Punk primers and reggae readers: Music and politics in British children’s literature

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, British punk and reggae artists united to fight racism throughout society. Young people embraced the ideology of these musical forms, and many wrote about and published their experiences with racism and the police, and their desire to change society. Children’s and young adults’ highly politicized writing contrasted with that of adults who wrote about punk and reggae during the 1970s and 1980s. Adult authors divorced the music from its political meaning by focusing solely on punk and reggae style, yet left the threat of police oppression to thoroughly remove any appeal to young readers. The rejection of punk and reggae ideology by mainstream adult authority was so successful that later incarnations of punk and reggae children’s books either allied the music with the authorities or turned it into commodified nostalgia