Ray Kinsella – författare

The ‘Troika’ is a word that is scorched into the narrative of the EU’s banking and economic crisis – a triumvirate constituted by the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund. The modus operandi of the Troika is defined by the authors of this book as ‘Troikanomics’.Ostensibly, the role of the Troika was to develop, coordinate and oversee the provision of conditional funding to support national governments in restructuring their economies. In fact, their power and influence extended far more widely. They enforced an unprecedentedly severe austerity programme of fiscal and structural adjustment through oppressive political oversight. Their practical impact was to impose on debtor countries in the EU periphery the single greatest economic and social dislocation in Europe’s recent history, thus corroding their autonomous capacities and enfeebling their national sovereignty. The Troika’s word was law in those countries where its writ ran – Greece, Ireland, Cyprus, and to a more limited extent, Spain. It was answerable only to a trio of unelected organisations, far removed from the consequences of its policies on the lives of citizens. Widespread socio-political reaction to Troikanomics gave shape to the anti-austerity movement across the EU, characterised by the centre as ‘Populism’.This book provides a timely response to the revisionist argument that there is no longer a ‘crisis’ in Europe. In their innovative analysis, the authors argue that Troikanomics is a manifestation of a deeper existential crisis within the EU that encompasses the centralisation of power, Brexit, Europe’s ominous militarisation and the progressive abandonment of its foundational values.

This is the first book to tell the story of the bebop subculture in London’s Soho, a subculture that emerged in 1945 and reached its pinnacle in 1950.

This is the first book to tell the story of the bebop subculture in London’s Soho, a subculture that emerged in 1945 and reached its pinnacle in 1950. In an exploration via the intersections of race, class and gender, it shows how bebop identities were constructed and articulated. Combining a wide range of archival research and theory, the book evocatively demonstrates how the scene evolved in Soho’s clubs, the fashion that formed around the music, drug usage amongst a contingent of the group, and the moral panic which led to the police raids on the clubs between 1947 and 1950. Thereafter it maps the changes in popular culture in Soho during the 1950s, and argues that the bebop story is an important precedent to the institutional harassment of black-related spaces and culture that continued in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This book therefore rewrites the first chapter of the ‘classic’ subcultural canon, and resets the subcultural clock; requiring us to rethink the periodization and social make-up of British post-war youth subcultures.

This is the first book to map and celebrate the overlooked history of producers, promoters and DJs from Islington that contributed to the acid house and rave scene as it developed in derelict spaces in the borough in the late 1980s, and how this paved the way for the house and jungle scenes that dominated Islington clubs during the 1990s. Blending oral history interviews with contemporaneous reports in the style press, the music press, local and national newspapers, and archival documents stored at the Islington Local History Centre, this book sheds new light upon key clubs, the music, cultural identities, and fashions. The book presents unpublished eyewitness accounts by people from Islington’s council estates that contributed to these scenes to unravel the complex and hitherto poorly understood interrelationship between gang culture, subculture and localised club culture. It argues that the backlash to the perceived unsavoury nature of clubbers and promoters, combined with the onslaught of gentrification in the borough in the late 1990s, led to the venues being closed down, and to this vital moment in the history of UK popular culture being brought to an end.