Matthew Worley

'No Feelings', 'No Fun', 'No Future'. The years 1976 to 1984 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. Rejecting both tired clichés and nostalgic myths, Matthew Worley provides the definitive account of how punk was constructed and utilised from the ground up. He takes youth culture seriously as a way of understanding history, demonstrating how punk not only reflected but directly impacted social and political history through its unique ability to provoke, disrupt and subvert. This revised and updated edition marks fifty years since the birth of punk and includes a new foreword from acclaimed music journalist, Paul Morley. It remains the foremost history of British punk.

Whether accompanying a march, a sit-in, or a confrontation with police, songs and protest are inextricably linked. As a tool for political activism, the protest song spells out the issues at the heart of each cause. Over a surprisingly long history, it has been used to spread ideas, inspire political imagination, and motivate political action.The protest song is - and has always been - a form of political oratory as vital to political representation as it is to performance. Investigating five centuries of English history, Our Subversive Voice establishes that the protest song is not merely the preserve of singer-songwriters; it is a mode of political communication that has been used to confront many systems of oppression across its many genres, from street ballads to art song, grime to hymns, and music hall to punk. Our Subversive Voice traces the history of the protest song, examines its rhetorical forms, and explores the conditions of its genesis. It recounts how these songs have addressed discrimination and inequality, exploitation and the environment, and immigration and identity, and how institutions and organizations have sought both to facilitate and to suppress them. Drawing on a large and diverse corpus of songwriters, this book argues that song does more than accompany protest: it choreographs and communicates it.The protest song, Our Subversive Voice shows, is an enduring, affecting, and effective means of expression and an essential element in understanding the drive to create political change, in the past and for the future.

Zerox Machine is an immersive journey through the vibrant history of British punk and its associated fanzines from 1976 to 1988. Drawing on an extensive range of previously unpublished materials sourced from private collections across the UK, Matthew Worley describes and analyses this transformative era, providing an intimate glimpse into the hopes and anxieties that shaped a generation.Far more than a showcase of covers, this book examines the fanzines themselves, offering a rich tapestry of first-hand accounts, personal stories and subcultural reflections. Through meticulous research and insightful analysis, Matthew Worley captures the spirit and essence of British youth culture, not only shedding new light on a pivotal movement in music history but crafting a unique alternative history of Britain in the 1970s and ’80s.

A Communist Party wanted, a party of action that will wage class war up to the point of revolution, rejecting all compromise and truck with capitalist reform seeking to rally the working class to the standard of International Communism'. Class against Class is the first major study of the Communist Party of Great Britain between the wars when it adopted the militant strategy of 'class against class, in its struggle to be the effective alternative to both the Labour Party and TUC and win the minds and hearts of the British working class. But the adoption of the 'New Line' of class struggle in 1929 and an end to cooperation with other leftwing parties seen as obedience to Moscow dictate resulted in loss of membership and much of the support and sympathy from within the wider labour movement it had gained during the General Strike of 1926. This revisionary study, based on newly unearthed material from the Communist Party's Manchester archive shows that far from losing influence and being driven to the brink of collapse, the CPGB consolidated its position as leader of the unemployed, led national hunger marches, organized social and cultural events, including party schools, theatre and film, while membership grew and the party developed as an effective and valued body in the pantheon of leftwing British politics.

'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.

This is the first full-length study of the organization that incubated Britain's most provocative and successful fascist movement. Exploring Sir Oswald Mosley's secession from Labour, his evolving politics and his eventual embrace of fascism, this book examines the process by which he transformed from Labour politician to fascist.

The period between the wars was a watershed for the Labour Party as it transformed from a failed alternative to the Conservatives to a majority party of government. After a slow build-up, it went on to win a landslide victory that brought in the Attlee government of 1945. Labour inside the Gate is the first study dedicated to this period in Labour's development. In this comprehensive history, Worley examines the parliamentary Labour Party and the growing network of constituency parties. He explores Labour's shifting identity at a national and local level and the evolution of a party policy that would drive the historic Attlee government into office.