Richard Allen

Most of my information is cribbed from various sources , primarily George Marshall of the (apparently now defunct) Skinhead Times Press. They used to have a website and George's steadfast reprinting of all the 18 Allen novels (The Complete Richard Allen Vol.s 1-6, 3 novels per volume) contained much of the information I'm about to relate.

1970 saw various NEL hacks at a party. One thought they should do a book about the topical subject of 'football agro'. James Moffatt was their writer of choice, being someone with a fast turn around time. Not sure how long he was given but apparently he asked for 3 days extra 'research'. This consisted of him going dahn The East End and finding a couple of members of a relatively new teenage cult. They talked to him, and their stories formed the basis of the first Allen novel Skinhead (Britain's newest teenage cult of violence!).

NEL duly published it and ... it stiffed! Sales weren't to go ballistic for a few months. My own personal theory on this is that the opening pages of the book feature middle aged dockers sitting around playing cards moaning about the state of the country. It wasn't until the youth of the day got past this and discovered the hooliganism they were looking for that word of mouth got going and sales skyrocketed.

Allen/Moffatt had moved on to Demo (a truly terrible work about student agitators), but the follow-up to Skinhead, Suedehead was another million seller (truly!) meaning NEL and Allen were well away. The old STP website had a picture of a tankard presented to Skinhead James Moffatt by the boot boys at NEL for Skinhead and Suedehead exceeding a million sales.

Although Moffatt dabbled in other genres, he returned as Allen for another 15 potboilers, documenting the changes in British youth throughout the 1970s, apart from Boot Boys, Skinhead Girls and other skinhead sequels, you could read about Smoothies, Sorts, Terrace Terrors,Teeny-Bopper Idol, Glam, Dragon Skins (kung fu!), Knuckle Girls and even Punk Rock and Mod Rule.

My researches have shown very little in the way of attempted cash-ins during this time. George Marshall did attempt to publish some similar works simultaneously with the Allen reissues in the late 90s (Casual by Gavin Anderson, England Belongs To Me by Steve Goodman (Punks and Skins in 77), Saturdays Heroes by Joe Mitchell and One For The Road by Kid Stoker) but these didn't seem to catch on and were superseded by 'proper' writers (Marabou Stork Nightmares by Irvine Welsh, The Football Factory by John King) and then the cottage industry of 'real' hooligan memoirs.

© Franklin Marsh, 2005