The product of years of research, travel, and countless conversations, Burning Britain is the true story of the UK punk scene from 1980 to 1984 told for the first time by the bands and labels that created it. Covering the country region by region, author Ian Glasper profiles legendary bands like Vice Squad, Angelic Upstarts, Blitz, Anti-Nowhere League, Cockney Rejects, and the UK Subs as well as more obscure groups like Xtract, The Skroteez, and Soldier Dolls through hundreds of new interviews and photographs. As the 1970s closed the media was quick to declare punk dead, but a new generation of even more aggressive and political bands were announcing their presence through some of the most primal and potent music ever committed to plastic. This book is the definitive guide to that previously overlooked era.

In this revealing history, author, historian, and musician Ian Glasper explores in minute detail the influential and esoteric UK anarcho-punk scene of the early 1980s. Where some of the colorful punk bands from the first half of the decade were loud, political, and uncompromising, their anarcho-punk counterparts were even more so, totally prepared to risk their liberty to communicate the ideals they believed in so passionately. With Crass and Poison Girls opening the floodgates, the arrival of bands such as Amebix, Chumbawamba, Flux of Pink Indians, and Zounds heralded a new age of honesty and integrity in underground music. New, exclusive interviews and hundreds of previously unreleased photographs document the impact of all of the scene’s biggest names—and a fair few of the smaller ones—highlighting how anarcho-punk took the rebellion inherent in punk from the very beginning to a whole new level of personal awareness.