Skins

SKINHEADS ​

**Skinheads sprang up in England in the 60’s**, as descendants of the mod movement they came up in the United Kingdom in 1958. The mods were middle-class young people, that liked elegant clothes, scooters, and street fights.

In those groups of hard-mods, some youths with shaved hair and heavy boots began to be seen, and they received several names (**noheads , baldheads , cropheads**) until 1969, when they are definitely known as skinheads The skins were united by the same type of music and dress, as well as football and violence. Moreover, they shared certain values as the cult of courage and companionship and the pride to belong to the worker class. This pride was translated into an ethic ( auto-discipline, hard work ). They were not a political group as someone may think, it was a way of life and in most cases, politics was not a very important topic in their lives, although someone voted to the Labor Party (left ).

Related to racism, nowadays so associated to the movement, was not an idea that the skins shared in that time. **The skinheads' way of life did not identify with any political force,** they were just workers. This fact produced a latent antiracism, since they were black, jamaican, English skinheads, etcetera.

Appart from **reggae and ska ** ,The young skinheads listened to a type of music that started to be called **Oi. ** The **Oi music ** received that term from the English expression «Hey you», a more quick, potent and radical music that the previous one. A group known as //**Skrewdriver **// was the one that caused all this change in the eighties. The music was evolving and at year 1988 a fission in the skinhead movement,took place: the singer and leader of the **Ian Stuart ** group joined the **NF** ( National Front, party of extreme right ) and returned to the first **RAC gr**oup (Rock Against Communist), this was the reason why some old members of the band gave it up, many skinheads repudiated the group and their new Neo-fascist tendency, and other people followed it, creating a parallel movement, always mixed up with the skinheads movement, this was: **the Neo-Nazi Movement or Boneheads **.

As a result, this culture separated into several groups: **Politics ** ( Nazi, -national, socialist- skinheads), R **edskins ** ( communist authoritarians and anarchist ), **Anarcoskins ** ( anarchist trostkyst, bakuninist and other ) and **SHARP ** ( no-parties ). SHARP Skinheads stands for the acronym: **Skin Heads Against Racial ** **Prejudice. T ** hey prevailed the culture of the 69’s according to spirit, antiracism and solidarity. Later,in order to keep union between the skinheads original antiracist and antifascist movement, the RASH (Red & Anarchy Skin Head ) emerged. In the same way as SHARP, it is a community that groups all skinheads, whatever their ideology is, whenever the principles of antiracism and antifascism are kept.

Alejandro González.  **SKI** **NHEAD'S CLOTHES** - **Shirts**: plain t-shirt a decaret with text and/or images related to skinhead subculture. - **Coat - J****ackets**: fitted blazers MA-1 type flight- jackets usually black or green, denim jackets oten blue, Harrington jackets, donkey jackets, crombie-style overcoat, short macs sheepskin 3/4 lengt coats or parks. - **Trousers**:Jeans normally Levi's, Leeor Wrangler, with pararell legs. Combat trousers plain or camouflage. Jeans and slacks are worn deliberaty short to show off boots,or to show off socks. Jeans are usually blue, sometimes platerred with bleach. - **Skirts**: skirt with stockings, fisnet stockings and mini-skirts.

- Footwear: Boots originally army surplus boots or generic workboots then Dr Martens boots and shoes.

- **Badges** **and** **scarves**: buttonbadges or swen on fabrics patches with text and/or images related to skinhead subculture; in general, bands, affiliations or beliefs. - **Tatoos**: tatoos with images or text, related to skinhead subculture in general bands, affiliations or their beliefs.

- **Bracers**: usually no more than 1 inch width, clipped to trouserwaistband. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> **Jaime González.**