On 21 September 2026, Herman de Tollenaere spoke at the conference of the Punk Scholars Network Indonesia. Here is the text of that contribution.
Hi, I am Herman de Tollenaere, a Dutch historian. In the 1970s, I co-founded a punk fanzine, a punk band and the Rock against Racism movement in the Netherlands.
Our subject is: How corporate media, political parties, and anarchists reacted to the rise of punk in 1976-1982 in the UK and in the Netherlands.
Punk started small. But then came the December 1976 London confrontation between TV presenter Bill Grundy, and the Sex Pistols and Siouxsie Sioux,
Bill Grundy intended to expose punk as worthless; but instead, that TV show informed millions of people across the UK and internationally, about punk. Many young people felt attracted.
Corporate newspapers published horror stories about how awful and dangerous punk was.
The London Conservative party leader said that the Sex Pistols and all punk musicians should be shot dead. Many local authorities in England, not only Conservative party ones, banned punk concerts.
In the Netherlands, governing political parties and corporate media acted less than in the UK as if punk was a mortal danger to the country. Dutch papers often claimed that punk would be a short-lived fad among young people. However, like in the UK, police often turned against punks. A motorist tried to run over the 16-year old girl singer of the Amsterdam punk band the Götterflies. The girl went to the police, complaining about that motorist. But police said: ‘You have green hair, so it is your own fault’! Terry, my band co-founder on bass and female lead vocals, was stopped by police for looking punky. In Antwerp, Belgium, police stopped punks several times a day. Not for committing any crime, but for looking punky.
London daily Evening News, part of the Daily Mail press empire, considered punk nazi, linked to the neo-fascist National Front. The Sex Pistols denied that angrily, saying they were anarchist and very much against the National Front. London anarchist paper Black Flag reacted, supporting the Pistols, who, Black Flag said, brought anarchism to working class kids where it belongs. Black Flag suspected the Daily Mail empire of wanting to help fascists by driving working class kids towards them. In the 1930s, the Daily Mail had supported British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley.
Anarchism became not the only tendency in Dutch 1977-1982 punk, but still the strongest tendency.
Not immediately: in 1978 in Dutch punk fanzines, there was only one mention of anarchism. In 1981, that had risen to 55 mentions.
That was not really because of older Dutch anarchists, A punk fanzine in Rotterdam asked an anarchist group for a contribution. In that contribution, they explained their view of anarchism, but did not mention punk.
The rise of anarchist influence in Dutch punk came from British bands Crass and Poison Girls. After their records had been released. After they had played in the Netherlands. After Dutch fanzines had written about them, Crass was the most mentioned UK band in 1977-1982 Dutch punkzines. Poison Girls were number four in number of fanzine mentions.
The Dutch anarchist movement before punk started had been mostly male, more so than in, eg, Spain. The new Dutch punk anarchists included proportionally more women. Between 1977-1982, the first five years of Dutch punk, at least 241 women played in at least 157 Dutch punk bands. Also many women made fanzines, were band managers, photographers, etc. So, the new punk movement made Dutch anarchism more gender balanced.
Non-anarchist tendencies and anarchist punks usually worked together. In Groningen, there was the collective Red White Black. In which Red were socialist or communist punks, White were non-political punks, and Black were anarchist punks.
There was hardly any political conflict between different views in early Dutch punk.
Basically, there was only a conflict between Crass and Maoist-influenced Rotterdam band The Rondos. Some Rondos musicians had been members of a Maoist organisation. They had left that organisation, an organisation which did not like rock music. But they still had some of the ideas of that Maoist organisation.
Crass had originally thought that the Rondos were fellow anarchists. But they found out that that was incorrect. The Crass song Bloody Revolutions is about the conflict with the Rondos.
This brings us to the question: how did more or less marxist political groups react to the rise of punk? We will see three categories: the mainstream communist parties. And Maoist groups. And Trotskyist groups.
Paradoxically, maligning punk as fascist happened not only in British right-wing papers; but also in British Maoist and Trotskyist political parties. The Maoist Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) claimed: ‘punk is fascist’.
Maybe also as their spokesman Cornelius Cardew, a cultural conservative, was not only an anti-anarchist Maoist, but also a classical music composer. Dutch Maoist groups, though not keen on rock music including punk, as far as I know, did not go as far as their British colleagues in calling punk fascist.
The UK Trotskyist Workers Revolutionary Party also at first called punk fascist.
But unlike Cornelius Cardew, they changed their mind later, inviting X-ray Spex to an event.
Other British Trotskyists, the Socialist Workers Party, saw punk mostly positively.
The communist parties of Britain and the Netherlands were much bigger than the Trotskyist or Maoist groups. Their attitude to punk was mainly positive, inviting punk bands like the Slits, and Motorboat to their events in London, respectively Paradiso in Amsterdam.
Trotskyism was much smaller in the Netherlands than in the UK. The only Dutch punk band with Trotskyist influence were Alerta from Deventer. We played with them at an anti-nuclear weapons event in Belgium. We did not quarrel with them on the difference between anarchism and Trotskyism.
We may conclude: Conservative and ruling parties and corporate media reacted more vehemently against the rise of punk in the UK than in the Netherlands. The same is true about Maoist groups in the UK, respectively in the Netherlands. There were mixed reactions among Trotskyist groups in the UK, and very few interaction between Trotskyism and punk in the Netherlands. While the previously existing anarchist movement in the UK reacted more positively to punk than earlier Dutch anarchists.
Now, I hope that there are lots of questions!
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