As the skinhead counterculture arose out of the mixing of youth cultures amid a wave of Jamaican immigration to the U.K. He also spent a lot of his youth in Brixton, and two years of his youth living in a Jamaican household. Back in the day we used to go around bashing the fash (fascists) on Friday nights,' he said.īovver says he's a 'Towner,' born and bred in Canning Town in the London Borough of Newham, East London. As long as I remember there were always boneheads (neo-nazi skinheads) around, but we had skins too.

'You know, skinheads always get a bad rep. And then he moved to Asia, where, like Europe, almost every country has had its own skinhead scene, including Korea. as well as in Spain before Brexit made him leave. And they range from being sickened by racism to violently opposing it.īovver aligns with the latter, identifying with Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP), and talks about fighting racists back home in the U.K.

But outside of mainstream discourse, as well as white supremacist propaganda, skinheads are known within underground culture as baldheaded music enthusiasts who want to buy you a drink, discuss their reggae vinyl collection or invite you to see their band. 'In most countries people can't pronounce their v's either, so I might as well be 'Boba Tea' when I'm abroad.'Īll this may seem like a horrifying introduction for those unfamiliar with skinheads, or those who learned about the 50-year-old counterculture through mainstream movies or white supremacist propaganda. 'Everyone called me Bovver because I was always up for a bit of the old aggro on a Friday night,' he told The Korea Times. Korea's punk scene has been a lot more lively, entertaining and friendly ever since the arrival of this young British skinhead, who goes by the nickname 'Bovver,' a British-accented way of saying 'bother,' meaning rowdiness, troublemaking or 'aggro' (a British term meaning aggression). When introducing himself to this reporter, the lead singer of the new punk band, Oily Rag, threw himself down on the pavement for pictures, then leapt up, burned the back of his hand with a lit cigarette and then flipped off the camera, in what he described as a ritual learned from his time in the Japanese skinhead scene. Members of Oily Rag sit during a technical malfunction at their debut show in Phillies Basement, July 15.

Sham 69 racists