From 1976 to the Y2K 
 What was Punk?

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 Part 2 | Postscript 
People will give you so much bullshit about punk being a working class thing, a copy of American punk, fashion, etc etc yawn !!  For me punk at its best,  was a spontaneous, infectious outburst of aggression and alienation set to music and cool clothes that swept aside politics, feelings, commercialism, gender and political correctness. To a messed up young kid like me it was a key to a new world. In this world anything was possible and that's why punk threw up such a wide variety of music.

In the beginning punk was this ! No boundaries just pure excitement and youthful rebellion.

Sunday Mirror 1976 above. Crass below.

 At its peak it subsumed all these differing elements being truly revolutionary before they began to gnaw at punk and pulled it apart. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say this was a perfect state of grace. There was also a lot of shit and bandwagon jumping going on. As time went on punk became hijacked by various elements. First was commercialism: Every major record label had its own punk bands. Shocking became the norm as papers like the Daily Mail ran features like 'How to turn Yourself into A Punk!!' and began to be incorporated into mainstream culture along with fashion and ideas. Bands had to do more to shock. 

Punk went from an attitude to a way of life. Anarchy and chaos became an actual political philosophy along with the classless society, communes and vegetarianism propounded by groups like Crass and Conflict. For them life was a constant political struggle against the repression of women, animals, religion, politics and anything else you could put to music. Other groups wanted to prove themselves harder and faster like GBH and Discharge as punk teetered on the verge of heavy metal. Other groups wanted to get notoriety like The Anti Nowhere League. 

From White Riot to posing for a London Postcard. 1977-1982
From the moment punk had entered mainstream consciousness bands and fans turned in on themselves and argued among each other as to who was more punk - fashion to anti fashion. Each successive wave of punk wanted to be seen to be more 'punk' than the previous one. Up rose the banner 'punks not dead' and 'Oi' arrived; a punk/skinhead hybrid music that seems to have been a deliberate invention of music writers like Gary Bushell who wanted to hijack punk as a great working class movement. As opposed to Crass these contained groups who were right wing like Skrewdriver or Combat 84 or 'Oi'  bands who were more concerned with violence. I'm not saying all bands were like this but there was an uneasy nationalistic bent to a lot of the music and image.

The happy smiling face of 'Oi'

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