From working-class London neighborhoods to neo-Nazism: how a story of cultural exchange, reggae, fashion, music and identity was rewritten by extremism and hate — with the help of politics.
It seems like a distant reality, but when it was born on the streets of London, in the 60s, culture skinhead it was an expression of a very different type of pride than it would be just over a decade later and even today.
Today exclusively associated with racism, violence, hatred and neo-Nazism, the movement began as a kind of cultural exchange among young white working-class and Jamaican communities recently arrived in the UK.
In the beginning, being a skinhead was, above all, affirming class identity. Many of the young people who adopted the style came from poor neighborhoods or less prestigious suburbs. They felt far from the hippie counterculture and that it did not exactly respond to their concerns — such as precariousness and lack of opportunities.
How do you try to explain the British Don Letts — black man linked to the first generation of skinheads in London — in the documentary, it is impossible to talk about the origins of the movement without remembering the changes in immigration who were living in the United Kingdom at the time.
The arrival of Jamaicans in London and other cities brought new communities to areas where white workers already lived. Physical proximity motivated contact and cultural exchange. Young English people began listening to and collecting ska and reggae records.
“Skinhead culture was not meant to be racist”, Tommaso Lanzi in , also explaining that the first skinheads were very influenced by ska, rocksteady and reggae [estilos de música jamaicana] who arrived from the Caribbean. The movement “began in working-class neighborhoods and was shaped more by music, style and solidarity than politics,” but “over time, extremist groups appropriated the look, distorting a subculture that was originally based on identity, pride and belonging.”
In dress and presentation, early skinheads also embraced earlier subcultures such as mods or rockers., remember . They wore well-cut coats, polished shoes and shaved or shortened their hair, but as a way of identifying themselves as a proud worker, part of a group that aspired and lived the same things.
Everything changed in the 70s
From the beginning of the 1970s, the word “skinhead” began to gain new strength. The figure of the skinhead, very present on the streets, grew to be frequently associated with violence, alcohol, football and racism, and would be the second ‘generation’ of skinheads to stop resisting this image: they appropriated it.
The aesthetics and aggressiveness projected by the media began to be adopted by racist elements and groups linked to football supporters, initially rejected by the first generation of the subculture.
Organized infiltration
As the subculture expanded, political organizations saw an opportunity.
“We were trying to think about race wars”says a former member of the British National Front, Joseph Pearce, in Letts’ documentary. Skinheads, victims of economic and social frustration, thus became fertile ground for ethnonationalist messages.
“Our work”, recalls the former party member and propaganda author in the 80s, “was basically destabilize the multicultural society, the multiracial society, and make it unviable.”
The party sought to recruit en masse where the skinheads were, and football games were a preferred venue. Selling magazines and propaganda materials around stadiums made it possible to reach hundreds, even thousands, of potential supporters. In some rural areas, where there was less cultural offerings, the National Front even resorted to night clubs with entry restricted to members.
Hey! and the Southall riot
As racist discourse gained ground, the movement began to “rot from within”, according to the narrative. A symbolic example appears in the musical universe: the punk band Sham 69, with a strong skinhead fan base, reportedly interrupted concerts after violent episodes carried out by National Front supporters, including a riot at a show in 1979.
The change in meaning of skinhead culture was so rapid that some members of the original subculture were pushed out of the group. It happened to Barry “Bmore” George, a former skinhead who told his story in the documentary: “it all depends on where you start telling the story”, he adds.
There was also one last moment of explicit attempt at multicultural rapprochement: the 2 Tone movementin the late 1970s, which mixed 1960s-style ska with punk energy and an aesthetic often associated with anti-racist messages; but when this wave lost its breath, a new sound emerged: the Hey!, described as the fusion of the skinhead blue-collar ethos with the strength of punk.
Right-wing nationalists sought to appropriate Oi! from an early age. The album Strength Thru Oi! was inspired by a Nazi slogan, and the cover included a neo-Nazi who would end up convicted of attacks on young black people at a train station in the same year, and, after leaving prison, would work as a security guard for a punk rock band, Skrewdriver.
One of the most memorable episodes was the motim de Southallin 1981, in London. Two buses of skinheads were heading to a concert in a neighborhood with a large Indian and Pakistani population. Along the way, they found an Asian woman and brutally assaulted her, while vandalizing stores and breaking windows.
Indians and Pakistanis followed the skinheads to the pub where the concert was taking place and total chaos ensued, according to an article in , dated July 5, 1981. A spokesman for the local youth association stated that the skinheads were displaying symbols of the British National Front and swastikas and accused the police of protecting them by pushing them behind the barricades instead of stopping them. The image of the skinhead would be immortalized as openly racist and violent.
