Sarnia de la Maré FRSA Author, Musician, Artist

  Chapter Two: London Calling If New York was a dirty prayer, London was the reply — shouted through a ripped speaker and a mouth full of safety pins. By the mid-seventies, Britain was broke, bored, and spoiling for a fight. You could smell revolution on the bus queues and in the dole offices. The youth didn’t just want music; they wanted a detonator. Into this walked the women of British punk — armed with sneers, art-school intellect, and a taste for self-destruction that doubled as self-invention. Poly Styrene, Siouxsie Sioux, Gaye Advert — they weren’t echoing New York’s noise so much as localising it. They took the downtown poetry and made it spit with a London accent. Where Manhattan had art galleries and amphetamines, Britain had bin strikes and boredom. Punk here was uglier, funnier, and more political. The girls didn’t need to look pretty — they looked like a warning. In London, fashion wasn’t decoration — it was a declaration of war. The women of punk wore their politic...