In 1969, skinhead culture emerged on the streets of London’s East End slums and within the newly constructed brutalist housing estates. Alienated from the bourgeois hippie scene that flourished during the ‘swinging ‘60s’, a new generation of working-class youth came of age searching for their roots.
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They found inspiration in a uniform look that paired shaved heads and Ben Sherman polo shirts with bleached jeans, Ma-1 flight jackets, and Doc Marten boots. The skinheads – and their ladies known as suedes – revelled in classic English fare: football games, pubs, and concerts. But they also embrace the style and sound of the Windrush Generation of the time, enjoying dub, reggae, rocksteady, and ska music.
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But in the 1970s and ‘80s, as a second wave of skins and suedes came of age, the far right-wing organisation the National Front attempted to infiltrate the scene, appropriating their powerful aesthetics while embarking on a series of anti-immigration initiatives. Corporate media, ever ready to vilify the working class, turned skinheads into the boogeyman.
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