Punk, pop, peace: 1980 UK chart singles of protest

1980 Top 75 UK chart singles about peace / anti-war / anti-nuclear issues, in approx. chronological order (source of original data: officialcharts.com; source of research data: McKay, ‘Rethinking the cultural politics of punk’ chapter).

[During this extraordinary year] there were 22 such Top 75 hits, by 18 different artists (see below). For almost the entire year of 1980 (47 weeks), the UK singles charts contained at least one hit song that spoke of anti-war or anti-nuclear concerns, and usually more than one.

From the new chart on November 30 until the end of the year, for instance, each week there were between five and seven antiwar or antinuclear singles in the charts (by Boomtown Rats, UB40, OMD, Clash, Jona Lewie, or John Lennon). Most of these were punk-related.  

For the youth that constituted a large part of the single-buying public, this was an unavoidable sociocultural discourse, an insistent nudging in the direction of a current social movement, and an articulation of a political positionality via cultural consumption. For everyone else it was impossible not to hear some pop message of peace via the everyday music of Britain at this time.