Mike Sutton

The author of the book is Dr Andrew Wilson, an academic criminologist. He was sent to borstal (secure prison for youths) in his teens. He moved on from the violent and drinking skinhead culture to the Northern Soul scene and was involved also in the culture of football violence of the 1970’s. Dr Wilson’s book deals with exactly what it says it deals with in its title. Namely, ‘Northern Soul: Music, drugs and subcultural identity.’ Anyone looking for a rosy celebratory understanding of the music and what exactly was/is the musical (as opposed to the obtuse/secret in-group) appeal of rare northern soul records will be disappointed. This is a gritty book. But, that said, it does seek to understand the arrival and evolution of the Northern Soul “Scene” from a cultural historical and sociological perspective. And I think it does this exceedingly well. Its handling of the criminological aspects – from Wilson’s own ‘insider’ knowledge of having lived it and from the interviewees garnered from his insider status is what makes this book so valuable. But you don’t have to take my mere word for that. The back of this book carries outstanding “book blurb” accolades from renowned representatives of the discipline of criminology. They are written by some of the most respected criminologists of our age: Stan Cohen, Ben Bowling and David Downes. Music aficionados may be impressed by another name to be found there: Simon Firth (Tovey Chair of Music, University of Edinburgh). Enough said? Well let’s put it this way, such scholars do not write accolades for books that are not excellent. You can stop reading here now if you like and decide whether to read the book for yourself. But I’ll add a little more anyway. As one of the straights or ‘divvies’ (Northern Soul tourists) so brilliantly named by one of Wilson’s interviewees – I attended football matches in Liverpool with boot-boy friends and Wigan Casino (in pursuit of girls and drink) in 1975/6 whilst attending Wigan Tech, I joined in some of the Northern Soul dancing but always felt very odd about dancing on my own and so never pursued it over the drink and pursuit of girls. When I was aged 15, 16 and 17, those on the “Scene” described by Wilson were an odd bunch from my more mainstream perspective. I never understood their motives and behaviour back then, and so reading Wilson’s book today is a revelation that took me a long time coming. If you too want to understand Northern Soul and that “Scene”, then you should buy this book. It does explain it. I wholeheartedly recommend this book, also, to any policy maker, crime reduction practitioner, police officer, criminologist or sociologist looking to understand drug use. This is because Wilson’s book deals with addiction and well controlled (not addiction) recreational use and the reasons for each brilliantly. Finally, on which note, Wilson’s “Northern Soul” sheds veracious light on the complex nuances of the weights of wanting to belong, peer pressure (peer resistance) and criminal involvement that blasts to smithereens the naïve (never interviewed a single criminal) administrative criminology beloved of the binary thinking number crunchers who seek safe easily publishable “number wanging” simple “made up” answers to complex problems from no more than endlessly analysing - and surreptitiously fiddling with their models until they get confirmatory desired outcomes - from secondary data sources. If you prefer you criminology to be real then you need to read this book!

I love this book. It is brilliant. I own a copy of the original book and now proudly own the second edition. Nonscience is essentially a book about what is wrong with our universities, the managerialists running them and many of the incurious and conformist so-called “experts” who work in them. Many examples are given of such bad science presented as good in this excellent book. Ford’s myth busting in that regard is so toe curlingly excruciating at times that I had to put the book down; sometimes to laugh, other times to curse and most times just to sit and think. Astoundingly shocking facts that I was unaware of just keep coming at you from out of the pages of this book like rat-a-tat-tat machine gun firing independently verifiable veracity over the deep trenches of previous credulous mere belief in the orthodox, taught, Zeitgeist. Whatever impression this book review gives you hereafter I whole heartedly recommend you buy Nonscience and read it carefully on mythbusting and general veracity seeking grounds. Prepare to be shocked!