Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP)

In the early 1960s, England saw a continuation of the entrenched class system, which offered most working class people with substandard educational, housing and economic opportunities. However, Britain was also experiencing a post-war economic boom, which led to an increase of disposable income among many young people. Some of those youths invested in new fashions popularized by American soul groups, British RnB bands, certain movie actors, and Carnaby Street clothing merchants. These were the Mods, a youth subculture noted for its consumerism and devotion to style, music and scooters. Mods of lesser means made do with practical styles that suited their lifestyle and/or employment circumstances - steel-toe boots, straight-legged denim jeans, button-down shirts and braces (suspenders in the USA). When possible, their limited funds were spent on smart outfits worn in the evenings to dance halls, where they enjoyed ska, reggae, and rock steady beats.

Around 1965, a schism developed between the "peacock" mods, who always wore the latest expensive clothes, and the "hard" mods (also known as "gang" mods), who were identified by their shorter hair and working-class image. Also known as "lemonheads" and "peanuts", these hard mods were commonly known as skinheads by about 1968. In addition to retaining many mod influences, early skinheads were greatly interested in Jamaican Rude Boy style and culture, especially Reggae and Ska music.

Skinhead culture exploded in 1969 to the extent that even the rock band Slade temporarily adopted the look. By the 1970s, the skinhead subculture started to fade, and some of the original skins dropped into new categories, such as the "Suede-heads" (defined by the ability to manipulate one's hair with a comb), "Smoothies" (often with hairstyles down to shoulder length), and "Bootboys" (associated with gangs and hooliganism). Some fashions returned to the mod roots, reintroducing the wearing of brogues or loafers, suits, and the slacks-and-sweater look.

In the mid-1970s, the skinhead movement was reborn after the introduction of Punk Rock. Skinheads with even shorter hair and less emphasis on style grew in numbers and grabbed the attention of the media, as a result of hooliganism during football matches, sometimes to the point of rioting.

Skinheads also gained a great deal of media attention after some of them were recruited by far right political parties like the National Front. The party's position against blacks and Asians appealed to some working class skinheads who blamed immigrants for economic and social problems. This led to the public's common misconception that all skinheads are neo-Nazis. In the meantime, the skinhead subculture had spread beyond The UK and Europe.

In an attempt to counter this negative stereotype, some anti-racist skinhead organizations were formed. In the USA, Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP) started in 1987, and Anti-Racist Action (ARA) began in 1988. SHARP then spread to the UK and beyond, and other less political skinheads also spoke out against neo-Nazis and in support of traditional skinhead culture. Two examples are the Glasgow Spy Kids in Scotland, and the publishers of the Hard As Nails zine in England. The Skinhead sub culture has since spread around the world, and there are many different kinds of Skinheads.

SHARP was born in New York, when mass media rumors and right-wing infiltrations had ruined the original Skinhead cult, spreading out the image of the bonehead (just another term for 'imbecile'), the nazi and brainless 'skinhead'. Some Skinheads, fed up with this situation, gave life to SHARP (SkinHeads Against Racial Prejudice) under the slogan 'pride without prejudice' to promote a different message, that Skins are not all the same and that every Skinhead has got his own ideas on politics as on every other thing: being a Skinhead is a style and a cultural choice, not a political one.

The first members of SHARP did a good job being interviewed on the radio and on TV, explaining our multiracial, and multicultural roots. Finally in 1989 Roddy Moreno (vocalist for Welsh Oi! band The Oppressed), who back then was in New York, got some anti-racist Skinheads' leaflets and thought that the idea was so good that those fliers were copied and distributed in Europe. SHARP finally became a worldwide reality.

All these things happened nearly twenty years ago, since then many SHARP chapters disappeared and new ones were born and they still keep on coming, and every single chapter is the reflection of its own town's and country's reality, often with deep differences especially on the political side, something that largely contributed to make SHARP members forget what this movement was born for: SHARP's purpose was to fight racism, belonging to SHARP doesn't mean that you are non-political, anarchist or communist, it just means that you're an anti-racist skinhead with your own ideas, proud of your roots and not willing to be nobody's puppet. Now, have we attained our objectives? First of all today a lot of people know that 'Skinhead' doesn't stand for 'racist', and this is something more than a small advantage for our everyday life, this is an important goal in the fight against fascism: notwithstanding the bad information and all the media publicity, nazis are aware that they have lost almost a part of an important recruitment tool; beside that, lots of section gave an important contribution to the scene, creating new oi! and ska bands and publishing new fanzines, diffusing both our anti-racist message and our culture, taking it back to its roots and not living it as a political instrument or as a wing of punk...

Remember SHARP is an anti-racist movement not a political movement...