The media have always manipulated the skinhead cult, by focusing on the racist few. It has taken a longtime to get the truth out there. Something I applied myself too for years!   Following the riot in Southall at a skinhead gig in a pub there. The oi scene was handed lock, stock and barrel to the chosen few,  If it was skinhead it was fascist - The media set about creating their nemesis, their bogey-man. 

I was a young teenager caught up in the middle of all of it. I paid lip service to the "Rock  Against Communism"  scene in my fanzine - Chargesheet, because I thought we had common ground.  Yet I was to part company with that movement. When I found it to be increasingly at odds with my love of Ska, Rocksteady and Reggae.  I spent years trying to undo what the media was creating with great abandonment.  From promoting commercial rather than political oi and punk music. I aided Link Records, in pursuit of this ideal.

I was also a key figure in creating the third wave of Ska which started in and around 1987.  As I convinced the bosses at Link Records that a ska scene was viable, purely because it had been 6/7 years since two-tone. Anyone who had looked up to the two-tone bands then and  had been too young for the clubs was now 18 or 19 and would be able to enjoy the chance to see ska live at adult venues.

It was a good shout because it spread round the world.

Anyway below are some of the media's output and the underground reply:-