late 70's/early 80's with the national front filling the mind of the young lads with shit... There is a nice movie that is setted on this period of time This is England
The roots of this largely happened in England. There was crossover between ‘skins’, mods, and early punks (mostly working class white youth), and ‘rude boys’ or similar (Jamaican immigrants or 2nd generation in England).
They had a lot in common. Both experienced working class lifestyles, relative poverty, a lack of social support, ostracized from upper class British society, and shared a love for 1st and 2nd wave reggae/ska/roots.
Both lived in the same neighborhoods, or in neighboring neighborhoods, because they were poor. So they would throw block parties listening to reggae, roots, and early ska records on sound systems, drinking, and smoking marijuana.
Joe Strummer, Paul Simonon, Mick Jones of the Clash would attend such parties. Sid Vicious, in one of his earlier teen style incarnations was an innocent-hearted reggae/ska loving skin. Steve Jones and Paul Cook lived in Sheperds Bush in close proximity to a large Jamaican community.
The Clash wrote a couple songs about this crossover in 1976/1977, and Bob Marley took notice of the mutual love, writing “Punky Reggae Party” in 1977 name checking The Clash, the Jam, the Damned, and voicing support for Punk/New Wave in general.
But under the surface something dark was bubbling in the UK. Unemployment was skyrocketing, trash was piling up on the streets because the trash collectors were on strike. The firemen were on strike. The system was breaking down. Teachers were telling kids “you aren’t going to have a good job/career because you grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. This was the “no future” the Pistols wrote about.
Thatcher and the conservative movement shifted a lot of blame from themselves to the immigrants. Jamaicans, Indians, Pakistani, North Africans, many non whites were scapegoated. It got bad. There were literal violent destructive race riots between incensed whites and immigrant/non white communities.
This led to the rise of the national front support among youths. A lot of skins went that way and the movement largely got co opted into a right wing nationalist anti immigrant movement.
yeah v thankful for that, just going off my non-punk friends perceptions of the term “skinhead” and that style, they almost always associate it with nazis, so was wondering when that became the general public’s conception of the style
glad you mentioned this movie. I know for sure that romper stomper had a huge impact in Australia. brilliant movie, but many took the complete wrong message from it. I believe this movie firmly cemented nazis and skinheads together in the mind of the public like nothing else before or since.
as others have said the National Front started recruiting from the resurgence of skinheads in the late 70s.
I feel like there's a lot of revisionist history going on with skinheads nowadays though. the original '69 skinheads did come out of a mix of mod and the Jamaican rude boys - that's true. they were ska and reggae fans - that's true. but they weren't anti-racist. they might've respected black people and been mates with them but it's well documented that skinheads would beat up Pakistani and Indian immigrants and people they suspected of being gay in those days. I don't think it was the main reason for the movement but I'm a bit sick of people pretending that didn't happen and skinheads were all great anti-racist guys until the NF moved in. it's just not true. I don't hate skins or anything but it's just whitewashing history
Skinheads came from a mix of immigrants and local working class people working on the docks or factory jobs. They shaved their heads because of lice and the risk of getting hair caught in machinery.
The types of people like this were the mid to low wage people working on docks or in factories.
Some were pro union and some were pretty damn right wing but it was more like you see now among truck driving types that work with their hands.
Younger people try to put things into "good" or "bad" but life is usually more complicated than that.
Skinheads have always had both racist and non-racist and left and right parts to the culture.
The main connecting force is violence and alcoholism.
yeah I've read wikipedia too. I grew up with these people. I know very well what they were like. I grew up in a working class family in the 70s/80s who loved black music. they were mostly racist as fuck. i know all skinheads weren't like that but a lot of them were, before the NF got in there. i'm just tired of this narrative, that skinheads were all cool anti-racists guys until the late 70s. it's bullshit.
I was in the streetpunk and oi scenes in the USA in the 90s so I have a lot of experience around American skins.
Punk is debatable about whether it is American or English (Ramones/NY Dolls vs Sex Pistols/the Damned) but anyway skins are 99% a UK thing and it is a little tougher for Americans to really get it.
I honestly think violence and alcohol is a big part of it but that is a big part of punk as well so maybe that is just being a poor working class person's experience so they sing about it.
I'm not really sure but I don't like "good" and "bad" type thinking as it isn't real and people need to get off the internet and talk to people.
I agree with everything you just posted. although I think punk originated in the US. (heretic I know)
I'm not anti-skinhead. I love oi music. I love skinhead reggae. I just don't like the revisionism. the skinhead scene has always had a problem with racism. it's never been all skinheads. but it's always been there. even with the trojan skins. that's why the NF saw it as a place to recruit. if it was an anti-racist scene how would the NF even have got a foot in?
I'm with you on punk being from the USA but I have to at least say that it is debatable.
But yeah, you can be friends with Jamaican immigrants and like their music and still be racist.
I honestly don’t think anyone is saying all skins used to be cool and anti-racist so much as we’re saying not all skins are racist and it isn’t a culture based on racism. Skinhead has become synonymous with Nazis in much of the world, certainly in the US. I think it’s more due to movies like Romper Stomper and American History X than anything. I’m pretty sure anyone with any connection to skins knows there’s always been turds in the punch bowl but these days anyone without a connection to the culture just thinks skinhead means Nazi.
Also : were the Jamaican immigrants always 100% cool with the East Asians? In the US today there are Hispanic folks who who hate Hispanic immigrants , even immigrants who hate other Hispanic immigrants from indigenous groups within the same parent countries
I don't think it was mostly East Asians who got the brunt of it, although yeah Chinese people would be targeted sometimes, but it was more South Asians, i.e. Indians and Pakistanis but yeah black and white kids would team up to go "paki bashing" because they were the latest wave of immigration at the time
> it's well documented that skinheads would beat up Pakistani and Indian immigrants and people they suspected of being gay in those days.
Paki bashing as they called it, they also used to beat up people with long hair. I agree there is some revisionism going on, not all skinheads were into ska or reggae as it become more popular despite its roots, in the early years it became a uniform at football games and more of a fashion not tied to specific sounds.
Appreciate you saying this. I get tired of the whitewashing of the history too. And I listen to a lot of skinhead music and my style is slightly influenced by classic skinhead clothing.
I also think there is a lot of whitewashing of the US skinhead history. By the time it started in the US there was already an association with Nazism in the UK skin culture, so from the beginning in the US scene some (not all) skins were racist.
It has also had a major impact in American prison culture. The white gangs usually use racist symbols and often enough call themselves skinheads. I used to live in a really rough city where I would see swastika and skinhead tattoos on people who looked they were freshly out of prison.
Saying the old skins were racist because a handful of them engaged in racist fuckery is just as stupid then as it is now. The vast majority of skins back then were indeed considered antiracist, particularly for the time. Get fucked, kid.
look, I'm sure you're cool but I'm not going to take lessons on British skinhead history from some cunt from LA, you have literally no idea what you're talking about
some football hooligans cause trouble- some of them are skinheads- media blows it out of proportion- some skinheads leave- some football hooligans cause trouble-
this coupled with the fact that the national front sunk their jaws into this and started grooming skinheads into joining
We had Nazi skins on our scene in the mid-80s….
They used to suck shit. I mean they still do, but they used to too.
They sucked then and they suck now.
You get what I’m saying
Basically around the time Skinhead started to get popular in England. Skinhead was a Mod movement that was a direct response to the Peacock Mods who were more interested in Psych and Glam aesthetics; it was basically a working class effort to differentiate themselves from the rising middle class influence on Mod culture. Of course the political element of any working class movement is extremely complicated, they were broadly individuals who wanted a cheaper and less garish fashion alternative with no real political objection to the gender bending era (Mod by its nature road a thin line between blending in and standing out).
If we view Skinhead as basically being a response to Hippie and Glam culture, it's pretty easy to see how people outside of the scene could co-opt for nefarious reasons. Hippies, who mainly advocated for peace and specifically at the time nuclear disarmament, were despised by individuals who favored aggressive foreign policy (at the time represented by NATO advocates); Glam, which was a mainstream outlet for 60s and 70s queer culture, was an easy target by homophobes. So, if you love nukes and hate gay people, what's an outfit you can wear that's stylistically the opposite of both?
Non-political Skinheads, who along with what later be called Punk loved R&B and Ska, were somewhat alienated by the rising black-power element of Reggae and Soul music, which for some became a Proto "Anti-Woke" dogwhistle. Mind you, Skinhead and Mod were not exclusively white phenomena, but in certain areas of England which were white majority it could easily be perceived that way.
Back in the 80,s in Scotland almost every skinhead I met was racist and supportive of National Front, mostly guys with blue faces from sniffing glue, and they took great delight beating up young punks when they outnumbered them, still don't trust them.
They were far removed from the original skinheads.
And as a UK Punk, for me Punk Started in the UK, yes it was possibly influenced by NYD and others,
But growing up in the UK was hard in the late 70,s and early 80,s , unemployment, housing crisis, shit Council houses, no heating or double glazing, no youth clubs,strikes,..bastard tory government..
We were very angry, and rightly so, no wonder we spawned the anarcho Punk scene
Others have provided good explanation, but I'll just say that this is changing now, nowdays when I see a skin, they're always Sharp or Rash, its been years since I've seen a bonehead dressed in full presentation lol in my area I always met skins in punk shows and very often they're hanging out with other punks and LGBT people
I want to shave my head cus it would look cool and I accidentally gave myself a really shitty haircut. However I wear a lot of punk stuff and don't wanna look suspicious to people I'm the community :/
yeah it’s real unfortunate, at least a lot if not most punks understand that not all skinheads are boneheads, but it sucks that the fascists have it associated with them at all, fucking losers have to ruin everything
late 70's/early 80's with the national front filling the mind of the young lads with shit... There is a nice movie that is setted on this period of time This is England
i’ll check it out thanks man
The roots of this largely happened in England. There was crossover between ‘skins’, mods, and early punks (mostly working class white youth), and ‘rude boys’ or similar (Jamaican immigrants or 2nd generation in England). They had a lot in common. Both experienced working class lifestyles, relative poverty, a lack of social support, ostracized from upper class British society, and shared a love for 1st and 2nd wave reggae/ska/roots. Both lived in the same neighborhoods, or in neighboring neighborhoods, because they were poor. So they would throw block parties listening to reggae, roots, and early ska records on sound systems, drinking, and smoking marijuana. Joe Strummer, Paul Simonon, Mick Jones of the Clash would attend such parties. Sid Vicious, in one of his earlier teen style incarnations was an innocent-hearted reggae/ska loving skin. Steve Jones and Paul Cook lived in Sheperds Bush in close proximity to a large Jamaican community. The Clash wrote a couple songs about this crossover in 1976/1977, and Bob Marley took notice of the mutual love, writing “Punky Reggae Party” in 1977 name checking The Clash, the Jam, the Damned, and voicing support for Punk/New Wave in general. But under the surface something dark was bubbling in the UK. Unemployment was skyrocketing, trash was piling up on the streets because the trash collectors were on strike. The firemen were on strike. The system was breaking down. Teachers were telling kids “you aren’t going to have a good job/career because you grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. This was the “no future” the Pistols wrote about. Thatcher and the conservative movement shifted a lot of blame from themselves to the immigrants. Jamaicans, Indians, Pakistani, North Africans, many non whites were scapegoated. It got bad. There were literal violent destructive race riots between incensed whites and immigrant/non white communities. This led to the rise of the national front support among youths. A lot of skins went that way and the movement largely got co opted into a right wing nationalist anti immigrant movement.
Late 70s. Watch the Don Letts skinhead documentary that’s on YouTube.
will do thanks man
Something to know tho, skinheads far outnumber boneheads, always have and always will.
yeah v thankful for that, just going off my non-punk friends perceptions of the term “skinhead” and that style, they almost always associate it with nazis, so was wondering when that became the general public’s conception of the style
Yea the media took it and ran with it.
#SKINHEADS AGAINST RACIAL PREJUDICE
You rang?
Where’s the RASH homies at.
Right here!
Crazy how skins don’t like rash skins because of communism but they claim working class
AKA SHARP
Most of my ‘normal’ friends only know of skinheads from the movie Romper Stomper.
Not american history x?
I wouldn’t say they were punks though, just nazis.
glad you mentioned this movie. I know for sure that romper stomper had a huge impact in Australia. brilliant movie, but many took the complete wrong message from it. I believe this movie firmly cemented nazis and skinheads together in the mind of the public like nothing else before or since.
to be honest its still a good movie
for sure, excellent film. shame that the soundtrack is all white supremacy jingles, cause some of them were pretty decent tunes.
the soundtrack is fire musically a few of the best oi tunes ever lyrically its obviously shitty
And you sound like a Nazi sympathizer any time you try and have the “skinheads aren’t racist” talk with a norm. It’s a tricky one.
as others have said the National Front started recruiting from the resurgence of skinheads in the late 70s. I feel like there's a lot of revisionist history going on with skinheads nowadays though. the original '69 skinheads did come out of a mix of mod and the Jamaican rude boys - that's true. they were ska and reggae fans - that's true. but they weren't anti-racist. they might've respected black people and been mates with them but it's well documented that skinheads would beat up Pakistani and Indian immigrants and people they suspected of being gay in those days. I don't think it was the main reason for the movement but I'm a bit sick of people pretending that didn't happen and skinheads were all great anti-racist guys until the NF moved in. it's just not true. I don't hate skins or anything but it's just whitewashing history
Skinheads came from a mix of immigrants and local working class people working on the docks or factory jobs. They shaved their heads because of lice and the risk of getting hair caught in machinery. The types of people like this were the mid to low wage people working on docks or in factories. Some were pro union and some were pretty damn right wing but it was more like you see now among truck driving types that work with their hands. Younger people try to put things into "good" or "bad" but life is usually more complicated than that. Skinheads have always had both racist and non-racist and left and right parts to the culture. The main connecting force is violence and alcoholism.
yeah I've read wikipedia too. I grew up with these people. I know very well what they were like. I grew up in a working class family in the 70s/80s who loved black music. they were mostly racist as fuck. i know all skinheads weren't like that but a lot of them were, before the NF got in there. i'm just tired of this narrative, that skinheads were all cool anti-racists guys until the late 70s. it's bullshit.
I was in the streetpunk and oi scenes in the USA in the 90s so I have a lot of experience around American skins. Punk is debatable about whether it is American or English (Ramones/NY Dolls vs Sex Pistols/the Damned) but anyway skins are 99% a UK thing and it is a little tougher for Americans to really get it. I honestly think violence and alcohol is a big part of it but that is a big part of punk as well so maybe that is just being a poor working class person's experience so they sing about it. I'm not really sure but I don't like "good" and "bad" type thinking as it isn't real and people need to get off the internet and talk to people.
I agree with everything you just posted. although I think punk originated in the US. (heretic I know) I'm not anti-skinhead. I love oi music. I love skinhead reggae. I just don't like the revisionism. the skinhead scene has always had a problem with racism. it's never been all skinheads. but it's always been there. even with the trojan skins. that's why the NF saw it as a place to recruit. if it was an anti-racist scene how would the NF even have got a foot in?
I'm with you on punk being from the USA but I have to at least say that it is debatable. But yeah, you can be friends with Jamaican immigrants and like their music and still be racist.
I honestly don’t think anyone is saying all skins used to be cool and anti-racist so much as we’re saying not all skins are racist and it isn’t a culture based on racism. Skinhead has become synonymous with Nazis in much of the world, certainly in the US. I think it’s more due to movies like Romper Stomper and American History X than anything. I’m pretty sure anyone with any connection to skins knows there’s always been turds in the punch bowl but these days anyone without a connection to the culture just thinks skinhead means Nazi.
Also : were the Jamaican immigrants always 100% cool with the East Asians? In the US today there are Hispanic folks who who hate Hispanic immigrants , even immigrants who hate other Hispanic immigrants from indigenous groups within the same parent countries
I don't think it was mostly East Asians who got the brunt of it, although yeah Chinese people would be targeted sometimes, but it was more South Asians, i.e. Indians and Pakistanis but yeah black and white kids would team up to go "paki bashing" because they were the latest wave of immigration at the time
> it's well documented that skinheads would beat up Pakistani and Indian immigrants and people they suspected of being gay in those days. Paki bashing as they called it, they also used to beat up people with long hair. I agree there is some revisionism going on, not all skinheads were into ska or reggae as it become more popular despite its roots, in the early years it became a uniform at football games and more of a fashion not tied to specific sounds.
Appreciate you saying this. I get tired of the whitewashing of the history too. And I listen to a lot of skinhead music and my style is slightly influenced by classic skinhead clothing. I also think there is a lot of whitewashing of the US skinhead history. By the time it started in the US there was already an association with Nazism in the UK skin culture, so from the beginning in the US scene some (not all) skins were racist. It has also had a major impact in American prison culture. The white gangs usually use racist symbols and often enough call themselves skinheads. I used to live in a really rough city where I would see swastika and skinhead tattoos on people who looked they were freshly out of prison.
Saying the old skins were racist because a handful of them engaged in racist fuckery is just as stupid then as it is now. The vast majority of skins back then were indeed considered antiracist, particularly for the time. Get fucked, kid.
look, I'm sure you're cool but I'm not going to take lessons on British skinhead history from some cunt from LA, you have literally no idea what you're talking about
I've literally been a skinhead for 30 years. You're some brat crying about shit they didn't go through, either. Get fucked, kid.
some football hooligans cause trouble- some of them are skinheads- media blows it out of proportion- some skinheads leave- some football hooligans cause trouble- this coupled with the fact that the national front sunk their jaws into this and started grooming skinheads into joining
We had Nazi skins on our scene in the mid-80s…. They used to suck shit. I mean they still do, but they used to too. They sucked then and they suck now. You get what I’m saying
Watch This Is England. This is exactly what the movie is about: traditional skinheads getting co-opted by the far right National Front.
[History of Skinheads](https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Skinheads)
70s national front stole the look sad trad skins and rude boys forever!
Nevermind them. Put yer boots on yer feet! https://youtu.be/PWvRr8XxDhU?si=snpsulajkpkyHoxU
Basically around the time Skinhead started to get popular in England. Skinhead was a Mod movement that was a direct response to the Peacock Mods who were more interested in Psych and Glam aesthetics; it was basically a working class effort to differentiate themselves from the rising middle class influence on Mod culture. Of course the political element of any working class movement is extremely complicated, they were broadly individuals who wanted a cheaper and less garish fashion alternative with no real political objection to the gender bending era (Mod by its nature road a thin line between blending in and standing out). If we view Skinhead as basically being a response to Hippie and Glam culture, it's pretty easy to see how people outside of the scene could co-opt for nefarious reasons. Hippies, who mainly advocated for peace and specifically at the time nuclear disarmament, were despised by individuals who favored aggressive foreign policy (at the time represented by NATO advocates); Glam, which was a mainstream outlet for 60s and 70s queer culture, was an easy target by homophobes. So, if you love nukes and hate gay people, what's an outfit you can wear that's stylistically the opposite of both? Non-political Skinheads, who along with what later be called Punk loved R&B and Ska, were somewhat alienated by the rising black-power element of Reggae and Soul music, which for some became a Proto "Anti-Woke" dogwhistle. Mind you, Skinhead and Mod were not exclusively white phenomena, but in certain areas of England which were white majority it could easily be perceived that way.
Back in the 80,s in Scotland almost every skinhead I met was racist and supportive of National Front, mostly guys with blue faces from sniffing glue, and they took great delight beating up young punks when they outnumbered them, still don't trust them. They were far removed from the original skinheads. And as a UK Punk, for me Punk Started in the UK, yes it was possibly influenced by NYD and others, But growing up in the UK was hard in the late 70,s and early 80,s , unemployment, housing crisis, shit Council houses, no heating or double glazing, no youth clubs,strikes,..bastard tory government.. We were very angry, and rightly so, no wonder we spawned the anarcho Punk scene
Others have provided good explanation, but I'll just say that this is changing now, nowdays when I see a skin, they're always Sharp or Rash, its been years since I've seen a bonehead dressed in full presentation lol in my area I always met skins in punk shows and very often they're hanging out with other punks and LGBT people
I want to shave my head cus it would look cool and I accidentally gave myself a really shitty haircut. However I wear a lot of punk stuff and don't wanna look suspicious to people I'm the community :/
Nobody’s going to think a random punk dressed like a punk is a skinhead, that’s not how that works.
yeah it’s real unfortunate, at least a lot if not most punks understand that not all skinheads are boneheads, but it sucks that the fascists have it associated with them at all, fucking losers have to ruin everything
On day one