The other side of Skinheads
Dedications Dedicated to my mother, the main narrative of this book, This book contains fragments of her time as a Skinhead in the 70s and early 80s. Including fragments from articles about the movement from various authors. Credits giving to the author at the end of each article. Editor // Laura Louise Baxter Orr Typefaces // Cheltenham Bold
SKINHEAD is a term describing members of a British youth cult. It was a reaction to the Hippie culture of the 1960s/70s, and strongly influenced by Mods and Jamaican rude boy culture. The skinhead movement itself was started in the mid-1960s by working-class youths in England.
Showstudio Nick Knight
I was born in Bolton, Lanarkshire England in 1965. I became a Skin in the late 70s just as the group were becoming more and more frequent. I Was young, I didn’t fully understand anything at the time about racism. I went about with black and white, listened to black music. Of course there were sections of the movement that had another meaning to it but for me, being a skinhead had a very different meaning. My friends were older than me and at the time their was a rise within the movement itself, more and more people were shaving their heads and whipping out the denim jeans and heavy boots.
Many Skin youths didn’t have the best background, this was the same with me I guess. I never really got on well with my mother, and she didn’t really approve of me especially when I shaved my head at 13 years of age. Of course their is more to it than just a rebellious teen not getting enough attention but I wont go into that. At the end of the day I decided myself to place myself in a children’s home and it ended up being the best decision I ever made. I spent the best childhood years in a children’s home and everyone became my family. I met my best friend Sylvie, we became close pretty quick. When I shaved my head I discovered a whole new world. In the end I had two families... My children’s home and the Skins.
SKINHEAD TATTOOS Pretty much every skin I knew had tattoos, It was also a big part of the culture. I guess it made you look more ‘hard’ and rough looking. I got my very first tattoo at 14 and it was done by my friend in her bedroom with a needle and ink. I got ‘mum’ on my arm in black ink. I also got a cross on my middle finger. This was what a lot of Skins had at the time, I was told it represented where you are from or grew up. I was born in Bolton, England so I had the cross for the flag. I didn’t know just how many ways the cross was viewed. It was a clear defining aspect of being a skin, as soon as you saw the tat then you know that person is a skin. But people also got the tattoo for other reasons. They were showing a statement that ‘This is England’ and that if you aren’t English then you aren’t welcome. This is one of the things that myself and many other
Skinheads did not agree with. These were the people that were giving everyone else a bad label and were the ones that were causing all the trouble. Most members of the gang have cross tattoos on the ir fingers and foreheads. The cross tattoo can have different interpretations to different skinheads; It was a representation of the St
Georges cross and being British. Some people had the tattoo for other reasons like being an offender or and inm ate, tattoos represented the wearers life story and what they were about. For example their were factions of skinheads that were extremely fascist and their tattoos mostly represented their beliefs. Erin Guerdette May 2014
Have you noticed a lasting influence of skinhead culture? “Yes. Now that the stereotypes are over with, and the demonization is over with, we can live through the music and the positive side of it. Music is everything—it’s what connects it all. I have noticed it’s really been embraced. Wherever you find a working-class country like Mexico, you’ll find skinheads. Same with Malaysia, even China. I’ve got a picture of a Chinese skinhead in front of that big fucking Mao Zedong statue in Red Square.” Quote by Gavin Watson
The music for me was everything! The type of music was a huge part of being a Skin. People ask you what type of music you listen to first instead of asking for your name. It becomes your identity of who you are and what you’re all about. I used to go to concerts all the time, I became a regular, especially at Bad Manners gigs. Whenever they played I’d go and see them. They were one of the last few bands that remained a skin, music was constantly changing overtime and many artists sort of left their originality behind to become more mainstream. I guess this is why I liked them a lot. I ended up getting to know Dougie the lead singer quite well and he always allowed us backstage at the concerts. I’d say for sure that music is one of the positive sides of the Skinhead sub-culture. The movement itself all got lost in all this fascist and racist bullshit. They really ruined a lot of things for a lot of us. Like I stated before, there will forever and always be negative aspects of any movement. Its a shame that for us this is what defines us, whenever anyone hears the word Skinhead they automatically assume what you are all about.
Although the typical picture of the skinhead is boots and braces, skinhead fashion changed in the evening when skinhead went to dance halls and clubs. Skinhead suit were much like those worn by the mods. Where daytime clothes were loose and hard wearing. The skinhead fashion spread through the football clubs, the dance halls and the dance circuits. Skinhead fashion was established before the media got hold of it. The supporters of London clubs such as Tottenham, West Ham and Chelsea, included many skinheads and these soon made their appearance known to rival supporters. Football was the major event of the week. It offered all the excitement of adventure with mates, the chance to display fanatical loyalty to your club, to prove your hardness and win the admiration. Together with the opportunity to get drunk and run amok, provided the sort of power and excitement which is denied to working class youth.
Although the typical picture of the skinhead is boots and braces, skinhead fashion changed in the evening when skinhead went to dance halls and clubs. Skinhead suit were much like those worn by the mods. Where daytime clothes were loose and hard wearing. The skinhead fashion spread through the football clubs, the dance halls and the dance circuits. Skinhead fashion was established before the media got hold of it. The supporters of London clubs such as Tottenham, West Ham and Chelsea, included many skinheads and these soon made their appearance known to rival supporters. Football was the major event of the week. It offered all the excitement of adventure with mates, the chance to display fanatical loyalty to your club, to prove your hardness and win the admiration. Together with the opportunity to get drunk and run amok, provided the sort of power and excitement which is denied to working class youth.
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SKINHEAD FASHION The style was smart, clean and looking tough. It differed from the mods and the hippies. As early as 1964 one could recognise mods – who resembled skinheads in that they had short, cropped hair, wore Ben Sherman shirts and Levis. The Mods eventually split in two groups: One group, the art college or trendy mods and other group the hard mods, or the gang mods, developed into the skinheads. The mod’s fanatical eye for detail became an important element of skinhead fashion. The young people who developed this skinhead fashion and style rejected the finery and slightly effeminate characteristics of the art college mods and the
Nick Knight, Director: ‘Skinheads pass Hippies in Piccadilly Circus’ - Photograph by Terry Spencer, 1969.
hippies for clothes that were more related to their working class background. Skinheads needed clothes that would not get torn in a fight, which would stay pressed and neat and which would identify them in cro wd. Donkey jackets, army greens , tough working jeans, industrial boots and braces fitted this need. Steel toe-capped boots, highly polis hed, became a badge of identity and useful weapon until they banned at football matches. The third source of the skinhead fashion was the hip young West Indians of inner city areas, such as Lambeth or Brixton. The whites and blacks mixed
freely at dance halls and clubs, both indulging a common love of dancing and music. The black youths were known as Rude Boys or Rudies. They could be seen hanging around street corners in Brixton, dressed in long black coats, later to become the crombies of the skinheads. Skinhead hair style varied over time; In the early days, the crop was fairly short, then the number one crop came into fashion, giving skins the nearly bald look. By late 1969, the length had increased, giving rise to a new name. The suede-
head had hair at least one and half inches long. Although the typical picture of the skinhead is boots and braces, skinhead fashion changed in the evening when skinhead went to dance halls and clubs. Skinhead suit were much like those worn by the mods. Where daytime clothes were loose and hard wearing. The skinhead fashion spread through the football clubs, the dance halls and the dance circuits. Skinhead fashion was established before the media got hold of it. The supporters of London clubs such as Tottenham, West Ham and Chelsea, included many skinheads and these soon made their appearance known to rival supporters. Football was the major event of the week. It
offered all the excitement of adventure with mates, the chance to display fanatical loyalty to your club, to prove your hardness and win the admiration. Together with the opportunity to get drunk and run amok, provided the sort of power and excitement which is denied to working class youth. Article extract; Subculture List 2018
Me and my friend Sylvie in Crombies
Evolution of Skinhead fashion. Illustrations by Nick Knight
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Nick Knight Acklm Hall II, 1979 - 1980
Nick Knight A Twelve Year Old Skinhead, 1979 – 1980
The skinhead movement was such a universal thing, and the right-wing skinheads are just as much part of the subculture as the black rude boys from Jamaica. They’re all part of it now – part of the fabric of the culture. You can never go away from the roots, though: it comes from the mix of black and white. That must drive the right-wing skinheads nuts. The Yanks were the ones who started defining everything and pigeonholing it. That wasn’t a skinhead thing – not where the roots come from anyway . I think the Mexican workingclass get it and the Indonesian workingclass get it – they understand that skinhead is away from any labels; you stand on your own, and whoever wants to judge you, judges you. That was the joy about being a skinhead, the misconstruction. People trying to take something that was basically uniting blacks and whites together – especially in the 80s with The Specials and Madness, the whole twotone movement – and destroy that by shipping in some weird Nazis that came out of fucking nowhere. It ’s politics. These kids are singing about freeing Nelson Mandela, then all of a sudden there’s 30 vi cious, horrible skinhead Nazis that live in King’s Cross and smash up every leftwing gig – that’s a bit odd, isn’t it ? All of a sudden, everyone’s saying skinheads are Nazis. They were manipulated. If you’re an angry,
murderous fucker, you’ll use any excuse for it. The media making shit up just made it stronger for me – until I was 23 and went raving, then I thought: ‘I don’t have to prove myself to anybody.’ It was there for me through those years of becoming a man, because there was no guidance. There were no role models – they had gone. Your dad was so grim and in such a fucking
Photo by Gavin Watson, in the book ‘We were here 78-89’
dead end that you couldn’t look up to him and say, “I want to be like you.” There were no initiation processes. When you’re young, all the creatives are in the art group or are a bit fucked up at home – half of those are going to become the skins, the punks, the hippies. Not the stiffs who can do the ex ams and do it properly that felt like
they were doing the right thing – the kids in subcultures are the ones that deep down inside thought, ‘There’s something wrong with this: fuck off, you don’t get it.’ Anger has so much energy that it can build empires – it’s passion. If I didn’t channel at least some of it into art, I’d be fucking dead. Gavin Watson September 29 2016,
In the 1970s and 1980s rock concerts - like football matches - could be dangerous events to attend. These days gig-going is a generally peaceable business. Dads go with lads, mums with their daughters, or vice versa - to quote Sly Stone, it’s a family affair. But it wasn’t always like that. In the late 1970s and 80s rock concerts were almost still exclusively youth events - anyone over 30 would have been regarded as a “weirdo” - and violence was commonplace. “There were riots all the time at gigs,” recalls Peter Hook, former bass player with New Order and before that Joy Division. The worst he saw was at Bury Town Hall. The era was defined by industrial strife and the politics of class and race, with the far-right National Front enjoying high levels of support, as Neville Staple of multi-racial ska band The Specials recalls. By the early 80s psychobillies, soul boys, trendies, goths, skinheads, rockers, and mods all co-existed, often uneasily. They were followed by new romantics and electro kids. Different musical tastes were amplified by clothes and haircuts. There were no computers, no internet or social media back then and fans lived for the weekly updates and style tips offered by the music press. According to former NME journalist
Paul Morley, that lent a peculiar intensity to the pop world: “The kind of music you liked was a matter of life and death. You really made a commitment to it. It wasn’t just about taste or lifestyle, it was really about who you were.” Some of the fighting at gigs in the 80s spilled over from football rivalries where trouble on the terraces was commonplace. And Peter Hooton, lead singer with Liverpool band The Farm, argues that violence was generally more accepted in British culture. The development of more professional security
And if you were a music fan, you were liable to make instant judgements about people, based not on what they were like or what they said but on their record collections. In 1982. Music defined who you were… You very quickly associated with people who had the same record collection as you. Everyone is wearing a kind of uniform and you’re easily identifiable like that.” arrangements contributed to an eventual decline in violence at gigs, but the real turning point came in the late 80s when a new scene emerged combining Chicago House music with the drug ecstasy. Rave culture saw the nation’s youth forgetting its differences and dancing together in “the second summer of love”.
Moonstomp What is the moon stomp? To Moonstomp: a simple dance derived from earlier styles of reggae to associate with offbeat genres such as ska and dub. Despite popular belief, this does not have anything to do with violent acts with both feet upon one’s head, and is wrongly thought to become associative with the extreme neo-fascist ideas of cult film “American History X” Despite unpopular belief, the term or idea wasn’t made famous on Rancid’s “Roots Radicals” song on the “Out Come The Wolves” album, neither. It is also referred to as “skanking”, which has it’s origins in Jamaica, also. This is a perfectly respectable name. To moonstomp conventionally, it is suggested that you raise your left leg along with your left arm and produce a low kicking movement towards the ground in front while making a slow and gentle “punching the air” movement with your fist, sweeping it behind your right leg and doing the same movement symmetrically with your right leg and right arm and thus repeating, to the rhythm and tempo of the ska or dub song, until the end of the song. “I want all you skinheads to get up on your feet, put your braces together and your boots on your feet and give me some of that old moonstomping……”
by SAAG December 19, 2007
“Bad Manners were one of the main bands I followed, they are a two-tone ska band. Probably one of my favourite bands. I knew Dougie Trendell, the lead singer of the band. Also known as Busta Bloodvessel. I got into all their gigs backstage for free and even ended up living in his flat. He opened up a squat, it was more like
an open house for anyone to come and go, and across the hall was the other band members Louis Cook and Richie. Dougie had his own house after he started making money but he still came and went whenever. My boyfriend at the time was best friends with him. Dougie was one of the few that stuck to skinhead music.�
When Bad Manners who hail from London started to make a splash in the music industry many labels wanted to sign them and despite being asked to sign to 2Tone decided to sign to Magnet Records and became one of the most successful bands of that era. The band even appeared in Dance Craze mainly because they were so closely associated with the 2 Tone movement they were one of six now iconic bands featured in the 1981 documentary film about the 2Tone movement.
Chris Kane, also remained in the band, but left again. During the nineties Buster Bloodvessel famously moved to Margate, and opened a hotel on the seafront called Fatty Towers, which catered for people with huge appetites.[5] While living in Margate, he was a regular spectator at Margate F.C., and Bad Manners sponsored the club for one season. Fatty Towers closed in 1998 and did not re-open despite a facelift. After its closure.
Their hits include “My Girl Lollipop”, “Lip Up Fatty”, “Can Can”, “Special Brew” and “Walking In The Sunshine”. One of the main reasons for their notoriety, was their outlandish hugetongued and shaven-headed front-man, Buster Bloodvessel. His manic exploits kept them continually in the public eye once the massive public interest Bad Manners subsided they left Magnet Records in. Telstar Records released a compilation album, The Height of Bad Manners, which reached number 23 in the UK Albums Chart The album was assisted with a television advertisement promotion, and it brought the band back to the attention of the media and the British public – but no further chart hits and ultimately disbanded.
They released Heavy Petting on Moon Ska Records in the United States, Buster then set up another record label and the band released Stupidity on Bad Records.
Buster reformed the band with original members Louis Alphonso, Martin Stewart and Winston Bazoomies. Another original member,
In December 2012, the band released their first single in thirteen years. “What Simon Says” was released via download just before the festive season, and the music video featured Bad Manners fans from across the world but none of the band members themselves. To this day the name Bad Manners are a by word for having a great time and Skamouth is proud to have them back performing on our stage. By Skamouth UK
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Me and my best friend Heather had known each other for years, she is what people would call ‘Rude Girls’ at the time. Their were Rude girls and Rude boys. You might think the term means someone simply being ‘rude or unpleasant but we knew it as that a Rude Boy or Rude Girl is a dedicated ska fan, with a sense of history, style and the ska scene, also known as Rudi, Roody, Rudy, etc. Traditional of the “rude boy/girl” is clothing similar to that of the swing dancers of the 1940’s or that of the historic gangsters akin to Al Capone. Someone who enjoys ska music. Usually associated with the checkered pattern. This image when skins started to grow their hair slightly longer, but we would always keep the fringe and have long sides, the back would be shaven with maybe leaving a bit at the bottom. This style is slowly coming back into fashion and is seen a lot in vogue magazines. I shaved my head again shortly after this photo was taken.
Me and my Best
Every Sunday, We’d all meet up outside a store called The Last Resort Just off Petticoat Lane. A store that sold Skinhead merchandise. This was one of the few remaining places where a large number of sk ins met up regularly. The ones that patronised the shop on Sunday’s and the rest of the week were all part of the Skinhead revival. This is where me and my friends would meet up and to meet with other skins. Even if we didn’t know each other, we were all like family. Brothers and sisters, we all dressed the same and liked the same music, and you’d know if you were ever in any trouble they would have your back. Even without knowing them. This is how I viewed the Skinhead
scene and its what attr acted me towards it. I was only a young girl myself, As with the early skinheads many of these youths came from a working class background and many of them, perhaps those most seeking strong role models and solid goals, are suggested to have come from broken homes or may have been victims of abuse. I didn’t have a stable relationship with my m other so I spent most of my years in a children’s home so it was nice to have a place to belong to.
The Last Resort changed its theme in 1978 when its owners, Micky and Margaret French, sussed an opportunity to become the Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood of the skinhead revival. The main reason would have been the shop’s handy geographic location in the East End. And indeed, the Last Resort became a popular hangout for young skins who had few other places to go. Ordering from the shop by mail was not recommended, as the owners often kept the money without sending anything in return. It’s unlikely that the confiscated cash benefited ‘the cause’, for Micky’s professed nationalism was almost certainly a PR move. Still, it was enough to get some people into trouble. Tony McGartnland of northern Irish skinhead band Control Zone, which contributed ‘Bloody Bouncers’ and ‘Johnny Johnny’ to the shop’s United Skins compilation, remembers: “I recorded one of our rehearsals at a local youth club and sent the demo to Micky French in London. He rang me to say that he’d been playing the demos in his East London shop and that all the skins were asking who the band was. He thought we were great, so asked us to go into the studio and record three songs. We did, but it turned out that he dropped ‘Left Right March’ because I told him it was about the H-Block campaign … We were told by French that we would see a draft of
the album sleeve before it was released. He didn’t keep to his word, and as a result we were on an album that was basically adorned by union jack flags. We were worried about the response on the street, so we quickly withdrew from any further contact”. Control Zone soon went their separate ways, but now it looks like they’re back as an “anthemic, new-wave, punk & alternative rock band … with catchy hooks & big choruses”. Any skinhead connotations have been carefully avoided in the band’s official history on Facebook. Man’s gotta eat, I guess. The shop also carried the first demo tape by house band The Last Resort, and French went on to publish their rough & ready posthumous debut album, Skinhead Anthems, which the band had originally recorded as just another demo. No prices for guessing what cut the Resort Boot Boys received from the proceeds. Moreover, Micky and Margaret talked Ian Stuart into reforming Skrewdriver – initially as a ‘patriotic skinhead band’, then as an openly racist Creedence Clearwater tribute outfit. As the irony of fate would have it, Margaret left Micky for a Rastafarian a few years later.
FEBRUARY 15, 2016 BY CROMBIEBOY
“Every Bank Holiday we all travelled to the beaches, Margate, Brighton, Southend. Thousands of people of all sorts showed up, Skins, Mods, Teddy boys, Rude girls, Punks. It was always so packed that you couldn’t even see the sand. We took over the entire beach! We usually went to meet up with other skins much like in Petticoat lane but on a larger scale. In the end they allowed for free travel on the trains every Bank holiday.” Something of an urban London-on-sea, my home town was steeped in youth culture when I was growing up. Mods still gathered on bank holidays, skinheads strutted around Dreamland and any concert large enough to take place at the Winter Gardens, homemade fashions, cheap speed, cheaper cider and an edgy mix of punks, skins, psychobillies, bikers and even soul boys (who knows what they made of The Meteors?). Yet local history records almost nothing of these important years in the lives of many who lived here.
Fifty years ago this month, on the Whitsun weekend of the 16-18 May 1964, the youth of Britain went mad. If you believed the newspapers, that is, who went with screaming headlines like ‘Battle of Brighton’, and ‘Wild Ones ‘Beat Up’ Margate’ . Editorials fulminated with predictions of national collapse, referring to the youths as ‘those vermin’ and ‘mutated locusts wreaking untold havoc on the land’. Whitsun 1964 has become famous as the peak of the Mods and Rockers riots, as large groups of teenagers committed mayhem on the rain-swept streets of southern resorts like Margate, Brighton, Clacton and Bournemouth. Extensively photographed and publicised at the time, these disturbances have entered pop folklore: proudly emblazoned on sites about Mod culture and expensively recreated in the 1979 film Quadrophenia. Yet, as ever when you’re dealing with tabloid newspapers, things are not quite what they seemed. What was trumpeted as a vicious exercise in national degeneration was to some extent, pre-hyped by the press. It was also not as all-encompassing as the headlines suggested: although an estimated 1,000 youths were involved in the Brighton disturbances, there were only 76 arrests. In Margate, there were an estimated 400 youths involved, with 64 arrests. While unpleasant and oppressive, this was hardly a teen take-over. The cycle had begun six weeks or so earlier, during a dull and unseasonably cold Easter weekend. Up to 1,000 or so young Londoners had descended on Clacton, a smallish resort on England’s eastern coast. Bored with the bad weather and limited facilities, groups had separated according to their tribe: there were scuffles and stone-throwing, and the generally threatening appearance of teenagers en masse, barely restrained by an underwhelming police presence. On Easter Monday, the press went big with the story: ‘Day of Terror by
Scooter Groups’ (Daily Telegraph), ‘Youngsters Beat Up Town - 97 Leather Jacket Arrests’ (Daily Express), and ‘Wild Ones Invade Seaside - 97 Arrests’ (Daily Mirror). Citing “fighting, drinking, roaring, rampaging teenagers on scooters and motorcycles”, the Mirror referenced the notorious 1953 Marlon Brando film, The Wild One, which in mid-sixties Britain was still banned by the British Board of Film Censors, as likely to incite juvenile delinquency. After that sensational write-up, the pattern was prepared for the next public holiday, and southern seaside resorts became the theatre. Contrasted with the anomie of Clacton, it became split along stylistic and tribal lines: between smart, scooter-riding, of-the-minute Mods, and leather-jacketed, scruffy Rockers − the younger siblings of the early 60s Ton Up Boys. ‘Grease’ they were called, and, although they had long hair − longer than many Mods − they were seen as throwbacks to Marlon Brando and 1950s Teddy Boys. Generation X The relationship between the rioters and the press was examined in Generation X, an influential piece of youth sociology by Charles Hamblett and Jane Deverson − published in 1964 to capitalise on the apparent turmoil of contemporary youth. The cover simulated a variety of lurid headlines or phrases ̶ “RIGHT OLD MESS’, ‘PUNCH UP’, ‘QUEER ̶ but the book gave room to the voices of real teens, allowing them to speak freely. It remains a valuable document. It began with a quote from “John Braden, 18, a London mechanic”: “yes, I am a Mod and I was at Margate. I’m not ashamed of it − I wasn’t the only one. I joined in a few of the fights. It was a laugh, I haven’t enjoyed myself so much for a long time. It was great − the beach was like a battlefield. It was like we were taking over the country. You want to hit back at all the old geezers who try to tell
us what to do. We just want to show them we’re not going to take it.” The Whitsun 1964 disturbances announced the fact that a new generation was claiming its space and its time. As evidenced by the interviews in Generation X, the early baby-boomers were more confident, better educated, and even more restless than their 1950s counterparts: the Edwardians, later Teddy Boys, who had become notorious for their combination of strange, exaggerated clothes and tendency towards extreme violence. Generation X captured, for the first time from within, a separate youth world that took its cues from music and fashion. As one interviewee observed: “a lot of today’s teenagers have ambitions to be the top dresser in his district. Another ambition is to play in a beat group that’s going to have some sort of fame”. Films were still important as fantasy vehicles but the public life of 1960s teenagers was acted out in terms of Mod clothes, Bluebeat music and Soho clubs. ‘Moral panic’ The Mod/Rocker disturbances soon faded as other styles came into youth culture prominence, but they set a pattern of tribal violence that would continue on and off throughout the rest of the 1960s (Skinheads v Hippies), the 1970s (Punks v Teds), and the 1980s − when the front cover of Time’s European edition for 24 October 1983 showed a scary-looking Mohawk punk with the cover strap The Tribes of Britain. Inside, the lurid copy presented a country riven by inter-youth culture battles. The events of 1964 were also a textbook example of what the sociologist Jock Young termed “a moral panic”. This idea was explored by Stanley Cohen in his groundbreaking study of the Mod/Rocker riots, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: “a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylised and
stereotypical fashion by the mass media”. Moral barricades are manned, solutions are devised by ‘experts’, and the episode fades or is successfully ‘dealt with’. Cohen observed how “one of the most recurrent types of moral panic in Britain since the war has been associated with the emergence of various forms of youth culture”’. What to the young seemed quite natural − the announcement of their generation’s arrival, a claiming of public space within a country that catered little for their needs − to adults seemed threatening and a symptom of national decay. There was violence, to be sure, but some of this was simply adult projection: a dark vision of a nightmare future symbolised by alien youth. Folk Devils and Moral Panics was published in 1973, and coincided with the pioneering work undertaken at Birmingham’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies: during the next few years, books like Resistance Through Rituals by Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, and Dick Hebdige’s Subculture: the Meaning of Style developed subcultural theory − in short, the mapping of youth tribes as both a commercial creation and a way of resistance − as a method of analysing mass youth culture. By Jon Savage 21 October 2014
Their were times when the police would line everyone up against the wall, the police hated skins, I guess we did cause a lot of trouble for them but they’d line us up and then walk across our boots. If we went ‘OW’ then we were safe, if we didn’t then we were nicked on the spot. This was because people were wearing work boots with steal toe caps. This became a weapon for Skins and could cause a lot of damage when kicked.
Photo by Gavin Watson, Skin boots
Photo by Gavin Watson, in the book ‘We were here 78-89’
Origins; Mods, Working Class Britain and Caribbean Influence Depending on which region people get the bulk of their news from, be it North America, The UK and Ireland or Continental Europe and Russia,[5] their image of ‘skinheads’ will most likely be (respectively) of neo-Nazi white supremacists, violent nationalist football hooligans or a mixture of both. Therefore it may come as a surprise to some that arguably the origin of skinheads was a coming together of influences from the ‘mods’ of late 1950s and early to mid 1960s Britain and the influx of working class West Indian immigrants around the same time.[6] The ‘mods’ or ‘modernists’ were one of the UK’s most prolific subcultures and famous for their rivalry and violent clashes with ‘the rockers’.[7] They were style-conscious post-war youths who listened to modern American jazz and blues and dressed in sharp modern Italian clothes, often riding motor scooters such as Vespas.[8] With their mid-length hair, sharp suits and jazz music, they don’t exactly evoke the same image that one would normally have of skinheads. However the reasons for joining such a ‘gang’ or group are much the same. These were young people, primarily working class, with either too much time or money on their hands but no clear goals and a sense of disillusionment with a post-war society in which many of them had disposable income to spare, yet no prospects of progressing out of the strict British class system of the time. It is therefore
perhaps not that strange that the ‘harder’ mods were the precursors to the first skinheads. The mods came from predominantly working-class backgrounds and certain members saw their movement as becoming too far removed from their roots. In the mid-1960s differences became apparent between the ‘peacock mods’,[9] who were less violent and more into expensive clothes and style, and the ‘hard mods’,[10] who were identified by their shorter hair and more working class image. The “hard mods” began to be known as “skinheads” around the mid to late 60s, with the peak of firstwave skinheads coming in 1969.[11] They began to wear their hair close-cropped perhaps for practical reasons, as industrial, manual and dock workers would, or because long hair might be a liability in a fight. Another possibility is that the short hair was meant to distance them from the emerging counter-culture ‘hippie’ movement, to which skinheads were generally opposed. Whilst retaining the stylish suits during the evenings, during the daytime they moved to a more working-man’s dress code of Dr. Marten boots, button-down Ben Sherman or Fred Perry shirts, tight jeans with the hems rolled up to expose the imposing boots and of course the famous (not functionally necessary, but entirely integral to the look) braces.[12] Over this were worn Crombie-style overcoats, fitted blazers, MA-1 bomber jackets, denim jackets or any number of variations. So far the skinheads are much like any youth subculture; filling a gap left by society, the lack
of a role model or sheer idleness. What makes the skinhead subculture particularly interesting, in light of their popular reputation and subsequent development, is the other side to their early influences; the West-Indian/Caribbean side. At the same time as the rise of the mods and rockers, there was a large amount of immigration into the UK from the West Indies. Many of these immigrants found themselves living in or near the same estates as the working class skinheads and even working in the same jobs or factories. Through this the hard mods and early skinheads had the chance to be exposed to ‘black’ Caribbean music as well as to the ‘rude boy’ or ‘badman’ images of Jamaica in particular. This was the genesis of the surprising musical style of the 1960s skinheads; the scene was a primarily reggae and ska dancehall scene, with a mixture of black working-class Caribbean and white working-class British. This phenomenon was so acute that arguably what really boosted the reggae and ska genres to worldwide success was their following in white working-class Britain. Many ska and reggae artists wrote songs specifically to appeal to the skinhead audience[14] and in turn many British white or mixed race ska and reggae bands and artists emerged.[15] These early days of the skinheads seem a far cry from drug-dealing white supremacists or football hooligan ultra-nationalists. By Shane July 2014
Photo by Nick Knight, Skinhead Crane 1979-1980
Photo by Nick Knight, Skinhead Crane 1979-1980
When I was younger, during my time as a Skin I was pretty well known. A lot of skins knew each other anyway, word went about from who’s who and what’s what. I’ve had my photograph taken for a book and even appeared in the papers once. A story I remember was when I was on the back of the bus and this other Skin girl two seats in front. Skins talk to Skins, so she turned back and we got talking then all of a sudden she comes out with ‘Tracy is my best friend, I know her well. She’d do anything for me’ she
was going on about me about how great I was. In the end she asked my name and I told her. She went as white as a bloody sheep. Completely froze and got off the bus at the next stop. Not to float my own boat here but I got about in them days, I knew band members and met some interesting people. Some friends for life, some people I wish I never got involved in. Some stuff I wish I never got involved in. But it was all an experience. It certainly was...
I left everything behind when I moved to Israel, I was still a Skin at the time of the move but I decided it was best to put that life behind me when I had my first daughter in my early 20s. I decided to focus on bringing her up. I moved back to London and raised her alone for a while before meeting Tom. It was funny meeting him because Hippies and Skinheads didn’t exactly get along. He still had his long hair and he just came back from his Travels abroad, I found out many years later after being with him for so long that we were at the same party years before we met each other... and years later we met again and that’s when we got together. Years down the line we had four children together. Being a Skin wasn’t a negative experience for me and it hasn’t affected my life badly in any way.
In fact I’d say it was the best years of my teenage-hood. I learnt from a young age how to be tough and stand up for myself, the time wasn’t that easy to get through and I certainly have been through the runner many of times. I even remember having a motto I used to say whenever I went out and that was “I ain’t gonna die today”. It was rough but having good friends and music and a second family to fall back on knowing they got your back helped. In my opinion, Skins have been given a bad name but if you take the time to understand the movement and what it truly is about rather than what you hear then you’d see that it wasn’t all nastiness.
James age 4, Laura age 2, Callum age 1
Four of my five children on the couch and their cousin behind them Christie age 3 Baby Laura 6months James age 2 Jodie age 10
Credits pg 6-7 // Photographer Nick Knight; Dougie pg 8 // Photographer Nick Knight; Tracy and friend
pg 30 // Photographer Nick Knight; Bad Manners Tunnel shoot 1979
pg 9 // Laura L Baxter Orr; Mum’s cross
pg 34 // Photographer Unknown; Busta Bloodvessel
pg 10-11 // Photographer Nick Knight; Tattoo
pg 38 // Photographer Unknown; Tracy and Heather
pg 12-13 // Photographer Laura L Baxter Orr; Docs
pg 40 // Photographer Nick Knight; Tracy and friend Skinhead book
pg 15 // Photographer Nick Knight; Bad Manners concert, Skins
pg 42 // Photographer Unknown; Petticoat Lane Market
pg 18 // Photographer Terry Spencer; Skins pass Hippies in Piccadilly Circus 1969
pg 44 // Artist Unknown; Illustration for magazine of Last Resort
pg 20 // Photographer Sylvie; Me and Sylvie
pg 46-47 // Photographer Unknown; Skins at Brighton Beach 1970s
pg 22-23 // Artist Nick Knight; Evolution of style pg 24-25 // Photographer Nick Knight; Skin lip tattoo 24 and Bad Manners concert 25 pg 27 // Photographer Nick Kight; Alkam Hall 19791980 pg 28 // Photographer Nick Knight; 12 year old Skin pg 29 // Photographer Gavin Watson; Skin Youths 1970s
pg 50-51 // Photographer Gavin Watson; Boots pg 52-23 // Photographer Gavin Watson; Skin Youth Oi 1970s pg 56-57 // Photographer Nick Knight; Skinhead Crane 1979-1980 pg 60-61 // Photographer Unknown; Family photos