Anarcho-Punk: Music And Resistance in London 1977-1988

Anarcho-Punk: Music And Resistance in London 1977-1988 by David Insurrection

Published: Dec 2024 by Earth Island

Paperback ISBN: 9781916864443
Ebook ISBN: 9781916864450
208 pages, colour

In this easy to read volume, David Insurrection takes you on a virtual tour of spots in London that formed part of the anarcho-punk counter-cultural landscape in the 1980s.

This book is the result of one man’s mission to seek out the buildings that had hosted gigs, band members, zine writers and organisers in the heady days when anarcho-punks numbered enough to Stop The City. A few of the sites’ previous history could lend one to consider a psycho-geographical influence but, in truth, the draw was simply that a house, shop, fire station or office block was empty and could be put to better use.

At times this book follows a narrative flow or geographic focus, but it doesn’t always, jumping about a bit. However, when you have worked your way through it once you can dip back in to focus on individual sites, activities or themes. I guess you could do this from the outset using the Index as your guide but I think it’s worth giving it a try in the order David intended.

One of the intentions David sets out in the introduction is that you can use this as a guidebook if you want to do a DIY tour of places that once were (and in a few rare instances still are) venues, squats, housing co-ops, homes and organising spaces inhabited by London’s thriving anarcho-punk community in the 1980s. Photos and/or descriptions give their current usage as antique showrooms or restaurants alongside the all too inevitable offices and estate agents in now clinical, soulless streets. These are places people lived in and created their art as well as where they played. Some spaces continued to be used for decades after, and while anarcho-punks didn’t disappear continuing to organise and make noise to this day, David’s choice of 1988 is a reflection of a general change of direction in musical style to more extreme sounds.

The freedom that people had to be creative, and the intersection with gothdom, hippies, protest movements, industrial noise pioneers and general misfits make for some interesting guest appearances around the blurry edges. Alongside the obvious names like Crass, Conflict, The Mob, Zounds, Flux Of Pink Indians, Rubella Ballet, Hagar The Womb et al, expect mentions of the British Black Panthers (Linton Kwezi Johnson, Darcus Howe, Olive Morris and more) Throbbing Gristle, Coil, Nik Turner’s Inner City Unit, The Cult, Bjork and My Bloody Valentine. Some of this will be old news or obvious to people knowing the squatter past of some now famous people but for others, this will be news. (E.g. I found about the 121 Centre in Brixton’s former role as a Black Panther bookshop from Darcus Howe himself in the 1990s when he popped his head around the door during a punk gig to see his old haunt).

There are some nice anecdotes, ranging from how the oldest building in Hackney was being saved by squatters. Now looked after by the National Trust, to how the Hackney Hell Crew got their name. A few tales smash the misty eyed reminiscence and remind you that these were also dangerous times, not least at the hands of the cops. The tension that existed between older anarchists and the new wave of punks, some of whom were not necessarily anarchists is presented in a quote from Albert Meltzer about the Wapping Autonomy Centre “In the excitement of the first gig where they could do as they liked, they did as they liked and wrecked the place. Loss of club, loss of money, loss of effort. End of story.” The irony is that anarcho-punk arguably saved anarchism from dying out as a social movement, and after these teething troubles was responsible for a wave of direct action on the streets and in the fields.

Anarcho-Punk Music And Resistance in London is well researched and, most importantly in these days of academic tomes, easy to read.  From the introduction and foreword, and having seen some of his field reports on Facebook, I know that David has visited every location mentioned in the book. Given his home base in Scotland, this has involved a series of considerable expeditions. While it acts as a gazetteer, it is conversational rather than archival. Throughout the book, David uses the voices of some participants to illustrate events, breathing life into what could otherwise be a dry walk around a bunch of random buildings across the capital. It was what went on between people within the walls rather than the bricks and mortar themselves that made these places special.

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Available from Earth Island and good bookshops

Words by Nathan Brown. You can read more from Nathan on his Louder Than War archive over here.