ABSTRACT
Histories of British punk, 1976-79, have been unanimous about the movement’s relationship to racism. Whether these histories be in the form of academic texts, commercial books, magazine articles, or tv and radio accounts, the conclusion has always been the same: that despite some posturing with swastikas, punk was essentially solid with the anti-racist cause. Its alliances with the reggae scene on the one hand, and the twin organisations of Rock Against Racism (RAR) and the AntiNazi League (ANL) on the other, are taken as irrefutable evidence of this, and have enabled historians to co-opt punk into a more long-term tradition of countercultural-left-wing-dissent.
