Skinhead

If you are interested in the history of the public perception of skinheads, this is an interesting primary source. If you are looking for likable characters or talk of scooter runs, reggae music, and brotherhood, this will likely disappoint you. Joe Hawkins- the main character- is a mindless rapist, xenophobe, gay bashing, racist, and has no regard even for the members of his crew. It's a pretty disturbing read, but it's short and fast paced and if you read it you will have a reference point for when people talk about Joe Hawkins. It was written to shock people and appeal to the more primal side of the teenage brain and it works on that level if that is what you are looking for. Think of A Clockwork Orange without the philosophical themes.

I enjoyed this book. Though, I can't help feeling like it was just capitalizing on the violence and mayhem of "A Clockwork Orange" (which, itself, was more or less based on this kind of gang violence in England). Overall, a decent book, though the author's own view on the matter seeps through the 3rd-person narrative consistently which can be a little distracting.

It's a bit like bumping into a girlfriend or boyfriend from your teenage years - much better when they were 18 and best left as a great memory.

This is a great book I highly recommend it to anyone.

classic book. hard to find for a number of years.

very entertaining and easy to read. Being fiction it didnt grab me enough to buy the rest of the series however.

I truly can’t work out whether this book is a cult classic or a comedy, and I’m going to have to place some spoilers in here to demonstrate, so there’s a warning for anybody who didn’t first read Richard Allen’s ‘Skinhead’ 40-odd years ago.So what have we got? Joe Hawkins, an East End skinhead whose life is ruled by violence, and we certainly read a lot about his reputation and anyone “unfortunate enough to get in his way.” In just the first few pages there’s the suggestion that Roy Hawkins, Joe’s father, gets Joe to sort out a docklands trade union leader who’s got it in for Roy. “I wouldn’t annoy Roy unless you want to meet up with his son, Joe ….. I wouldn’t annoy Joe Hawkins. Not ever!”Ed Black has apparently taken care of himself in some weird corners of the globe and he hardly goes anywhere without four of his special cronies who act as bodyguards and who he can count on to protect him, yet “the mention of Joe Hawkins sends a shiver of fear down his spine.”Gosh! Well Joe Hawkins must certainly be a hard-nut if just the mention of his name can strike fear into such a man. I found myself in a cold sweat over the idea of just turning the page, but felt obligated to brave it, praying that simply reading the book wouldn’t agitate this fictional character. Can East End skinhead, Joe Hawkins, really be this tough?Er, well, not really, I’m afraid. We meet Joe on Saturday and follow him to the pub where admittedly he makes two huge black men back down because they’d heard about his reputation. What reputation? Unless I’m missing some kind of hidden message here, it seems to me that he’s got a reputation for getting a spanking in just about every scrap he gets into.First of all him and his mates pick on a guy on the District Line. This fellow’s outnumbered and they’re tooled up but he fights back, withstanding everything they’ve got and still fighting back. All in all it’s a bit of an embarrassment for Joe.West Ham are playing away at Stamford Bridge, and Joe and his mates - believing in their own ‘reputation’ it seems - get into the Shed End and kick off. Now it’s their turn to be outnumbered, but I’m sorry to say they don’t give such a good account of themselves as the guy on the train. Joe gets stabbed and a jagged broken bottle is pushed into his face with savage force.Now say what you like, but that would be enough for me. I’d be off home to nurse my wounds. But Joe’s not finished getting beaten up yet. Back to the pub to find it full of dockers and other assorted heavies, men who weren’t going to back down to anyone “not even with Joe Hawkins’ reputation.” And they certainly don’t. Joe and his mates kick off and – yes, you guessed it - get punched all around the pub, kicked all over the floor and he ends up with three darts in his backside.I shouldn’t think that the docklands trade union leader’s got much to worry about, would you? So far, on the first day we meet him Joe’s been punched, stabbed, bottled, kicked all round a pub and ended up with three darts sticking out of his backside! Not a great day for anyone of his ‘reputation.’Sunday is the day of rest, so Joe and his mates take a vacation from being beaten up in order to head down to Brighton and bash up some Hippies and rape their girlfriend. They only ever seem to win against soft targets, you see, those who won’t fight back. It’s just that not being born too bright and completely lacking in those special survival skills common to most kids brought up on the streets, they seem to always take the ill-advised option of picking on the wrong people.A case in hand would be the church youth club they attack on Monday night. Joe managed to not get beaten up at all on Sunday, and also for most of Monday, so the church youth club provides a target for him to re-establish his much-valued reputation. Him and his mates stroll in the door, pushing people about, grabbing hold of girls and getting into a fight with one lad who doesn’t like bullies and decides to stand up for himself. He absolutely thrashes Joe, landing several punches to the face – which must surely have opened fresh wounds from Saturday’s bottling – and only stopping when a police offer saves Joe any further distress.So in the last 48 hours Joe Hawkins – he of the fearsome reputation – has been stabbed, bottled, kicked all round a pub by Dockers, had three darts stuck in his bum and he’s now been knocked about by choirboy.HahahahahahaThe copper, no doubt fearing he’s the only person in the whole of East London who hasn’t taken a pop at Joe in the last two days, chops him in the throat for good measure. Joe finishes the night he’d hoped to re-establish his reputation as the most fearsome street fighter in East London by puking his guts up on the pavement outside a church.You’d think that would be enough for Joe, wouldn’t you? I mean, he can’t even beat up a choirboy!Have you ever met one of those people, always bigging themselves up, who get into a fight every Saturday night, but who never win? They get a spanking from a different person every Saturday night! Well that’s Joe Hawkins, and by this time I couldn’t wait to read on. Who was going to knock him about next? Was he going to target a lunch club for Age UK, and were a couple of old ladies going to hammer him over the tea and biscuits?Well Joe’s a coalman and he’s always threatening the pensioners he delivers to after he’s altered the bill in his favour. Somehow news of this never gets back to the coal board, but that’s just one of several inconsistencies in the story. Anyway, much as I’d like to report that a pensioner kicks him all around his front yard, it’s an old couple’s son who Joe comes up against, on leave from the Army. He’s trained in unarmed combat and when Joe aims a kick at him he finds himself on his back in a pile of coal after receiving a punch to the jaw, a chop to the throat – possibly in exactly the same place as the copper chopped him the night before – and a kick in the balls.I’d give it up, Joe, if I were you. Let’s face it; it’s just not your week mate, is it?But this soldier’s made Joe feel inferior. Personally I’d have thought that taking a battering from a lad in a church youth club would have made him feel inferior, but then what do I know?East London is famous for producing hardened street fighting men, but when all’s said and done Joe Hawkins isn’t one of them. He does get revenge on the soldier, but he does it in the dark, without warning and with a gang of about 15 skinheads all armed with bottles, iron bars and an assortment of other weapons.So although Joe is reputed to have a ‘fearsome reputation’ we’re hardly likely to see him standing toe-to-toe ‘on the cobbles’ taking on Gypsy bare-knuckle fighters in a fair scrap, which traditionally is how East London brawlers earned their reputation.There’s trouble in a youth club in Ilford, a lad gets shot, and Joe’s involved. When the police come around to talk to him Roy Hawkins is so fed up with his antics that he takes his son upstairs and punches him all around his bedroom. OUCH! Joe’s face, after his disaster of a week must be absolutely black and blue from being punched all over a pub by dockers, punched all around a youth club by a choirboy and being bottled in the face by Chelsea supporters. Not to mention a few cracked ribs at least.As his dad lays into him, no doubt opening fresh wounds, bruising his already-bruised face even darker shades of black, blue and purple, he must have found himself thinking, “Wasn’t there somewhere else I should have been this week?”There are a plethora of inconsistencies in the book. We’re told that his idea of a slap-up meal consists of chips with everything, and a couple of pages later he orders steak with boiled potatoes. He comes up against a Hell’s Angel in a leather jacket. Since when did Hell’s Angels wear leather? I thought it was part of their ethos never to wear leather. He goes to a pop concert. A skinhead going to listen to bubblegum pop! Skinheads listened to early reggae, blue beat, rock-steady and ska, not pop. And finally on the way to the concert he feels safe from the law because “his was a face that did not conflict with those around him.”WHAT!After all the hammerings he’s taken that week (from dockers, choirboys, his dad and Chelsea supporters) he must looked like he’s just done 12 rounds with Mike Tyson, been run over by a concrete wagon and had a bear chew on his head for a while. Hardly a face to blend in!All in all, this book is a load of tosh and not the paperback-nasty I remember from my youth. I can’t realistically offer it any more than two stars.Mind you, I’m still a little nervous of Joe Hawkins. Supposing I got into a fight with him on a Saturday night and by some miraculous feat he beat me!!! Can you imagine how embarrassing that would be? I’d never live it down!

This book first came out in 1970, the first and most well-known of a series of cult novels by Richard Allen. I went to a fairly rough school from 1970-1972, where the (scary) skinhead girls of the 3rd and 4th years would lend it to we 12-year-old babies. It got passed round the whole class, and I remember it used to fall open at Chapter 8, the dirty bit. When I spotted the new digital version during an Amazon browse, I had to buy it to see how it had stood the test of time, and if it was as bad as people said it was, even then.Briefly: A couple of weeks in the life of Joe Hawkins, the 16-year-old leader of a skinhead gang from Plaistow, East London.Violence - tickSexual content - tickNudity - tickBad language - tickRacism - tickSexual violence - tickIt's hard to give this a star rating as there are so many elements to take into consideration. As a piece of pop culture history, it's a gem. The characterisation is pretty good, and it certainly kept me turning the pages. Now and again clever insights are succinctly delivered, and the atmosphere of the time - the post 1960s, pre-decimalisation years, when the East End no longer ruled, is so well illustrated I almost felt nostalgic for a time and place about which I know little. A soldier, Jack Piper, who falls foul of Hawkins' bovver boots, talks about the fate of his working class parents in the dreariest part of London in a way that is quite heartbreaking. The attitudes of the older working classes, particularly the police, to the new liberalism of the 1970s is, I daresay, spot on....but then there's the exposition, the bad punctuation (the proofreader from the New English Library, its first publisher, must have thought that a semicolon is a random alternative for a comma, whenever you feel like it), the exclamation marks, the lazy grammar... and, in places, lack of research/realism. 'Richard Allen' (pen name) was nearly 50 when this was written, and it's clear he doesn't know what the effects of 'pot' are, or even that it wasn't called that by anyone other than newspaper reporters. He appears to think that all hippies, or 'hairies' (haven't heard that word since 1972!) are unemployed and indulge in regular orgies. Joe Hawkins and his band of thugs never use the 'f' word, and call people things like 'stupid idiots', though the 'c' word does appear once or twice.It's really quite a horrible book, depressing and nasty, from Joe himself (who, Allen makes clear, is not the victim of social deprivation or an abusive childhood, but was born a psychopath), to the way women are portrayed (old bags or total slags), to the way in which the older people worry about the lack of control over the new breed of thugs. Yet I kept turning the pages. Go figure, as they say.Oh, and by the way, the Chapter 8 'dirty bit' is no stronger than anything you might read in one of today's mainstream 'steamy' romances. In an age when you see more explicit stuff in network TV dramas than would have been included in under-the-counter soft porn in Joe Hawkins' day, it is quite tame.

Quite frankly I am amazed that people regard this book positively in any way at all. It is absolutely horrendous. It is full of disgusting racism, sexism, homophobia and unnecessary violence. I cannot stress just how appalling the language in this book is. At many times it feels as though the author is merely projecting his own thoughts onto the main character. The storyline is totally unbelievable and it is so poorly written. It is a totally inaccurate depiction of the majority of the skinhead scene. Don’t waste your money or your time on this book!

Like many reviewers I read this as a teenage. There seemed to be a lot of 'lifestyle' books like this - Hell's Angels books were also popular. I don't recall anyone ever buying one!I never thought this was a good book, even as a teenager. It describes a lifestyle that never had any appeal to me. Particularly as the main character basically gets given a good kicking from almost everyone he picks a fight with. His gang only succeed when they are armed with weapons and 1) take their victim by surprise and 2) outnumber him 14 to 1. Apparently this makes them feel that they are "hard cases".What a bunch of sad losers they really are. Even sadder is that some people read this and think it's worthwhile. It isn't - it's crap written for kids by a middle aged man who should have known better.

So many happy memories of reading this book 45 years ago. All 'the lads' read it and wanted to be Joe Hawkins. How does it stand up today? In short not well. It ticks all the boxes of things, in these more enlightened times, we find unacceptable. It's racist, sexist and homophobic. Arguably I suppose the book isn't any of those things but character is and at times it's an uncomfortable read.It's written well enough and, unlike the sequels, isn't too unbelievable.

This is avery well written but unpleasant book which chronicles the activities of this vicious group of thugs now happily no longer with us. You will only enjoy it if you can tolerate descriptions of sickening violence