John Ingledew and the last skinhead era told from the inside: not just combat boots and tattoos
Young faces with shaved heads and unequivocal tattoos: words, symbols, and names, written in a shaky block lettering. Photographs from the late 1970s that remained unpublished for over forty years—taken by John Ingledew, a British photographer and academic. Today, he is a visiting professor at the University of West London, and some of his work is part of the National Portrait Gallery's collection. In 2024, the independent publisher Moonboy collected them in "Looking for Trouble: I want all you skinheads to get up on your feet": 144 pages, over 160 previously unpublished black-and-white images, 800 numbered copies, and a preface by Jon Swinstead, founder of the Museum of Youth Culture.
The phrase "I want all you skinheads to get up on your feet..." is the opening line of the song "Skinhead Moonstomp" by the British ska/reggae group Symarip, originally released in 1969. The track became a true anthem for the original skinhead subculture, rooted in Jamaican music and the British working class. The "moonstomp" was an energetic dance characterized by heavy footsteps and stomping to the beat of the music.
Looking for Trouble
The book featuring Ingledew's shots follows three groups: West London skinheads—found between stadium terraces and the West End—a group of female skinheads from Bristol, and the kids who went to concerts by Prince Buster and Laurel Aitken, pioneers of Jamaican ska. The volume closes with portraits of the same subjects taken decades later.
John Ingledew was their age. He picked up his first camera at eighteen when he entered art school. "I was their age, and I was always welcome," he said in an interview. They invited him home, on group outings, to gigs, and to the tattoo parlor. This proximity sets the tone for the images. There is no anthropological distance, nor is there the gaze of tabloid crime reporting. You see cluttered interiors, a venue sofa where someone lies down with their boots on the table, and a couple embracing in front of a shop shutter.
A broken country and its soundtrack
Those faces must be read within their time. Margaret Thatcher arrived at Downing Street in May 1979. By early 1982, unemployment in the UK surpassed three million. John Ingledew puts it bluntly: "Britain was a complete mess, especially for young people. Government policies decimated manufacturing to the point where the only thing still stamped 'Made in Britain' was the foreheads of these deeply disillusioned skinheads."
During those same months, however, something else arrived. Under the 2 Tone label, The Specials and Madness brought 1960s Jamaican ska and rocksteady back to the charts, featuring lineups that brought white and Black musicians together. "I wanted to photograph both sides of that moment," Ingledew explains. On one hand was the anger of a jobless generation; on the other, an energy coming from Kingston.
A wardrobe as grammar
The revival picked up on a subculture born in London around 1968. Back then, working-class hard mods had cut their hair short and adopted the style of Jamaican rude boys. Ten years later, the code remained rigid down to the finest detail: Ben Sherman shirts, Crombie coats, cuffed Levi's, Fred Perry polo shirts with the laurel wreath, and polished Dr. Martens. In John Ingledew's photos, it reads right off their bodies. You see the bleached bangs of the girls resting above their shaved heads, V-neck sweaters over white t-shirts, and the high laces of their boots.
Skin also became a surface to write on. Names, football clubs, their crew: everything ended up tattooed on foreheads, necks, and arms—irreversible choices made at twenty or even younger. One of the book's starkest images shows a young man opening his jacket to reveal a crucified figure with suspenders and boots tattooed on his chest.
The shadow over the scene
A historical fact cannot be separated from those photographs. Right during the revival years, far-right organizations such as the National Front and the British Movement were recruiting among skinheads, causing the subculture to split along political lines. By the end of the decade, the British media had conflated the skinhead identity with racism. Opposite responses emerged as well: left-wing redskins in the UK and, in 1987 in New York, Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP), which later spread to other countries.
John Ingledew's narrative focuses on the musical and emotional side of that story—the Prince Buster gigs—without dwelling on the political context.
A uniform without instructions
That rift also reached the cinema screen. Shane Meadows's 2006 film This Is England, set in 1983, depicts a multi-ethnic skinhead gang fractured by the arrival of nationalist recruiters. Meanwhile, items from that wardrobe kept circulating, straying further and further from their roots. The laurel wreath polo shirt is the clearest example. In September 2020, Fred Perry suspended sales in North America of its black polo with yellow trim, which the Proud Boys had adopted as their uniform. The brand declared that Proud Boys products featuring its laurel wreath "have absolutely nothing to do with us."
John Ingledew looks back on that era from a different perspective. "Youth culture is an extraordinary thing, and here in Britain, we do it better than anyone else," he said. "Every kid should be in a gang and have a tribe they love, one that only they truly understand." The final pages of the book show some of those kids forty years later. One of them, the photographer shares, went on to become a director in Los Angeles. The tattooed foreheads remained where they were, while their lives each went their separate ways.
PHOTO: LOOKING FOR TROUBLE, John Ingledew cover
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