London Skinhead History Walk: 100 Club Nights

This article is part of the London Skinhead History Walk series.

100 Club, 100 Street, Soho
Not much needs to be said about this legendary London rock, blues, and jazz venue in general – it opened in 1942, hosted everyone from the Rolling Stones and The Who to the Sex Pistols at key stages in their careers, and was crucial for the birth of punk. When I lived in London, the club also put on regular northern soul nighters, which began as early as 1979 and I believe are still continuing today – though I preferred the sixties nights and soul sessions at the Vinyl Bar and Helen of Troy, both on nearby Hanway Street.

Here’s some footage from the 10th anniversary soul nighter in 1989:

For the skinhead scene, the venue became important around 1982. After the Southall debacle of July 1981, the Oi movement was stuck in a dead end and began to wither, as bands found it impossible to get booked anywhere that still had a functioning window. But in late 1981, promoter Nanda Leslie opened the 100 Club doors to the unwanted, deciding to book skinhead and punk bands on Tuesdays and Thursdays – the sort of nights usually reserved for quiz teams or jazz trios. Some of them – like Skrewdriver, Brutal Attack, the Ovaltinees or the Diehards – though by no means all, were far right. But RAC had yet to exist as a scene in its own right, and for the time being, these bands squeezed onto the same bills as the 4-Skins and UK Subs. Although punch-ups between left and right did occur, these were still internal to what was, for the moment, the same music scene.

On 7 and 21 October 1982, it was at the 100 Club that the reformed Skrewdriver made their live return, building on their contributions to the United Skins compilation released that month and promoting their Back with a Bang 12-inch single. Their material at this stage was forceful skinhead rock ‘n’ roll, and most of it wasn’t overtly political just yet. The gig on 7 October was filmed, and rather than giving fascist salutes, the cheerful crowd is seen clenching their fists, singing football songs, and chanting “Skin-head” – a display of unity owing more to lager than to ideology.

This had well and truly changed by the second gig, on 21 October. According to various eyewitnesses, the event resembled a Nuremberg rally, boasting a sea of stiff-arm salutes – including, as some claim, one from Ian Stuart himself, confirming what the rumour mill had been churning out for years but he’d carefully avoided admitting.

By their 13 January 1983 show at the 100 Club, Skrewdriver had gone full-on Hollywood nazi: Ian Stuart appeared in a German Afrika Korps helmet, and the band earnestly performed a cover of ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’ – a pseudo-fascist satire penned by two Jewish gay men, John Kander and Fred Ebb, for the musical Cabaret.

Not everyone was impressed with what they saw. I spoke to Rule Galloway, then a young skinhead managing the Oi band On Parole from Livingston, Scotland. He was among the crowd at the 100 Club on 2 December – Skrewdriver’s fourth gig since the comeback. Says Rule,

At the time I was living in Scotland, aged fifteen. Stagecoach had just introduced the cheap overnight bus services to London. A return ticket was only £5, so I started going to London regularly, because it was always much more interesting than living in a new town. On this trip I interviewed Chris Henderson and John Armitage about their band Combat 84 at the Chelsea Drugstore. It was meant for my zine, A Way of Life – but I never did anything with it ‘cos things were changing at home and unfortunately that interview is now lost forever. Anyway, that night I ended up hanging out with John and going with him to the 100 Club in the evening. Chris was there too.

I generally had a good time at the 100 Club. In the early ’80s I saw the Upstarts there two or three times, The Exploited, Frankie Flame… The first band on were Vicious Rumours. I remember thinking they had strong songs and a good stage presence. Later, in ’83, I saw them supporting Combat 84 too – they were a good band. Vicious Rumours were a mixture of punks and skins, and the singer had a mohican, but the crowd at the 100 Club was wall-to-wall skinheads. There was no sense of any trouble. It was quite a young crowd, with the older lot being the centre of attention.

There was an intensity when Skrewdriver played. They were wearing black. I don’t remember if Ian Stuart gave any fascist salutes, but each song was preceded by a rant of hate from him and a steady stream of sieg heils from the crowd. I think it was basically an audience of mixed-up kids looking for an identity. The dancefloor was really where the youth were with the sieg heiling, while the older lot lingered around the edges. John and I left about halfway through Skrewdriver’s set because I’d heard enough. I come from a socialist family, and I’ve always been on the left ever since I first started taking an interest in politics.

On 18 November 1982, over a year after the Southall fiasco, a new 4-Skins line-up featuring ‘Panther’ Cummings on vocals was filmed by a German TV crew during their performance at the 100 Club for Rund um den Big Ben: Britische Notizen, a monthly programme reporting from the UK. From the band’s perspective, the aim was to show that skins could be reasonably well-behaved kids and concert promoters could, at least in theory, trust them. The footage suggests they largely succeeded. Journalist Wolf von Lojewski’s voiceover drips with condescension, and the camera lingers on a punter’s British Movement tattoo, yet there is no rioting, and an older skinhead helpfully explains to the reporter that ‘real’ skinheads aren’t nazis and can be of any ethnicity.

We’ve prepared English subtitles for you, so make sure to switch them on in the bottom-right corner!

With so much history under its belt, however, the 100 Club has seen its fair share of violence over the decades. Here’s but a few incidents:

On 21 September 1976, prototype ‘punk moron’ Sid Vicious allegedly threw a beer glass, which shattered and struck a girl in the eye, blinding her. It was the second night of the mythical 100 Club Punk Special, featuring the Sex Pistols, The Damned, The Clash, Subway Sect and others, with Vicious playing drums for Siouxsie and the Banshees.

On 8 December 1981, Blitz vocalist Carl was hospitalised during his band’s set when “one over-enthusiastic punter decided to add something ‘a bit stronger’ – like a fire extinguisher – to the friendly shower of plastic glasses” (Sounds write-up on 19 December 1981).

At the Angelic Upstarts gig on 22 December 1981, Gary Bushell was attacked by a dozen British Movement members, who weren’t skinheads, from across London. According to a report in Sounds on 2 Jaunary 1982, they were all four or five years older than the rest of the audience and had been involved in minor scuffles during the Upstarts’ set. As Bushell was leaving, he was set upon without provocation, kicked and punched, and came away with a bruised nose.

In what must have been 1983, Combat 84’s ‘Chubby’ Chris and some of his mates allegedly got a kicking somewhere near the 100 Club from skins affiliated with Red Action, the far-left street-fighting group that in the ’90s would help set up the broader-based Anti-Fascist Action. Many of these kids were Irish, and the core group had originally been expelled from the Trotskyist SWP for “squadism” – that is, for taking a hands-on, direct-action approach towards their far-right adversaries. Combat 84 bandmate Deptford John later reflected on Chubby’s fighting prowess: “Chubby was the worst fighter I’ve ever seen. But he was the best one at starting fights, come on then, come on then… all that. Next thing you know he’s three rows back going, come on then” (Simon Spence, What Have We Got? p. 164).

Rob from Brixton, then with Red Action, claims: “There were several frank exchanges of views with Combat 84 followers. Most planned” – though when prompted, he declines to give any further details.

On 18 January 1983, after vocalist Lee Wilson had made disparaging comments about Skrewdriver on stage, Ian Stuart and friends attended Infa Riot’s show at the 100 Club and beat up the band in their dressing room. Speaking to Sounds, Infa Riot complained that “by booking bands like Skrewdriver and Combat 84 the 100 Club was asking for trouble”. Promoter Nanda Leslie denied any political activity at the venue, insisting she wouldn’t tolerate political talk on stage and that all entrants were searched for weapons. Only the latter was true.

Lee Wilson’s appeals were of no avail. The right wing of the scene increasingly made the 100 Club their base of operations, which made life slightly more difficult for those with opposing views. Only a month later, on 24 February 1983, the ideology promoted by Skrewdriver at a 100 Club show spilled into Soho itself, when a group of skins heading for the tube home began harassing random non-white passers-by with chants of “white power” and “sieg heil”. Before they reached Piccadilly Circus, a group of black youths armed with snooker cues intervened in a very direct fashion.

But besides actual violence, there were a fair few close shaves too.

On 10 February 1983, Attila the Stockbroker attended Black Flag’s performance at the 100 Club, having previously appeared alongside them on the Oi! Oi! That’s Yer Lot compilation. By then, he recalls, the venue had become “absolutely infested with nazi boneheads” – and during Black Flag’s set, he suddenly found himself surrounded by some fifteen of them. At the centre of the group was Ian Stuart Donaldson, who fortunately dissuaded his companions from roughing up the leftist poet, opting instead for persuasion. Stuart treated Attila to an earful of fairytales about the Strasser brothers’ “proletarian” National Socialism, evidently tailoring his pitch to what he thought might appeal (by all accounts, he was a Hitlerite rather than a Strasserite). When the effort to convert failed, Stuart gestured toward the door and said, “See ya”. On his signal, the others stepped aside and let Attila leave safely.

Says Attila, “I reviewed the gig in Sounds, and the incident became part of the review. Black Flag were supported by their roadies performing as the very strangely monikered Nig Heist. I interviewed D Boon of the Minutemen, who were on the bill as well, but I was a bit distracted by the nazi boneheads”.

At some point in spring 1983, skinhead gigs ceased amid increased police harassment of concertgoers around Oxford Street, though there were notable exceptions, such as Cock Sparrer’s comeback show on 21 July that year. This did not mark the end of violent incidents at the venue. The author of these lines, in any case, earned himself a bloody nose as late as 2017 and was later labelled a troublemaker by some clueless hack in Street Sounds magazine. A towel full of ice cubes, promptly brought over by a friendly bouncer, saw him through the rest of the band’s set.

None of this is to suggest that the 100 Club was, or is, a violent venue. It is simply a central London rock club that has witnessed a great deal of history – and, inevitably, violence has been part of the picture.

The 100 Club still throws croptop-relevant gigs from time to time. In recent years, many of these have been organised by Human Punk, run by Football Factory author John King, who has contributed to our site before. For me, the highlights have always been The Last Resort shows – still explosive every single time.

Text: Matt Crombieboy

CLICK HERE FOR PART 4 – ‘A’ BOMB IN WARDOUR STREET

Below is a small selection of gigs that took place at the 100 Club in the period we discussed – plus a few others that I found noteworthy.

21 Aug & 18 Dec 1973	Kilburn and the High Roads
16 Apr, 18 Jun & 3 Dec 1974	Kilburn and the High Roads
5 Feb & 30 Dec 1975	Kilburn and the High Roads
9 Nov, 16 Nov, 14 Dec & 28 Dec 1976	The Jam
11 Jan, 25 Jan, 29 Mar & 11 Sep 1977	The Jam	11 September gig recorded and released on CD in 2011
27 Mar 1978	Little Bob Story	Chiswick rockers from Le Havre
25 Nov 1980	Chelsea
7 Jul, 4 Aug & 20 Oct 1981	Chelsea
8 Dec 1981	Blitz, The Partisans	Carl rushed to hospital
14 Dec 1981	Black Flag
22 Dec 1981	Angelic Upstarts
2 Feb 1982	UK Subs, Brutal Attack
20 Apr 1982	Vice Squad
11 May 1982	UK Subs, Brutal Attack, Actifed	Brutal Attack set recorded and released as demo tape
8 June 1982	Toy Dolls
24 Aug 1982	The Exploited
14 Sep 1982	The Lurkers, Erazerhead
27 Oct 1982	Angelic Upstarts, Kidz Next Door
30 Sep 1982	The Business, The Satellites, One
7 Oct 1982	Skrewdriver, Accused	First Skrewdriver comeback show
14 Oct 1982	The Business
21 Oct 1982	Skrewdriver, Accused, Brutal Attack
29 Oct 1982	The Pogues
7 Dec 1982	Toy Dolls
11 Nov 1982	The Warriors	One of only two gigs by 80s Roi Pearce line-up
18 Nov 1982	4-Skins, Four Minute Warning	Panther line-up, filmed for German TV
23 Nov 1982	Hanoi Rocks, Gymslips	What an odd combination!
25 Nov 1982	Skrewdriver
2 Dec 1982	Skrewdriver, Vicious Rumours
16 Dec 1982	4-Skins	Panther will leave the band around Xmas
23 Dec 1982	Skrewdriver	“Xmas fling with Skrewdriver”
30 Dec 1982	Combat 84	Released as Live and Loud!! LP by Ink Records in 2019
6 Jan 1983	Combat 84, Vicious Rumours, London Branch
13 Jan 1983	Skrewdriver, The Ovaltinees, London Branch
18 or 20 Jan 1983	Infa Riot, Erazerhead	Trouble with Skrewdriver band members
25 Jan 1983	The Adicts
27 Jan 1983	4-Skins, The Ejected	Who was singing?
10 Feb 1983	Black Flag, Minutemen, Nig-Heist	Ian Stuart tries to convert Attila
17 Feb 1983	Skrewdriver, Vicious Rumours, East End Badoes	East End Badoes billed as ‘Eastern Buddies’
24 Feb 1983	Skrewdriver
17 Mar 1983	Vicious Rumours, Diehards
14 Apr 1983	4-Skins, One Way System	Roi Pearce line-up
21 Jul 1983	Cock Sparrer, Subculture	Sparrer’s first gig with Shock Troops line-up
26 Nov 1983	Blitz, And Also the Trees	Second Empire Justice line-up
1 May 1984	Angelic Upstarts
19 Jun 1984	Angelic Upstarts, Capricorn	Capricorn later became Mega City Four

CLICK HERE FOR PART 4 – ‘A’ BOMB IN WARDOUR STREET