The youth of yesteryear looked a lot more threatening and violent

See what I mean. Here are a group of youths photogrpahed in 1980. You would want to mess with this lot would you? And they listened to violent music too like Oi and Punk Rock. Whose lyrics were often about violence for example the 4 Skins famous imortal quote was "we don't incite violence we just sing about what happens."


The following year - 1981 youth riots swept the length and breadth of Britain. The worst being in Toxteth in Liverpool in July where one injured policeman who famously reported as saying "To think this is England" after a night of rioting and looting by thousands of youths.

About youths ramage though a seaside resort about 1981 and attack a bystander.

 

opposed to the youth in Iraq that keep fighting a holy war and blowin there selves up...thats pretty violent to

 

In my area the way to avoid trouble was to exude toughness, which I see here. they looked tough in order to prevent trouble. Now they don't do that, and just shoot ya instead. I see a whole new set of values regarding fighting the last couple decades, or more correctly, a lack of them.
It is harder to tell who to watch out for these days, whereas it used to be easy.

 

You haven't got a clue what you're talking about. I lived in Toxteth at the time of the riots and remember them well. They weren't 'youth' riots. They were a whole community rising up against the harassment and intimidation tactics being practiced by the police at the time. That anger was also fuelled by certain drug barons in the area who wanted to manipulate the situation to help them establish Toxteth as a no-go area for the police.

 

Which was pretty much the same story in Brixton and Notting Hill ... and later on in Tottenham

 

I think that was the same year when a load of skinheads rescued some people from a tube train after it crashed.

You are tending to judge a book by its cover, so I take it that you weren't there. The skinhead movement was never originally associated with the NF and violence. They were hijacked by the far right, but originally it was just another working class youth movement expressing contempt at the hand society had dealt them. That lot wouldn't have scared me any more than anyone else on the streets today.

As for the comparison with the music of the early punk movement ... well if I remember properly, it was punks who would get beaten up because of their way out looks etc. Not the other way round.

Like they said "we don't incite violence we just sing about what happens."

 

That's very different. When you make someone's life worthless, when you take away any reason they have to live, then what do they have to lose in death? And they would see no reason not to take a few of their enemies with them....

 

now ya dont act so proud
now ya don't talk so loud
about having to be scrounging your next meal

when you ain't got nuthin, you got nuthin to lose

you shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you


I know they arent in order, just lines that I love, and I would even say that many suicide bombers are even eager to take some of the oppressors with them.

 

The suicide bombers are from a totally different culture though. Islamic terrorism emerged in the late sixties in the wake of the 1967 six day war in which Israel gained control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip from Eygpt and Jordon. Islamic terrorism is political not social and cultural like the skinhead and punk movement of the seventies and early eighties.

The youth violence of the late seventies and early eighties had its origins in mass youth unemployment combined with youth cults which glorified violence. There were running battles between punks and teddy boys on the Kings Road in London as early as the summer of 1977 for example. (By teddy boys I mean teenage revivalists as there was a 50s revival in the 70s and also every youth cult leaves behind a hardcore of followers years after its initial demise. The sight of punks around today is evidence of this. The teds who largly dissappeared at the end of the 1950s were no exception, with a few die hards clinging to the fashion and inspiring a smaller new generation of followers).

 

So to what is the point of this thread....other than to express your love of all things right wing..

 

Treehouse ... How old are you?

By what you have said in this thread so far you clearly weren't around at the time of any of this ... or are you reading it all out of a book?

 

I'm fairly sure it's from Stormfront...isn't it 'Herr Baumhaus'?!

 

Yep they most definatly did look scarier I mean check out these guys from the 80's....Wouldn't want to meet them in a dark alley...

 

Ha! Classic!

 

I am 38 years old and was around at the time in the early 1980s. I witnessed the riots on TV and read about them in the newspapers at the time as well. As well as hearing about reports of local mini riots that happened where I was living at the time in north Staffordshire. Loads of my mates were also into the punk and skinhead scene at the time and I got involved in it from 1984 til 1989. So I know what I am talking about. Certainly in north Staffordshire at least those youth cults brought out the worst in people. There were also major punk bands round my way aswell like Discharge, The Skeptix and Paranoia back in the early to mid eighties.

 

Hmmmmmmm.

 

As opposed to poverty and unemployment, family problems etc etc? I always found them to be....liberating.

 

Now for some sweeping generalisations - every generation chucks up it's youth culture, at a time in human life most associated with frustration - no longer a child, yet not treated as a responsible adult. Society in the past used to harness this violence by sending large numbers of young men off to fight, and die, in wars.


Some of my earliest memories are of going to stay with an uncle in London near Brick Lane and seeing houses and shops that were still burnt out from race riots, and this would be 1963/64. The following summer, my dad was working away in Brighton over one of the bank holidays, and my poor old mum was glued to the radio after massive running fights between the Mods and the Rockers broke out on the beach and the Police lost control- my Dad had been a Ted and was no stranger to a punch-up, so she was half-worried he'd be picked on by the Mods, half-worried he go looking for trouble, and totally worried he be banged up - yes, the filth were just as loathed on the street of the council estate I grew up on, ( oh, seems so strange, I can remember hearing the police described as fuzz and pigs, but not until a couple of years later, sorry senile meanderings)

Punk, mmm, yes can remember going to two Stiff Record road-shows, circa 1976/1977. The first was shambolic, The Damned, totally wasted, but the second introduced the likes of Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, Jonah Lewis and lots of other goodies - yeh, I know, not true punk, but good talent that probably wouldn't have got the break if the Sex Pistols et al weren't smashing the pop industry as we'd know it up till then. But it's that first gig that seems most relevant here. Down the front, there were a select band of fans, in all the gear, gobbing on the stage, on each other, on the rest of the audience, and pogoing away.

Afterwards, a few of my muso mates dragged me back stage, and most of those punks were there, unaware that we were coming up behind them. I've never heard such a bunch of "Hooray Henry's" and "Sloane Rangers", every one expensively educated and with accents that could cut glass, all Tarquin's and Trixibelles. Of course as soon as they became aware we were there it was f***ing this, and lots of macho posturing.

I was in to Northern Soul, and used to go to all night dances, which were big with the main skin-head movement from the mid-sixties onwards, so the punk look didn't seem that radical. But that night I saw that while being a skinhead could be seen as a truely working class movement from the very beginning, punk was a manufactured one right from birth.

And finally, if you were seeing punks bands in the early 1980's, then surely they were imitators, not innovators. By that stage they had become more like tribute bands, imo, doing nothing that The Ramones hadn't done better and faster, the Sex Pistols had imploded, Sid was dead, and even the Clash had moved on.

Oh well, time to go and stick my Sham 69 on, mmm, what shall it be, "If the Kids are United" or "We're all going down the pub". Better take my Sanatogen first... wonder where my DM's are.....

 

Mods all the way!!!!!! We will NEVER die:X

 

My sister is three years older than me, and she looked older, so she got to hang around with the Mods at the estate school. In part it was a rebellion to Dad and his Elvis Presley records. There was a scooter gang, riding around on a few (stolen)Vespas and Lambrettas, although most of them had, racks brain, BSA's I think - little old ladies mopeds basically,(Honda, Suzuki - never heard of 'em).She had a Woolies special record player in her bedroom, and as a special treat, when we weren't fighting like cats and dogs, she'd play me the 45's she'd bought with the money from her Saturday job. Lot's of the Who, Revolver era Beatles and then the Small Faces.

I knew I was the odd one out in the school playground at the age of 8 when the gang that loved the Beatles clashed with the gang that loved The Rolling Stones - when I was asked to declare my allegiance I said The Small Faces and got beaten up by both sides - I bet you didn't get that with the Blur\Pulp yawn.

Spool forward to 1977, and The Jam were one of the bands that came through on the crest of the New Wave\Punk explosion. Definately worth paying to see. All my favourites re-packaged.



Ok, no more nostalgiafest.