The Story of Skinhead with Don Letts


The Story of Skinhead with Don Letts

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What do you think when you hear the word "skinhead"?

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Violence? Intolerance?

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Hatred? This image was born in the 1970s,

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when this youth driven subculture earned a reputation for trouble on

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the streets and terraces and a toxic association with racism.

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But that's not how it started,

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and it's certainly not what it meant to me.

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This programme contains strong language

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There was a time we were united on the dance floor, dressed to kill

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and, if only for a moment, it felt like colour didn't matter.

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'Skinhead was always, always a multicultural thing,

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'skinhead was born of a mixed marriage between Jamaican culture

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'and white working-class London culture, Cockney culture.

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'That's what it always was.'

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So, for any of these idiots to come along later and say, "No, it's a racist thing,"

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how can it be racist? How can you be so ignorant of the roots of the thing you're trying to be?

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'Subcultures are interesting.

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'Skinheads are one of the most enduring, one of the most striking,'

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and, for me, interesting,

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because they contain that contradiction of

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liking one thing but sometimes having differing views.

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This is a story of kids trying to find a voice and a place in society.

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It's a very British tale that reflects our national culture, good and bad,

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and it seems that, throughout its troubled life,

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there's been an ongoing struggle for the soul of skinhead.

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I was born in 1956 and reached my teens on this

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very estate in Stockwell,

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south London. Back then, like most working class kids,

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I used the only two things at my disposal to create my identity,

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music and clothes.

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And in those days, round these parts, it was all about skinhead.

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'I moved to London, '64.

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'Ten, 11. All the suburban kids, they all had short hair,

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'so I used to just watch them and stare at them, see what they were wearing.

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'Fascinated, loved it.'

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And after a day or two, I realised it was subversive,

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the whole thing was just fucking wild, like really short hair,

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and these great big, awkward looking shoes, and, you know,

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this is the swinging 60s!

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'We weren't behaving or speaking or dancing

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'or dressing like the hippies'

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wanted us to do or our parents wanted us to do or the police or our

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teachers or anybody else, or the media.

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We were doing our thing.

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-Number two.

-Number two?

-Yeah. And cut partly in as well.

-Certainly.

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-INTERVIEWER:

-Can you remember when you first decided to be a skinhead?

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I'd say about nine months ago.

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I put on some jeans and stuff.

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See what it's all about.

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You walk down the street, people turn to look at you.

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I sort of feel proud, really.

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'I knew that it was like the mods had theirs, five or six years earlier,

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'the teddy boys had theirs ten years ago. This is it, this is our thing.

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'There wasn't a name for it except peanuts, some people used to say...

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'"You know that peanut from...?" It would be like that.

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'But no-one said "skinhead".'

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One guy I heard saying, "Oi, skinhead!", but jokey.

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'For quite a long time, the term skinhead was rather a casual name.'

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I can remember in 1968, we weren't really calling ourselves anything.

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To an extent, skinhead was what other people called you.

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And gradually, the name just stuck.

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And I don't know if the others recognised it,

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because they didn't speak about it, but I was thinking,

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"Wow, look what's going on here."

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To many people, raised on a certain idea of skinhead,

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the real roots of the movement are surprising.

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As although the basic ingredients of these subcultures had already been

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established by teddy boys, rockers and mods,

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it was the arrival of my parents,

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with the Windrush Generation after the Second World War,

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that would play a crucial part in this particular story.

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Because along with their hopes and dreams,

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they also brought style and some brand-new sounds.

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Both found favour with these white working class kids,

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and seemed to contradict the emerging racism of the times.

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I guess, like previous youth generations,

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it's about people trying to find an identity,

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but these white working class kids seemed to be taking tips from distant lands.

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That was the first wave of Jamaican immigration

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that had come in

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and was then starting working alongside white workers,

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and particularly on the docks.

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And kids, I think, who were starting on their working life,

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trying to look more manly and doing all this kind of business adopted those

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kinds of styles. And that was the same for black youth and white youth.

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'It probably started out like that, which was sort of working-class.

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I even used to wear a donkey jacket with Dr Martens and turned up Levis.

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But then you start looking around and you want to smarten up, and

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other people actually started wearing that sort of thing.

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And you just want to move on from there.

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'We loved our clothes, we loved our music,

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'we wasn't looking for the innovative thing, the guy who had the next thing that came along.'

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We discovered this Ivy Shop in Richmond, it was like a treasure.

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They had all the stuff we liked and wanted to access, but quality,

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quality items. They had the button-down shirts, they had

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the brogues and the smooth loafers that you wanted.

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The really slick cut Crombie coats and so on.

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I'd heard about the legendary Ivy Shop in my early teens,

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but funds and its location in Richmond,

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a distant land for this south London kid,

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meant I never actually got there. Luckily for me,

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its creator was still in business.

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-John, how you doing, man?

-Nice to see you.

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-Very nice to see you.

-So, Mr Simons, you've got to tell me,

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how did The Ivy Shop become the Holy Grail for skinheads?

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We opened The Ivy Shop in the summer of '64.

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The initial idea was we were crazy about American Ivy League clothes,

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this sort of collegiate kind of look.

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And that's what inspired us to open the shop.

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What did you make of this new clientele you were getting?

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We gradually began to develop a clientele

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that wore a clean cut look,

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that did inform, I think, the skinhead situation later on.

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I've noticed over your shoulder,

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there's something that looks like a Harrington jacket...

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I've heard that you were the one that named the jacket the Harrington jacket.

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-I did indeed.

-Can I have a look at this, is that all right?

-You can have a look at that.

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This is a casual jacket of ours, which is similar to a Baracuta Harrington,

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which is the jacket that really got this whole thing started.

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We visited Baracuta, I think,

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just a couple of months after we started.

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And then, one was watching the TV and you saw the series Peyton Place.

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Black and white, I remember that.

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In which Rodney Harrington wore the Baracuta Harrington.

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So we were selling it in the shop, and he was wearing it on the TV,

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so we used to put tickets on saying, "The Rodney Harrington jacket."

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And after a while, say a few months, we got a bit lazy and

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then we dropped the Rodney Harrington jacket,

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and we just called it the Harrington jacket.

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And the rest is history, really.

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The skinhead staple was born!

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'This was stuff which would have been recognised

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'in the USA as being, well, rather preppy.'

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We got it, somehow, second-hand, third-hand,

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and we put sort of a cocky, street edge on it.

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A tie for me was always quite slick.

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They took a lot of time and detail into making sure that their appearances

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were spot on.

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One of the jokes around Harrow was,

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"I like your suit." "Thank you."

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"Was it made-to-measure?" "Yeah."

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"Who for?(!)"

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'The girls were gorgeous,

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'most of them were very, very chic and very, very smart.

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'The hairstyle, it was really stylish, very sexy.

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'Yes, it was very short on top and yes,'

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there were long side pieces and pieces at the back,

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but it was layered beautifully.

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# I want all you skinheads to get up on your feet

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# Put your braces together and your boots on your feet... #

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Although we were tapped into American culture,

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it was a little island with a big bassline that really captured the

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imagination of the emerging skinhead scene.

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What was it about Jamaican culture that attracted you white guys?

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It was unique and it was a bond we had with our black friends,

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it was something we could all share in, even what we were wearing,

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the trousers up high, things like that, that all came from Jamaica,

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I would say, rather than the States.

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'Black people just seemed cool in those days.

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'There is no other word to use, really, they seemed cool.'

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It's like Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove. These places that you went

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to if you wanted this kind of slab of otherworldliness.

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'They came with a style, they came with a fashion, they came with a'

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look, which again was embraced, along with the music,

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and skinheads embraced that as well.

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'We listened to reggae exclusively. I can remember, the summer of '69,'

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I would only buy reggae. I remember being really quite pleased about that.

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"I'm only buying reggae!"

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Jamaican recording artists were also pleased by this new-found interest.

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So much so, a whole new genre was born out of ska - skinhead reggae,

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created specifically for the UK market.

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'All of a sudden, they acknowledge us. I just found it was an acceptance on both sides.'

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Those records created great atmosphere in the dance halls.

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'We went to see all these artists, we saw The Pioneers,'

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we saw Desmond Dekker, and we loved them.

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So it was completely multiracial.

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It's pretty amazing that this movement blossomed here in the late '60s,

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because, let's face it, in Britain back then,

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racism was a fact of life.

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'People forget at that time,

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'the National Front were poling quite high,

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'I think Enoch Powell made that speech in '68.

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'And also, I'm guessing that some of the white kids' parents were a'

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little racist, because they were scared...

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Oh, sure. The one thing you've got to remember is that Britain overall

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was a much more racist society back in those days.

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You could get away with Pakistani jokes on the radio.

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'I went to school around the corner, in Willesden,

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'and the teachers were openly racist to the black kids.'

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I mean, that's how England was.

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My black mates, I would take home, and my dad would raise his eyebrows,

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it wasn't done in those days.

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It's like, "Oh."

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As we entered the '70s, the ugly intolerance, common in these years,

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entered the bloodstream of skinhead.

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-INTERVIEWER:

-Who's your natural enemy?

-Pakis ain't so much your enemy,

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-they're just a pastime, ain't they.

-Pakis?

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-What do you mean by Pakis?

-Pakistanis.

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-You don't like Pakistanis?

-No.

-It's not their colour,

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cos the Jamaicans are all right, we mix with the Jamaicans.

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We get on with a lot of Jamaicans.

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You like Jamaicans but you don't like Pakistanis?

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We mix in with a load of Jamaicans, got a lot of Jamaican mates.

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I mean, they don't like Pakistanis, either.

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'A slightly younger generation started to come in,

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'and they did get the idea that

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'they had to buy a package of ideas,

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'they had to buy the Paki-bashing idea.

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-'Play up to the headlines.

-Yeah.

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What you've got to remember is that by late '69 and early 1970,

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those of us who'd been there at the beginning were starting to get old.

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'I remember one time wandering off the estate and bumping into some'

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skinheads that definitely weren't on-side.

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I made a hasty retreat back to my block, and my mother,

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hearing the altercation outside, ran down, trusty kitchen knife in hand,

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and proceeded to tell them about their mothers.

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Lucky for those skinheads, they did the right thing!

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When skinheads turned up, it was like, they'd had a precedent.

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You weren't surprised by that,

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you weren't surprised that there were elements of white youth that

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thought that kind of thing.

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From its beginnings on London council estates,

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skinhead was now entering the dangerous waters of the mainstream,

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and all the media attention that came with it.

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'The media love a good moral panic.

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'In 1969, they were looking for this year's mods and rockers,'

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and suddenly, there we were, this ready-made youth cult.

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'When the media articles did first come out, me included,

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'and some other people, thought, "Oh, wow,'

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"we're getting a bit of recognition."

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And then, those kids, the same ones who were right up the front,

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they started growing their hair long,

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and first of all it was just the hair, then it was the clothes,

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and by the end of 1970,

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dare I say it, flares!

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This might well have been the last call for the originators, but skinhead

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didn't die. Instead, it found a new form and a new legion of followers.

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The boots, the genes, the Harrington jackets and things like that,

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the football supporters adopted those.

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'Teams that were coming down to London were seeing this attire'

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seeing the way we were dressing. You know, "We're taking this back." It started to spread,

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so it went out into the counties.

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The inherent working-class appeal of skinhead found

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a natural home up north.

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London might well have been swinging,

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but the rest of the country was less prosperous.

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It's only later that I found out that a skinhead thing persisted

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quite some time up there. And that makes sense.

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When you consider that to a great extent in Britain,

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fashions seemed to start in London and spread out from London.

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Now, truth be told, I've never been to a football match in my life!

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And I was curious as to how the skinhead style has spread through the terraces.

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So I figured I'd better speak to those that were there.

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First stop, Yorkshire, to meet the Shipley Skins.

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Jack, Austin, when and how did skinhead reach the North?

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A guy moved up here from London.

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He came up with his Sta-Prest and his boots and his shaved head.

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And we were all football crazy,

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so it weren't skinheads who started watching football,

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it were football fans round here who started dressing as skinheads.

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The first Harringtons that everybody was wearing was black,

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but the uniform was red boots, white Sta-Prest, and the white

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Fred Perry, I remember more than anything.

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And looking after the boots was really important, in my view,

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because the boots looked after you.

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They did.

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'It was 1969, I was a little 12-year-old going to football.

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'And I seen this gang of skinheads.

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'To me they were men, 16, 17, 18 years old.'

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And they were like an army, and they just had this impression on me.

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Do you know what I mean?

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That was it, I went home, got my hair cut, stole my brother's work boots,

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nicked my father's braces, and I become a skinhead!

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MUSIC: Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival

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'When they used to play things like Bad Moon Rising

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'at football grounds, that used to whip the crowd up.

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'I remember a semifinal against Manchester United,

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'they played that at half-time, and that has stayed with me for ever,'

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because Bad Moon Rising was trouble on the terraces.

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'If you went to football, you would go there to support your team

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'and to defend your end.

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'Football was the only bastion where you could go there on a Saturday or'

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a Sunday, scream and shout obscenities,

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threaten people and not get arrested.

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'We were fucking horrible, we wanted to fight with everyone, like, you know?

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And, it's not nice, but kids are kids, that's what they do, do you know what I mean?

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It's almost like a rites of passage thing.

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It used to be, they'd sign 'em up and send 'em off to fight wars, like.

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But after the Second World War there wasn't any more wars to send the kids off.

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-So they had to release their...

-Testosterone!

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-Exactly.

-Yeah, get it out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

-Like lions, they fight each other

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to establish who's the best.

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We're just the same, you know, we're animals.

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# There's a bad moon on the rise... #

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'Aggro, words came in, we'd never heard of "aggro" before until we heard,'

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"We are the Chelsea Aggro!"

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And all that sort of thing. We heard all of these songs, and we became Shipley Aggro Boys.

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I remember one particular match where we disguised ourselves as Manchester United fans.

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Then we saw this small group of ten or 12 Manchester United fans,

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and we started chanting, "Manchester, lah, lah, lah." So they all came jumping out.

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We said, "We're fucking Leeds fans!"

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And kicked the seven bells of shit out of them!

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-We did!

-Yeah.

-Not proud of that, by the way, and I have to say that,

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but that's how it was. And you were part of a military operation.

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In London, there's a lot of interaction with the Afro-Caribbeans.

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What was going on here?

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There was a good number of black skinheads in Bradford. We didn't consider them black.

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They were skinheads. They were our mates.

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They weren't West Indians with same clothes on.

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They were skinheads who liked our music, our football.

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Not even all the same football team.

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There were many dark faces, there were many black faces going to football.

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I never got once confronted by that, but I was totally aware of it.

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I heard stories and I knew about stuff, but there was a dark side to it,

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there was this dark side in football.

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This dark side obviously made for great headlines.

0:19:080:19:12

It was further intensified by the publication of Richard Allen's book, Skinhead,

0:19:120:19:16

in 1970. It became the Bible for these new skinhead converts.

0:19:160:19:20

Trouble was, its hero, Joe Hawkins, was an out-and-out racist.

0:19:200:19:25

Consequently, it had a lot to answer for.

0:19:250:19:28

'The book was passed around and it was my turn,'

0:19:300:19:32

I got hold of the book and read it and I read it again, and...

0:19:320:19:36

I'm not... I sort of admired Joe Hawkins, because he was the skinhead I wanted to be.

0:19:360:19:40

I liked the way he looked. The front cover was very sort of, you know, big sideburns.

0:19:400:19:44

-Yeah, it was.

-Big 'burns.

-And then the fact that he didn't like policemen.

0:19:440:19:49

Now, I realise how juvenile my thought was, but he influenced me,

0:19:490:19:52

there's no doubt about that.

0:19:520:19:54

So, for a while, it's about style, music and football.

0:19:540:19:59

And then politics seems to come into the mix.

0:19:590:20:02

Definitely down in London. Was that the same up here?

0:20:020:20:05

It did for a short while, we had one guy, he was...

0:20:050:20:08

You know Barnadale's cousin?

0:20:080:20:10

-Yeah.

-He came in, he was a young socialist.

0:20:100:20:13

Behind-the-scenes was the National Front.

0:20:130:20:15

They actually took us to, I remember going to Scarborough for a weekend,

0:20:150:20:18

all free. You can imagine young folk with nowt else to do jumping on a

0:20:180:20:21

coach. And the conference was held at the Spa in Scarborough, and they

0:20:210:20:25

wouldn't fucking let us out.

0:20:250:20:26

They'd got us in there and they locked the doors. We wanted out. We went to Scarborough for a good time,

0:20:260:20:30

we didn't go to listen to all this bollocks about politics.

0:20:300:20:33

Seriously, that happened.

0:20:330:20:35

And they still kept on. And a few guys got hooked into it.

0:20:350:20:38

'Football was a massive movement.

0:20:440:20:46

'And I think certain people thought, "If we can influence football on a political level'

0:20:460:20:51

"and give them the start that we want, you know,

0:20:510:20:54

"it could get, it could go off the wrong way."

0:20:540:20:57

Now, I'd heard about the National Front's attempts to infiltrate the

0:21:000:21:03

terraces, so I dug deeper, via the net, to speak to a repentant,

0:21:030:21:07

ex-high ranking NF member.

0:21:070:21:09

What's the truth behind the NF targeting football fans,

0:21:090:21:12

many of whom were skinheads?

0:21:120:21:13

At the time, I was chairman of the Young National Front,

0:21:130:21:16

which was the youth movement of the NF.

0:21:160:21:18

And we were aware of the sympathy that many of the skinheads

0:21:180:21:21

had for what we were doing.

0:21:210:21:24

And we used to sell Bulldog,

0:21:240:21:25

the newspaper of the Young National Front,

0:21:250:21:27

of which I was the editor, outside many football grounds.

0:21:270:21:30

And at Chelsea, Chelsea were a bad team with home crowds of only about

0:21:300:21:35

seven or 8,000.

0:21:350:21:36

We were selling 700 copies of Bulldog at every game.

0:21:360:21:39

So that's 10% of the crowd were actually buying copies of the magazine.

0:21:390:21:43

So, it was a fruitful place for us to be plying our ware, shall we say.

0:21:430:21:47

So it's not surprising you're going to go where your support base is.

0:21:470:21:50

Did you know guys with right-wing tendencies?

0:21:520:21:55

Well, I were a member of National Front, simply because...

0:21:550:21:59

they used to have a disco and they wouldn't let you in if you weren't a

0:22:010:22:05

member. So I used to go to a regular meeting on Thursday nights,

0:22:050:22:09

at Belfry, it was called, Belfry,

0:22:090:22:12

just for the music and stuff.

0:22:120:22:14

Why do you think the skinheads found the National Front attractive?

0:22:170:22:21

I think the skinheads found the Nation Front attractive probably for the

0:22:210:22:24

same reason I did, they were white,

0:22:240:22:25

working-class at a time of major demographic change, of economic hardship,

0:22:250:22:31

of class identity,

0:22:310:22:32

of racial identity, and I think all of those things came together.

0:22:320:22:35

The tribal cohesiveness.

0:22:350:22:38

And of course, once you have a crucial number of skinheads,

0:22:380:22:43

the rest of the skinheads want to be part of the same scene.

0:22:430:22:45

In order to be a true skinhead, you have to be a member of the Nation Front and it becomes a

0:22:450:22:49

self-fulfilling prophecy at that point.

0:22:490:22:50

When I joined...

0:22:500:22:53

as far as I can remember, I was the only young member, under 25.

0:22:530:22:58

And now, there's so many, I don't know how many.

0:22:580:23:01

'There was an element that tried to hijack the terraces,

0:23:030:23:06

'of course there was. There was an element that tried to infiltrate the'

0:23:060:23:09

terraces, even on a political way.

0:23:090:23:11

But fortunately, they never got to the masses.

0:23:110:23:15

The country slipped into a period of social decline during the mid-70s.

0:23:170:23:21

And as skinheads took hold on the terraces,

0:23:210:23:23

it seemed to disappear as a fashion from the streets.

0:23:230:23:27

But the arrival of punk rock, a new soundtrack fuelled by the times,

0:23:270:23:30

would kick-start the skinhead revival.

0:23:300:23:33

# And I am an anarchist... #

0:23:330:23:36

In 1977, as DJ at the legendary Roxy Club,

0:23:360:23:39

the UK's first punk rock venue,

0:23:390:23:41

I was perfectly placed to see this forgotten army emerge from the shadows.

0:23:410:23:46

# ..want to be

0:23:460:23:49

# Anarchy... #

0:23:490:23:53

Skinheads were in a funny place when they came back.

0:23:530:23:55

They started coming back from '76 onwards,

0:23:550:23:58

but they were very small at the time.

0:23:580:24:01

And at that time, the only places these kids could go were to punk clubs.

0:24:010:24:04

And they didn't really like punk, because to them,

0:24:040:24:07

a lot of the punks were middle-class, a lot of the punks were posers.

0:24:070:24:10

They didn't like the scruffiness.

0:24:100:24:12

'I remember being 12 and seeing the Sex Pistols,'

0:24:150:24:19

listening to them. I was scared. I was scared.

0:24:190:24:23

That's a bit much. Like, "I'm an antichrist!"

0:24:230:24:26

'Me, as a kid, I would see all these punks walking round town with

0:24:290:24:33

'multicoloured hair and spikes and that sort of stuff and thought it was so exciting.

0:24:330:24:36

But punk itself was a little bit to art school for me,

0:24:360:24:39

I was a council estate kid living in, you know...

0:24:390:24:42

I think Sham 69 is what really got me.

0:24:420:24:45

Sham had an upsurge in working-class people

0:24:500:24:54

so much wanting something else

0:24:540:24:56

and something new and something that they could feel was a punk band.

0:24:560:24:59

'When Sham came along, they were like the champions, in our own eyes,'

0:25:030:25:06

of the underdogs. So a lot of kids gravitated towards them.

0:25:060:25:09

I gave them our way into punk that they did not have outside of that.

0:25:120:25:19

Their whole thing is not about being experimental, it is a structure.

0:25:190:25:24

'And I think what Sham did,

0:25:270:25:28

'they took that whole terrace chant thing and they tried to reinvent'

0:25:280:25:32

themselves. And I think they'd have done it and been much more successful

0:25:320:25:35

if they hadn't been destroyed by the politics.

0:25:350:25:38

'By the late '70s, the right-wing politicians, they realised there was'

0:25:400:25:46

an army who'd fight for them, do you know what I mean?

0:25:460:25:49

'They saw a way of, say, recruitment at our gigs.

0:25:490:25:54

'The lost souls of whoever they were, in the weakness of whoever they were,

0:25:540:25:58

'could far more easily be contained and brought about into their party'

0:25:580:26:03

through a Sham 69 gig than probably any of the gig they could possibly

0:26:030:26:07

go to. I was very, very quick to recognise this.

0:26:070:26:10

So therefore that's why I quickly wanted to play the Rock Against Racism gig. Any of them,

0:26:100:26:16

to show straightaway I was an ally to the theme of rock against racism

0:26:160:26:21

than I ever was, do you understand, to the other event?

0:26:210:26:25

-Hold-up!

-Hang on!

-Oi!

0:26:250:26:28

Oi!

0:26:280:26:29

'Sham 69 concerts were disrupted by National Front and British movements,

0:26:290:26:34

'skinheads after Jimmy Pursey came out on the anti-racist side.

0:26:340:26:40

'It became, if you like,'

0:26:400:26:41

a catalyst for the skinheads to show their disapproval of what they saw

0:26:410:26:46

as Jimmy Pursey's sell-out of what they saw as being the true skinhead thing.

0:26:460:26:51

'When Sham 69 had their last stand, a terrible gig at The Rainbow,

0:26:520:26:57

'it was that lot, all of them who caused it.'

0:26:570:27:00

And even though there was only 40 of them,

0:27:000:27:01

they got a bigger mob around them and that's what caused that chaos,

0:27:010:27:04

so that was a terrible time for Jimmy Pursey.

0:27:040:27:06

What can I do? I mean,

0:27:060:27:08

I do it for you. If you trust me, I would have trusted you.

0:27:080:27:11

This 40 managed to get about

0:27:160:27:19

200 of the audience running round in packs terrorising people, and then

0:27:190:27:23

they invaded the stage and there's Sieg Heiling and all this old crap.

0:27:230:27:27

It was horrible. Absolutely horrible.

0:27:270:27:29

The worst gig, up to that point, I had ever seen.

0:27:290:27:32

'When people bring themselves out into the daylight,

0:27:380:27:41

'it's a completely different way of looking at things, isn't it? So that's what it did for me.'

0:27:410:27:46

It put a total value to their stupidity, do you understand, of saying,

0:27:460:27:50

"Thank God you've done that," because now I can also go, "Look,

0:27:500:27:53

"do you really think I want to play to that?" That's why it was the last.

0:27:530:27:57

"Do you really think I've got anything to do with this trash?"

0:27:570:28:00

In 1979,

0:28:030:28:04

Jimmy walked away from a scene that was becoming increasingly toxic.

0:28:040:28:08

And from where I'm standing, the Sham 69 story is a real tragedy.

0:28:080:28:12

Because whether I liked the music or not,

0:28:120:28:14

he definitely made a connection to youth that felt ignored and rejected.

0:28:140:28:19

Something I could certainly relate to.

0:28:190:28:21

And they wouldn't be the last band to feel the pressure of having a skinhead following.

0:28:210:28:25

# One step beyond... #

0:28:250:28:28

MUSIC: One Step Beyond by Madness

0:28:280:28:31

There was another movement waiting in the wings to pick up the skinhead

0:28:330:28:36

slack, good and bad.

0:28:360:28:38

Fuelled by the energy of punk and a love of reggae,

0:28:380:28:40

it focused on kids living on multicultural estates that had grown-up with,

0:28:400:28:44

well, kids like me.

0:28:440:28:46

And it put style and music centre stage.

0:28:460:28:49

Because this was 2 Tone.

0:28:490:28:51

'We lived in a town called High Wycombe, which was west of London,

0:28:520:28:55

'it was an overspill town. So, it was full of immigrants.'

0:28:550:28:58

Calypso was played all the time, reggae was played all the time.

0:28:580:29:02

But our music, the white kids, you know, council estate kids,

0:29:020:29:04

was punk rock. When 2 Tone came along, to us,

0:29:040:29:08

that was the kids of our council estate playing in a band together.

0:29:080:29:12

When The Specials done that music, Neville Staples and Terry Hall,

0:29:120:29:15

that was us, that was me and Barry.

0:29:150:29:17

These guys, they were us.

0:29:190:29:23

And I'd never seen us jumping around on Top Of The Pops.

0:29:230:29:26

When I heard that, just the call of "one step beyond", I thought,

0:29:290:29:33

"I'm having some of that." I didn't really look at it as being skinhead,

0:29:330:29:36

it wasn't about that, it was just about, "This music, I like.

0:29:360:29:40

"What they're wearing, I like."

0:29:400:29:43

End of.

0:29:430:29:44

'There was a whole new bunch of kids coming up and Specials and

0:29:460:29:50

'the multicultural stuff are talking to that, and they were talking to the kids'

0:29:500:29:54

that were seeing stuff, the new world out of our eyes,

0:29:540:29:57

not our parents' eyes, when the whole world was white.

0:29:570:30:00

'My dad was extremely racist.

0:30:040:30:06

'I mean extremely.

0:30:060:30:08

'He was a National Front member, he hated anybody that wasn't white,'

0:30:080:30:11

Anglo-Saxon. So my dad was saying one thing, I was saying something else.

0:30:110:30:15

But it wasn't about making a big statement, it wasn't like,

0:30:150:30:19

"Oh, we shouldn't be doing it." It was just normal.

0:30:190:30:22

'It was full of black people like Neville Staples and Pauline Black on'

0:30:240:30:27

the television telling us it was us, as well.

0:30:270:30:30

Do you know what I mean? So it was like, "This is ours."

0:30:300:30:33

We didn't think we were skinheads, or we were this, or we were that,

0:30:400:30:43

we were just... I had as many black mates that were wearing their stuff

0:30:430:30:47

as anybody else, until...

0:30:470:30:50

the evilness of it all started happening and they all chipped.

0:30:500:30:53

They just went, "Obviously we can't do that no more."

0:30:530:30:56

You know, if you're playing, you had maybe the first four or five rows

0:31:010:31:04

all Sieg Heiling at the stage, at some stage during your set.

0:31:040:31:08

And you had to deal with that.

0:31:080:31:10

And the only way you could deal with it would be to stop the gig.

0:31:100:31:14

So we used to go offstage and wait for it all to calm down and then a

0:31:160:31:21

skinhead ambassador would come upstairs and sort of tap on the door

0:31:210:31:26

and say, "Are you coming back on?"

0:31:260:31:28

"And you go, "No, we're not!

0:31:280:31:30

"All your mates are all Sieg Heiling at us."

0:31:300:31:32

He was like, "Well, they don't represent what we think.

0:31:320:31:36

"There's a whole group of us down there and we only came along because we

0:31:360:31:39

"love the music," and all this kind of thing.

0:31:390:31:41

I mean, what I used to say was, "Go down and talk to them,

0:31:410:31:45

"convince your other mates, who look exactly the same as you do,

0:31:450:31:48

"that this is, they're at the wrong gig."

0:31:480:31:52

Even though I was very ideologically

0:31:560:32:00

involved with the National Front's

0:32:000:32:03

credo, I was quite happy to listen to black music.

0:32:030:32:07

I loved soul music, I loved reggae music, I loved ska music.

0:32:070:32:11

So, there was a paradox, you can call it a contradiction,

0:32:110:32:13

it was certainly an oddity that we wanted an all-white culture and all-white

0:32:130:32:18

society, yet we were quite happy to imbibe this non-white culture.

0:32:180:32:24

I still don't understand how any skinhead can keep that contradiction

0:32:310:32:36

within themselves of loving the music and feeling it is perfectly

0:32:360:32:40

acceptable to practise racism.

0:32:400:32:43

-# Stop your messing around

-Ah-ah-ah

0:32:430:32:46

# Better think of your future... #

0:32:460:32:48

'Skinhead was always, always a multicultural theme.'

0:32:480:32:51

Skinhead was born of a mixed marriage between Jamaican culture and white

0:32:510:32:56

working class London culture, Cockney culture.

0:32:560:32:58

And that's what it always was.

0:32:580:33:00

So, for any of these idiots to come along later and say, "No,

0:33:000:33:02

"it's a racist thing." How can it be racist?

0:33:020:33:04

How can you be so ignorant of the roots of the thing you're trying to be?

0:33:040:33:08

'It never made sense to me, you know what I mean?'

0:33:140:33:16

Why the fuck would a racist want to go and watch 2 Tone bands?

0:33:160:33:19

Because the whole idea of 2 Tone was multiculturalism.

0:33:190:33:22

But the same thing, I think they went along just for the fucking trouble.

0:33:220:33:26

So all people would see is skinheads in trouble, you know what I mean?

0:33:260:33:29

They'd see some of them would have fucking "white power" T-shirts and

0:33:290:33:32

they'd assume all the skinheads that were there were white power.

0:33:320:33:36

# A message to you, Rudy... #

0:33:360:33:40

'The media, they seem to think we were the instigators of that.'

0:33:400:33:43

And in some ways, that 2 Tone completely missed the point,

0:33:430:33:47

was some right wing movement that attracted skinheads

0:33:470:33:51

and we were a threat to society in some way or another,

0:33:510:33:55

without ever thinking past that or even thinking, "Well,

0:33:550:33:57

"there's black people who were in these bands,"

0:33:570:33:59

or even investigating what we were talking about.

0:33:590:34:02

'They tried to brand all skinheads as being right-wing thugs and idiots,'

0:34:050:34:08

'which was never, ever true.'

0:34:080:34:10

To the extent that I think they actually transformed the way skinheads

0:34:100:34:14

were seen.

0:34:140:34:15

A lot of middle-class people were scared of the skinheads,

0:34:190:34:22

because they were largely working class, they took this line they were all right-wing thugs.

0:34:220:34:26

And they weren't, they never were.

0:34:260:34:28

-MUSIC:

-Ghost Town by The Specials

0:34:280:34:31

'When I was a little kid in school, the teacher asked us,

0:34:330:34:37

'"What do we think we are? Working-class, middle-class or upper class?"

0:34:370:34:41

And nearly every kid said middle-class.

0:34:410:34:43

We were all from a fucking council estate.

0:34:430:34:45

But we were ashamed to say fucking working-class, do you know what I mean?

0:34:450:34:49

There was a stigma on it.

0:34:490:34:50

So when we reached 12, 13 and become skinheads, we thought, "Fuck him,

0:34:500:34:54

"why should we be fucking ashamed?"

0:34:540:34:55

We become proud to be working-class, not so much proud, but unashamed.

0:34:550:35:00

# All the clubs are being closed down... #

0:35:000:35:05

'We were the ones no-one wants talk to.

0:35:050:35:07

'We were the scruffs, we lived on council estates,

0:35:070:35:10

'there was nothing cool about us.

0:35:100:35:12

'And the more we were hated by the media, the more we were called the Nazi,

0:35:120:35:17

'hooligan thugs, scumbag, lowlife, drug sniffing, mugging old lady lowlife,

0:35:170:35:22

'the more it put us together. The more it made us outlaws,

0:35:220:35:25

the more we were Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

0:35:250:35:27

That's what we felt we were. And that kept us together throughout the '80s.

0:35:270:35:32

The coming decade would see yet another incarnation of skinhead,

0:35:350:35:38

and one that confused the hell out of me.

0:35:380:35:40

It was harder, it was tougher and I couldn't see or hear any connection to

0:35:400:35:44

Jamaica. Trust me, there was no black in Oi!.

0:35:440:35:47

This generation of skinheads were disillusioned and felt despised.

0:35:510:35:54

So they needed a new soundtrack.

0:35:540:35:57

'It was 1981.

0:35:570:36:00

'By then, skinheads had come back on the back of Sham 69 and 2 Tone,

0:36:000:36:05

'they were already back, like. So the older ones like me,'

0:36:050:36:07

we already knew what it was all about.

0:36:070:36:10

The younger kids, they didn't remember the first time round.

0:36:100:36:13

For them, it was like a punk inspired skinhead thing,

0:36:130:36:17

hence the different clothes.

0:36:170:36:19

They were more like military with the flight jackets and stuff like that.

0:36:190:36:22

# Running down the backstreets Oi, oi, oi

0:36:220:36:24

# And we're running and we're free Oi, oi, oi... #

0:36:240:36:28

'What you noticed were bands coming through who were the reality of that

0:36:280:36:32

'punk myth, who were the dead-end kids, they were from council estates,

0:36:320:36:36

'they were from high rises, tower blocks,

0:36:360:36:38

'that was the people forming bands.'

0:36:380:36:41

And it became a harder guitar sound, it became more of an all lads together,

0:36:410:36:46

big mob chorus. That's what distinguished it.

0:36:460:36:48

I give it the name, I think, new punk, real punk,

0:36:530:36:55

we're searching for a name for it because it was different.

0:36:550:36:58

And I hit on Oi! in 1980.

0:36:580:37:00

But you also, you put together a record of Oi! music that had as its title,

0:37:000:37:05

Strength Thru Oi!, which is a parody of a Nazi slogan.

0:37:050:37:09

-You must have known it was a Nazi slogan?

-Did you know that before? I didn't.

0:37:090:37:12

You mean you were sold a title for your album without realising?

0:37:120:37:15

I was looking for a play on words.

0:37:150:37:17

I thought of The Oi! Of Sex from Joy Of Sex,

0:37:170:37:19

I thought of Oi! Division from Joy Division.

0:37:190:37:21

I thought Strength Thru Oi! was, it was the definitive, street level,

0:37:210:37:26

hooligan album.

0:37:260:37:27

You mean to say you didn't realise it was a Nazi slogan?

0:37:270:37:29

The first time I saw that slogan, it was on a Skids album.

0:37:290:37:32

The Oi! music per se is not racialist, it's never been racialist.

0:37:320:37:36

All it is, is pro working-class people.

0:37:360:37:39

We happened to show up there and we sing about football violence and

0:37:410:37:44

fighting with the police and shit like that.

0:37:440:37:46

So Oi! is just a name that got coined to make it different from the

0:37:460:37:51

original punk.

0:37:510:37:52

'When the Oi! came in, I was 15, 16 and I thought, "Yeah,'

0:37:560:38:00

"they are expressing how I fucking feel and how angry I am.

0:38:000:38:04

So you had the Madness stuff you could dance to and the "fuck you" stuff

0:38:040:38:07

with the Oi!

0:38:070:38:08

You said earlier you were running round smashing things up anyway, right.

0:38:150:38:18

-Tell me about that?

-We had our moments.

0:38:180:38:21

But, yeah, we went down to see Angelic Upstarts and just fucking tore the

0:38:210:38:24

place to pieces.

0:38:240:38:26

I liked Angelic Upstarts. There was no reason why we done that, we did it.

0:38:260:38:31

When you hear the music, you feel aggressive. Then after, you feel like punching someone's head in.

0:38:360:38:41

THEY LAUGH

0:38:410:38:42

Kicking their teeth in, whatever.

0:38:420:38:44

All you want to do is go in a pub, get yourself pissed,

0:38:440:38:46

kick somebody's brains in and then go out and smash a few windows or

0:38:460:38:50

something. Something like that.

0:38:500:38:51

There's nothing to do, when you think about it,

0:38:510:38:53

that's the only reason why people do that sort of stuff.

0:38:530:38:56

'They were singing that violent, aggressive white, skinhead music.'

0:39:000:39:05

And we, "Wow, man, this is us."

0:39:050:39:08

The days of dancing down the disco to 2 Tone and having a great time

0:39:080:39:12

had now turned into this, we are now street fighting gangs.

0:39:120:39:15

'Now, I can't pretend I was one of Oi's biggest fans,

0:39:190:39:23

'but one of the things that did catch my eye were the tattoos.

0:39:230:39:26

'These new street gangs had lots of them in strange places.

0:39:260:39:30

'And they'd become a defining part of Oi.'

0:39:300:39:32

'In the 1980s, there were a lot of skinheads within the Oi movement

0:39:360:39:40

'that did opt to have tattoos, tattoos had started'

0:39:400:39:42

to become popular with all subcultures at the time.

0:39:420:39:46

# I just can't take much more of this oppression

0:39:460:39:49

# I'm going out my head... #

0:39:490:39:51

Many skinheads wanted to make a big statement in those days

0:39:510:39:55

and, um, the face became very popular.

0:39:550:39:59

# Have you ever seen grown men cry?

0:39:590:40:01

# Police! Police! Police oppression!

0:40:010:40:04

# Police! Police! Police oppression! #

0:40:040:40:07

One of the problems with people getting their faces tattooed

0:40:070:40:11

is that, in some ways, you're behind an ink prison.

0:40:110:40:13

I guess you can move on from fashion,

0:40:130:40:15

but you can't really move on from a face tattoo.

0:40:150:40:17

Some tattoos, you know, you could regret,

0:40:170:40:21

because of your life choices and how they change.

0:40:210:40:24

In London, in Leicester Square especially,

0:40:260:40:30

you had all the runaways living on the streets, right.

0:40:300:40:32

These are the ones who had the tattoos on their faces

0:40:320:40:35

and were glue sniffing, and we, as kids...

0:40:350:40:37

Again, we were their age, we were looking at them and hero worshipped

0:40:370:40:40

them a bit, cos they were the toughest, they were the hardest.

0:40:400:40:42

This very white and violent incarnation of skinhead

0:40:450:40:48

seemed always to be always looking for a fight and, once again,

0:40:480:40:51

the National Front were there to give them a reason.

0:40:510:40:54

How did the politics coming into the mix affect your attitude?

0:40:540:40:57

Oh, mate, I was hanging out, everyone was cool.

0:40:570:41:02

And, er, then, suddenly,

0:41:020:41:04

they started to listen to some of this other music, which...

0:41:040:41:09

I'm a lover of music, so, within the music they were listening to,

0:41:090:41:12

there were some tunes I thought, "That's a good tune.

0:41:120:41:14

"That's a nice tune, an all right tune."

0:41:140:41:16

But what fucked me off is I couldn't go to the gigs.

0:41:160:41:18

-Yeah.

-There was no chance that I could now travel with my friends.

0:41:180:41:21

There was no chance that I could now continue socialising.

0:41:210:41:26

Er... I was out of the game, basically.

0:41:260:41:29

For a black kid then,

0:41:310:41:32

there was not much reason for them to get involved in the Oi! scene,

0:41:320:41:36

especially when all they seen in the newspapers and the telly was Oi was

0:41:360:41:39

full of skinheads, Oi! was full of fucking racism and shit like this,

0:41:390:41:42

you know what I mean?

0:41:420:41:43

Although I couldn't relate to Oi!,

0:41:440:41:46

as a black man, I could definitely relate to the growing discontent

0:41:460:41:49

across the land - something I experienced personally

0:41:490:41:52

during the Brixton riots of the early '80s.

0:41:520:41:55

You've gotta look at what was going on at the time.

0:42:030:42:05

There was a lot of anger going on and so it was very easy, it was like

0:42:050:42:09

get this fucking anger music up there and people went for it,

0:42:090:42:11

because, you know, they could relate to it.

0:42:110:42:14

Unemployment was high, you had a lot of people with fuck all to do,

0:42:170:42:21

they had no future, they genuinely had no future.

0:42:210:42:23

And so, if someone comes along and has got a message for them saying,

0:42:230:42:26

"We can help you guys," whether it be the far left, or the far right,

0:42:260:42:29

they've got an audience, and, even if only one in ten of them listens,

0:42:290:42:33

they can recruit.

0:42:330:42:34

Skinhead was becoming even more polarised,

0:42:350:42:38

leading to confusion on all sides.

0:42:380:42:40

And in a year that was full of anger,

0:42:400:42:42

the situation came to a head in the summer of 1981, at a gig featuring

0:42:420:42:47

several Oi! bands that attracted a right-wing following,

0:42:470:42:50

regardless of where they stood.

0:42:500:42:52

-NEWSREADER:

-200 skinheads travelled to the large Asian community

0:42:520:42:56

of Southall in London to attend a concert at the Hambrough Tavern.

0:42:560:42:59

As they reached the centre of Southall,

0:42:590:43:01

several skinheads ran down the Broadway breaking shop windows.

0:43:010:43:05

Here you had large groups of people,

0:43:050:43:07

fascist people, er, who were doing Nazi-type salutes,

0:43:070:43:12

writing NF on the condensation of the windows

0:43:120:43:15

and abusing all the Asians here.

0:43:150:43:18

You know, police still didn't do anything.

0:43:180:43:21

The idea that these bands went to Southall...

0:43:210:43:24

-An Asian community!

-..with the intention of starting a race riot is

0:43:240:43:28

-just nonsense. I mean...

-That's still a little naive!

0:43:280:43:31

If you go in there in a mob!

0:43:310:43:34

What happened at Southall was the locals,

0:43:340:43:37

who obviously had been wound up by someone about the fact

0:43:370:43:40

that skinheads, as well as other kids, were coming to this gig.

0:43:400:43:44

And they took it as an affront and

0:43:440:43:45

it was a massive attack on the gig with kids throwing petrol bombs.

0:43:450:43:48

It kicked all off, the pub got burned down.

0:43:510:43:53

This made major news across the country.

0:43:530:43:56

Margaret Thatcher, in her wisdom, said, "Ban that, let's ban Oi!"

0:43:560:43:59

Right? So that got pulled off the shelf and then, after Southall,

0:43:590:44:03

most of the good Oi! bands all folded up, The Rejects, all them were gone.

0:44:030:44:07

And in their place were small little Oi! bands

0:44:070:44:09

and they were being funded by the right wing groups

0:44:090:44:12

and it just fed this whole monster, really.

0:44:120:44:14

So, of course, the media picked up on it

0:44:190:44:21

and every time you then saw somebody with the high boots on

0:44:210:44:24

and the bleached jeans - racist skinhead.

0:44:240:44:26

I think the trouble really started up in London,

0:44:290:44:33

with bands like fucking Screwdriver.

0:44:330:44:35

The out and out, Nazi, fucking bonehead bands.

0:44:350:44:40

They got into it in a big way, the right wing thing. I think they could

0:44:400:44:44

see they could make money, they could play gigs, sell records.

0:44:440:44:47

Being part of being a skinhead is to be a nationalist,

0:44:470:44:50

to be patriotic and proud of your country and proud of your race.

0:44:500:44:52

There's a lot said about skinheads being started from blacks

0:44:520:44:55

in the East End, but personally, I don't think that's right at all.

0:44:550:44:59

I've heard these rude boys, whatever they are called,

0:44:590:45:01

but I don't consider them to be skinheads anyway. I think

0:45:010:45:04

skinhead is a white, working-class movement thing, really.

0:45:040:45:07

# Boots and braces Fighting cos you're bored... #

0:45:070:45:12

For Screwdriver, they started "blood and honour".

0:45:120:45:14

What was blood and honour about?

0:45:140:45:15

Blood and honour was the sort of prodigy of Screwdriver, really.

0:45:150:45:21

It was a proper neo-Nazi thing.

0:45:210:45:23

We were trying to bring about race warfare,

0:45:250:45:27

so our job was to basically disrupt the multicultural society,

0:45:270:45:31

the multiracial society, and make it unworkable and make the various

0:45:310:45:34

different groups hate each other to such a degree they couldn't live

0:45:340:45:38

together and, when they couldn't live together, you end up with that

0:45:380:45:41

ghettoised, radicalised society from which we hoped to rise,

0:45:410:45:44

like the proverbial phoenix from the ashes.

0:45:440:45:47

The rise of these right-wing bands led to the formation of SHARP -

0:45:500:45:53

Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice -

0:45:530:45:56

spearheaded in the UK by Roddy Moreno.

0:45:560:45:59

We were reactionary, so we become like an antifascist band.

0:45:590:46:03

Nothing to do with the country,

0:46:030:46:05

it was simply because there was fucking boneheads out there

0:46:050:46:08

-making us fucking look bad.

-You had to do something, I guess?

0:46:080:46:10

Look, if skinhead was about anything,

0:46:100:46:12

it was about don't let people take the piss out of you,

0:46:120:46:15

you know what I mean? Be a man, man up like, you know what I mean?

0:46:150:46:18

So, when we seen these fucking dickheads dressing up like us and

0:46:180:46:22

come in with all this Nazi nonsense, we had to stand up and say,

0:46:220:46:25

"No, we're not having none of that."

0:46:250:46:27

The Daily Mail tried to paint the whole thing

0:46:300:46:33

as being this neo-Nazi movement, which it never, ever was.

0:46:330:46:37

And I think that media version was

0:46:370:46:40

taken up by, um... the media all round the world.

0:46:400:46:43

MUSIC: Beethoven's Symphony No 9 from A Clockwork Orange

0:46:430:46:47

If you put in the internet "skinhead", you'll get, like,

0:46:470:46:50

a whole list of Polish casuals running around at football matches.

0:46:500:46:54

You'll get American, white supremacist groups.

0:46:540:46:57

You know, where's the skinhead amongst that?

0:46:570:46:59

You know, there is none. It's got nothing really to do with us.

0:46:590:47:02

-No.

-It's been hijacked by the media, it's been sold.

0:47:020:47:05

And that is a shame, that, after 40 years, it's that same thing.

0:47:050:47:10

The demonisation helped, if you like, to ghettoise skinheads

0:47:180:47:22

and they became this very sort of angry, bitter, resentful, paranoid

0:47:220:47:26

subculture, because of the way they were being depicted by the media,

0:47:260:47:30

so, um, in one sense, they became the monster the media had created.

0:47:300:47:33

You look at most racist rallies,

0:47:360:47:38

say in America, and they're dressed all in black, military fatigues,

0:47:380:47:42

the boots and that. They don't look anything like skinheads,

0:47:420:47:45

but it's the military look.

0:47:450:47:47

They just wanted to look hard, so they dressed up like skinheads.

0:47:470:47:51

Particularly in Europe,

0:47:510:47:52

and especially perhaps now in Germany and Eastern Europe,

0:47:520:47:55

the skinhead movement has emerged as part of the new what you might call

0:47:550:48:00

neo-fascist response to the challenges of migration,

0:48:000:48:04

and European union meltdown and whatever other political phenomenon

0:48:040:48:08

you want to bring into the equation.

0:48:080:48:10

As this idea of skinheads as fascists,

0:48:120:48:14

with misguided ideas about national identity, spread around the world,

0:48:140:48:18

it would even find a home where there were no white people.

0:48:180:48:22

There's this gang of fucking dickheads called the KL Troopers

0:48:220:48:26

and they're Malaysia Nazis. I know, it don't make sense.

0:48:260:48:31

The Nazis would've fucking shot them all, do you know what I mean?

0:48:310:48:34

And their thing is Malay Power. Brown Power they call it.

0:48:340:48:38

And they want fucking Malaysia for Malaysians,

0:48:380:48:40

so they want all the Chinese to fuck off

0:48:400:48:42

and they want all the fucking Vietnamese to fuck off.

0:48:420:48:45

Wherever the right reared its ugly head, there was a left response.

0:48:470:48:51

And then, there were those that wanted nothing to do with either side.

0:48:510:48:54

The global appeal towards the skinheads is because

0:48:560:48:59

they stand up for themselves, and I think we all need that sometimes -

0:48:590:49:03

to stand up and say, "I want to be heard."

0:49:030:49:06

You know, I want to be heard, and I think other countries, they have

0:49:060:49:09

their downfalls and have got their upset with their societies and they

0:49:090:49:13

just go, "We're going to stand up for ourselves and say who we are."

0:49:130:49:16

MUSIC: Morning Sun by Al Barry & The Cimarons

0:49:160:49:19

If you ever find a very proud working-class nation,

0:49:220:49:24

you will find skinheads and reggae music and Oi music there,

0:49:240:49:28

because it speaks to somewhere else, it isn't just surface.

0:49:280:49:31

And I have spent three decades trying to suss out

0:49:310:49:33

what that fucking is, I think it's a bit of a mystery.

0:49:330:49:36

Something organic, something that goes deep

0:49:370:49:39

when you're within a tribe.

0:49:390:49:41

# She was waiting so impatiently... #

0:49:410:49:46

I mean, I still have people come up to me today and say,

0:49:460:49:49

"Are you a skinhead?" and you go, "Yeah."

0:49:490:49:51

and they go, "So you're a racist?"

0:49:510:49:53

And I go, "What makes you say that I'm a racist?"

0:49:530:49:55

Even though, after fucking 35 years fighting against it,

0:49:580:50:02

Joe Public still assumes skinheads are fucking racists.

0:50:020:50:06

Where we have one, everyone knows the fucking truth,

0:50:060:50:09

you know what I mean?

0:50:090:50:10

Everyone knows there's skinheads and there's boneheads.

0:50:100:50:14

You have skinheads within skinheads. So there are, if you like,

0:50:190:50:22

retro skins that just want to go back to that '60s purity,

0:50:220:50:26

as they would see it, or those that are blood and honour

0:50:260:50:29

keeping on that tradition that goes back to the late '70s.

0:50:290:50:33

But I mean, except for the fact they call themselves skinheads,

0:50:330:50:35

and they might look superficially similar, a white supremacist,

0:50:350:50:38

neo-Nazi skin is not going to look very much like someone

0:50:380:50:41

who's trying to look like a 1969 skinhead who loves ska music.

0:50:410:50:45

Subcultures are interesting.

0:50:500:50:51

Skinheads are one of the most enduring, one of the most striking

0:50:510:50:56

and, for me, interesting,

0:50:560:51:00

because they contain that contradiction of liking one thing,

0:51:000:51:05

but sometimes having differing views from what that might suggest.

0:51:050:51:12

The fight for the soul of skinhead has always been a one-sided battle,

0:51:150:51:19

as these opposing views have been poorly represented.

0:51:190:51:23

But there have been attempts to redress the balance.

0:51:230:51:26

What do you think Shane Meadows was trying to do with This Is England?

0:51:260:51:29

I think Shane was trying to put a truth across.

0:51:290:51:32

Um, an honest truth about how it actually was for his generation

0:51:320:51:36

and that time growing up.

0:51:360:51:38

There's a kid in it, he's dressed up with his bleached jeans,

0:51:410:51:43

he's got a shaved head, he's a full-on skinhead.

0:51:430:51:46

And they're driving back from a Nation Front meeting

0:51:460:51:48

and he's sat in the back and he goes, "Er...

0:51:480:51:52

"Wasn't that all a bit of a load of old bollocks?

0:51:520:51:55

and he stops and throws him out the car and leaves him

0:51:550:51:57

in the countryside, and I thought, "That's me, that is me all over."

0:51:570:52:00

The Tim Roth film, it's like, "Whoa!"

0:52:040:52:07

You know, anything that gave a little nod towards who we were,

0:52:070:52:11

you jumped on.

0:52:110:52:12

He was a confused kid, he had a Swastika on his forehead.

0:52:120:52:15

He was a confused kid, thank you.

0:52:150:52:16

But he spent most of the film hanging out with the black guy.

0:52:160:52:19

Thank you. See, that's what I mean!

0:52:190:52:21

That's why he got it, so that director got it so spot fucking on.

0:52:210:52:25

Against a tidal wave of negativity,

0:52:300:52:32

there's always been those that know the real story.

0:52:320:52:35

And it's left to them to keep the original flame alive

0:52:360:52:39

in the form of skinhead revivals.

0:52:390:52:41

I'm 61 years of age, I was brought up in this culture.

0:52:470:52:49

And I love the music, I love the clothes I wear,

0:52:490:52:52

People give me dirty looks and everything else, but I don't care.

0:52:520:52:55

Cos, at the end of the day, I wear what I want. As I says, I'm 61!

0:52:550:52:59

I'm happy what I'm doing, I have friends, I have everything.

0:52:590:53:03

But the odd occasion, you have people come up to you saying

0:53:030:53:06

you're a Nazi and NF and all this. I'm not NF!

0:53:060:53:09

What's NF got to do with dressing like this, you know? It's stupidity.

0:53:090:53:13

It's a way of life for me.

0:53:150:53:17

It's the music, it's the clothing, it's the culture,

0:53:170:53:21

from when I was young. That's what I grew up with. That's what I love.

0:53:210:53:24

We do what we do and we'll do what we do till we die, you know.

0:53:270:53:30

It's important for the younger generation to understand

0:53:300:53:32

-where it came from, to understand the music.

-It wasn't about racism.

0:53:320:53:36

There is no racist element in what we do

0:53:360:53:40

and that's very important to get over to people.

0:53:400:53:43

This is a very, very interesting phenomenon for me.

0:53:440:53:46

I've been in touch, lately,

0:53:460:53:49

with people like that, because it's heartening they want to do that.

0:53:490:53:52

Cos what really united us, when all said and done, as I keep saying,

0:53:520:53:56

was the music and the clothes.

0:53:560:53:58

For a youngster now, to actually choose to become a skinhead...

0:54:000:54:04

-HE LAUGHS:

-..I mean...I mean...

0:54:040:54:06

why would you want to do that, unless you are really into it?

0:54:060:54:10

It's probably the hardest youth culture to choose to be in.

0:54:100:54:14

We didn't do that when we... We just went for whatever was cool!

0:54:140:54:17

And we didn't have all that stigma - that's all come after.

0:54:170:54:20

But to choose to do that now as a youngster,

0:54:200:54:22

I've got nothing but respect for them.

0:54:220:54:24

On my feet, I wear Doctor Marten boots, they're cherry red,

0:54:270:54:31

they've got yellow stitching and yellow laces.

0:54:310:54:33

Levi jeans, they're 501s with a half-inch turn up

0:54:330:54:37

and I also wear a Brutus trim fit shirt, nice button-down collar

0:54:370:54:42

and I wear half-inch braces,

0:54:420:54:44

so they match everything else.

0:54:440:54:46

And I wear a Harrington jacket that completes the whole skinhead look.

0:54:460:54:50

So, skinheads started in the '60s, there was a revival in the late '70s

0:54:500:54:54

-and there's reunions in the 21st century.

-Yeah.

0:54:540:54:57

Why are young people so into it?

0:54:570:54:59

It's...it's something different, it's the music, the style

0:54:590:55:04

and just to be someone else and be part of a family.

0:55:040:55:08

I think the clothes is a big part of it, cos it's...

0:55:100:55:14

what separates you from everyone else, isn't it? So...

0:55:140:55:17

the clothes is a big part of it,

0:55:170:55:19

I think you either go into collecting the records

0:55:190:55:21

or you collect the clothes and I started off collecting the clothes,

0:55:210:55:25

getting everything, so I looked pukka!

0:55:250:55:28

Why are you skinheads in the 21st-century?

0:55:320:55:35

Because it's a way of life.

0:55:350:55:37

It's just one of them things that doesn't leave you.

0:55:370:55:39

It's there, the music, the fashion,

0:55:390:55:41

even through the times when you're growing up, getting married,

0:55:410:55:44

you're having kids, where you think, "I have to put it

0:55:440:55:47

"on the back burner," it's always there,

0:55:470:55:48

so, when you get the opportunity... I think you're always a skinhead.

0:55:480:55:52

The younger generation,

0:55:530:55:55

as long as they look at the good aspects of being a skinhead,

0:55:550:55:58

the traditional skinhead, and the Trojan music, the clothes

0:55:580:56:02

and whatever and don't go for the bad side of the skinheads,

0:56:020:56:06

that, um, sort of a merged in the late '70s, early to mid 80s,

0:56:060:56:11

um, then that's a good thing, and it keeps the culture alive.

0:56:110:56:15

# This is the law!

0:56:150:56:17

# Chapter one

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# The law

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# The law for the good

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# The law for the ugly

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# For the bad! BAD!

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# The law... #

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When I'm listening to the news and they say,

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"Gangs of skinheads attacking refugees" or, this, that

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and the other, I think, "Hang on, taking my name in vain,

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"taking the name of my mates in vain."

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I would like to reclaim their name.

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Either throw it away, because it's become associated

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with something else, or actually reclaim it.

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Do you think it's possible to

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reclaim the name skinhead from the fascists?

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-No.

-Really?

-No, I don't think so at all.

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For the simple reason that, again,

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those ideologies have been so sold to people,

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in that skinhead is associated with...

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that it's like a branding.

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I get asked a lot by people about,

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like, well, "You seem to know a bit about skinheads. What's it about?

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"I thought they were all racist, I thought they were all this."

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It depends on where you start reading your story.

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If you go back and start reading your story back to the beginning

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and get yourself a good foundation

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of your knowledge of the skinhead culture, and where it was born from,

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I think, if you can just get that foundation sorted out right

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in your head, then everything you read and come from after that,

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at least you've got that, you know what it was about.

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Then you can understand and you can see where it's been distorted,

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do you know what I mean? Because it did start off as one thing.

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Now it has branched off to mean untold different things.

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I thought I knew what skinhead was when I started this journey.

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Even though the world's telling me it's changed into something else,

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I still believe in the original idea - the one

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that brought us together through a mutual love of music and style.

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In my world, a tool for social change, albeit at street level.

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But where I'm from, that's where it starts.

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Where it ends up, well, as we've just seen, that's something else.

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