Key concepts:

● Cultural resistance
● Cultural hegemony
● Subcultural theory

Context:
● Race Relations
● Thatcher’s Britain

Case Studies:
● Rock Against Racism
● Rock Against Sexism

Resistance and political protest:

• laws don’t necessarily equal change
• change is much more likely through culture- which is normally more subtle and isn’t always riots and big gestures.
• everyday people
• Overt political protest is uncommon. When it occurs, it often results in a backlash.- doesn’t change public’s opinion

Cultural hegemony: (hegemony – dominant)

Antonio Gramsci: Italian philosopher writing in the 1930s

Cultural hegemony functions by framing the ideologies of the dominant social group as the only legitimate
ideology.
● The ideologies of the dominant group are expressed and maintained through its economic, political, moral,
and social institutions (like the education system and the media).
● These institutions socialise people into accepting the norms, values and beliefs of the dominant social
group.
● As a result, oppressed groups believe that the social and economic conditions of society are natural and
inevitable, rather than created by the dominant group.

Thatcher’s Britain:

• Prime Minister 1979-90
• Militant campaigner for middle class interests
• Extreme attitude towards immigration
• British Nationality Act 1981: introduced a series of increasingly strict immigration procedure and prevented Asian people from entering Britain

British national identity
could be swamped by people with different
culture’ – 1978 Interview

‘firm immigration control
for the future is essential if we are to achieve
good community relations’ – Conservative Manifesto

Subculture:

Working-class youth culture
● Unified by shared tastes in style, music and ideology
● A solution to collectively experienced problems
● A form of resistance to cultural hegemony

Teddy Boys: 1950/60s
● Responding to: post-war social changes
● Music: influenced by American rock n roll
● Style: upper-class Edwardian fashion
(narrow trousers, lappelled jackets), fused
with an element of rebelliousness in the form
of exaggerated hairstyles and shoes (quiffs
and creepers)

Skinheads: 1960s
● Responding to: social alienation.
● Rejected: late 50s conservatism,
as well as the ‘peace and love’
middle class hippy movement of
60s
● Expression of: working class
pride
● Music: West indian music (ska,
rocksteady, reggae)
● Style: shaven heads, Dr Marten
boots, braces, shirts, and cropped
trousers
● Politics: Original skinheads were
anti-racist, however the movement
quickly polarised

Punk: 1970s
● A Reaction to:
● 1) Capitalist middle class culture
that has achieved dominance and
legitimacy (hegemony)
● 2) Their alienation from the adult
working class culture of their
parents and grandparents
● 3) The social, political and
economic crisis of the mid1970s,
resulting in high youth
unemployment
● Values: anti-establishment,
emphasis on individual freedom,
on doing it yourself.
● Fashion: emphasised ugliness,
shock value, irony. Used items like
safety pins, ripped shirts, chains.
● Music: often self-produced and
independently distributed, the
music is loud and aggressive, with
lyrics expressing anti-establishment views and working
class concerns.

Rude Boys: 1960s-80s
● Music: listened to 1960s Jamaican ska
and 1970s roots reggae. Lyrics about
oppression and poverty articulated their
own experience. Also influenced by the
anti-establishment ethic of 1970s punk.
● Style: influenced by Jamaican
Rastafarianism and also British working
class fashion. Focus on dressing ‘sharp’

• suits, shiny shoes, hats.
  ● Reacting against: oppression from the
  state, police, and racist thugs. Also
  against the ‘peace and love’ aspect of
  the rasta culture. Instead, emphasised
  self-confidence

Race relations:

Bringing race into the picture in the 1980s, Paul Gilroy
highlighted how black youth cultures represented
cultural solutions to collectively experienced problems
of racism and poverty

Post war British Race Relations:

• After WWII, Britain faced a mass labour shortage which lead to the migration of half a million people from the Caribbean (the Windrush generation 1950s-70s) searching for jobs
• However, they faced severe discrimination which made it difficult for them to find employment and housing
• During the 1970s and 80s, the children of the Wind Rush Generation were reaching adulthood, but found it difficult to find employment due to having faced the same prejudice their parents did – the difference was that they were willing to resist this racism

Racism from the state/police:

• A clash between the police and black youth
• police generated the idea that black people were criminals – more likely to steal, use drugs, start fights etc
• Black community targeted by SUS Laws –  a stop and search law that permitted a police officer to stop, search and potentially arrest people on suspicion
• New Cross Fire 1981 – fire started by racist arsonist, killing 13 black people, whose charges were completely dismissed

Racism from Far Right Groups- NF:

Racism from Far-Right Groups: The NF
● The National Front was a far-right group
● Advocated the an end to immigration and the
repatriation of non-white Britons.
● Blamed immigration for the decline in employment,
housing and welfare.
● In the 1970s, the NF gained the support of
disillusioned white youth
● Racial attacks, violence and intimidation

Black Music Resistance:

• Black music offers a means of articulating oppression and challenging what Gilroy has termed ‘the capitalist system of racial exploitation and domination
• The lyrics of many reggae songs revolve around the black experience, history, culture and consciousness of economic and social deprivation as well as criticising the the continuing enslavement of racist ideology

Rock Against Racism 1976-82

• RAR campaign fought for the eradication of racism in the music industry against the rise of fascism among white working class youths
• People believed they could prevent their audiences from being prejudice by the messages they put across in their music
• RAR took advantage of the emerging subcultures who had similar anti-establishment ideologies as well as provided many different musical forms to which the campaign could project their anti-racist politics
• RAR organised hundreds of musical events which united white bands with black bands – it was highly successful in shining a light on multiculturalism and unity
• RAR’s fusion of youth culture and politics has been widely celebrated for making politics fun

Two Tone Britain:

• 2 Tone Records was founded by Jerry Dammers 1979 from The Specials which advocates the eradication of racism in British society
• This created a new genre of British music that fused punk with Jamaican reggae and SKA
• The bands signed by 2 Tone Records were largely multi-cultural, eg The Specials and The Selector, and represented the exact aim of RAR
• 2 Tone bands were most vocal after the election of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1979 – writing lyrics about the politics of racism, sexism, violence, unemployment, youth culture and a corrupt system of government
• 2 Tone gigs often attracted members of the right-wing which caused huge disruption

CONCEPT	strongly agree	agree	neutral	agree	strongly agree	OPPOSITE CONCEPT
CRITICAL OF GOVERNMENT	X					AGREE WITH GOVERNMENT
OUT OF CONTROL	X					IN CONTROL
FEMALE					X	MALE
YOUNG	X					OLD
WHITE			X			BLACK
URBAN	X					RURAL
POOR		X				RICH
EDUCATED			X			UNEDUCATED
STRAIGHT		X				GAY
CHILDISH		X				MATURE
HAPPY				X		DEPRESSED

Youth culture as a political protest:

Political protests are stereotypically petitions, marches etc, but people don’t think about the fact that people make moving images/music etc to help change view points on certain things. Just because a law has changed doesn’t mean the opinion of s topic will have changed, which leads to the fact that the political, personal and cultural are always intertwined.

Cultural hegemony

Framing ideologies of dominant social groups as the only legitimate ideology- The only ‘real’ belief is the hegemonic one, the dominant one.

Antonio Gramsci:

An Italian philosopher 1930s

Subculture-

● Working-class youth culture
● Unified by shared tastes in style, music and ideology
● A solution to collectively experienced problems
● A form of resistance to cultural hegemony

The song challenges the social theories at the time

Paul Gilroy

Author of the book ‘Ain’t no black in the union jack’, exploring the construction of racial ‘otherness’ within the print media in the 1970s. The book traces the story of UK Post war race relations.

Gilroy argues that the racial representations that were ‘fixed in a matrix between the imagery of squalor and that of sordid sexuality’, marginalised the immigrant black community from the outset – constructing them as racial ‘other’ in the predominantly white world of 1950s Britain.

In 1970s and 80s, newspapers related stories concerning the many community riots of the period, depicting the multi-ethnic disturbing events as only black events, suggesting the black community was prone to lawlessness and incompatible with white British values.

QUOTES FROM ARTICLES

‘no night complete without a fight, Skinheads attacking whoever riled them, flick knives at the ready.’ – The conversation.com

‘nods to cinematic soundtracks and music hall tradition, it reflects and engenders anxiety.’ The conversation.com

 deadpan vocals lamenting how “all the clubs have been closed down” because there is “too much fighting on the dance floor”. The conversation.com

‘England was hit by recession and away from rural Skinhead nights, riots were breaking out across its urban areas. Deprived, forgotten, run down and angry, these were places where young people, black and white, erupted.’ The conversation.com

it expressed the mood of the early days of Thatcher’s Britain for many. – BBC