Collective youth up trees or down tunnels, protest camps and all-night raves across the land - these are the spectacular features of the politics and culture of nineties youth in Britain. DiY Culture lays to rest the myth of “Thatcher's Children,” for the flags are flying again -- green, red and black.

Editor George McKay, author of Senseless Acts of Beauty, claims that popular protest today is characterized by a culture of immediacy and direct action. Gathered together here for the first time is a collection of in-depth and reflective pieces by activists and other key figures in DiY culture, telling their own stories and histories. This, then, is a book of both celebration and self-criticism, written by realists and idealists alike.

From the environmentalist to the video activist, the raver to the road protester, the neo-pagan to the anarcho-capitalist, the authors demonstrate how the counterculture of the nineties offers a vibrant, provocative and positive alternative to institutionalized unemployment and the restricted freedoms and legislated pleasures of UK plc.

Read an excerpt...

Praise for Senseless Acts of Beauty :

“The secret history of the last two decades.” --Jon Savage
“McKay has drawn together an important record of the endlessly rebellious vein in British society which has managed to circumvent every attempt to smother it.” – Big Issue

“A truly brilliant tome to the misunderstood and usually misrepresented frontline.” -– Muzik
“Essential reading for any activist with an interest in their own political ancestry.” – Squal

George McKay is an academic and writer on radical culture who teaches at the University of Central Lancashire. His previous books include Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance since the Sixties, also from Verso.

224 pages
16 b/w photos

Paper
1 85984 260 7
£11 / US$19 / CAN$25

Cloth
1 85984 878 8
£40 / US$45 / CAN$80