Everything seems to be peaceful, on the outside. But on the inside, the things that the world does not see; the things that take a lot more than the human eye to see; the city streets are screaming. I walk into one of the local diners; everything is silent, menacing faces staring at me as if I dont belong. I notice that a lot of them look the same, like a gang, dressed the same as each other; using the same language. Doc. Martin combat boots with the Union Jack, girls with short tartan skirts. Young boys, maybe as young as 13, wearing thin suspenders and bomber jackets, emblazed with the Nazi insignia. I wonder to myself, why would they dress the same? Yet still, out of all these severely prominent features, was an instantly recognisable characteristic, a shaved head. The Skinheads!.
These were the first Skinheads that I had ever recognised on the streets; all of the other suspicious characters were just by-passers. When I walked into this diner I knew that this town was different, the youngsters were self absorbed in their selves. This was the town, which taught me about the other side of town, the side that didnt want Asian Invasions.
The skinhead phenomenon originated in England where gangs of menacing-looking, shaven headed and tattooed youths in combat boots began to be seen in the streets in the early 1970's. The racist and chauvinist attitudes that prevailed at the time among many Skinheads later evolved into a crude form of Nazism. Nizkor (1995) states that from the start, Skins drew public notice for their bigotry and taste for violence, exemplified by their frequent assaults on Asian immigrants, attacks which came to be known as Paki-bashing. .
In the years that followed, the Skinhead movement spread from England to the Continent and beyond. Racist Skinheads are found in almost every industrialized country whose majority of the population is of European stock. Those attracted to the movement are almost uniformly white youths between the ages of 13 and 25, with males outnumbering females.