Oi For England

As the 1970s bled into the 1980s Britain was a strange and exciting place to be. The far right had risen, principally through the National Front hiding their overtly Nazi past and aims, adopting the Union Jack as their flag and appealing to the Little Englander mentality. This propelled them to the fourth most popular political party in Great Britain by the mid-1970s. Youth culture had received a bizarre kick up the backside with a huge 1950s/Rock And Roll revival in the early ‘70s – Bill Haley topped the charts, and Wembley Stadium hosted its first ever concert featuring Bill, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard. Further down the bill were Screamin’ Lord Sutch, Heinz (backed by a Brilleauxless Dr Feelgood) and the MC5. (Check out the film The London Rock And Roll Show – as amazing a time capsule as The Stones In The Park but three years on – make sure you get the long version for Sutch and Heinz – unfortunately the Motor City 5 didn’t make the cut. There’s a t-shirt/cothing stand from Kings Road Teddy Boy couteriers Let It Rock – owned by Malcolm MacLaren and Vivienne Westwood – the times they are about to change) As punk waxed and waned during the decade crossover, skinheads were back with a bang. I went to my first gig proper on bonfire night (November 5th) 1978 – The Salford Jets and Chelsea at the Lyceum Ballroom in the Strand. The NME would have you believe punk was dead but there were hundreds of ‘em around that night, and a small group of skins – who would flaunt their backward-looking outlook with a cheeky “Got two bob, mate?” rather than the punks ubiquitous 10p. Two-tone bounced up the following year and skins were everywhere, the cheerful music and smart clothing appealing to even the very young. The original punk bands had imploded or joined the rock establishment, and the future seemed to point in two directions – Crass or The Cockney Rejects. Crass lived in a commune in Epping Forest and were defiantly anti-war. Nuclear war was still a very real possibility then. Thatcher had usurped the NFs immigration line to get elected and would soon be looking for a small war to unite the country. Crass seemed a bit like hippies. And they seemed to want to tell you how to think despite preaching anarchy. (I know they didn’t but I was young, and anti-hippy despite retaining my pre-punk Pink Floyd lps). The Rejects were all about fighting at football and getting nicked which was the short term view compared to Crass’ world destruction fears, and they were slightly more tuneful. Garry Bushell, who wrote for Sounds at the time, loved them. (Although I used to own a pro-Crass fanzine that actually reprinted one of his early reviews of the anarchists, and it was very positive). There was also post-punk, which could be interesting but wasn’t very melodic or adrenalin rushing. This movement coalesced around Joy Division, against whom either Crass or the Rejects seemed very upbeat. In a rather odd move, Bushell attempted to gather together “punks, skins and herberts” in a loose coalition he dubbed Oi! A working-class, street-level protest movement that championed drinking, fighting and having a laugh as methods of dealing with poverty, unemployment and Government oppression – which, under Thatcher, was coming down very heavy. (Incidentally, Herberts, according to GB were ‘scruffy little tykes who liked a bit of punk and a bit of metal’. Many of the older punk bands co-opted into Oi! Were the ones who dressed down – Sham 69, Menace, Slaughter And The Dogs, The Angelic Upstarts – ie not in Sex/Seditionaries finery – there’s a couple of hilarious live recordings of Sham performing Rip Off which start with an absolute tirade by Pursey against punk threads. Curiously, some Oi bands would lean towards metal later in their lives…) As we move through 1981 and 1982, serious rioting hits Britain. There had been outbreaks of street violence via strikes like Grunwick, and opposition to NF marches through sensitive areas such as Lewisham and Southall the previous decade , and it was Southall that would prove critical for the nascent Oi! Movement. On a Saturday in July 1981, my brother and I were attending an Apocalypse Today gig at Bracknell Sports Centre to thrill to the likes of Chron-Gen, Anti-Pasti, The Exploited and Discharge. We met the Windsor punks and one remarked “Guess where the 4-Skins are playing tonight? Southall!” (Elsewhere on the internet I’ve erroneously reported that we were attending an SLF gig at Bracknell – I only went there twice and originally got the wrong gig – doh!) I forgot about this until the next day when I saw my mother who growled “I hope you weren’t at that concert where there was all that trouble”. Huh? Yipes. It made the nationals, although most were reluctant to use the name 4-Skins, sanitising it to ‘a skinhead disco’ or “The Skins” group. And the NME printed a mostly white (the irony!) cover with a small b&w picture of the aftermath with the sobering headline ‘The gig that sparked a race riot.’ The startling element to this was the Asian community rising up to take on what it saw as a fascistic invasion, as Asians were mostly seen as passive. And (get on with it!) it’s this factor that is referred to in Trevor Griffith’s play Oi For England! That set me to thinking about my past. An internet colleague had sent me a couple of DVD-rs labelled Oi! The History Lesson, which were a home done compilation of Oi related TV programmes. Disc 1 included the Arena documentary on Sham 69, TOTP performances, a programme following Chris ‘Chubby’ Henderson of Combat 84 around London (at one point he visits nightclub Gossips and in the background one of my fave non-Oi, non-Crass punk groups The Satellites are playing. Result! Eeyore!) and odd stuff like a Nationwide report on the aftermath of Southall. Disc 2 featured a programme about pulp author Richard Allen (the reason I received this kind gift), a documentary about skins and Oi For England. Left-winger Griffiths penned it as a result of concern over rioting, right-wing corruption of youth and the way Britain was going under Thatcher. Although intended to be presented at youth clubs, community halls etc in an attempt to engage kids who were subject to the pressures depicted in the play, ITV took a rather brave step in filming it and putting it out. Three young skins are rehearsing in the basement of a place owned by a black man. They are Oi band Ammunition, and are channelling their frustrations through angry white-boy rock. The fourth band member eventually shows up, unusually flush. He’s been subbed by The Man who wants their band to play at an upcoming local Skinfest (as White Ammunition). It soon becomes apparent that The Man has fascist tendencies. The band are torn. It’s a gig. They’ll get paid. But it’s going to be the equivalent of a small scale local Nuremberg rally. There’s rioting going on outside. Their landlord’s daughter talks in an excitedly amazed fashion about the local Asians rising up – and trapping some skinheads in the Union Jack club. One of the lads, the least enthusiastic about the gig on political grounds, has Irish blood in him. Questions about unemployment, race and environment abound. There’s even a copy of Sounds, and the cover of Oi! The Album in the background (Although it did go on sale it was originally obtainable by collecting vouchers in the weekly music mag). What are the boys to do?