pollard character from the comedy series Little
Britain as insults, she instead wears them as badges of honour
on her Adidas hoody.
political

life;

She has even made some forays into

objecting

to

the

demonisation

and

criminalisation of her favourite item of clothing, she has

even

petitioned

campaign.
her

Downing

Street

with

her

Save

the

Hoody

She has also acknowledged the influence of punk on

attitude

and

output,

and

makes

this

very

explicit

by

covering the Pistols song Pretty Vacant on her new album.

Likewise, rapper Akala features samples from Siouxsie and the
Banshees

and

The

Cure

on

his

recent

album,

whilst

Lethal

Bizzle mines those elements of punk most evidently influenced

by black music, performing versions of songs by The Ruts with

hardcore band The Gallows and sampling The Clashs cover of
Eddy Grants Police On My Back.

Punk

laid

the

groundwork

for

subcultures in a number of ways.

was

deliberate

aesthetics,

slap

declaring

in

the

the

development

of

later

As Andy Medhurst argues, it

face

generational

for

established

independence

pop

through

carnivalesque inversion of musical value (225). Whilst punk,

dance and urban music have been positively rapacious in their
ransacking of the archives, elements of past cultures are not
treated with the reverence afforded to
archaeological treasures but sampled and put to work in new
and surprising contexts.

Medhurst further suggests that punk

established that the medium was secondary to the message,

that popular culture could and indeed should be a vehicle
for social and cultural intervention.

Music, in other

words, was political no, more than that, it was a form

of politics itself, a politics that concretely engaged
with contemporary issues (226).

Dying ones hair pink, dancing all night in a field or wearing

a

hooded

sweatshirt

with

attitude

may

appear

fairly

insignificant political gestures, but they have often been

symptomatic and symbolic of more deep-rooted and wider social
discontent, and the attempts by the authorities to clamp down

on them through moral and legal frameworks suggests that they

are regarded as a significant threat by those in power.xxii

As

societies change, so must

their subcultures in order to be vital and relevant, a message
that punk made explicit throughout its short life.

Yet

(former)

members

of

subcultures

are

also

curiously

nostalgic for their heydays, even if back in the day was

only five years ago.

As Andy Medhurst acknowledges, there is

a particular irony in nostalgia for

a discourse as rabidly unsentimental as punk.

A central

thread in punks semiotic and ideological repertoires was

its scorched-earth, year-zero attitude to tradition and
the

past

[]

whereas

nostalgia

often

springs

from

an

attempt to seek consolation and security in times gone by

(224).

Nostalgia is, as many commentators have observed, a consistent

presence

in

British

condemned out of hand.

culture,

but

is

perhaps

not

to

be

As David Lowenthal observes, The view

of nostalgia as a self-serving, chauvinist, right-wing version

of

the

past

foisted

by

the

privileged

and

propertied

[]

neglects half the facts; (27) and not simply the fact that
the Left is equally prone to promoting romantic versions of
the past.

Nostalgia can be a critical and positive engagement

with the past and does not necessarily imply a despairing

rejection of the present. (28) Rather, as Roger Rosenblatt

suggests, nostalgists desire to get out of modernity without
leaving it altogether; we want to relive those thrilling days
of yesteryear, but only because we are absolutely assured that
those days are out of reach. (Lowenthal 28)

In this vein,

Jon Savage reflected in 1981 that

I still buy records, but its like it used to be: they
fill in various gaps, rather than occupy the centre of my
life these days, I find sex, video and history much
more interesting.

As for punk rock, I dont regret it at

all, although I do wonder occasionally.

I wouldnt do it again.
If

at

all,

exciting

its

period,

remembered
which

for

as

all

blurred,

frantic,

its

paraded

nihilism,

negativity and stupidity actually held out hope as some

reaffirmation

of

the

human

spirit

in

this

collapsing

society (Savage, Time 131).

Medhurst recalls his punk days as

a time of strongly drawn boundaries, a time when people
took sides [] Punk happened to me at the same time as a
number of major changes in my life [], indeed it has
become

intimately

bound

up

with

them

through

the

processes of memory, to the extent where the opening bars

of

record

can

plunge

me

back

directly

feelings of thrilling transition. (228)

into

those

As Lowenthal suggests, nostalgia

mainly

envisage[s]a

time

when

folk

did

not

feel

fragmented, when doubt was either absent or patent, when

thought

fused

with

action,

when

aspiration

consummation, when life was wholehearted;

past

that

was

unified

and

in short, a

comprehensible,

incoherent, divided present.

achieved

unlike

the

Significantly, one thing

absent from this imagined past is nostalgia no one then

looked back in yearning or for succour (29).

Nostalgia for subcultural activity, then, might be interpreted

as

nostalgia

for

lack

of

nostalgia;

nostalgia

for

youthfulness.

Thus, even attempts to recapture and recreate the glories of

subcultures past (such as performances by reformed punk bands
and

Old

Skool

raves)

may

be

considered

as

not

entirely

conservative and reactionary cultural events, but attempts to

recapture a little magic in otherwise mundane (adult) lives.
As Patrick Wright suggests:
At the vernacular level, the unique gains in importance
and meaning with the rationalisation and
disenchantment of everyday life; and despite the many
problems
history

implicit
there

is

in
at

the
least

institutional
the

restaging

possibility

that

of
real

cultural

creation

mourning

can

albeit

occur

in

of

the

kind

public

connected

to

appropriation

of

historical remains (80).

Although
perhaps

opportunities
precluded

subcultures

more

in

for
such

genuinely

radical

circumstances,

generally)

can

activity

punk

remain

an

(and

are
past

active,

inspirational part of Englands cultural heritage, and not

merely a folly in the garden of a stately pile.
Works Cited

Bradley, Lloyd.
2004:

London Calling MOJO

Issue 132 November

54-58

Brewster, Bill, & Frank Broughton. Last Night A DJ Saved My

Life: The history of the disc jockey. London: Headline, 1999.

Burgess, Paul, & Alan Parker. Satellite Sex Pistols: A book of

memorabilia, locations, photography and fashion. London:
Abstract Sounds Publishing, 1999.

Carpenter, Humphrey. That Was Satire That Was: The Satire Boom
of the 1960s. London: Phoenix, 2000.

Colegrave, Stephen, & Chris Sullivan. Punk: A Life Apart.

London: Cassell & Co., 2001.

Garnett, Robert.

To low to be low: Art pop and the Sex

Pistols. Punk Rock: So What? Ed. Roger Sabin. London:

Routledge, 1999.

17-30

Hebdige, Dick, Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London:

Routledge, 1991.

Jacobs, Jane M. Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the city.

London: Routledge, 1996.

Lerner, Laurence. The Uses of Nostalgia: Studies in Pastoral

Poetry. London: Chatto & Windus, 1972.

Lowenthal, David. Nostalgia tells it like it wasnt. The

imagined Past: history and nostalgia, Eds. Christopher Shaw &
Malcolm Chase. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989.
18-32

Lydon, John, with Keith & Kent Zimmerman. Rotten: No Irish, No

Blacks, No Dogs: The Authorized Autobiography Johnny Rotten of
the Sex Pistols. London: Plexus Publishing, 2003.

McKay, George.

Im so bored with the USA: The punk in

cyberpunk. Punk Rock: So What? Ed. Roger Sabin. London:

Routledge, 1999.

49-67

McLaren, Malcolm. Afterword. Great Interviews of the 20th

Century: Sex Pistols: Bill Grundy 1976. London: Guardian News
& Media, 2007. 13-15

McNeil, Legs & Gillian McCain. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored
History of Punk. London: Abacus, London, 2002.

Medhurst, Andy. What did I get?: Punk, memory and

autobiography. Punk Rock: So What? Ed. Roger Sabin. London:
Routledge, 1999.

219-231

Murphy, Scott. Collector or Sad Bastard. Pistols at the

Palace Official Souvenir Magazine. 2002.

Queenan, Joe.

25

Meltdown Expected. The Guardian 9 August

2007.

Roll Deep presents Grimey: Vol. 1 CD Compilation, London: DMC

Publising Ltd., 2006.

Sabin, Roger.

Introduction. Punk Rock: So What? Ed. Roger

Sabin. London: Routledge, 1999.

Sabin, Roger.

1-13

I wont let that dago by: Rethinking punk

and racism. Punk Rock: So What? Ed. Roger Sabin. London:

Routledge, 1999.

199-218

Savage, Jon, Englands Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock,

London:Faber & Faber, 2001.

Savage, Jon, Time Travel: From the Sex Pistols to Nirvana:

Pop, Media and Sexuality, 1977-96. London: Vintage, 1997.

Sinker, Mark. Concrete, so as to self-destruct: The etiquette

of punk, in habits, rules, values and dilemmas.
Punk Rock: So What? Ed. Roger Sabin. London: Routledge, 1999.
120-139

Spencer, Neil. Johnny, be good. The Observer

1 February

2004: 27

Weight, Richard. Patriots: National Identity in Britain 19402000. London: Pan Macmillan, 2003.

Wright, Patrick. On Living in an Old Country: The National

Past in Contemporary Britain. London: Verso, 1985.

Nevertheless, these alternative national/ethnic identities

were clearly of considerable personal importance to Lydon and

McLaren, and may have both aggravated a sense of the

oppressiveness of the English Establishment and facilitated
the critical perspective of the outsider.

McLaren recalled

that:
My grandmother had impressed on me at an early age that
the English were a nation of liars and the royal family
its symbol.

England was a country whose survival, she

thought, depended on how well they practised the culture

of deception.

[]

I opened my first store, Let It Rock,

with the sole purpose of smashing the English culture of

deception.

[]

I gathered my art school friends to help

me plot the downfall of this tired and fake culture.

I needed now was a record company.
of choice.

All

EMI became my label

It was English through and through.

(McLaren

13-14)
ii

That England is taken to be a synecdoche for Britain as a

whole, and indeed London for England is, perhaps ironically, a

familiar criticism of Establishment portrayals of the nation.
Indeed, this essay could, arguably, be titled the London-ness
of English Punk.

While I accept that this might reflect also

my own regionalist prejudices, and in no way seek to deny the

significance of the contributions of the Buzzcocks et al, it
is also true that punk and London have become closely
associated in the public imagination.

The myths of the Kings

Road and the 100 Club are testament to this, as is the

souvenir industry that, for a couple of decades at least,

produced London postcards adorned with photographs of colorful
punks, and punk dollies which were part of a series that also
included Tower of London Beefeaters and British Bobbies.
(Medhurst 229)

iii

Lydon writes:
I loved history [at school] because I dont believe any
of it.

I have a good memory for it, but since Ive seen

my own musical history buggered up so professionally, I

really cant believe anything about anyone else.

In

twelve years the media changed me into God knows what for
their own benefit.

So what on earth have they done with

Napoleon and the rest?

Any kind of history you read is

basically the winning side telling you the others were

bad.
iv

(Lydon 16)

It was for this reason, among others, that many British

punks deemed it significant that Presley died in their year,

1977. (McKay 57)
It might be reasonably objected at this point that the
Pistols, much as they might wish to deny it, clearly were
influenced by the antecedent American punk scene.

McLaren and

the band admitted the influence of the New York Dolls and Iggy
and the Stooges particularly, but this influence was
translated into something else altogether that was appropriate

to, and shaped by the English context.

This adaptation of

their musical subculture was greeted by American punks with,

by turns, resentment, horror, delight and resignation.

Legs

McNeil grumbled, apropos of the Pistols US tour and the

accompanying media hysteria:
So it was like, Hey, if you want to start your own
youth movement, fine, but this ones already taken.
But the answer that came back was, Oh, you wouldnt
understand.

Punk started in England.

You know, everyone

is on the dole there, they really have something to

complain about.

Punk is really about class warfare and

economic blah, blah, blah.

(McNeil 407)

A variety of accounts, from both sides of the Atlantic, stress

that what distinguished English from US punk was the
sociological emphasis of the former.

Whilst the latter was

largely content to remain an underground artistic movement, in

the UK punk was regarded as an opportunity to express
political, and not merely aesthetic dissent.

Mary Harron

recalled that:
You could really feel the world moving and shaking that
autumn of 1976 in London.

I felt that what we had done

as a joke in New York had been taken for real in England

by a younger and more violent audience.

And that

somehow, in the translation, it had changed, it had

sparked something different. (McNeil 303)

See Peter Mandler, The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home 1997

for a full account and critical analysis of this history

vi

If we consider the two films about punk discussed here

within this schemata, it could be argued that Jarman offers a

Utopian vision of punk whilst Temples is Edenic.

This might

at first appear to be a counterintuitive classification as

Jubilee presents the Tudor past as tranquil and idyllic, and
the present as violent and chaotic.

However, Jarman was

filming at a time when punk could still be conceived of as an

active movement alive with possibilities, whereas Temple
presents it rather as an historical golden age; the fall
from grace emphasised by the films concentration on the
various tragedies that ultimately beset the band.
vii

In early 2004 Lydon was a contestant on the ITV reality

television show, Im A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, in which

personalities face a number of (usually unpleasant) challenges
whilst living rough in the Australian rain forest for a
number of weeks.
viii

As Hebdige observes:
Official reactions to the punk subculture betrayed all
the classic symptoms of a moral panic.

Concerts were

cancelled; clergymen, politicians and pundits unanimously

denounced the degeneracy of youth.

Among the choicer

reactions, Marcus Lipton, the late M.P. for Lambeth

North, declared: If pop music is going to be used to

destroy our established institutions, then it ought to be

destroyed first. Bernard Brook-Partridge, M.P. for
Havering-Romford, stormed, I think the Sex Pistols are
absolutely bloody revolting.

I think their whole

attitude is calculated to incite people to misbehaviour.

It is a deliberate incitement to anti-social behaviour
and conduct (quoted in New Musical Express, 15 July
1977). (158)
ix

As with punk, much of protagonist Jimmy Porters fury in

John Osbornes Look Back in Anger is directed not just at his

elders and betters but also at his own disillusionment and
that of his generation: Nobody thinks, nobody cares.

No

beliefs, no convictions and no enthusiasm. (Carpenter 10)

John Lydons nihilistic persona finds echoes also in Arthur
Seaton, the hero of Alan Sillitoes Saturday Night and Sunday
Morning (1958).

Seaton declares himself beyond morality:

Thats what all those looney laws are for, yer know: to be
broken by blokes like me. (Carpenter 11)
x

Likewise, one element of Beyond the Fringe, that appeared to

genuinely outrage audiences was a sketch titled The Aftermyth

of War.

This mocked such 1950s Second World War films such

as The Dambusters and Reach for the Sky (the film biography of
Douglas Bader) and, in doing so, laughed at all the clichs
about the war itself. (Carpenter 113)

As with punk, the

targets of such attacks were not war veterans themselves, but

the myths spun around them and deployed to ultimately

reactionary and repressive (if comforting) ends.

As with punk

also, those who were offended by or criticised these attempts

to puncture complacent fantasies seemed unable or unwilling to
appreciate this subtle but crucial difference.
xi

Despite the fact that the song appears to be a fairly

explicit attack on a Britain gripped by an unhealthy

nostalgia, given that it was released in 1979 after Margaret
Thatcher had taken office, after Sid and Nancy were dead,
after punk was dead (Queenan) it might also be interpreted as
a work of nostalgia for the early, vital years of punk.
xii

It is significant that the metaphor of war was also

deployed in a number of popular reggae songs of the time; for

example, War Ina Babylon by Max Romeo, Two Sevens Clash by
Culture (reputedly the inspiration for The Clashs name,) and
Under Heavy Manners by Prince Far I, a critique of Jamaican
Premier Michael Manleys draconian law enforcement strategies.
The Clash stencilled the phrase on to their stage outfits,
both to suggest solidarity with the Rastafarians and that they
too were the victims of an oppressive state apparatus.
xiii

This is made very explicit by the lyrics to The Clash song

White Riot: Black man gotta lot a problems, But they dont
mind throwing a brick.
teach you to be thick.

White people go to school, Where they

xiv

Sabin notes that bhangra, the closest Asian equivalent to

reggae, was largely ignored by both punk and Rock Against

Racism in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and argues that
Asian music did not make an impression on the UK music scene
until the appearance of a number of indie bands with Asian
members most notably Cornershop and Echobelly in the 1990s.
Although Asian music is still poorly represented in the charts
and mainstream music broadcasting relative to record sales
(due, to some extent, to the majority of Asian music being
sold outside of the mainstream chart return retail sector)
and live audiences, arguably both the dance and UK Underground
urban music scenes have embraced Asian music to a much greater
extent than rock circles in recent decades.

The popularity of

DJs such as Bobby Friction and Nihal (who have their own show
on BBC Radio 1) and bands and producers such as Asian Dub
Foundation and Rishi Rich have facilitated a much wider
appreciation of desi beats and the production of some
genuinely fusion musical projects.

Such shifts have

significantly coincided with a radicalisation of identity

and politics amongst second and third generation British
Asians.

Given this, we might accuse Sabin of both expecting

too much of punk and a degree of ahistoricism, given that

Asian culture was, in the 1970s, both lacking a political
dimension and largely hidden from, and thus unavailable to
white communities.

xv

For example, reggae band Exodus were violently heckled when

they played at the Wigan Casino.

xvi

Weight concurs, arguing that the Jubilee had little lasting

effect on Britishness because Unlike the coronation of 1953

[or punk], the Jubilee offered no coherent vision of who the
British were or what direction they should take. (551)
xvii

I would myself go so far as to argue that the Sex Pistols

represented the last gasp of the Modernist avant-garde.

xviii

Rave culture shares with reggae an emphasis on the sound

system as a key part of a mobile and D-I-Y approach to

staging music events.

Such systems and in particular the

enormous bass bin speakers - also boast the additional

subversive advantage of facilitating the creation of
oppositional aural places within any given space and
consequently attracting the disapproval of straights and the
authorities.
xix

The alarmist reaction to Castlemorton and rave culture more

generally resemble the similarly horrified responses to

incursions of the mob (i.e. the urban proletariat in the
guise of ramblers, hikers and day-trippers) into the English
countryside earlier in the twentieth century.

See both Wright

and Raymond Williams The Country and the City 1975 for fuller
accounts of these phenomena.
xx

The English-Chinese artist Wong is symptomatic of such

diversity.

The lyrics of and video for his song Whos That

Boy flag up his ethnicity whilst having fun with stereotypes

of Chinese culture (Kung Fu movies) and of first-generation
Chinese immigrants (selling counterfeit DVDs on street
corners) but is still firmly rooted in the context of London
(both its housing estates and its musical cultures.)
xxi

In this context, DJ and film-maker Don Letts claim that

Hip-hop is black punk rock is not insignificant (Colegrave

364)
xxii

The hoodie has arguably replaced the safety pin as the

definitive symbol of delinquent youth and, as such, has found

itself the recipient of negative attention and sometimes
attempts at legislation from media, politicians and local
authorities.

The term hoodie has now become a synecdoche

for the juvenile delinquent.