Social history & a lot of political music. I know all of the songs BUT its quite one-dimensional. No Motown or soul, no what today would be called Americana. It was the age of Rock Against Racism which promoted a diversity of music. The politics is reflected here but not the diversity. A useful corrective perhaps to memories of the time (for those old enough).
For those not old enough this was an end of year thing on the BBC radio show of the late John Peel. Pre internet and social media it was voted for by listeners. Peel died in 2004 and is now a controversial figure. That doesnt take away from the social historical interest of the above though
In those days ‘diversity’ basically meant punk bands doing reggae numbers, of which there are two examples here. But the Specials at #7 is a sign of things to come.
Anarchy In The UK was #1 in the FF every year till 1980, after which Peel started running a Festive Fifty for that year’s releases only, to keep it interesting. Tommy Vance’s rock programme briefly did its own Fifty in emulation of Peel, but they had a worse version of the same problem: they gave it up after two years, because the second year’s Fifty was almost entirely identical to the first (I think numbers 14 and 17 swapped places, or something like that).