Category: Skinhead history

Bring back the donkey jacket

Last week, in typically elitist London fashion, I pontificated about crombie overcoats. Well, this has prompted a response from my Yorkshire bro, the Northern Avenger. Here’s his tribute to an unjustly reviled skinhead staple. Bootgirls and bootboys, I’m handing over to the Northern Avenger…

The humble donkey jacket: one of the mainstays of the British coal miner, binman, and other manual workers and lefties of years past – and (some) skinheads of course. It has a long history with the working class. I will try – and probably fail – to explain some of its history and relevance to the skinhead cult. Continue reading →

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I walked with a Crombie

About a year ago, I sneered that there was nothing “authentically skinhead” about real Crombies. With no small amount of inverted snobbery, I suggested there was no point in getting one unless you were an “MP, diplomat or KGB agent“. Well, that was then. But last month, I sussed an unbelievable bargain for a Crombie Retro Coat in mint condition. Now I think real Crombies are the dog’s bollocks. Continue reading →

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Skinheads and racism in a German news article, June 1970

londonskin
‘London skinhead and cop’ – from Der Spiegel, no 24/1970

Below, you will find our translation of an article that was first published in the German news weekly Der Spiegel on 8 June 1970. As far as we’re aware, it’s the only time the press in that country reported on the original skinhead wave. It would be eight years before skinheads made another appearance in Der Spiegel, once again in connection with racism and street thuggery in the East End of London. Continue reading →

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A skinhead in Paris, 1979-83

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Paris skinhead band Swingo Porkies, early 1980s

While the original wave of skinheads remained a strictly British phenomenon – the closest the French came to mod were the minets – it didn’t take long for the late 1970s revival to cross the Channel. As the Sham Army turned concert halls into battlefields and skinheads began to proliferate across Britain again, a small gang of punks in a working class banlieue of Paris took note. Around 1978, Farid, Pierrot, Fan, Fabian and a dozen mates swapped their spiky hair and leather for clean-cut crops and MA-1 jackets. Continue reading →

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The Bovver Boot #2, 1986

rsz_bovverboots

It’s no secret that the British ‘sussed skin’ movement of the 1980s is one of several sources of inspiration for this blog. Although we ultimately want to do our own thing rather than imitate, the combination of sharp style and smart politics is still an excellent starting point. Continue reading →

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Girls boycott club over ‘Skinheads’ ban

196x skinhead girls

Find below a little tale of solidarity between female teenagers in Dublin, originally published in the Sunday Independent (Ireland) on 19 April 1970 and transcribed by us.

Two things jump out: first, the girls’ overnight transition from ‘weirdo’ (hippie) to skinhead and their continued friendship with hairies. This is somewhat at odds with the accepted notion of ‘working class skinheads’ versus ‘middle class hippies’. Continue reading →

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The Last Resort, Aldgate

Found in an old copy of Glaswegian skinzine, Spy Kids (#3, 1985): a pisstake on advertisement sheets from the famous East End clobber store, The Last Resort.

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Compare and contrast with the original:

Continue reading →

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Original Haringey bootboys

Gentrification, yuppification, social cleansing: while the useless idiots of the Football Association have decided that Spurs fans’ proud self-identification as yids is, in fact, ‘anti-Semitic’, David Lammy’s local autocracy sells off Haringey borough – including its Tottenham heartland – to property developers, tears down council estates, and prices out the poor. Yuppies and affluent hipsters pour in and take their place.

It is a pity, for Haringey has a long and proud cultural history – not least as a stomping ground for all manner of youth cults. Enjoy this little tribute to the borough and behold the pictures of original Haringey skins and assorted bootboys.

1970 tottenham hotspurs skinheads
“Your droogie is your brother, someone you can trust” – Hotspurs skins, date unknown. Continue reading →

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The Press interview, 1989

the pressThe Press were one of the USA’s earliest Oi! bands. Broadly sympathetic to the now thoroughly discredited British Trot-lite cult, the Socialist Workers’ Party (lite on political theory, heavy on bureaucratic maneuvering and building unpopular fronts), The Press didn’t have it easy in NYC’s right-leaning HxC skinhead environment.

Continue reading →

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Skinheads & Cherry Reds

1969 rolling stone

Let’s kick off with a 16 July 1969 article about a bunch of Somers Town skinhead kids, originally published in Rolling Stone magazine and transcribed by persons unknown. Here, the usual tales of bovver, aggro, and tribal warfare are interspersed with obscure stylistic references to “spade haircuts”, “Cherry Boots with steel toe caps and a yellow trimming” – supposedly not Dr Martens – and “Stomper boots” with “high backs, big steel toe cap, and everything”. Note also that the article claims boots were “still worn” with mohair suits on the weekends, albeit highly polished – a combination whose existence many 1969 veterans steadfastly deny. Continue reading →

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