Hitler the Hells Angel.
 
A gang of British Hells Angels ride into town. They gather at their favored bar in Birmingham, England, the aptly named Oddfellows’ Arms. The bar is the last remnant of a once-thriving working class area. Inside, the Angels drink, chat, and carouse. At one of the crowded tables a young biker has “Mum + Dad” tattooed on his soft white arm.

A film crew documents these activities. When asked, the Hells Angels talk of their rejection of society’s values, their independence, their freedom. They relish their dirty appearance, long hair, and their uniformity of dress. One biker has a jacket covered with the Nazi insignia. He says his parents’ generation fought the Nazis—“The only good German was a dead German,” they said—but he’s never met a bad German. He wears the badges and pins to shock, to disgust, to rebel—to show his “outlaw” status.

Though these Hells Angels consider themselves free of society’s rules, they do have their own codes and rituals by which they live their lives. Outside the bar, a young couple named Sylvia and Hitler get married. They want their relationship to be recognized by the other Angels. The marriage is a genuine ritual. To the rest of society Hitler and Sylvia are “living in sin.” Like any other newlyweds, the couple will have to get a job, some “bread” and somewhere to live.

When Hitler is asked about his name, he explains he was called “Hitler” by the other Angels because he has “proved himself.”

Interviewer: How do you prove yourself?

Hitler: There’s quite a few ways you can prove like. I mean, beat a skinhead up—that’s great. That’s class. I mean, if it was legal we’d go around hanging skinheads.

 

Four skins…
 
The kids were out of control. Or so it seemed. The rise in births after the Second World War saw a massive number of youngsters reach their teens and twenties during the 1960s. There was a fear the country was being swamped by gangs of youths. There was no longer any National Service to dissipate their energy on military maneuvers or war. There was more money. More leisure time. More entertainment. Pop music and television were the new gods. For an older generation, the hysteria of Beatlemania—with its “out of control” mobs of teen girls—was as much a portent to the breakdown in British society as the gangs terrorizing the inner cities. Teddy Boys. Razor gangs. Rockers. Mods. Tribes defined as much by their violence as by their tastes in music, their clothes, their modes of transport, or their goddamn hairstyles.

In the 1950s, poet Thom Gunn wrote a highly preceptive poem called “On the Move” about the rise of rebelious youth and their chaotic, unfocussed energy. The poem describes a biker gang roaming across America “reaching no absolute, in which to rest” always moving “toward, toward.” Gunn was inspired by The Wild One, the Marlon Brando movie, where his character Johnny was asked “What you rebeling against, Johnny?” To which Brando’s character replies, “Whatcha got?” Though Gunn’s admiration for the bikers’ rebellious attitude is obvious, he sees their actions as wasted and inadequate to provoke any real change.

By the late 1960s, skinheads were considered a bigger threat to the British public than bikers. Hell’s Angels kept their business amongst themselves. Skinheads attacked anyone—though primarily anyones of a different ethnicity to their own “pure blood” white skin. Skinheads were thuggishly unrepentant “bovver boys” who’d give you a kicking as much a look at you.
 

Skinhead Steve with his parents.
 
The documentary shifts to a group of young skinheads from London. They brag about “Paki bashing.” They crow about their racism and violence. The film focuses on one young skinhead called Steve. The camera follows him home where he watches TV with his mom and dad. His father had been a Teddy Boy. He understands the appeal of being in a gang. Steve tells him about the thrill of marching through South End a thousand strong. The feeling of being part of something says Steve, would bring “tears to your eyes.”

Steve: It makes you feel proud. It will last for a little while. Then something new will come along. But till then you’ve got us. It’s just the way it goes.

More after the jump…

 
One way or another, skinhead culture has been with us since the 1960s. Since skinheads can range from white supremacist to avowedly anti-racist, it’s a slippery thing trying to define a group with as much internal variation as that. And yet…

It’s safe to say that skinheads were strongly influenced by the rude boys of Jamaica and the mods of London and that it is primarily a working-class phenomenon as well as a reaction to the long-haired hippie types. You see, long hair and factory labor with a lot of large and powerful moving machine parts isn’t a good idea. (Also, you can wear your steel-toed workboots on the job, no problem.)

Furthermore, in London at least, working-class whites tended to share the same working-class neighborhoods with new immigrants from the Caribbean, and that exposed them to lifestyles and fashions defined by soul, ska, and reggae. And then somewhere along the line the boots and braces become the uniform of a racist subculture.

Having delivered that preamble, here are some striking images of skins, both male and female, from the 1970-1990 period.

Click on the images for a larger view.
 

 

 

 
More skinheads after the jump…

Isobel Varley
 
For his series Rebels Without A Pause, British photographer Muir Vidler captured the most daring and stylish renegades “of a certain age.” Muir seems to specialize in surreal portraiture, extreme events and settings with the odd flash of quiet. Other series include Israeli death metal fans, a circumcision party in the Maldives, and a beauty pageant in Libya, complete with a cameo by the late Colonel Gaddafi. His elder rebel study however, has an intimate feel, with little sense of spectacle to the staging.

Take for example, Isobel Varley (above), who held the Guinness World Record for the most tattooed female pensioner up until her death just this last May at the age of 77. Varley only started getting tattoos at 48, but went on to cover every square inch of her body except her face, her ears, the soles of her feet, and parts of her hands—even her scalp is tattooed, underneath the cute blond coif. Varley isn’t the only local celeb either. You can see video below of one of Muir’s most charming subjects, Paul Elvis Chan, who used to perform his Elvis impersonation act before a delighted audience at his Chinese restaurant.

My favorite though is Danny Lynch—aka, the Great Stromboli, who did his fire-breathing act for Muir with his adorable wife in the background. Muir remembers her as very hospitable:

Yeah, she was going into the house to make a cup of tea. She said, “Cup of tea darling?”, I said OK, then all of a sudden he was blowing fire and she was dashing off to put the kettle on. With the dog and the station wagon in the photo too, it was a very suburban backdrop.

Isn’t it so terribly quaint?
 

 

Mick and Peggy Warner, whose son is a Teddy Boy
 

John G. Byrne, gay skinhead since 1969
 

Sid Ellis, who says “In my spare time I either go to fetish clubs or do needlepoint. I like medieval tapestries.”
 
Continues after the jump…

“Margate during a bank holiday, 1981.”
 
I can’t look at these poignant pictures of skinheads and punks in the U.K. around 1981 and not start humming “No Thugs in Our House” by XTC, which, as it happens, was recorded in late 1981.

You might imagine that the photographer, Derek Ridgers, was a compatriot of these young rebels, but that’s not the case. Ridgers had studied at the Ealing School of Art around 1970 (one of his fellow students there was one Farrokh Bulsara, a.k.a. Freddy Mercury), and in the 1970s Ridgers worked in advertising. In 1981 Ridgers turned 29 years old.

Says Ridgers of his becoming one of the first serious documenters of the skinhead scene: “It was pure beginner’s luck, helped by the photos being timely and available. And because of my advertising background, I had chutzpah and was fairly shameless in touting them around.”
 

In early ‘79 I was already engaged in what eventually turned out to be a lengthy photographic study of the New Romantics (though back then they were not known as such). I’d been documenting this nascent scene in the Soho nightclub ’Billy’s’ and, one evening, a group of about half-a-dozen skinheads turned up. They saw me taking photographs and one of them, a guy called Wally, asked me if I’d like to take some photos of them too. They seemed pretty friendly and not at all camera shy. I took a few snaps, we got talking and Wally suggested I go with the whole gang on one of their Bank Holiday jaunts to the seaside. That was what led, eventually, to five years of photographing skinheads. In those five years I got to know some of the skinheads quite well and liked many of them.

 
Interestingly, Ridgers was so not one of them that he almost entirely misjudged the identity of his subjects. “I must have been pretty daft. At first I assumed that Wally and his friends were just dressing up as skinheads. I thought that they’d probably all come from art schools or fashion colleges and they were benign, skinhead revivalists. … I proved to be seriously misinformed.”

Ridgers’ new book Skinheads was released in September. The captions are Ridgers’ own and come from this gallery at the Guardian website.
 

“I entitled this photograph ‘Smiler’ since he’s got it written on his jacket. His real name was Wayne and his street name was Wally. In an email he informed me that he was 16 when I took this photograph in 1984.”
 

“Kevin, photographed next to The Last Resort shop in Goulston Street, 1981. “
 

“Two skinhead girls photographed on a bank holiday in Brighton (this is the image later used by Morrissey on the Your Arsenal tour).”
 

“Kate, left, and Lesley, Shoreditch, 1979. “
 

“Skinheads hanging around outside The Last Resort shop in Goulston Street, 1981.”
 

“This is John and Dave (gleaned simply from looking at their tattoos) in Chelsea in 1981.”
 
More of Ridgers’ pictures of skinheads after the jump….