This is the late 1970s and ’80s as explained through the urgent and still-relevant songs of the Clash, the Specials, the Au Pairs, the Style Council, the Pet Shop Boys, and nearly four hundred other bands and solo artists.

Each chapter presents a mixtape (or playlist) of songs related to an alarming feature of Thatcher’s Britain, followed by an analysis of the dialogue these artists created with the Thatcherite vision of British society. “Tell us the truth,” Sham 69 demanded, and pop music, however improbably, did. It’s a furious and sardonic account of dark times when pop music raised a dissenting fist against Thatcher’s fascist groove thing and made a glorious, boredom-smashing noise. Bookended with contributions by Dick Lucas and Boff Whalley as well as an annotated discography, The Fascist Groove Thing presents an original and polemical account of the era.

Hugh Hodges' profile page

Dick Lucas' profile page

Boff Whalley is an English musician, writer, and athlete, who is perhaps best known for being the former lead guitarist for the anarcho-punk and folk band Chumbawamba. He is now a playwright and the founder of Commoners Choir, who released their first album in 2017.

Boff Whalley's profile page

“It’s not often that reading history books works best with a soundtrack playing simultaneously, but Hugh Hodges has succeeded in evoking both the noises and the feel of a tumultuous 1980s. Proving that pop music is the historian’s friend, he has here recovered those who help us best make sense of a scary, precarious, and exciting world.”
—Matthew Worley, author of No Future: Punk, Politics and British Youth Culture, 1976–1984

“Very interesting and timely indeed.”
—Anne Clark, spoken word poet, The Smallest Act of Kindness