In the Picture

TING A LING (AKA STEPHEN K. JACKSON)

in Derek Bishton, Brian Homer and John Reardon’s Handsworth Self Portrait 1979

I remember passing by the record shop on Grove Lane and I saw these two white guys on the other side asking people if they wanted to take their own photograph and get a free print. So I walked over and said: ‘I’ll have a go.’ They had a motor attached to the camera and when you pressed the button on the cable, it automatically wound on the film. I realised this as soon as I clicked the button, so I must have taken nine or ten pictures of myself before Derek stepped in and took the cable off me, otherwise I would have used up all their film! I was laughing because of the freedom to express myself and take so many photos. I was 14 years old. It was like a movie and I was the star.

When I look back at that photo now, I realise I’m pointing like in that famous First World War recruitment poster with Lord Kitchener, except I’m pointing with a smile on my face because I’m coming to broaden your horizons. I think people can read lots into the photo and the pose, and that’s why it has been so popular.

I’ve done lots of things since then but always with the aim of helping people in my community. I’ve worked on knife crime prevention. Now I run a community shop that organises all kinds of services – from garden maintenance forthe elderly to advice and support for young people here on the frontline in Handsworth. But we have an international outlook as well. Right now, we have a focus on supporting an orphanage in Jamaica and a school in Gambia. Last year we registered the Ting A Ling Project as a charity. It’s all about sharing and caring.

So, that 14-year-old youth who was pointing at you 45 years ago is still pointing now, asking you to support and celebrate what he is trying to do.

_{Stephen K. Jackson – known universally as Ting A Ling – is the founder of Ting A Ling Youth Project, a registered charity based in Handsworth, Birmingham}

LEE WINSTON DALY (right)

in Syd Shelton’s Skinheads, Petticoat Lane, East London 1979

Being almost residents of The Last Resort punk and skinhead shop on Goulston Street, Petticoat Lane, we were used to being approached and asked to have our photographs taken. On this particular day, Irecall Syd asking if we were up for him taking a few pics. As we were walking towards the location, Syd mentioned ‘socialism’, and I – being a victim of the insidious extreme right-wing propaganda of the time that had taken root among the disenfranchised, white working class – gave outthat‘the only true socialism is National Socialism’.Ireally thoughtI’d played a trump card with this and was quite pleased with myself.

But here’s the rub: it so happened that I come from a long line of trade union activists, and my family were deeply involved in fighting the injustices that the local dock owners meted down to their workers. I learned quite early – at the feet of those involved – of the dangers of capitalism, fascism, and of the racism that was endemic throughout the docks. Further to this, it would have shocked many of my fellow skinheads had they known that my maternal grandmother was mixed race.Within two years of this photo being taken, I’d become a highly politicised socialist, involved with the Anti-Nazi League and an anti-Apartheid activist.

My conversation with Syd often came to mind in the interim years before the internet brought this photo to my attention. When first I saw it published online, it was titled ‘Nazi skinheads’. To say I was horrified is an understatement! I wrote to the site owners insisting that this was inaccurate and that the title be changed – which it was. However, on reflection I felt somewhat uneasy about having done so. Was it fair to act out of ego, and by extension to re-write history out of a sense of embarrassment? I’m not sure, now that I’m older and more comfortable in my own skin, that I’d be inclined to do so again. History is history and the truth is always true.

I love the kid in that photo now. I remember how he felt like an imposter at times, and that he’d often parrot the words of others as his own. I remember him sometimes thinking to himself when alone: ‘do I hate Black people? Do I really hate Bengalis?’, and him feeling lacking somehow because – at heart – he knew he didn’t, and what sort of skinhead did that make him? All this from a single photograph.

_{Ting A Ling, Handsworth Self Portrait and Skinheads, Petticoat Lane, East London are included in The 80s: Photographing Britain, until 5 May 2025.}

_{These texts were originally published in Tate Dialogues: The 80s, edited by Debbie Meniru.}

_{Lee Winston Daly is a life-long music-obsessed, (grudgingly) adopted Mancunian of East End of London origins.}