Boot Boys

They called them smoothies, bovver boys, hard mods or simply: bootboys. Working class kids growing up in Britain's socially stratified milieu during the late 60s/early 70s with a disdain for anything reeking of the upper or middle classes. They had an affinity for close cropped or mod-length hair, steel-toe boots (huge asset in street fights), straight Levi jeans or Sta-Prest trousers, suspenders (braces) and buttoned-up shirts alongside a penchant for short, simple and loud guitar based tunes with anthem-like choruses, strongly prevalent in the glam rock hits of the day. It is those shouted choruses, like chants on the stadium terraces, cheering on the footy team, that resonate as a primal call to arms. The aristocracy had organised and codified football, but it was the lower classes that played it. Bootboys became synonymous with violent encounters between rival football club supporters, with many participants being sent to hardened juvenile detention facilities called Borstal "schools."

Boot Boys was a Norwegian far-right neo-Nazi organization from Bøler, a suburban area of Oslo, with connections to individuals in Bergen and Kristiansand. Consisting of about 50 members, it was considered as one of the most violent neo-Nazis in Norway. They were founded in the midst of the 1990s and were active for many years. The group was known for having racist and xenophobic attitudes.[1] When the Neo-Nazi environment in Bøler was at its strongest in the autumn of 2000, it consisted of 10 to 12 uniformed young men who controlled a small area in the community. They marched in the streets, painted swastikas on school walls, drank beer behind the shopping mall and occupied lake Nøklevann in the evenings. Daniel de Linde was one of the groups' leading members. Other members included Joe Erling Jahr and Ole Nicolai Kvisler, who was convicted of the murder of Benjamin Hermansen on 26 January 2001.[2][3]