Story of a picture: Ulla Street Boys

‘Ulla Street Boys’ by Robin Dale was conceived as part of an ethnographic study of a post-industrial Teesside already in decline by the early 1970s. Sometimes referred to alongside his ‘A Spot of Bother’ taken during a match at Middlesbrough’s Ayresome Park ground, it has since come to define a profoundly regional take on suedehead. The boys, found on a terraced street corner in central Middlesbrough (the street still largely exists, save for the odd demolished part here and there), examine the camera as intently as it surveys them. An all too rare perhaps depiction of skinheadism in one of its more multiethnic settings, Andrew Stevens spoke to the Billingham-based photographer. Continue reading

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The faces of a football hooligan

Nowadays it’s all prawn sandwiches and latte, but there were times when people went to football carrying meathooks… Interview with ‘Peter’, a 17 years old Park Lane boy from a “housing estate in the heart of the East End”.

From the Sunday Times, 21 September 1969. Continue reading

Long live Eccles: rare Chelsea Shed Boys pictures resurface

Yesterday on the unofficial Chelsea FC forum, The Shed End, a photographer named David Nicolson posted a couple of rare Chelsea Shed Boys pictures, including of their notorious leader, Danny ‘Eccles’ Harkins.  Continue reading

I walked with a Crombie

About a year ago, I sneered that there was nothing “authentically skinhead” about real Crombies. With no small amount of inverted snobbery, I suggested there was no point in getting one unless you were an “MP, diplomat or KGB agent“. Well, that was then. But last month, I sussed an unbelievable bargain for a Crombie Retro Coat in mint condition. Now I think real Crombies are the dog’s bollocks. Continue reading

Skinheads and racism in a German news article, June 1970

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‘London skinhead and cop’ – from Der Spiegel, no 24/1970

Below, you will find our translation of an article that was first published in the German news weekly Der Spiegel on 8 June 1970. As far as we’re aware, it’s the only time the press in that country reported on the original skinhead wave. It would be eight years before skinheads made another appearance in Der Spiegel, once again in connection with racism and street thuggery in the East End of London. Continue reading