So I live in a town called Broadstairs, which is right next to the seaside town of Margate. Margate is famous for being a holiday resort, with its lovely beach and a fun park called Dreamland, which everyone would flock to on Bank holiday Mondays back in my youth.
Over the years Margate has seen all sorts of cultures visit the seaside town. There’d be Londoners down for the weekend on a beano who were also out on the piss looking for trouble. The locals started entertaining them once they were all tanked up as the day went on. You’d also get invasions from the likes of the Mods, Rockers, Teds, Punks and of course the best till last, the Skinheads, who to me out of all of them had to be the most feared. They did look like a nasty bunch of thugs with their shaved heads, boots and braces. Some of these Skinheads even had tattoos on their heads that would read something like ‘Made in England’. Marvellous, eh?
One fine, glorious Bank Holiday Monday back in the late seventies, I was down good old Margate (probably trying to scam some money from the fruit machines in the arcades) when I looked out to sea and saw that the Old Bill had rounded up a mob of Skinheads. They’d lined them up on the beach, waiting for a Black Maria to take them away to the cells for the day.
It was the August Bank Holiday. The seafront and beach were heaving with people who probably hadn’t anticipated this invasion of evil baldies. This was quite early in the morning so there was going to be a hell of a lot more Skinheads and punks arriving throughout the day. This particular group of Skins got impatient and started the aggro off early. I suppose with the Skinheads it was a case of ‘It didn’t matter’ whose brains got bashed in and it seemed to me that there wasn’t any particular rival for the Skinheads. Unlike the mods and Rockers whose history goes back to the sixties.
Years later (in the present day) I was talking to this chappie at work taxi driving one night. The fare was going down to Walmer in Kent. I’d told him that I was writing a book about football, bands and some of my experiences with the invasions of different gangs coming down to Margate back in my youth. He said that he remembered it well too and that he was a Sergeant at Margate police station all those years ago, back in the sixties. He said it was “Absolute chaos!” He went on to tell me about the Mods setting fire to deckchairs on the beach and then the Rockers would make an assault on the beach from the other end of the seafront. This was an attempt to attack the Mods. He said it was quite a hair-raising stuff trying to keep law and order back then. I ‘jokingly’ said “So is that why you moved away from Margate and down to Walmer then?” and he just laughed.
My first experience with the Skinheads was like the Sergeants with the Mods and Rockers. I overheard someone saying “The Skinheads had just battered a load of punks in the amusement arcade down on the seafront.” My mate Ashley and I went to check it out. While we walked through the arcades playing the odd machine and looking for signs of the action, we noticed a mark of blood on the wall behind this fruit machine in the corner of the building. It must have been from the trouble earlier. This blood stain looked like someone had washed their hair in blood and then splattered their head against the wall behind the machine. My mate Ashley, (who himself was a bit of a Skin) just stood there looking at it in amazement but, to be honest, I was more interested in who their next victims were going to be. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be us!
Later that day we walked up to Dreamland’s fun park area. Dreamland is like a big empty car park nowadays, I hope the council eventually gets the fun fair up and running again. No one comes to Margate anymore; it looks like it’s had the life sucked out of it. But back then as we got to Dreamland, there was another much bigger mob of Skinheads booting in the windows of a boozer called the Bar El Toro! Is that Spanish? Anyway, the windows caved in and all the Skinheads just fled as another Black Maria screeched to a halt at the scene. Weird! To this day I still don’t know who the Skinheads were after in that boozer. But like I said previously, I didn’t think it mattered to the Skinheads who they’d done over, anyone would do. As everybody dispersed in different directions, there on the floor was a screaming Skinhead lying in a pool of blood, with a few loyal mates trying to help him out. He must have caught his leg on the glass as he’d been one at the front, kicking the windows in. This bloke had a great big gash on the back of his leg. As soon as the Old Bill got close the loyal ones hit the high road. There was only one place the injured Skin was going and that was to the hospital!
Later that day, I don’t know how but I think a load of brave locals that seemed like soul boys, had mobbed up along the seafront. There were easily a couple of hundred by now. We watched from near the train station as the soul boy mob chased a ‘by now’ depleted mob of Skinheads (of which half had probably been nicked anyway) along the seafront. Then would you Adam and Eve it, the very last Skinhead on his toes – hobbling for his life was the same bloke who gashed his leg open earlier.10 out of 10 for bravery! Well, not quite because he was still trying to run away. But fair play to him, at least he came back. He must’ve been on glue or some other drugs, or even more likely – the anaesthetic hadn’t worn off (drugs? Nah, give him a chance eh) to come back with his injury. Ashley and I were pissing ourselves laughing at the hobbling fool as he was trying to get away. Hopefully, he survived the day to tell the tale. Or maybe, the angry soul boy mob were in stitches like us – and didn’t have the heart to kick him in. We’ll never know. We hoped he might have even been Knighted or got some sort of award for bravery from the Queen, but I doubt it, bless him.
After that day my other mate, Mickey Boy Meaker, (you guessed it!) went and got a couple of grade 2’s at the local barbers and became Skinheads. After all, most of my mates were. I have to say – I still remember that day we came out of the barbers with our shaved heads. I felt such a buzz – like I could take on the world and couldn’t wait till the next Bank Holiday so we could join the Skins that would invade Margate.
I did have other mates at school who were already Skins back in the day. They were already into Oi music, especially my mate Clive, he seemed to be into it right from the off. Clive also loved West Ham and the Cockney Rejects but his favorite band was the Angelic Upstarts. I discovered those bands a bit later on. My favourite bands back then were bands like the Ruts, UK Subs and, of course, the Sex Pistols. It was at this time that I first got into playing the guitar. Who’d have thought that years later I’d be playing guitar for the Anti-Nowhere League and the Last Resort, alongside all those famous Punk and Oi bands at different festivals around the world?
The next August Bank Holiday Monday came around – armed with my new look of cropped hair, braces and oxblood Doc Martens we headed off to Margate. The only thing wrong was that a few of my older sister’s girlfriends said “Isn’t he cute with his new haircut” It did my head in a bit. I felt like I could hear the drone of spitfire engines (like in the Battle of Britain) when they’d come crashing to the ground, it’s called being shot down in flames… “Fantastic!” I thought to myself. I’m supposed to look hard, mean and menacing, not cute. The other worrying thing that played on my mind was the fact that my mate Mickey Boy Meaker conveniently couldn’t come to Margate that day. I think he must’ve told his mum where he was going and she wasn’t having any of it. Then just to add fuel to the fire, when we got off the train and headed for the seafront there wasn’t one bloody Skinhead in sight. ‘Outstanding!’ I thought to myself, this is when I discovered the word paranoia (without the drugs, I was a good boy then) and I felt like the whole of Margate was looking at me as if I was scum, granny’s ‘n’ all. To look back at it now donkeys years later and think, I’m not bloody surprised you thick idiot, the amount of chaos and damage the Skins had caused the last time they came down to Margate, it’s hardly surprising is it? What did you expect; a street party or bloody carnival as you got off the train?
We made our way to the seafront and found a small group of Skinheads, mostly younger ones but nothing like the mob who were down the Bank Holiday before. Bearing in mind the Skinheads could have gone to Brighton or even Southend or somewhere like that. We started chatting to a small crowd of Skinheads that were having a few cans of lager by the clock tower. They said that they heard that all the Skinheads were meeting in Ramsgate this time and that they were heading for the train station. So Ashley and I made our way to the station and ventured off to Ramsgate.
There were a lot more Skinheads already on the platform and I could sense that there was going to be trouble, in fact some of them were pissed up and getting quite loud. The train pulled in and we piled on, about eighty Skinheads all in all. On the journey to Ramsgate seats, headrests, bog rolls, you name it, everything was going out of the window because on the old trains – the window used to open right up and you could open the door while you were moving along. I’m surprised the guard and ticket collector didn’t join the bits and pieces that were getting slung out, but at least no one set fire to the train like they did at football. And as for the guards and ticket collectors, I bet they were probably hiding somewhere anyway.
One day a teenager was leaning out of the window of the train, I specifically remember this because my mates and I were on the train coming back to Broadstairs. About a mile from Broadstairs station the train had stopped, someone had pulled the emergency chain that stopped the train. This poor teenager had leant out the window and smashed his head on the tunnel entrance as the train went through. He didn’t survive his head injuries. What a waste. Nowadays the trains have completely changed and people can’t open the windows or doors anymore, especially while the train’s moving.
We arrived at Ramsgate station and I was surprised that the Old Bill wasn’t there to greet us, because of the damage the Skins had done on the train, I thought they’d be there for sure. Maybe because people didn’t have mobile phones back then and there was no way of letting the police know what was going on, well not on the train anyway.
We got to Ramsgate seafront and made our way to the Pleasurama amusement arcade. The Pleasurama was a bit like a smaller version of Dreamland without the big rides. I always remember that smoke smell from the Bumper Cars and the Shooting Ducks. Shooting Ducks was fun but you only used to win a poxy teddy bear. I wanted a car. The smell of the Bumper Cars was from the sparks at the top of that pole that fired them along, or it could have been from the smoke from the guns.
Things started to get a bit fiery as the afternoon wore on, there’d been other smaller groups of Skinheads down the seafront getting drunk, then suddenly a massive mob was formed. Everyone was chanting “Skinheads Skinheads” and then everyone started running, which threw me as I couldn’t see for the life of me why we were running. Then out of the blue everyone was singing, like the football chant “You’re gonna get your fuckin’ ‘eds kicked in” – you know the one. Again I was baffled – there was no one there only a couple of blokes fishing, surely they weren’t going to do them. Luckily they didn’t.
The Old Bill had arrived in their droves by now and had done their homework. They’d blocked either end of the seafront, so the only way to escape was in the sea. I don’t think anyone fancied that. A few of us started to leg it to the steps that went up the cliff. Obviously, we knew the steps were there because we were locals.We had scaled those cliffs before and luckily i’d made it to the top but nearly fell, I was lucky. Never again. Unfortunately, the police knew the area too; they were already at the top of the cliff with dogs and meat wagons to take us away. Marvellous! “You’re nicked!”
I don’t know how many of the other Skins escaped, I should imagine some did. If they’d split up and stayed around the arcades they probably wouldn’t have gotten nicked. We tried to leg it and still got nicked. Oh dear, how was I going to explain this one to my Dad?
Down to Margate cop shop was the order of the day, down to Fort Hill Police station where the police were going to read us our rights and the riot act. Luckily this time it was just the riot act and then the usual scenario (according to the other Skinheads) was that we were going to be locked up for the rest of the day. Now you can imagine, the police had a bit of a problem because there were far too many of us to fit in the cells and there just wouldn’t be enough room. So they locked us in this big courtyard, like one big happy family. We could hear shouting coming from the proper cells, these must have been the real naughty boys!!
Hours passed and we eventually got let out, but not all at once. Looking back I was quite grateful we didn’t get taken to court. I think they thought we were just kids and just wanted us off the street because no one got hurt (only the train) at the end of the day.
Bank Holidays seemed to change after those Skinhead days. The next pair of invaders to invade our Margate was the Mods and Rockers, just like in Quadrophenia. I wonder if anyone ever shot those targets on their backs??