Oi! Story

“Bands such as the Cockney Rejects, the Angelic Upstarts — Marxists from South Shields managed by a man [journalist/manager Garry] Bushell colourfully describes as ‘a psychopath — his house had bars over all the windows because people had thrown firebombs through it’ — Red Alert, Peter and the Test Tube Babies. It briefly stormed the charts. The Angelic Upstarts followed the Cockney Rejects onto Top of the Pops, while Splodgenessabounds made the Top 10 with the deathless Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps Please. But today, if the general public have heard of it at all, they tend to agree with the assessment once offered by journalist and broadcaster Stuart Maconie: ‘Punk’s stunted idiot half-brother, musically primitive and politically unsavoury, with its close links to far-right groups.’ It is, asserts [English nationalist/television critic who once tried to get a comedian banned from live broadcasts because he made a joke about fisting the Chancellor of the Exchequer Garry] Bushell, ‘without a doubt, the most misunderstood genre in history’.”
-There’s a delightful history of the Oi! genre in today’s Guardian which I think you’ll rather enjoy.