London Punk and Protest 1979-1981

Morvan’s photographs capture that moment when punk in Britain was giving its edge to mod revival culture. They might be subtitled with Paul Weller’s lyrics from Down in the Tube Station at Midnight and the youth-led reaction against National Front thugs “who smelled of pubs and Wormwood Scrubs and too many rightwing meetings”. The mod scooter girls in this picture capture all the creative confusion of that year: the girl on the left, in her dress sense at least, embraces the multicultural Two-Tone message of Rock Against Racism; her friend at the back of the group, meanwhile, wears Vivienne Westwood’s swastika “destroy” T-shirt of a couple of years earlier, the most controversial of her punk shock tactics.