The youth of Great Britain today has lost its voice.
And yet, we’ve certainly got plenty to be shouting about – unemployment, recession, poverty, disillusionment with politicians, with education, with the older generations. We just seem to have forgotten that fighting with our words is far more effective than fighting with our fists. The recent August riots have proved as much. Even the student protests, which should have been a pinnacle of academic debate and reasoning, soon spiraled into violence for many. In short, we’re fast losing our faith in reasoned political protest.
Young people in the 1970s and 80s were no strangers to such issues. By 1975, the country was deep in recession and faced vast youth unemployment; public spending had risen to 45% of the national income with little improvement in living conditions. The IRA had begun its mainland bombing campaign, and the optimism of the sixties was fading fast. It’s not too great a stretch of the imagination to apply these issues to the current climate, with public spending as a percentage of the national income predicted to rise to 63% by 2030, youth employment at its lowest in twenty years, tripled tuition fees and cuts, in huge numbers, of welfare programmes. Indeed the circumstances (if not the extent) of the August riots may be likened to riots similarly caused by perceived police brutality in Birmingham, Liverpool, Tottenham and Brixton in the 1980s. We’re not the first generation to have experienced these issues and we certainly won’t be the last.
In 1970s and 1980s Britain, however, there existed a force that united and educated young people, and that drew them out of their apathy.
This force was punk music.
Bands from the Clash to the Sex Pistols crafted a kind of music that spoke not just about the typical broken hearts but also had a real political voice. Its greatest weapon, which is now its greatest criticism, was its simplicity. In one sense, the bands proved fairly formulaic – a bassist, a guitarist, a drummer and a vocalist. The songs were simplistic, primarily written in 4/4, and often consisting of just four chords. Indeed many now comment that the lead vocalists couldn’t really sing.
But at least they had something to say!
Punk was the political weapon of a generation. Joe Strummer, the lead singer of the Clash, famously stated that:
“We’re anti-fascist, we’re anti-violence, we’re anti-racist and we’re procreative. We’re against ignorance […] I don’t have to get drunk every night and go around kicking people and smashing up phone boxes […] We’re dealing with subjects we really believe to matter. We’re hoping to educate any kid who comes to listen to us.”
Punk brought about political education and participation, playing a part in the protests against the poll tax and nuclear power, and not in the kind of way illustrated in the recent riots. It encouraged people to be individuals, to fight for what they believed in, and to not be tied down by society’s expectations of their futures. It gave a lost generation hope.
Indeed young people today are seeing their futures becoming more uncertain. In some situations the only certainty that university students can find in their futures is years of working hard to pay off astronomical student debts. This is hardly a bright image for the future.
Given the current political climate, what I want to know is: where are the musicians who are going to stand up for us?
Perhaps the best answer to ‘modern’ punk comes in the form of bands like Green Day, whose ‘American Idiot’ harks back to the Clash’s ‘I’m so bored with the USA’, and NOFX’s take on Martin Niemöller’s ‘First they came…’ in their song ‘Re-gaining Unconsciousness’. In light of these examples, however, perhaps my question needs rephrasing: where are the British musicians who are going to stand up for us? The answer, sadly, seems to be that they’re buried in your dad’s dusty old record collection – the classic punk artists: the Damned, the Clash, the Sex Pistols, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Buzzcocks. A far cry from the artists of today’s charts: JLS, Cher Lloyd, Katy Perry, Rihanna, and their songs of heartbreak and parties.
Punk stood up for those people who found themselves without a voice. It united a generation against injustice. It gave them involvement instead of indifference, passion instead of anger.
In the absence of punk-politics in modern day music, brush the dust off your dad’s record collection and have a listen. You’ll certainly find some gem, and you never know, you might even find your voice, and perhaps a little hope.
Pippa Bailey
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