Keele Research Repository

The Clash, for many of us growing up in the 1970s outwith the metropolitan dominance of London, offered if not the only at least the most consistent and concerted experience of the explicit politics of punk, as well as a critical transnational and multicultural perspective and analysis. Whilst other bands may have been more explicitly political (e.g. Crass, Dead Kennedys) or more infamous (the self-promoting self-aggrandising Sex Pistols for example) or more nihilistic (the Damned), the Clash popularised a coherent alternative critique to the politics of the age, the failure and end of the post-war social and political consensus, the birth of neo-liberal conservatism and the mutually assured apocalyptic politics of the cold war. The Clash presented a range of conscious raising comment and critique on unemployment, poverty, statism, the politics of community and multiculturalism, racism, policing, injustice, marginalisation, resistance and revolution. etc. They also opened up historical events, foreign policy, cold war politics and conflict, imperialism, globalisation, etc. to a scathing attitudinal destruction of the taken for granted but failed status quo. They provided a popular and hard political edge to punk. This chapter will address how the DIY culture of punk created not only opportunities for empowerment through participation but also how the music and lyrics of the Clash introduced and popularised political ideas and events, theory and practice, music and resistance from around the world to marginalised, disenfranchised and exploited youth not only in the UK but Europe, the US and elsewhere. This not only influenced a transnational awareness and community of interest but was allied with the opportunity and demand to explore via a DIY educational politics, cultures, ideas and experiences from beyond the dead-end streets and housing schemes where punks seed was sown, was spawned and flourished. The chapter will explore how the topics and themes covered in various Clash lyrics and songs opened up to a wider public alternative perspectives, understandings and interpretations. The Clash had a mission, music with a message, that was concerned with not only the dissemination of information but also for creating a self-sustaining and critical openness and awareness of cross cultural and global experience, resistance to injustice and exploitation through a musical and political education.