In all possibility, you may think that when it comes to Richard Allen and the New English Library Skinhead titles there’s little more to be said, almost 50 years on. And like the steel-toed kick in the balls you’d clearly deserve, you’d be wrong, very wrong. Mark Sargeant (Sarge) has written for Scootering since the 80s – many post-decimal currency readers wouldn’t even know the name Richard Allen without the contribution of his spadework in bringing Skinhead to a new audience during that period. 

Sarge was kind enough to put away his toolbox and answer a few questions on ‘The Richard Allen Legacy’, his late 80s Scootering interview with the author himself and life as a rally-going soul DJ.

When did you first come across the Richard Allen books?

At school. Skinheads were morphing into suedeheads at the time, it was a mixed grammar school, with quite a strict policy on uniform and colours of uniform. Those of us with a rebellious streak pushed the boundaries with button-down Ben Sherman, or Jaytex Oxford cotton shirts or white Fred Perry polo shirts with black, grey or even navy blue sta-press and black Doc Marten or brogue shoes. Later Brutus jumbo collar shirts and certain combinations of tonic sta-press were favoured by those of us in the know, of course, navy blue or black Crombie coats were worn to and from school. Instead of being sent home for hair being too long, quite a few lads were sent home until their hair grew. New English Library put out Skinhead by Richard Allen, which followed the exploits of East End skinhead Joe Hawkins.

I got my copies of Skinhead and Suedehead from WHSmith in Oxford city centre, in fact, I got most of my Richard Allen books from there, and still have those copies today. Some schoolmates would’ve found themselves in trouble at home if they dared to take a copy there, so well-thumbed dog-eared copies of Skinhead, and soon after Suedehead were passed around in a similarly furtive way as soft porn magazines. Some copies of Skinhead and Suedehead were confiscated by school teachers, who probably wanted a sneaky read themselves. Those with grebo inclinations had their own similar books such as Chopper also published by New English Library.

One lad in my year selected to read a chapter from Skinhead in a public reading/speaking competition held at the school. Despite several Anglo-Saxon words included in his chosen chapter, the subject of which was football violence, he more or less pulled it off, apart from a minor admonishment by the head of English, for sniggering while reading out loud a line about Joe Hawkins kicking some random opponent in the balls! Cult fiction like Richard Allen books tapped into the impressionable teenage market of the very early 70s, way before the internet, mobile phones and social media. Suedehead sales went into the millions, which literally saved New English Library from going bust.

Were you still a skinhead in the late 80s when you were at Scootering and beginning to write about the books or more of a scooterboy by then?

More of a scooterboy/soulie, though always have had a leaning towards the original skinhead/suedehead era. Interesting times… Oxford Roadrunners had mods, scooterboys, scooter skins, soulboys, punks and psychobillies as members, with no cultural differences as scoots were what brought us all together.

The problem was, I think, uber-elitist mods in the early 80s pushed the more Quadrophenia-inspired away, scooter boys were on the rise, riding serious distances on scoots led to practicalities in the attire stakes. Also while many arrived via mod/Quadrophenia, it soon became an insult to be dubbed a mod, scooter boys were in effect anti-mod in appearance… yet underneath shared a similarly wide taste in music.

Personally, I went from a young skinhead/suedehead and later bootboy eras into soul, with a brief dip into early punk, both northern soul going to Wigan Casino events as well as funk/jazz funk Rio Didcot, Lacy Lady and Goldmine down near Canvey Island among others. Then the mod revival reawakened my interest in scoots, having learned to ride Lammys aged 13/14. Mod, skin/suedehead and soulboys/soulies cross-pollinated with each other. I can remember scoots parked up outside Wigan Casino on many an occasion, for example.

What caused you to put pen to paper with ‘The Richard Allen Legacy’ for Scootering?

If memory serves, it was initially a broad overview of cult fiction, from Absolute Beginners onwards, that very tenuously included scooters. A loose follow-on to Steve Berry’s overview of scoots featured in big and small screen films. Other books included covered The Death Penalty – I can’t remember the author off the top.of my head – which was about a skinhead/bootboy football crew who after their team gets knocked out of a cup competition, track down the referee who awarded a penalty against them. Set in the early 70s, the referee is eventually chased while out training alone by the ‘heroes’ on their scooters, before being kicked to death. Caleb, a West Indian lad on the periphery of the crew, gets fitted up for the killing.

The Richard Allen Legacy was kind of a natural progression from the initial cult fiction idea. There were a total of 18 books penned by James Moffat as Richard Allen… some better than others, of course. Demo, the first Richard Allen book about/subject of student/hippy protesters was the only book I didn’t get as a new publication. Skinhead, Suedehead, Boot Boys, Smoothies especially and the last Richard Allen book Mod Rule were part of the formative years of two separate generations of the magazine’s readers at that time.

Outside of the novels, there was a fair amount of rucks between those subcultures

There were a few, well more than a few, incidents, stand-offs and the like. That the male of the species has an inbuilt natural desire to defend their turf and invade/conquer others, without getting too sociological, goes back to prehistoric times.

I can remember being at Tiffany’s Great Yarmouth when Desmond Dekker played live and the gig was halted by right-wing boneheads who had planned the disruption. Of course, it was near impossible to differentiate right-wing extremist boneheads and scooter skins there to see a skinhead reggae legend. The, err, boot was on the other foot so to speak, at Margate rally when Col. Kilgore Vietnamese Formation Surf Team played, right-wing boneheads attempted to disrupt that rally gig but ended up getting battered. Isle of Wight rally when several Oi bands played and ended up in a riot culminating in scooters being banned from the island also marked the end of overt infiltration of the scene by right-wing boneheads.

Of course, in the early days of the national rallies locals took exception to their hometowns being invaded by hordes of scooter-riding outsiders, with occasional inevitable culture clashes resulting in scuffles and punch-ups. Riding back from a Bournemouth rally around 1980, a few of Oxford Roadrunners took an unplanned detour which resulted in some local yokel wannabe punks mob-handed in cars attempting to run the scoots and riders off the road. Needless to say, a return visit was paid! Early RSG nights run by Jon Buck in Berkhamsted invariably ended up with mass brawls in the streets with mods, scooterists and soulies against mobbed-up locals. Both incidents being far from unique, similar incidents were rife across the UK from the 60s through to the noughties and beyond.

In general terms, rivalries such as mods and rockers, skinheads and grebos, punks and revival teddy boys, football team local derby matches, and the like have, to lesser or greater degrees, been part of teenage and beyond males’ makeup. To quote Madness, oh what fun we had!

Subcultural rites of passage and a sense of belonging while looking down on and belittling those not a part of your inner circle was for many decades a quasi-tribal part of growing up, certainly in the UK. In recent times the advent of political correctness along with invariably mollycoddling of their young the British middle classes have created a generation of mummy’s snowflakes, the combination of which has all but eradicated the advent of new youth subcultures with tribal undercurrents sadly. Which has led to youngsters with a desire to be different and to rebel against society to discover for themselves subcultures that are decades old, though the influx of young blood does put a contemporary spin on what’s gone before. At least that’s the way I see it.

By the time you wrote that piece Moffat/Allen was largely forgotten about?

Apparently so. Certain Richard Allen titles were beginning to command £5 even £10 for near-mint first editions from collectors. But yes, in the main, even with Mod Rule being published at the tail-end of the 79 and early 80s revival, Richard Allen books, along with similar cult fiction novels had been forgotten by the mid to late 80s.

Although I didn’t know at the time, James Moffat AKA Richard Allen was not in the best of health, in a care home. I tentatively attempted to get in touch with him (as did a few others with less luck) and I sent a copy of the magazine with The Richard Allen Legacy in it, along with a covering letter to him via New English Library. I believe it was forwarded on to his family, then they forwarded it on to him. He replied by post, he was surprised there was an interest in some of the books he’d written many years before, and pleased with the Richard Allen Legacy piece too. On the back of that he agreed to do an interview (by post), he politely declined meeting in person or speaking on the telephone.

His official reasoning being that he didn’t want to shatter any illusions of how Richard Allen was perceived to be like. The stark reality was he really wasn’t in the best of health and couldn’t guarantee he’d actually be well enough to keep to any time or date schedule. Instead by communicating via letter he could respond as and when he was able. I was in communication via correspondence with him for some time until a few weeks before he passed away. He asked that I didn’t, at the time, reveal that James Moffat was Richard Allen. In fact, all correspondence I received he signed Richard or Richard Allen.

Did the interview have any immediate impact, either by the readership or outside of it?

The magazine had some complimentary comments when it came out. What also transpired as an aside to the interview was James Moffat had retained copyright on his Richard Allen novels. I put James and George Marshall at ST (Skinhead Times) Publishing in touch with each other, the result of which saw ST put out a series of six Richard Allen books, each with three linked titles. For volume one of the series of six James, as Richard Allen, wrote the foreword. Was nice for me to get a namecheck in that. Also, as an aside to the interview, George, just after doing the deal with James for reprinting and represent all 18 Richard Allen titles for several years after published a number of cult fiction books, via ST, alongside his own coffee table-type books on skinheads.

A short while after the interview came out I had a few letters from longtime Richard Allen fans, one who generously sent me a copy of, I think, Marathon Man by James Moffat… it was the book he was challenged to write on live Saturday night magazine programme On The Braden Beat. It was in the run into an Olympics, so topically the Olympic Games were worked into the plot. The challenge was to write and (have it) published as a book in one week/seven days… James managed to complete the challenge with one day to spare! As far as I’m aware that Braden Beat appearance was the only time James or one of the very few times, appeared on television. He was quietly quite proud of that achievement, as he mentioned it several times to me.

What about yourself after that era of Scootering?

I’ve covered a vast number of feature scooters as well as the occasional rallies, events, scooter sport meetings and custom shows. Also interviewing bands, musicians, live shows, specialist music DJ-driven all-nighters and all-dayers, plus on occasion interviews with authors of books, and even films and plays.

In 2014 I was commissioned to produce an entire supplement for Scootering, ’50 Years of Mod’, as 2014 was the golden jubilee of the then over-reported and sensationalised bank holiday mods and rockers clashes. Though I say so my self it was rather good as it revealed the realities of some of the ‘happenings’ of 1964 from people who were there at the time. Additionally, there was a short overview of subcultures that were, in effect, the bastard sons of the original mods, skinheads/suedeheads, northern soulies and casuals amongst them. As an aside, albeit linked to writing and photography for Scootering I’ve contributed as a researcher/interviewee to a number of books with specific bands, eras, and subcultures as subject matter.

In recent times Scootering editorial policy moved away from the more lifestyle type of features for several years. However, over the past 18 months or so there has been a massive swing back to encompass, embrace and include a wide range of lifestyle, as in music, books, and clothes, subjects in Scootering magazine.

source : CreaseLikeKnives

Growing up on a council estate in High Wycombe in the late 1970s, skinhead culture just spoke to me. It was all about camaraderie, fashion and music. We were listening to 2 Tone bands such as the Specials and aping what Madness wore on their album covers. Back then I was heavy-handed, angry and rough around the edges, and there was a definite suppression of anger in the lyrics of the bands we were listening to. I liked the attention that being a skinhead got me, too.

School was a nightmare for me. I loved art but couldn’t transfer what was in my head to the page, which caused me massive frustration. But in 1979, aged 14, I went to Woolies to buy a pair of binoculars and got a camera instead – a little 110 Hanimex. Getting my first set of prints developed was a life-changing moment. I remember the voice in my head: “I’m going to be a photographer.” That was it. I never wavered. I would get my mates to nick camera film from Boots for me because I was too scared. The only downside was that anywhere I went, I’d get: “Oh, look who it is, David Bailey.”

A year after getting the camera, I started photographing skinheads. There are no strangers in my photos: they’re my schoolmates, my girlfriends, my mum and dad and my younger brother Neville, who was a skinhead too and extremely stylish, refined and sophisticated. I managed to make the people I loved – normal people – into stars.

Quote

This is a photo of my mate Skinny Jim on the tube in 1980. There were six of us, all aged 15. We’d taken the train down to London on a rainy day to go to Carnaby Street and get a Harrington jacket – or whatever we could afford for a tenner. It was an away day and I’d taken my camera, like I normally did.

Skinny Jim was one of those 15-year-old kids who think they are the hardest because they haven’t been punched on the nose yet. That expression is Skinny Jim all over. My God, what a face.

London was scary back then. We had to keep our heads down. There were gangs roaming. You couldn’t go anywhere without getting your head kicked in. But I was never intimidated. I was six foot tall and I remember using my Hanimex as a weapon when some bloke tried to get funny with me in Trafalgar Square. He got it over the head.

That picture is perfect. I’m not blowing my own trumpet, but I stare at it myself and it’s up there with anything that any of the big boys have done. I’ve seen so many variations of my skinhead photos over the last 30 years, but everything is so contrived and they all use models. I was in a tiny little gang on a tiny little council estate, in a tiny little town that no one had ever heard of at the time, taking pictures I thought no one would ever see just because I enjoyed doing it. So there’s an honesty to it, and that’s where the power lies. There is no narrative attached.

What blows my mind is that I was only 15 years old when I took that photo, on a moving tube train. It’s the level of confidence. Something very strange was going on, that I came out as such a confident photographer when I was so insecure at the same time.

If you talk to most people about skinheads, they think it’s about the right-wing and Nazis. The demonisation was continuous. But the skinhead movement, when it started, came out of the philosophy of black and white kids uniting and dancing to 60s ska music from Jamaica. That’s where my photographs come in. Because when I do exhibitions, people usually come in tight-lipped, expecting to see fat, balding 30-year-olds with bulldogs. But if you’re at a gig dancing to ska music – that’s a skinhead. Simple as that.

I don’t know what happened to Skinny Jim. No one bloody knows. I heard he went off and invented stuff. I heard that somebody bumped into him the other day on Facebook and they said he was a lovely bloke, involved in charity. Somebody else said he was dead. So I don’t know. I would never have remembered him at all if I hadn’t taken that photograph.

Gavin Watson’s CV
Born: Kingsbury, London, 1965
Training: “Absolutely zilch. I didn’t need it.”
Influences: “None.”
High point: “My Vice exhibition in Milan.”
Low point: “Too many to count.”
Top tip: “Don’t expect instant fame unless you photograph stars – and that’s boring as ****.”

Gavin Watson’s photobooks, Time Has Creative Power and Oh! What Fun We Had, are available now through the Museum of Youth Culture.

Source: The Guardian

SPSP: How would you describe your research?

Kevin: I would call it a cross between several types of qualitative methods. A lot of it was interviewing and ethnographic work, as well. Let’s say I was researching neo-Nazis. I’d go to rallies (they knew I was a social scientist, and that I didn’t believe in their views.) I would go and interview there, and observe what was going on at the events and take notes. And once I got to know some of them and know where their hangouts were, I’d go there and do interviews, so it was both qualitative and ethnographic.

I got involved with this research because I was teaching a class on deviance and the issue of hate groups came up. Some of the kids in the class were talking about Neo-Nazi skinheads, and I responded back, “Well, not all of them are Neo-Nazis, there are several different types.” I described the Traditional and SHARPS (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice), and a bunch of other types of skinhead identities.

After the class was over, two female students came up to me and said, “I want to thank you for actually clarifying to people that not all skinheads are Neo-Nazis.” They admitted that they were skinheads and that their boyfriends were skinheads, and they asked me if I would be interested in interviewing them because they knew I was doing research on the skinhead movement.

I said, “Sure,” and from there it all snowballed into meeting other people, getting contact information from them, and emailing or going to bars with them and meeting people or going to rallies. It really was this huge snowball effect that started with having a discussion in class about the definition of skinheads.

SPSP: When you’re doing these interviews and other types of communication, what’s the area of focus?

Kevin: It depends. One of the things that’s fascinating is what they would label as being a “true” skin. There’s a debate within the movement of what’s true. A Traditional skin might be more accepting of a gay skin than someone who is a Neo-Nazi. There’s also differing views on gender. Some skinheads have traditional views of women and basically believe that women should have more of a back-seat role, and some are more liberal in their views.

Robin: I think you see that with the female Neo-Nazi skinheads, too. Some of the Neo-Nazi women Kevin interviewed were very upfront that they wanted to be involved in, and sometimes were involved in, fighting.

There can be a lot of aggression, especially among the Neo-Nazi skinheads. Some of the women were okay with women fighting, and some of the men were okay with that. And some of the men said, “Women shouldn’t be fighting”, and even some of the women themselves said that they should take more of a backseat role with that.

Another question we look into is how different people got involved in the skinhead movement - what brought them to it. There are some commonalities across the board, and also differences. I think a lot of people who join feel that they are accepted for who they are within the movement. They’re looking for a place to belong. A lot of times, they feel like they didn’t fit in in high school, and yet they fit into the skinhead group.

Kevin: Both males and females join the skinhead movement because of issues of self-worth and self-esteem. A lot of them came from a background of being seen as blending into the crowd, and almost being a nothing. They wanted to stand out, so they ended up joining the movement. Then, they found that people feared them. And there’s kind of a power in fear. A lot of the women really liked that, because they were able to find a “true self”. They were finally accepted for who they were, in a way.

SPSP: That’s really intriguing. I don’t know that I would have thought about all of the nuances on my own.

Kevin: I didn’t either, and that was some of what surprised me. When you do reading on skinheads, you almost think that it’s homogenous. I found out there were different types of skinheads, with different reasons for joining. I did boil it down to several elements that were very similar, and one similarity is the issue of self-esteem.

A lot of skinheads weren’t recruited, per say, but willingly joined. They liked what they refer to as the respect they received. Like I said earlier, I refer to it as fear, but there’s power in that. For a lot of them, they’re only involved with the movement for a short time and then they move off into other things, but it increases their self-worth. I didn’t expect to see some of the results that I did.

Robin: Interestingly, too, one of the ways in which people are brought into the movement is through music. Whether they’re Traditional skinheads and they’re listening to ska and reggae, or they’re Neo-Nazi skinheads and they’re listening to the white power music, people would show up to the music venue to listen to the music. They’d meet people there, and hang out with them, and then join the movement. So music is one avenue in.

Kevin: At these music events and even in other spaces, sometimes people who are non-racist will hang out with people with racist views. I don’t hang out with anybody who’s racist because I don’t agree with that viewpoint. But because there’s so few skinheads and there’s power in hanging out in a pack, they basically tolerate this issue of bigotry and homophobia, etc.

I found it surprising that this happens, especially because there’s a whole SHARPS (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice) movement. But for the most part, that movement has died down in America. I saw a lot of skinheads who would hang out with the racists, and I was amazed that they would tolerate that.

SPSP: How did you come to pursue this area of research? Were you studying this prior to the interaction with the two students?

Kevin: I was at Northeastern University and was a teaching assistant to Jack Levin, so I got interested in hate groups. When I started my dissertation in the late ‘90s, the internet was becoming big, and there was an influx of hate groups going online. I wanted to do a comparison of the online views of skinheads versus the face-to-face views of skinheads. That’s how I originally got into this research area, and I stumbled into a bigger avenue of people to interview.

Robin: My research with Kevin started with online hate, and moved more to looking at skinheads and the different types of skinheads. When I started doing the research, I thought of skinheads as Neo-Nazis and bikers. I started learning about the other groups, like the Traditional skinheads, and that they are around the world.

A lot of people trace the movement back to England, and say it came to the U.S. on the heels of punk rock. But there are skinheads in Korea, Japan, Australia, Germany, France, South America. It’s one of England’s most successful exports – it exists today and around the world.

I found a group of Straight Edge Skins Against Animal Cruelty, and they had a whole bunch of songs in that arena. There are female skins and gay skins, which kind of goes against the masculinity that’s associated with the group. Even though it’s a subculture, it’s a really diverse group.

SPSP: What about your research and your findings have been most surprising?

Kevin: For the females, the juxtaposition of the two roles. Some women take on a more traditional role and let the men do everything, and there are other women that are a little more standout-ish, and some of the other skins are a little more liberal in their views, and let them do their stuff. A lot of people refer to it as female masculinity.

One thing that I found was that regardless of gender or political affiliation, they’re extremely violent and you have to be really careful when you’re dealing with them. That transferred over into the women, as well.

If you look at violent crimes in general in the U.S., women only commit 13% of violent crimes. And yet, I don’t think I met one who woman didn’t have a violent extreme view on something, or who didn’t believe that you could act violently as a means to an end. I was expecting to find something a little bit different based on how the larger social structure is and how women view violence.

Robin: Some of the gay skins probably downplay their gay identity. But even among those who downplayed that identity within the skinhead movement, their close skinhead friends all knew that they were gay and yet a lot of their family didn’t. They felt comfortable telling these friends, but not their family. It’s really men acting feminine that they’re against, so even some of the gay skinheads beat up men who were acting effeminate.

Kevin: You saw that across gender, too. Some female skins didn’t see that kind of violence as being wrong. But sometimes it’s tough to tell how people really feel. You’re dealing with a lot of different views and the people all hang out. You don’t know if they’re just ignoring the behavior. But they never really espoused that beating up gay people was wrong, regardless of which gender they were.

SPSP: What have you found most interesting about the research and your findings?

Kevin: I think what I found about how, let’s say women, get involved in the movement. A lot of it involved networks of relationships. So maybe they had a boyfriend or an older brother or another female friend that was in it, and they were drawn into it. If they become a neo-Nazi or racist skin, then they learn to hate. They get involved because it increases self-worth, so for them it’s more important to have that self-esteem and sense of pride. And they learn to hate later.

Whereas a lot of the males were attracted to the violence. For women, violence wasn’t an attractive component of it, but for a lot of the males, the violence brought them in.

Robin: The stereotype is the neo-Nazi skinhead, but I find commitment of the Traditional skinheads to “This isn’t about politics or racism; those things don’t have a place in the movement,” to be really interesting. Because it’s a subculture, you might expect much more homogeneity. But it’s a diverse group in terms of political beliefs.

And that’s true even in the women: you have women who are Traditional skinheads, women who are neo-Nazi, and so on. You see it just as you do in women outside of the subculture - very different views about race, politics, and aggression. The women in the movement reflect the larger group of women.

In the subcultures you can see women struggling for equality. In some skinhead groups they are treated as equals, and in others they have to fight to be treated as equals. That fight is not just with men - it can be with other women. I think you see the same thing in the larger society; some people are very accepting of women being treated as equals, and some say “No, they’re not.” And some people in each of those groups are men, and some of them are women.

Kevin: Some sociologists say if you understand subculture and deviance it’s easier to understand the larger society. If you look at what Robin’s talking about with women in the movement, it’s a subset of what’s going on in society. Women are fighting for rights, saying they should be able to do various things, or to go into combat. Combat is violent. It’s a microcosm within skinhead culture.

SPSP: What are the different groups of skinheads, in addition to traditional, neo-Nazi, and SHARPs?

Kevin: In Europe you get anarchist skins, red skins that are for communism and socialism. I haven’t run into that in the U.S.

Robin: In Europe, there’s also anti-Fascist skins.

SPSP: The red skins would seem to be on the left side of the political spectrum, but overall the movement, even if it’s nuanced, seems to be more to the right. Or is that not an accurate characterization?

Robin: Obviously, the racist nationalist skinheads are going to be on the right. And numerically, they are probably, at least in the U.S., more common than the extreme left. Although, as I mentioned, I did find the Straight Edge Skins Against Animal Cruelty, so you do have some left-leaning ones, and then the Traditional skins are more in the middle.

Kevin: Some of the Traditional skinheads still had elements of patriarchal views of women, and things of that nature, which aren’t very liberal. But they don’t consider themselves to the right of the spectrum, either. I think a lot of them wouldn’t really put themselves on the spectrum, partly because when people say “skinhead,” the first thing people think is Neo-Nazis.

They don’t want to be seen as totally to the right or left. A lot of them tend to take a neutral stance and don’t want to discuss politics. Some of them always say, “No politics allowed.” But views are expressed around violence. Some women are praised for their violence, and the attitude is, “You want to be violent? Go ahead and express yourself that way, that’s what the skinhead movement is all about. “

Others were more traditional towards women – “We’re supposed to protect them,” etc. And the women who were violent were almost chastised. So in the Traditional movement, you have people who lean a little more to the left in terms of self-expression. And others who think women shouldn’t fight. And they’re all tolerated - they don’t get into fights with each other about it.

Robin: The skinhead movement started as very working-class. “We’re working-class and we’re proud of who we are.”  It goes back to what Kevin referenced earlier, the discussion of the definition of a skinhead.  

Some people see it as being who you are, being true to yourself. Gay skinheads would say, “I am a true skinhead because being gay is who I am, and I espouse all of the working-class things that go along with being a skinhead.”

Others don’t think that gay people should be in the movement. They would say that being a true skinhead doesn’t include being gay. So it comes back to who gets to claim, “I’m a real skinhead,” and what does that mean?

Kevin: That’s the whole battle going on. Some of the skinheads in America embrace coming from England. But if you talk to the racist skins, a lot of them say the movement didn’t start until the 80s, when it came over on the back of the punk movement.

The definition of who is a true skin is probably one of the most interesting things of dealing with this culture, because everyone says “A skin would do this”, “No, a skin would do that”. The definition is always in flux. It’s never a solid thing that you can point a finger at. If you look on paper, that’s never really explored or brought out. I think that’s one of the interesting things we found.

SPSP: Thank you so much for your time.