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Beyond bovver, pleasures are simple: beer, a very occasional whiff of pot and dancing in seedy clubs to the solid, punchy beat of West Indian blues. Skinheads don't bovver with the West Indians, probably because they are tough. Pakistanis are a favorite target because they seem passive, weak and, above all, different. "They smell, don't they?" says the son of a London docker. "It's all that garlic. I mean, they've no right to be here." One skinhead described the "Paki-bashing" technique to a British television interviewer: "You go up to them and bump into them, and then you nut them right, and then you hit them, and as they go down you give them a kicking, bash them with an iron bar, and take their watches and rings and things like that."
Last week more than 2,000 Pakistanis marched on No. 10 Downing Street to protest skinhead attacks, which have numbered more than 50 in recent weeks. If the skinhead problem worsens, some British voters, increasingly sensitive to law and order, may pay closer heed to the Conservative Party's emphasis on the issue and vote Tory in the forthcoming national elections. On a few occasions, police have confiscated bootlaces and braces from skinhead packs, on the theory that it is difficult to kick a victim if one's boots are flopping and one's trousers are dropping—but bootlaces and braces are not all that difficult to replace. The only resolution, it would seem, will come when Britain produces a still newer youth fad. In the meantime, Vidal Sassoon's Mayfair salon has capitalized on the current one by offering skinhead hairdos to London's trendiest ladies.