The Subculture England BANNED...

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The roadman thing started long before drill and long before kids from country knew anything about inner city London and it wasn't something to be necessarily proud of, more circumstances.

"Your fashion is lacking" is now my favourite insult.

Being poor is one thing. Being scum another.

My friend with academic potential caught a murder case at 18. It’s a game until it’s real; being real isn’t ‘cheffing’ someone and catching 20 years , it’s making your family proud .

Coming from Jamaica & seeing our culture of violence & how closely related to a lot of modern Dancehall music i'd say the music does play a big role in influencing a lot of the violence & killings. They promote it & cheer it on normalising it into the culture. Poverty is a very poor excuse for crime & violence, poor people aren't all killer savages & some of the poorest countries in the world are also some of the most peaceful (see Malawi, Sierra Leone, Bangladesh, Indonesia etc.) Culture & mindset cause crime & violence.

This video fell short tbh. It goes a lot deeper than something that just emerged in the 2010s alongside drill. This ‘subculture’ has been around for many years before, the violence, the premise of the music, the fashion, all of it.

Just few months after I moved to England from Eastern Europe, a balaclava wearing boys stopped me while I was riding my bike through an underpass. I am not very familiar with this culture at all, I thought they would ask for a lighter or cigarette or something. He mumbled something like " oi whatcha doin big man " "get out off your bike " "dis bike is mine now bruv" etc.. Prior to moving to England I have served 7 years in Afghanistan of which 3 years separately I was a close combat instructor for their military. Fought agianst talibans etc, and these balaclavas ( i didn't even know they are called that ) were making me feel uneasy. One of them start pulling me down and I started punching them one by one, they just crumbled and couldn't believed that I actually fought them. They were screaming and yelling and threatening which I couldn't comprehend totally. Some lady called the cops and she accused that I was the one trying to mug the boys :D The police arrived and they put handcuffs on me, while the kids were spitting on me. I managed to stand up while the cop was trying to lay on me, and kicked the balls of the spitting piece of sht. They wanted to put me in for aggravated assault on the cops. But eventually I was released without charges. I learned a lot since that incident, those boys learn from it too. Main thing is that the moment you try to defend yourself with equal amount of violence against criminals in the UK the law is becoming their friend, not yours. The UK law and police doesn't care about innocent civilians getting robbed, stabbed or killed and all you can do is sit there and take it as a good boy. If you retaliate and start hitting back or try to stop someone who is commiting a crime, you become even more guilty than them. Basically the whole justice system is based on a mind boggling understanding and tollerance towards criminals and if you break that God forbid, you will take the law in your hands which is absolutely unacceptable according to UK laws. And these criminal parasites are taking advantage of it every second, every moment of their vile and absolutely unnecessary existence. I have very strong opinions about criminals and what we should do with them. The only place they belong is the end of a rope, especially those violent types which stop you walking, break into your home or threaten you with hurting you. Whenever I see the entitlement of 7-10 teenager groups, which due to their number think they are the biggest gangsters, imagine these little twits getting on their hands automatic assault rifles. What will be the outcome? They will become the same evil terrorists which will cut your pregnant wife's belly open and burn her alive with gasoline because it's fking Tuesday. The audacity of this country allowing the society to be run down by certain evil individuals and not doing ANYTHING to stop it is ridiculous. These mugs have chosen their path in life. They made an active selection. They have chosen to destroy, disturb, annoy and hurt the society. They do not deserve to live period.

it's so tiring living around these people. there are so many of them, and they're so violent.

This video is fairly educational but is missing a few things: 1, roadmen existed before 2010 2, the first roadman to get a music ban was the Peckham rapper 'stigs' aka 'tiny butch' (William) in 2011, at that time he did rap since UK drill didn't exist yet (PYG, GMG/ANTI, Peckham) 3, one major influence for roadmen wearing Balaclavas/face coverings in their music videos was the murder case of Zac Olumegbon aka 'lil Zac' (TN1 gang, Tulse Hill). One of his murderers Jamal Moore aka 'jkid' aka 'JJ' aka 'Younger sneakbo' almost got away with the crime, however police recognised his big nose from CCTV and music videos, then and caught, arrested and linked Jamal Moore to the murder case. He was charged with murder and given 14 years in 2010/2011 I forgot the exact year (GAS gang, Brixton)

Not fair to say the road man is an evolution of the chav. Very different locations and different demographics.

it normalizes violent behavior

I Remember looking out of my window I'm the deep dangerous centre of Brixton with my daughter and seeing a stabbing I literally had to tell her it was a sword fight. At 15 she ended up in one of those ''sword fights'' on her birthday never came back home.

Another thing that hasnt been talked about much is that it is bringing well off people into that lifestyle as they aspire to be in gangs as a roadman. Ive seen it first had with rich kids saying there gonna stab me and gonna get their men on me. Dressed as a roadman acting blasting drill. I find it really sad that that is a thing people aspire to be a part of when anyone in it just want to get out.

The roadman culture is the reason why someone in my Secondary School got murdered. Luckily I had no attachment to this person since I wasn't close with him, but the fact that I saw someone around me who is now dead is eerie. He went to Eastbury Community School if you're wondering. If you know you know. I'm not naming names tho.

It's mental we've been forced into this mess.. A crime against humanity if you ask me.

This is what happens with the erosion of the family unit, hope, and a sense of belonging. Same for any youth culture sadly. Most kids either grow up in a home situation of abject poverty, abusive upbringing wether violence or mentally, or the kind of family people would assume is better because of more money coming in because both parents work. Even the most functional families below the middle class background these days are squeezed so heavily, some kids want for nothing, yet they never really see their parents which just means the direction and love isn't there even if all other factors seem abundant. A lot of the older generations will never understand the loneliness of these people growing up, so many different lifestyles of the modern family all really equate to the same damaging effects be they financial, mentally or socially. World now is very different than our father's was, one parent could work and sustain a family leaving actual care for kids growing up, society was less warped and there wasn't the rampant commercialism at any cost, politicians and supposed leaders at least appeared more decent and respectful on the whole. Everything about modern society has become so twisted, and the next thing followed by the next will only get progressively worse as the younger generations feel more and more disenfranchised. Society is in crisis, big changes are needed.

As someone who went to primary school in England and had a friend who lived with his grandparents while his mom lived in London, I never really understood why he didn’t live with his parents until I got older and learnt about the knife crime and how it’s become more and more of an issue in places like London and Nottingham and was a issue in Scotland before. The reason I’m saying this is because a lot of the time as black people I feel like we’re so quick to blame society and say “what can society do for us” and in turn say stuff like “all they’re doing is speaking their reality the wider issue is why is that their reality” but for me it comes more down to responsibility, everyone knows that the only reasons knife crime continues is because 1 young boys are too scared to be “caught lacking” a lot of the fighting is via which neighbourhood people are from/post code revenge stabbing a where someone got stabbed then they themselves or their friends go out and do a revenge stabbing to “even the odds” but all that does is continue the cycle. The thing id say that would have a bigger impact on youth is not only giving them some sort of feeling of being safe but also having real father figures that are around to show how not to ask what society can do for you but how you can contribute to society. I’m tired of people either listening to it and fuelling it and just kind of going along and saying “they’re just expressing themselves” the lyrics are dark af and borderline evil tbh we need to stop furthering it. That all comes from the wider community not the government in my opinion, the government itself is a mess so why wait for the government or the police to fix these types of issues, it all starts by people setting positive examples of ways to get out of their poor situations that they’re born into. A lot of the gang related stuff in London anyway is just another export of the bloods and crips culture when they initially started out the UK tried to copy that stuff like we always usually do when it comes to American black culture.

Chav culture isn't where the roadman came from, it was a yardie thing that integrated and came over to the uk in the 50's and 60's. There's a lot missing in this video, would have been interesting to have gone more in-depth with it.

Being a gangster in a good ass country with good neighborhoods, good education and good police will never make sense to me.