New Film On UK Skinheads: As an Asian teenager, Sarfraz Manzoor lived in fear of skinheads

In the summer of 1983, when I was 12 years old, I would see them with their shaved heads and bovver boots, combat jackets and inky tattoos, hanging around by the underpass I had to walk through on my way to secondary school. Should anyone who was black or Asian walk through the underpass, they could expect spit and abuse; so each time I set off from school the danger of encountering them was a constant concern. If I spotted them, I would take the long way home. They were skinheads, and for a young Asian like me they were the very incarnation of fear and loathing: we feared them and they loathed us.

I assumed all skinheads were racists. This, after all, was a time when National Front-supporting skinheads would march through our town centre on Saturday afternoons, and the news, circulated through the Asian community, would prompt our parents to ensure we did not venture into town. Memories of those fear-filled afternoons came rushing back to me as I watched This Is England, an astonishingly powerful and compelling new film from Shane Meadows. The 1980s were about more than Rubik's cubes, ZX Spectrums and the New Romantics, and by recalling the dark side of the decade, Meadows rescues it from the lazy compressions of nostalgia.

Its associations with racism have meant that skinhead culture has inspired less cinematic affection than other English youth cultures. This Is England is, among other things, an attempt to rehabilitate the skinhead movement by reminding us of its links with ska and reggae, and to capture a moment when there was nothing oxymoronic about being a black skinhead. But a benign, colourblind version of skinhead culture that was about fashion and friendship is also challenged by the film and usurped by a darker, uglier vision, in which being a skinhead means being a dedicated follower of fascism.

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This Is England is a coming-of-age tale, but it is also a deeply political war film. It tells the story of 12-year-old Shaun Fields' experiences of joining a gang of skinheads, but the two most important characters in the film never appear on screen. The shadow of Margaret Thatcher looms across the film, just as it hung over all who grew up during the 1980s. It was the working class who suffered most from the recession of the early part of the decade, the decimation of the manufacturing industry creating the economic casualties of Thatcherism. The recession ruined lives and destroyed families; so did the Falklands war. In the film, Shaun's father is one of the soldiers who died in the Falklands. It is the loss of his father that drives Shaun to seek the company of the skinheads, which is why This Is England is a war film - it offers a timely warning of the human consequences of military conflicts.

The film suggests that those whose lives are unmoored are vulnerable to charismatic, hate-spouting demagogues. It is the arrival of Combo, an older, embittered and enraged skinhead, that precipitates Shaun's descent to the dark side. Combo is precisely the sort of thug who terrified me as a young boy, and Stephen Graham's superlative portrayal is bone-chilling. But it is made clear that, hateful as Combo is, he is also deeply damaged. The roots of his hatred are fear: the fear that England is being stolen from him, coupled with a jealousy for those who have what he does not, whether it is the Asian shopkeeper with money or the black skinhead with the loving family. The richness of their lives only reinforces the poverty of his own, and when love no longer remains it is hate that sustains.

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