The London Skinhead History Walk

In 2017 I unexpectedly fell on hard times and had to take on a second job fast. It was a shit job, frankly, but one that had me walking all over London for long hours. By the end, I knew London’s streets, alleys, and corners, its whole geography, better than ever.

To entertain myself and make the best of the situation, I started noting where and when certain episodes in history had taken place – much of it about subcultural history, especially skinheads. Every shift became a kind of urban exploration, letting me soak up the atmosphere and flavours of days gone by across different neighbourhoods. I took notes, snapped some photos along the way, and gradually built a mental map of London’s past.

Recently, it struck me that this material shouldn’t go to waste. So now, after eight years, I’ve decided to turn it into a London Skinhead History Walk. We’ll start with Central London – roughly from Marylebone to Holborn. Other parts of the city may follow once that’s complete.

**Walking through London: Deptford John in 1981/82**

I no longer live in London, so this isn’t a walking tour you can join in person. Unlike the Jack the Ripper or Karl Marx tours, it exists entirely in your imagination. That said, if anyone ever takes this tour in real life, I’d be thrilled to hear from them. But be warned: many of the original locations are gone, closed, or demolished. London has been transformed and gentrified beyond recognition.

I’ve given some thought to what should be included and come to a few conclusions. First, there’s no point in presenting a sanitised picture of London’s skinheads. From the late ’70s onwards, the far right had a presence in the scene, mingling with merely patriotic or politically indifferent skins to the point where it’s impossible to draw a clean line between ‘boneheads’ and others (though this became easier in the ’90s). Like it or not, both far-right and far-left politics were part of skinhead history, and the notion that National Front supporters or Red Action militants weren’t ‘real’ skins is fanciful.

Second, we’ll only touch on the scooterist and mod scenes in passing, mainly where they cross paths with skinheadism. Otherwise there’d be too much ground to cover, and the mod world is best left to those who know it better than I do. I wish I could include more about the rude boys than I probably will, but there’s just so little information about them. Even so, they’ll get a mention where their world overlaps with that of the skins.

Third, I was in two minds about the gay skinhead scene, since many of these people were simply dress-up fetishists with no real connection to skinhead culture. But today we know there was also an area of overlap – a fringe where real skins also had a life in the gay skinhead scene, moving between both worlds. In fact this was already the case in the late ’60s, but for some reason became especially widespread in right-wing circles in the ’80s. To the extent that we’re talking about actual skins and not just cosplayers, I’ll try to include their sites (if I still lived in the UK, I could probably bag an arts grant on the grounds of ‘LGBT visibility’).

So, now that I’ve hopefully managed to piss off everyone equally, the only thing left to say is that the era we’ll cover spans roughly the late ’60s to the early ’90s – what I consider the classic skinhead period – with a few exceptions here and there.

Spot any errors? Let us know and I’ll double-check. Think I’ve missed an important location? Give us a shout. Remember any events or street scenes? Share your memories and anecdotes, and I’ll add the best ones to the walk. The London Skinhead History Walk will be built on your stories too.

Oh, one more thing: photographs. I have a large archive of historical pictures, collected from various sources, often without a clue who took them or who appears in them. If you recognise a photo or have any info, let us know and I’ll gladly credit everyone involved.

Matt Crombieboy

CLICK IMAGE FOR PART 1: MARLEYBONE TO WEST SOHO