Redskins

The Redskins formed in York in 1982, rising out of the ashes of a punk band called No Swastikas, and they wore their convictions on their sleeves and everywhere else. Chris Dean sang and played guitar, Martin Hewes played bass and sang backup, and Nick King drummed. Dean and Hewes belonged to the Socialist Workers Party, Dean moonlighted as an NME writer under the name "X. Moore", and the trio dressed in skinhead gear, helping to spark the redskin movement along the way.

The trick was that the politics came wrapped in songs you could dance to. They mixed soul, rockabilly, pop and punk into something tight, hooky and fired up, all brass-knuckle rhythm and rousing choruses. Their first single, "Lev Bronstein", came out on the CNT label in 1982, "Peasant Army" dates from the same year, and CNT also issued "Lean on Me", which NME placed sixth among its tracks of 1983. They then signed to London Records, and "Keep On Keeping On" arrived in 1984.

King left in 1985 and Paul Hookham joined for the final stretch, but the fire burned out quickly, and by 1986 the Redskins were done: four years, a pile of singles and a cause they never stopped shouting about.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.