Skinheads are a subculture that originated among working-class youths in London, England, in the 1960s and soon spread to other parts of the United Kingdom, with a second working-class skinhead movement emerging worldwide in the late 1970s. Skinheads are defined by their close-cropped or shaven heads and working-class clothing such as Dr. Martens and steel-toe work boots, braces, high-rise and varying length straight-leg jeans, and button-down collar shirts, usually slim fitting in check or plain. The rise to prominence of skinheads came in two waves, with the first wave taking place in the late 1960s in the UK. The first skinheads were working-class youths motivated by an expression of alternative values and working-class pride, rejecting both the austerity and conservatism of the 1950s-early 1960s and the more middle class or bourgeois hippie movement and peace.
However, some skinheads became associated with racist and neo-Nazi beliefs, and the subculture became politicized. Racist skinheads are typically imbued with neo-Nazi beliefs about Jews, blacks, LGBT people, and others. They are organized into small, mobile "crews" or act individually, and tend to move around frequently and often without warning, even as they network and organize across regions. Research has found that the Skinhead Nation is highly organized, shares common political viewpoints, and works in concert with other right-wing hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nation, and the neo-Nazi Party on an international scale.
It is important to note that not all skinheads are racists, and the skinhead phenomenon is not always overtly political. The skinheads originated in the 1960s in the working-class neighborhoods of London, and some viewed their subculture primarily as an expression of alternative values and communal solidarity and were more interested in parties, concerts, and sporting events than in violence.
