It’s unbelievable the trouble we people can cause by uniting. You can see it in different ways. Whether prejudiced individuals coming together and bullying others, or same-class youth uniting across races, religions, genders or backgrounds and fighting back a system which never had their backs. Unity has an irrefutable power, but like intelligence, it’s only a tool – which means it can be used as much for good as for ill. You might be asking yourself what does this have to do with skinhead culture and White supremacy. Well, although I can understand the confusion, unity and group dynamics have a lot to do with youth movements and the creation of subcultures. The skinhead movement is an extremely interesting case to study, and finds itself at crossroads between class, race, and politics – an ensemble of key notions of Western societies. We’ve all seen or heard what skinhead culture represents nowadays; racism, violence, nationalism, but also plain bigotry, to say the least. However, it wasn’t always that way. As a matter of fact, it seems as the movement did a total U-turn along the years, to now end up being one of the most infamous representatives of far-right political groups. So how is that so? What happened between the late 1960s and the late 1980s for things to go that sour? How did it propagate from Britain to the rest of the world, and what can we learn from this movement and phenomenon?
Post-war Britain was a reconstructive era in many ways; infrastructurally, culturally, politically, and many other facets constituting society as we know it. A great part of this reconstruction process took place during the Windrush era (late 1940s to early 1960s), a period during which thousands of people from Commonwealth nations arrived in the United Kingdom in response to Britain’s lack of workforce to rebuild the country, then still suffering the damages of the Blitz from a few years prior. This being said, it was also a continuation of Britain’s pre-existing industrial expansion, with several of its cities as European polestars when it comes to the sizes and quantities of factories it held – major cities including the UK’s current second biggest city Birmingham, but also England’s ‘steel city’ Sheffield, and Bristol in the Southwest of the country. This means that a lot of British cities were also home to millions of factory workers and lower-class people, including Caribbean newcomers who often took on roles in manufacturing, construction or public transport. However, the National Front scored pretty high during those times, with Britain’s political landscape mainly consisting of an opposition between Labour and Conservative, marking clear distinctions between classes within the country.
It is thus from a marriage between Britain’s working-class youth and Jamaica’s young and stylish arrivants that a new subculture emerged, primarily revolving around a deep passion for reggae music, and clean-cut outfits: boots, braces, button-down shirts and high-waisted jeans. Up until the 1970s, skinhead culture did not have any political component to its core. The movement consisted of teenagers and young adults gathering around common interests: music, fashion, and little later on, football. The aesthetic was a blend between Britain’s ‘hard mod’ scene dominated by middle-class youth, Jamaica’s ‘rude boy’ style, and working-class symbols like the famous work boots. During the summer of 1969, reggae and ska were the essence of skinhead musical scene. Dancehalls would bring Britain and Jamaica in one place, with working-class youth blending together as one. However, the political climate was else in the country, the influx of immigrants having become a problem in the eyes of the British government. Already in 1973, John Clarke and Tony Jefferson from Birmingham’s Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies analyzed the complex nature of this era: “One must also note the emergence of a new “social problem” – that of race. White racism, previously comparatively invisible, became increasingly overt and finally was given institutional definition and legitimation (beginning with Peter Griffiths’ Smethwick campaign in 1964), shifting through a variety of measures such as conciliatory and assimilatory stages of Community Relations Councils and anti-discrimination acts to more overtly anti-immigration policies.”
Indeed, back in the early 1960s, the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 had already taken action to restrict further immigration from Commonwealth countries; more specifically to “make temporary provision for controlling the immigration into the United Kingdom of Commonwealth citizens; to authorise the deportation from the United Kingdom of certain Commonwealth citizens convicted of offences and recommended by the court for deportation; to amend the qualifications required of Commonwealth citizens applying for citizenship under the British Nationality Act, 1948; to make corresponding provisions in respect of British protected persons and citizens of the Republic of Ireland; and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid”. Later in that decade, the parliament would go back on their previous decision, however not for the better. Another Commonwealth Immigrants Act would be passed during the spring of 1968 and would apply further restrictions to the rights of citizens of the Commonwealth countries looking to migrate to the UK. The Act in fact barred the future right of entry which was previously enjoyed by citizens of the United Kingdom and its colonies, to only those who were born there or who had at least one parent or grandparent born there. This act officially marked the end of the Windrush era. Britain had gotten the workforce it needed from its colonies, and decided that it was time to close doors to non-natives – a decision which said a lot about its sentiments towards foreigners, especially those of color.
The 1970s brought the final blow with the Immigration Act of 1971, adding even more restrictions to Commonwealth citizens, but also adding distinctions between the latter and European citizens – a clear distinction between unwanted immigrants, and those accepted and appreciated by the UK. Indeed, the Act defined the concept of patriality or right of abode, a status granted to British citizens, certain British subjects, alongside with the few Commonwealth citizens who had specific connections to the UK before 1983. The Act was passed in parallel to the country’s preparation to entering the European Communities (EC) two years later in 1973. It is on the same day the Act came into legal force that EC member-state citizens would be granted new automatic rights alongside with giving them priority over non-EC citizens. In other terms, Europe first, Commonwealth after – or in even simpler terms, Whites first, people of color after.
For skinheads, the scene rapidly changed at the dawn of the 1970s too. The group was in fact receiving increasing bad press from mainstream media, football matches often being settings for skinhead and council-estate youth to be seen going wild – sometimes a notch too wild even. Consequently, the movement saw a gradual dissolution of its original members, a lot of them trying to avoid being associated with mainstream media’s new nemesis. A lot of them started growing their hair and eventually adopted one of 1970s classics: bell-bottoms, a skinhead’s antithesis. However, despite a lot of first-wavers straying away from their roots in order to maintain their personal reputation, the movement’s fashion did not disappear at all; it got recycled. Indeed, football fans ended up adopting the look, however missing a great core aspect of skinhead culture: unity across races. Amidst the growing tensions and polarization between groups, the 1980s skinhead scene rapidly became prey to political propaganda from far-right political parties, the latter seeing working-class youth as perfect target for racially divisive narratives, and above all, for new and easily acquirable members.
It is in particular the National Front who saw the opportunity of utilizing working-class teenagers’ frustration towards society to its own benefit – sometimes recruiting them right outside football stadiums, on the streets, and offering them entries to political rallies throughout the country. Some of the new recruits did not agree with the views they were presented and rapidly opted out. Others, however, really needed something in their life to direct their anger at. Unfortunately, in that case, that anger would be directed at foreigners, immigrants, and most of the time, people of color. For the even less fortunate who did not have a positive father figure at home, joining those spaces and thereby becoming part of a male-dominated circle, often coupled with the presence of an older male leader, provided the guidance and sense of belonging most teenagers intrinsically need. Professor Anoop Nayak from Newcastle University in fact explores the representation of White masculinity in skinhead culture in his paper “‘Pale Warriors’: Skinhead Culture and the Embodiment of White Masculinities”, a chapter in 1999 book “Thinking Identities: Ethnicity, Racism and Culture”. Through the overt expression of violence tied with notions like honor and pride of one’s nation (human tribalism in a nutshell) this new and destructive branch of skinhead culture represented for young males an identity to adopt in the process of becoming a man. Masculinity thus rhymed with the use of your own force, oftentimes to extreme lengths and in the least fitted scenarios possible.
In parallel to the insidious spread of nationalism and White supremacy throughout skinhead groups, the spread of this negative offshoot of the movement was rapidly reaching other countries throughout Europe and America. Germany’s Neo-Nazi scene adopted the outfit and further contributed to popularizing a sinister image of skinhead culture. 2011 German drama “Kriegerin” (“Combat Girls”) in fact shows main character Marisa wearing a Chelsea cut – the female skinhead haircut par excellence. 2001 American movie “The Believer” staring Ryan Gosling shows the extent of this spread with main character Danny Balint, a self-conflicted Neo-Nazi sporting skinhead items from head to toe – the classic cherry-red Dr. Marten’s boots, blue jeans and the famous red braces. Likewise, 2018 British drama “Farming”, written and directed by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and based on his own childhood, shows the presence of corrosive nationalist ideologies within Tilbury’s skinhead community during the 1980s and their effects on Black people – a divisive topic within skinhead groups (even more those from the very city of Tilbury), between the ‘real’ ones who do not hold bad sentiments towards their foreign neighbors, and those who call themselves ‘skinheads’ without understanding the history and values of the movement.
All in all, the climate of the 1980s was pretty much a breeding ground for polarization across demographics within the British society. Unemployment was high (standing at 2 million for the first time since 1935), alcoholism was on the rise, workers’ strikes over poor remuneration were intensifying (and on top of that were reprimanded – Margaret Thatcher announcing the same year that state benefit to strikers would be halved), inflation was rising… Simply put, the UK was in quite a mess, and for working-class kids, things didn’t look so jolly. A lot of the skinhead youth had problems at home, at school, and often faced altercations with the police. They felt beat up by the system in every way possible, and the anger which arose from this sadly had to be released somewhere. It’s around that same time that oi!, a subgenre of punk rock from London, started gaining success amongst skinhead kids. With its rebellious lyrics and rugged sonorities, it had all the components for an angry and frustrated youth to go wild, to the point where it sometimes could no longer be controlled. Some groups of teenagers were smashing anything in their sight, damaging pubs, shops and private properties. For instance, Southalll, a large suburban district of West London, had become home to violent attacks, riots and tensions between National Front skinheads and South-Asian communities.
In response to the growing divides within skinhead groups, a portion of the first-wavers decided to take action to protect their culture’s reputation and fight the virus infecting it: racism. This is how S.H.A.R.P, Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice, was created. Founded in New York City in 1987, S.H.A.R.P aimed at countering the spread of the White-Power skinhead movements which were slowly gaining in importance throughout the West. In the same spirit, Rock Against Racism was created a few years prior, mid-1970s, by anti-racism activists organizing events and gigs throughout the UK, to bring Black and White fans together around their common love of music – a key component of skinhead culture.
Nevertheless, the media together with far-right political parties held more power than the select few anti-racism activists and well-intentioned skinhead groups scattered throughout the country. The years passed and nationalism kept growing, and the appropriation of skinhead fashion a lot of its members made further tarnished the reputation of skinhead culture. Today, it has never been harder to put on boots, braces and as Harrington jacket without sparking the thought “Racist?” inside the head of the average person on the street. It has never been so puzzling to determine what a specific outfit represents in this day of age; unity beyond race, or White supremacy? I’d like to think that the skinhead movement never ceased to stop being what it initially was – a marriage between lower-class England and Jamaica, and that the ones preaching White-supremacist narratives in braces and boots are just imposters, but who I am to say what ‘skinhead’ means? What I’d however like to say is the following: the suit doesn’t make the man, and boots and braces don’t make a racist.
Sources
John Clarke & Tony Jefferson (1973), “Working Class Youth Cultures“. https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/college-artslaw/history/cccs/stencilled-occasional-papers/1to8and11to24and38to48/SOP18.pdf
Anoop Nayak (1999), “‘Pale Warriors’: Skinhead Culture and the Embodiment of White Masculinities”, a chapter in “Thinking Identities“. Explorations in Sociology. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230375963_4
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reGXa3vgeF4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naQqtDIsbq8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Immigrants_Act_1962
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Lesley Smith and David Foxcroft (2009), “Drinking In The UK: An Exploration of Trends”. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265595939_Drinking_in_the_UK_An_Exploration_of_Trends
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Aude Calloch 