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S kinhead, skinhead, Oi, Oi, Oi. Swastika on the forehead, covered in tats, big boover boots, neo-Nazi racist thug, looking to give some ethnic a good kick in. This is often the kneejerk reaction one has when they hear the word skinhead. It was not always this way. In fact, the first skinheads were born out of a love of reggae and ska introduced to them by the West Indian immigrants after the government had encouraged mass immigration to give life to a flagging labour market.
Jamaican rude boy style the skinheads emulated.
Skinheads
Made from love, destroyed by hate.
Skinheads and rude boys had a mutual love of the music, both had staunch anti-racist views of the world and were happy to mix and indulge in each others cultures. So, what could turn something that blossomed from love and acceptance to the hate you envisage today?
The media. It was only once the media had caught up with the culture in the 1980’ s that things started to sour. A perfect example is the Tilbury Trojan Skins, a name that highlights the influence of black Jamaican music, the name being taken from Trojan records which was founded to bring ska, reggae, rocksteady and dub music to the UK market.
It was no accident this working class subculture was alive and strong in Tilbury Town, a dock town in Thurrock, a place described by The Guardian as‘ the country’ s capital of misery’ in 2012 and it was a lot worse in the 80’ s. Add this to the earlier influx of West Indian immigrants who arrived directly in Tilbury in the late 40’ s on the MV Empire Windrush, then it’ s no surprise skinheads roamed the marsh land of Tilbury. Tensions were higher than previous decades, shortages of labour created by the war were no more and jobs became a little harder to come by. It was a time where the bond between the people needed to be at its strongest but the media attacked and turned the working classes against themselves.
The Sun was the main perpetrator when it set up a sensationalist report entitled‘ Aggro Britain’.
In this article they made the Tilbury Skins out to be racist thugs and painted
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