It was June 1972, the era of the Doctor Marten-wearing, reggae-loving skinhead, and the Scotswood Aggro Boys were out and about in Newcastle.
The early 1970s saw youth gangs emerge in the towns of suburban Tyneside and the wider North East. They would fight rival mobs, marking their territories out with graffiti tags. Of all the Newcastle teenage gangs 50 years ago, the lads from Scotswood were probably the most well-known on the streets.
In an article from the time attempting to explain the 'skinhead phenomenon' to its readers, the Chronicle listed the four main groups in the city. We reported how the 300-strong Scotswood Aggro Boys spray-painted their marker 'SAB' on almost every building on their patch "and controlled the Scotswood area bordered by the River Tyne and the West Road."
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The other gangs included the Big Lamp Aggro Boys - or BLAB - who originated in the Westgate Hill area of the city. We told how "their influence has become so strong, smaller groups from the East End have aligned themselves with the gang". The Newbiggin Hall gang, we reported, "has its headquarters on the vast housing estate on Newcastle's boundaries. It is more than 150-stong and is often involved in border skirmishes".
And at Blakelaw, there was a large gang "controlling" Montagu Estate. "Members claim they do not go outside the area looking for fights, although they will defend themselves against outside raiders".
The gangs were usually made up of lads between 13 and 17, and a gang's motivation, one 15-year-old member told us, was simply to prove it was better the other gang. Defending a gang's territory was the overriding objective.
But, in another story from 1972, we reported how the Scotswood Aggro Boys had also helped organise "a disco dance to help the disabled" at Mill Lane Youth Centre in the West End after a previous one had to be cancelled because of trouble. Ron Pike, the youth centre organiser told us: "They say they've turned over a new leaf and this is one way of showing it."
The Scotswood Aggro Boys had actually featured in a BBC North East documentary aired in 1971. Called All Dressed Up And Going Nowhere, it was filmed in Newcastle and recorded their conflicts with a rival gang of motorbike-driving ‘hairies’.
The film, narrated by a young and very well-spoken Mike Neville, was out of circulation for years, but popped up on YouTube a while back. It talks of “violent crime escalating, despite the emergence of shiny office blocks and new estates in Newcastle with a new way of life breeding a new way of violence”.
It’s a gritty reminder of the way parts of Newcastle were in the early 1970s, and it’s well worth a watch - as is a follow-up feature made by the BBC years later in 2013 in which some of the original Scotswood lads, then in their late 50s-early 60s, reflect on their tearaway teenage years.
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