Skinheads who stand up against racists include traditional skinheads, trojan skinheads, typically known as Skinheads Against Racial Prejudices (SHARP)
Oi! is a subgenre of punk rock that originated in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s. The music and its associated subculture had the goal of bringing together punks, skinheads, and other disaffected working-class youth. Oi! became a recognized genre in the latter part of the 1970s, emerging after the perceived commercialization of punk rock. It fused the sounds of early punk bands such as the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, the Clash, and the Jam with influences from 1960s British rock bands. Oi! has come to be considered mainly a skinhead-oriented genre and played an important symbolic role in the politicization of the skinhead subculture.
First-generation Oi! bands such as Sham
… Read more 69 and Cock Sparrer were around for years before the word Oi! was used retroactively to describe their style of music. The word "Oi!" is a British expression meaning hey or hey there! In addition to Cockney Rejects, other bands to be explicitly labeled Oi! in the early days of the genre included Angelic Upstarts, the 4-Skins, the Business, Anti-Establishment, Blitz, the Blood, and Cock Sparrers. The prevalent ideology of the original Oi! movement was a rough brand of working-class rebellion. Lyrical topics included unemployment, workers' rights, harassment by police and other authorities, and oppression by the government. Oi! songs also covered less-political topics such as street violence, soccer, sex, and alcohol. Some Oi! bands, such as Angelic Upstarts, The Business, the Burial, and the Oppressed were associated with left-wing politics and anti-racism, and others were non-political.