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Riotous Assembly: British Punk’s Cultural Diaspora in the Summer of ’81

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A European Youth Revolt

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements ((PSHSM))

Abstract

Britain’s newspaper headlines made for stark reading in July 1981.1 As a series of riots broke out across the country’s inner-cities, The Sun led with reports of ‘Race Fury’ and ‘Mob Rule’, opening up to provide daily updates of ‘Burning Britain’ as the month drew on.2 The Daily Mail, keen as always to pander a prejudice, described the disorder as a ‘Black War on Police’, bemoaning years of ‘sparing the rod’ and quoting those who blamed the riots on a ‘vociferous immigration lobby’ that sought ‘excuses all the time for the excesses of the blacks’.3 The Daily Express wrote of a ‘permissive whirlwind’ wreaking havoc; the Daily Mirror combined coverage of ‘Riot Mobs’ with condemnation of a Tory government that failed to recognize ‘real, deep and dangerous problems’ rooted in housing, education and unemployment.4 Britain was ‘close to anarchy’, the Mirror insisted, as it juxtaposed images of battered police and broken windows with a message to Margaret Thatcher: ‘Save Our Cities’.5

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Notes

  1. See, for example, C. Brooker (1980) The Seventies: Portrait of a Decade (London: Allen Lane);

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  2. P. Whitehead (1985) The Writing on the Wall: Britain in the Seventies (London: Michael Joseph);

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  3. D. Sandbrook (2011) State of Emergency: The Way We Were: Britain, 1970–74 (London: Penguin); idem. (2012) Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974–79 (London: Allen Lane). For interesting reassessments of the period, see N. Tiratsoo (1997) ‘“You’ve Never Had It so Bad”: Britain in the 1970s’ in idem. (ed.) From Blitz to Blair: A New History of Britain since the 1970s (London: Weidenfield & Nicolson), pp. 163–90; C. Hay (2010) ‘Chronicles of a Death Foretold: The Winter of Discontent and Construction of the Crisis of British Keynesian’ Parliamentary Affairs, vol. 63, no. 3, 446–70;

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  6. For two differing styles of overview, see B. Harrison (2010) Finding a Role? The United Kingdom, 1970–1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press);

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  8. The Scarman Report, commissioned in response to the Brixton riots of April 1981 that presaged the wider summer disturbances, recognized the police as carrying ‘responsibility for the outbreak of disorder’, citing prejudice and a failure to engage in community relations as integral to the sense of distrust that permeated estates up and down the country. Lord Scarman (1982) The Scarman Report: The Brixton Disorders, 10–12 April 1981 (London: Pelican), pp. 118–19.

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  16. M. Worley (2014) ‘Oi! Oi! Oi!: Class, Locality and British Punk’ Twentieth Century British History, vol. 24, no. 4, 606–34.

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  20. S. Alexander Reed (2013) Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

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  21. See J. Robb (2009) Death to Trad Rock (London: Cherry Red).

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© 2016 Matthew Worley

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Worley, M. (2016). Riotous Assembly: British Punk’s Cultural Diaspora in the Summer of ’81. In: Andresen, K., van der Steen, B. (eds) A European Youth Revolt. Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-56570-9_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-56570-9_15

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-55230-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-56570-9

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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