What made growing up in the 1980s so great was the explosion of youth tribes. We nailed our colours to a particular mast and then went about our lives with a restless energy, reading about our antics in the youth culture bibles of the time — The Face or the NME. There were mods, punks, rudeboys and casuals. New Romantics were making a name for themselves because some band from Birmingham were breaking girls’ hearts everywhere. They had a singer named Simon Le Bon. I thought he was fat. The girls thought he was gorgeous.

These were exciting times if you were 14 and had a licence to roam. My youth tribe of choice? Odd as it may seem for a black kid from a council estate in Hackney, I chose the cool, clean look of the mods (blame my mum’s record collection): button-down shirts, white socks and loafers, boating blazers and parkas. My hero was Paul Weller of the Jam. Life was a Technicolor rite of passage — girls, sharp threads, quality vinyl, White Hart Lane, raving and misbehaving.

Saturdays (when Tottenham played away) were spent on Carnaby Street, looking at the latest styles and chatting up the girls.

Shane Meadows’s This is England brings one particular Saturday to mind. It was the weekend that the Jam released Sound Affects. With pocket money saved over three weeks, I made my way down to the West End of London. Before heading into HMV on Oxford Street, a friend (a black rudeboy — in the ska sense of the word) and I took the long road via Carnaby Street. Our upbeat vibe was broken by a gang of skinheads. As Paul Weller would describe to me a few hours later in That’s Entertainment, there was “a smash of glass and rumble of boots, an electric train and ripped-up phone booth”. The skinheads, as they tend to do, ruined the moment. Younger legs and better footwear — loafers will always outpace Doc Martens — saved the day.

Skinheads were (and remain) at the bottom of the youth culture pecking order. Any youth tribe that listens to Oi music and wears tight bleached blue jeans with braces doesn’t amount to much. Meadows is at pains in the film to remind us of the other type of skinhead to be found among the 1980s tribes, those who loved ska and reggae, Ben Sherman shirts and Doc Marten boots. In the story, one character, Woody, isn’t into blaming “wogs” and “Pakis” for the nation’s woes. Also, one of the gang, Milky, is black.

Meadows brilliantly captures the spirit of the tribes in the first half of the film. But This is England falls over when the more readily identifiable neo-Nazi skinhead, Combo, played by Stephen Graham, enters the plot. Brimming with hate after serving three years in prison, Combo is full of stories about a “black bastard” who ate his pudding in prison. Combo leads Shaun and a few other halfwits into the arms of the extreme Right.

Meadows has recently said: “There was a time in my young life when I thought those things [that were said by the National Front] were true.” But in trying to exorcise this particular demon, the film’s narrative takes a path that seems unconvincing. Meadows is adept at capturing the youth of the era, less precise in exposing its ugly underbelly You will understand when I say that given my skin colour, plus the fact that I haven’t quite shaken that Carnaby Street moment, I can’t quite share Meadows’s view of the skinhead culture that he loved — the film sometimes teeters on the edge of rose-tinted nostalgia. Nor can I see that the National Front might be an attractive proposition for a disaffected 12-year-old living in a town that time forgot. But the period continues to resonate with me. That is why I still ride a Vespa with a Union Jack on the side and still go to football wearing Stone Island jackets.

Paul McKenzie is editor of the urban music magazine Touch

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