The Truth About Skinheads
(I lifted the following from some long-forgotten website and edited it a little for clarity.)

These days, it seems everyone thinks all skinheads are racist. Thanks to the media, and the increased growth of the racist right's organizing efforts in North America, the skinhead subculture has been demonized and appropriated.

The original skinheads first appeared in England in the late 1960s, growing out of the "rude-boy" and "hard-mod" movements. Skinheads were the result of a synthesis of white, working-class culture with that of Jamaican immigrants to the UK. The original skins were black and white, and listened to ska music, as well as soul and blue beat.

These skins had a tough, clean style which expressed their working-class backgrounds, wearing Doc Marten work boots, Levi's blue jeans, donkey jackets, and suspenders (called "braces"). At dances they would wear flashy suits, and mixed freely with West Indian youth, whose music and culture they admired. Racial violence by skinheads was near non-existent at this point. How could there be when the skinhead style grew out of black culture, and skins listened to black music?! It is for this reason, that "real" skinheads call neo-Nazis "boneheads" because they are an abomination to where real skinheads come from.

It is true that skinheads were often linked to violence (which was frequently mindless). Skinheads frequently got into scraps with other subcultures, the police, and towards the end, other skinheads. This eventually led to their downfall, and by 1972 the original skins were a rare breed.

Out of the punk rock explosion of the late 1970s grew Oi!, a street level movement of kids dedicated to bringing punk back to its angry roots. Oi! bands sung about real issues faced by youth in the UK, such as unemployment, prison, authority, etc., and many bands had an obvious left-wing slant (such as Sham 69, The Business, and the Angelic Upstarts).

Unfortunately, other people sought to cash in on the new skinhead revival. Gary Bushell, a writer for Sounds music magazine (the Spin or Rolling Stone of the UK at the time) frequently played up Oi!'s negative image of violence and aggressiveness while at the same time making a hefty amount of money by promoting records of right wing bands. This attracted a lot of scum to what was once a positive, working class movement.

At the same time, due to outreach by the National Front (a fascist political party which at the time time was at its height in Britain), racist and neo-Nazi skinheads also began to appear. A mutation of the original racially-mixed skinhead movement, they sought easy scapegoats to the problems of unemployment and recession, blaming immigrants, blacks, and other minorities instead of the conservative British government (then under Margaret Thatcher). Nazi skinhead bands such as Skrewdriver and Brutal Attack, and organizations like Blood & Honor (a racist skinhead network) made the message popular and accepted in the skinhead subculture.

Of course, the media helped the Nazis along by giving them exposure without debate. Interested only in selling papers, the media refused to allow anti-racist skinheads a voice, effectively silencing those who directly fought this Nazi-resurgence on the streets, and flooding the skinhead scene with right-wing scum. Despite this setback, real anti-racist skinheads continued to fight on for their tradition by organizing Oi! against racism concerts, and physically fighting Nazis out of the streets and shows.

Real skinheads hold certain ideals in common. They are all working and lower-middle class and believe in unity, pride in their class and in themselves. They enjoy music, dancing and a good night out. Many of them like beer. They also seem to get into a lot of fights. They are militant in standing up for what they believe in, and they hate racism.