For anyone interested in the relationship between music and politics in general, or music and politics in the UK specifically, this book is a repository of fascinating and valuable insights. It offers an oral history of three music-led – but very different – interventions into British politics: Rock Against Racism (RAR), 2 Tone and Red Wedge. The first, begun in 1976, was the movement forged between musicians and left political activists to combat the rise of the racist National Front; the second was the multiracial record label founded in Coventry in the 1970s by Jerry Dammers of the Specials; and the last was the 1985 alliance of the Labour Party and sympathetic musicians, poets and comedians.

Drawing on more than 100 interviews with politicians, activists, musicians and journalists, among others, Rachel records the detailed memories of those who were at the heart of RAR, 2 Tone and Red Wedge. The book is a tribute to the many people – the stars and the unsung – who believed in the power of music and musicians to make a difference. It is also a tribute to Rachel's skills as an interviewer and editor. Apart from a brief introduction, the author is present only as the unseen and unheard facilitator, and as the skilled producer stitching together his multiple verbal samples. (Almost all the content derives from his interviews, but occasionally he interjects extracts from other sources – as in the case of comments from, for example, David Widgery of RAR and Paul Weller).

Rachel's interviewees recall why they became involved in these different forms of political activism, how they organised them, what it felt like, and what they achieved. We hear from slightly bemused politicians, wondering at how they found themselves addressing large gatherings of young people, and wary musicians carefully negotiating relations with political parties and far-left activists. We learn of the devotion and dedication of those who worked behind the scenes, who created the possibility of many unlikely alliances. Some of these voices have been heard before, in the books, articles and PhD theses that have been written about RAR, 2 Tone and Red Wedge, but never before in a single volume and with such a large cast of characters.

While the book's author is a silent presence, he is not simply a transcriber of the thoughts of others. He has chosen his subject on the basis that, for him, the period covered by the book (1976–1992) was one in which ‘politics was at the heart of pop music for the first time in British musical history’ (p. xxi). Nor is he simply a historian, looking back on some golden period. Walls Come Tumbling Down is also intended as an example of what can be done. It exemplifies the possibilities that reside within the harnessing of music to politics.

The story told is one of success, of how revolutionaries can be persuaded to temper their dialectical materialism with ska rhythms, of how pop choruses can liven up debates about constitutional reform. Annajoy David, one of the founders of Red Wedge, talks endearingly of her first encounter with Paul Weller. She had no idea who he was, but after meeting up Weller said to her: ‘I want to help you. I think you're great. Let's do something’ (p. 346). This, says David, was the start of a political–musical relationship that lasted 15 years, in which Weller invested substantial amounts of his own money, without which Red Wedge would not have happened, according to the musician and activist Rhoda Dakar (p. 410).

We hear stories of how the Miners’ Strike of 1984–1985 radicalised musicians and journalists (especially those on the NME). Paul Heaton of The Housemartins (and later The Beautiful South) recalls how he heard miners sing ‘You'll never walk alone’ as they returned to work: ‘It was incredibly moving and their strength gave me strength and inspired the way I work to this day’ (p. 368).

There is also space for scepticism and criticism. This book is not mere celebration or adulation. ‘My biggest problem’, says Dakar, ‘was Joe Strummer talked in slogans. I never believed him. It was a stance’ (p. 65). Despite the occasional barb, though, Rachel is more interested in the positive and the possible, most particularly in rescuing the Red Wedge from history's neglect.

Red Wedge has generally had a bad press as a ham-fisted attempt to make the Labour Party cool. However, the witnesses furnished by Rachel tell a different story. They report packed meetings of several hundred – before the gigs – to discuss local policy initiatives and to question MPs. The irony is, of course, that while Red Wedge may appear as the least well-known or successful of the three moments covered by Rachel, it now seems the most pertinent in the era of Grime4Corbyn.

This book has had glowing reviews and was selected for BBC Radio 2's Book Club. It is entertaining and fascinating. It is also frustrating. All voices are treated as equal; all are treated as valid. Yet these are stories filtered through failing memory and hindsight. They tell us how RAR, 2 Tone and Red Wedge are now recalled, but it is still an open question as to what they actually achieved. I would like to believe what Annajoy David says in the book's final extract, that the period from RAR to Free Nelson Mandela, helped ‘to define the language of politics’ and to define ‘a generation who brought together culture and politics to stand up and say something about the government of the day’ (p. 534). Maybe this is what happened, and maybe it is happening again, but …