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Booted and Suited

The Real Story of the 1970s â" it ain't No Boogie Wonderland.

John Blake Publishing Ltd

In Search of 'Wally'

Can you remember those illustrated kids' books from a few years back called Where's Wally? where you had to find a gormless, bespectacled bloke in a red striped jumper among a myriad of similarly dressed characters? Trying to find when the first skinhead appeared in Bristol, let alone Britain, is a bit like that. It goes without saying the first sightings would have been in London. 'Course it was, me old china – you wouldn't expect anything else, would you? Those Cockney geezers have always been one step ahead of the rest of the country, haven't they?

Dick Hebdige, the British media theorist and sociologist, claims that some mods were spotted with boots and braces during the notorious riots with rockers at Margate and Brighton as early as 1964 – which also ties in with Micky Smith's observations in his book Want Some Aggro? – whereas the spring of 1968 seems to be the more commonly accepted date for their historic debut. As for the exact location of where he first saw the light of day, Bermondsey, Willesden and Plaistow can all lay claim to be the birthplace of the forerunner of the modern-day hoodie. One of the first recorded instances of this new teenage phenomenon appearing in public came during the Great Vietnam Solidarity March in London on 17 March 1968 – 30,000 anti-war demonstrators were heckled and abused by 200 'closely cropped local youths dressed in Millwall Football Club's team colours'. Not that these lads were making a political statement; their venom was aimed at the massed-ranked hippies as opposed to the USA's involvement in south-east Asia – political animals they were not.

John Waters, an original Sixties mod from Upper Holloway, London, remembers vividly two very different sorts of mods: the easy-on-the-eye West End dandies and those with a tougher outlook, the so-called 'hard mods' who were just a step away from being bona fide East End boot boys. Writing on the Modculture website, he recalls, 'There were two distinct types of mod within the London area. The first was the familiar scooter boys which has become the generally accepted face of Sixties Modernism. However, there was another type of mod back in those days. These were the members of the many mod "firms" ... members of these gangs would not be seen dead on a scooter, their preferred mode of transport being a car.'

These gang members not only had a different outlook but also dressed differently, their style being more uniform – 'They were meticulous in their dress, the order of the day being the mohair suit, velvet-collar overcoats and, as often as not, a "Blue Beat" hat.' Dick Hebdige even puts forward the idea that these hard mods 'started sporting close-cropped hair which artificially reproduces the texture and appearance of the short Negro hairstyles'. There's even claims that these first skinheads were, in fact, 'aspiring white Negroes' – the very first 'wiggers' even. How odd then that, in years to come, skinheads would always be associated with being far-right racists.

It's hard to dispute therefore that the early crophead evolved from the dying embers of the mod movement which had acrimoniously split and gone its separate ways once LSD replaced dexidrine and Meher Baba influenced Pete Townshend more than John Lee Hooker. What is harder to determine is what the original boot boys were called – 'peanuts', 'lemonheads', 'cropheads' and the previously mentioned 'hard mods' were all used by the rabid red-tops, desperate to find a tag for the delinquents on to whom they could then heap all of Britain's ills. Certainly in those early days, 'skin' heads would have been way off the mark. Witness the 1969 film Bronco Bullfrog, in which Bronco's hair is a rather scruffy, and very common, short-back-and-sides, while the amateur 'star' of the docu-film, Dale, is constantly flicking the hair from out of his eyes. Take away his size-ten boots and you're back searching for Wally.

Contrary to popular belief, the haircut itself was not a direct descendant of the American crew-cut, which left virtually no hair at the back and sides but a longer length on the top. Despite this, rather amusingly in the late Sixties, US military personnel based in this country were advised to wear hairpieces to avoid being mistaken for native, booted hooligans. More often than not, a request at the local barbers for a 'square cut' resulted in the desired effect. It was not until a year or so later that the term 'skinhead' entered the argot of the English language and became the tag that would stay for ever with any future hooligan possessing a short hairstyle, with or without the boots. Even the Prime Minister of the time, Harold Wilson, speaking in Parliament in 1969, used the terminology, in describing certain Tory rivals as 'the skinheads of Surbiton'.

Surprisingly, though, as the embryonic skinhead took centre stage it was not the hairstyle but the footwear that defined the cult. However, the greatly revered Doc Martens were hardly worn at all – it was their surly, ugly older brothers in the guise of calf-high paratroopers, steel-toe-capped workboots, army hobnails or (my own personal favourites) the infinitely more comfortable Monkey boots that were the preferred choice.

In April 1970, Bristol's Evening Post even saw fit to send their fashion reporter Barbara Buchanan out to hunt down the 'bovver boot'. Full of curiosity about the boots, she made a trip to GB Brittons in Kingswood, who, at the time, were the largest manufacturer in the world for 'safety footwear' – an oxymoron if ever there was one when the boots were in the hands, or rather on the feet, of the young skinheads.

Jim Burriss, a director of the company, was naturally delighted with the latest teen fashion. Brittons had seen an increase of 29% in sales of steel-toe-capped protective footwear in the previous year but, not wishing to align himself with the bovver boys, he disputed that the sales were down to them entirely. 'It's a greater awareness of factory safety plus our first-class bunch of salesmen,' he stated. Of course it was, Jim, and just to give more credence to the fact he added that he thought ex-army stores were a more likely source for the favoured footwear. 'The old army boot could be pretty lethal ... there are plenty of them available in surplus stores.'

The intrepid reporter then tried her luck at an unnamed army surplus store where the proprietor stated that more and more teenage boys were buying a certain type of boot that 'have a very heavy sole and lightweight upper, they're marvellously comfortable to walk in but the boys are buying them as a fashion'. I can only guess that they are describing Monkey boots as Doctor Martens certainly didn't fit this description. When asked if the boys bought the lethal-looking hobnails, the answer was that they did, and at 52s 6d (less than three quid) they were a lot cheaper than the others but it seems that it was the former unnamed boot that they wanted.

Ironically, Doc Martens came to be the boot synonymous with skinheads by a strange quirk of fate. Later on in 1970, the police across the country decided that the steel-toe-capped boot should be classed as an offensive weapon and that anyone wearing them could have them confiscated, or the wearer could even face arrest. That ban saw the shift to Doc Martens and, within a few months, they virtually became standard issue, with their simple utilitarian design becoming as much an anti-fashion statement as a very noticeable nod in recognition to their working-class roots.

Of course, you could answer 'so what?' Does it really matter why and where it all started? Click on Wikipedia, search for mods and you'll find prosaic and flowery expressions such as 'existentialist philosophy', 'middle-class teenage boys' and references to French new wave films and 'penchants for jazz' – nice. Click on 'skinheads' and the hackles start to rise and the vitriol cranks up: 'entrenched class system' and 'working-class subculture' jump out at you and – surprise, surprise – once the brief history gets dispensed with, there's a whole chapter on racism, anti-racism and politics – not so nice. It's all a bit clinical and prescriptive, too, with the accurate but obvious references to the influence of home-grown West Indian rude boys and the skinheads' love affair with ska and reggae – but that's it. Nothing that actually gets under the skin, as it were.

In some respects, the early skinheads had a great affinity with the counter-culture of the punks who were to burst on to the scene spitting and screaming less than a decade later. A young East End skinhead quoted in the Penguin Educational paperback The Paint House states, 'Everywhere there are fucking bosses ... they're always trying to tell us what to do ... don't matter what you do, where you go, they're always there. People in authority, the people who tell you what to do and make sure you do it. It's the system we live in, it's the governor system.'

Like the late-Seventies anarchists, skinheads grew out of disillusionment with not just those in authority but with pop and its excessive trappings. The über-coolness of the 'swinging Sixties' when London music and fashion had ruled the world was on the wane. The summer of love of 1967 was the last straw; the music had lost its way, fashion had lost its head, and the hair, well, that was just asking for trouble. The working-class youth needed their adrenalin rush as much as the more cultured middle classes, but, whereas the grammar-school types from the leafy suburbs escaped from their tedious life by immersing themselves in the flamboyant, expressive, drug-infused hippy culture, the comprehensive-school kids from the post-war concrete council estates tried to revisit an earlier period. They craved for a time when life was simpler and they tried desperately to recover a sense of tradition in a fast-changing Britain, a tradition which, to them, the hippy movement was trying its hardest to destroy. The social dynamic behind the skinhead cult is obvious, unequivocal and cannot be over-emphasised.

Thankfully, these were the days when the working class were still looked upon with some affection. Forty years on and the working class have been replaced by the Indian-inked, hooded underclass – for the salt of the earth, now read the scum of the earth.

It's often been said that the modern-day sportswear-clad chavs have no respect for anyone or anything around them; they deliberately cover their faces and hide their eyes beneath hoods and ubiquitous checked caps. It's not respect for others the hoodies don't have, it's respect for themselves, something the first generation of skinheads had by the bucketload. Ask any skinhead from that era and they'll constantly remind you of how much they respected older people, embraced the traditional British work ethic, loved their country, loved themselves and, most importantly, loved their mums.

While the cult of the hippy and flower power had weak roots, all things skin had strong ones based on traditional values. Skinheads viewed hippies with their mantra of individualism, drug taking, free love and doing their own thing as the enemy within. As one 16-year-old 'peanut' bluntly stated in an interview in 1968 when asked about what he was against, 'Long hair, pop, hippy sit-ins, live-ins and the long-haired cult of non-violence'.

The reaction to the hippy movement and its music featuring sitars, cowbells and those obligatory ten-minute guitar solos was as extreme as it was rapid. The skinheads chose to grossly exaggerate their working-class background and deliberately accentuated its hard image: the braces, overtly exposed working boots, close-cropped hair, collarless shirts – all stereotypical working-class imagery. It could even be argued they were making a political statement but, back then, politics was the last thing on a young skinhead's mind, they didn't really care much for Vietnam, Tariq Ali or CND; their thoughts were elsewhere. It's those thoughts that I now hope to reveal and retell in the next few chapters – thoughts, memories and recollections of those first-generation skinheads, those boys and girls who were around when the mods drew their final breath, cast off their parkas and laced up their boots. Welcome to Booted and Suited.

'This Is a Scene, There's Some Kind of Code'

I read somewhere that Bristol could have been as glorious as Rome, except the locals couldn't be bothered, or that it could be Britain's equivalent of San Francisco. Certainly, the geography resembles the Californian city and Bristol's got an amazing bridge – and a prison – but that's where the similarities end. San Francisco was the birthplace of the free-loving hippies, Bristol the birthplace of Methodism; somehow, I can't see the connection.

Since the 1950s, coffee bars have played an important part in the life of the British teenager. From 'Coffee An' off Wardour Street in London to the 'Cona Coffee Bar' in Tib Street, Manchester, teenagers flocked to them in their droves – it's amazing what a jukebox, pinball machines and a Gaggia can do. Warm, inviting, slightly racy, with a hint of the Continent, British youth is easily pleased.

In Bristol, we had the 'Never on Sunday' in Fairfax Street, just around the corner from Woolworth's and the Co-op and just a stone's throw from the Central Police Station in Bridewell. Good thinking, lads.

Iain McKell, the well-known fashion photographer who learned his trade back in the Seventies and Eighties through shooting skinheads and new romantics, and who photographed Madonna for her first magazine cover, recalls, 'I remember skinheads the first time round, in 1969, when it was really hardcore. I must have been 12, 13 and I was in a café in Bristol when this bloke walked in, hair cropped, wearing a Ben Sherman shirt, braces, Levi's and DM boots. Then another one ... and another one. And I thought, Hang on a minute, there's something going on here, this is a scene, there's some kind of code. And in those days, it was shocking to see something like that.'

A public schoolboy with working-class parents from Weymouth, McKell was awestruck by the skinheads' defiance and aggression, and it wasn't long before he wanted to be part of this 'scene'. 'This big firm of lairy skinheads would stand behind the goal at Bristol City's ground [no accounting for taste], so one day I joined them, just to experience this feeling, this roar. They'd bang their boots against the corrugated tin wall behind them, then they'd surge forward in this big wave.'

'Defiance and aggression ...' It's easy to see how the movement roared through Britain in the summer of 1969, a bit like Concorde had done in April that year on its maiden flight ... from Filton, Bristol, for the record.

This 'scene' was being repeated up and down the country. Chris Welch, the esteemed rock journalist, writing in Melody Maker in 1969 made a similar observation: 'it's a curious thing that whenever ... a pillar of our bewildered society wants to cast stones, they instantly start talking about long-haired louts/yobs/hippies/students etc ... Yet anybody who has ventured on the streets will instinctively know that they have nothing to fear from the long-haired youth who merely wants to turn on in peace to his favourite band and chick. The sight of cropped heads and the sound of heavy boots entering the midnight Wimpy bar or dancehall is the real cause for sinking feelings in the pit of the stomach.'

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Excerpted from Booted and Suited by Chris Brown. Copyright © 2009 Chris Brown. Excerpted by permission of John Blake Publishing Ltd.
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