Keeping the Faith

This book is a history of northern soul. It examines the origins and development of this scene, its clubs, publications and practices by locating it in the shifting economic and social contexts of the English midlands and north in the 1970s. The popularity of northern soul emerged in a period where working class communities where beginning to be transformed by deindustrialization and the rise of new political movements around the politics of race, gender and locality. It makes a significant contribution to the historiography of youth culture, popular music and everyday life in in postwar Britain. The authors draw on an expansive range of sources: fanzines, diaries, letters, and a comprehensive oral history project to produce a detailed and empathetic reading of an aspect of working class culture that was enjoyed by thousands of men and women in the 1970s.