Unruly portraits of punks at Blackpool’s Rebellion Festival 2023

Punk is not dead. It’s still kick­ing and scream­ing – and might just be more rel­e­vant than it has been for years. If you’re search­ing for the beat­ing heart of punk, look no fur­ther than Rebel­lion Fes­ti­val. Grac­ing Blackpool’s Win­ter Gar­dens each year, it’s grown to become the largest inde­pen­dent punk fes­ti­val in the UK.

Intrigued by whis­pers of a punk revival, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Spencer Mur­phy joined the rev­ellers at this year’s fes­ti­val. ​“I went on a jour­ney to dis­cov­er if the punk ethos still has a heart­beat or if it’s an age­ing rel­ic – just an echo of a bygone era,” Spencer explains of his project Where’s Punk When You Need It. ​“I was inter­est­ed to explore if punk music as a cul­ture can still have a col­lec­tive voice against the estab­lish­ment of our time.”

Indeed, the con­fused and con­flict­ed isles of today must feel a lot like the Britain of half a cen­tu­ry ago that birthed punk from a cli­mate of urban angst and post-war decline. In between sets from leg­ends like Bad Man­ners, Steel Pulse and U.K. Subs, Spencer spoke with the peo­ple he pho­tographed to learn what punk means to them.

“I’ve been into punk for 33 years now, so I just con­sid­er it how I live,” explains Kaz, a long-time Rebel­lion attendee, who came along with her kids Harp­er and Sor­cha. ​“It’s not that I iden­ti­fy myself as punk as such because I’m just me.”

Kaz’s hap­pi­est moment at Rebel­lion was see­ing her young’uns make it down to the front bar­ri­er for Scot­tish punk rock­ers The Exploited’s set. See­ing Harper’s red mohawk from the mic, lead singer Wat­tie Buchan invit­ed him on stage – although Harp­er was too shy to take him up on the offer, in the end. For Kaz, the most valu­able thing about punk is that it’s one big, sup­port­ive family.

“Punk will always be rel­e­vant because it makes a stand against things that deprive peo­ple of choic­es and rights,” she explains. ​“It gives oth­ers a voice through music and also fash­ion to be able to express them­selves. A lot of peo­ple are strug­gling finan­cial­ly or emo­tion­al­ly in the UK at the moment with how bad things are and punk has a strong fam­i­ly feel which offers a strong sup­port net­work to oth­ers who might be struggling.”

For Spencer, pho­tographs are about try­ing to look beyond the aes­thet­ics and reveal a deep­er truth. ​“I always hope to make some­thing a lit­tle more inti­mate and poet­ic that goes beneath the sur­face,” he explains. ​“So those occa­sions when I stuck it out and my patience paid off prob­a­bly stand out the most.” The more Spencer shot, observed and spoke, the more it became clear that punk is a band-aid for the bleak and con­flict­ed times the UK finds itself in these days. But with­in punk, there’s an ener­gy that burns for some­thing brighter and more inclusive.

“It may not be like it was back in the Sev­en­ties and Eight­ies but I feel like there is a par­al­lel between punk now and when it first rose up in pop­u­lar­i­ty,” explains Jessie, who has been doc­u­ment­ing the punk scene in Birm­ing­ham. ​“Protests have been tak­ing place demand­ing that every­one is equal and liv­ing a life they don’t feel threat­ened in. We’re see­ing a repeat of Sev­en­ties infla­tion and how the gov­ern­ment is still not help­ing us eco­nom­i­cal­ly – mak­ing us increas­ing­ly angry. Idles’ ​‘Moth­er’ is a great exam­ple of a song that talks about these prob­lems with­in today’s punk music. It shows what a moth­er has to do to fight this ​‘fucked-up’ sys­tem that will repeat­ed­ly ​‘fuck her over.’”

So, is punk still rel­e­vant today? ​“I don’t have a con­clu­sion for you yet but I think so,” Spencer reflects. ​“I hope it can be a voice that ris­es above and tran­scends the music. I’m still inves­ti­gat­ing though and it’ll take more time for me to answer my own ques­tion.” But for atten­dees at Rebel­lion, there’s lit­tle doubt – punk is still an avenue to chan­nel the anger felt on the streets of the UK. Anger is the first step: anger inspires action and action can bring about change.

“Punk is lifestyle to live by and a belief sys­tem, not just some­thing to label myself as,” reflects Cam, hang­ing out­side the pub with his girl­friend. ​“Punk is def­i­nite­ly gain­ing more trac­tion again recent­ly, in new ways. Watch­ing the way politi­cians and the gov­ern­ment han­dle things, clamp­ing down more on our ways of life and being igno­rant to the work­ing class, minori­ties and those less for­tu­nate, there’s a lot of sim­i­lar­i­ties [with punk’s birth era] and peo­ple have the right to be angry about it.”

Fol­low Spencer on Insta­gram.

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