Calling “This Is England” a moving, nostalgic tale about a boy who joins a skinhead gang might sound strange to Americans, for whom the term “skinhead” conjures neo-Nazi thugs. Yet Shane Meadows’s coming-of-age film, set in Thatcher’s England, reveals the British subculture’s far more innocent and rich history. Long before the racist influence exerted by the country’s fascist National Front movement, cross-cultural bonds — not beatings — were the movement’s starting point.

“The skinhead fusion of culture came from blacks and whites working together in the docks, swapping music and stories,” Mr. Meadows said recently. The mingling of London’s East Enders and Jamaican immigrants in the 1960s planted the seeds for a new national identity (and new forms of music) that spoke to the working class. “Really, there have not been that many films told about the core of skinheads, before the right-wing hijacked it.”

Born in a small town in northern England, the 34-year-old director knew skinheads through his sister’s boyfriend, and even joined a gang. “The ones I knew were really into black music,” he said. The path of the film’s diminutive protagonist into a skinhead gang therefore bears the empathic mark of experience. Twelve-year-old Shaun (Thomas Turgoose) finds comfort in a chummy, idle group sporting the skinhead uniform: combat boots, suspenders, and a streamlined scalp. They hang out, goof off, and crash about in abandoned buildings.

But with the return of a prison-hardened member of the gang, Shaun takes a turn that parallels the rising violent current in the skinhead movement and the declining morale of economically stumbling Brtiain. Ex-con Combo (Stephen Graham) preaches anti-immigrant English purity and splits the group with a hate-filled ultimatum. Shaun, vulnerable since the death of his father in the Falklands, sides with Combo, and is soon bullying a darker-skinned store-owner in the neighborhood.

All this would be a challenge for any professional actor to play, but Mr. Meadows was able to cast someone with hard-knock experience. Mr. Turgoose, 12 years old at the time of shooting, came from a similarly deprived background. “He’s had a tough childhood, but he’s really smart and observant,” the director said. “He came from a place with no structure and not going to school, to testing his stamina working long hours for weeks.”

With some help (“We had to get him used to slow-release energy foods”), Mr. Turgoose delivers an astonishingly unaffected, fluid performance, aided by an expressive face that’s been described as “Churchillian.” His skill and comfort in scenes is critical to the film’s strongest suit: the gang’s persuasively warm camaraderie. It’s a strategy distinct from other attempts to capture the British skinhead movement, such as fellow Briton Alan Clarke’s 1982 drama “Made in Britain,” which primarily pitted the individual skinhead against society (and also introduced a young talent: Tim Roth).

But if the gang provides Shaun an ideal community to escape from his surroundings, it remains only a partial escape. So, given the film’s autobiographical origins, it’s easy to wonder how Mr. Meadows, a self-described petty thief in his teens, ended up behind a movie camera — “rejecting what Shaun feels. Embracing the violence in a different way,” said the director, who fled his hometown at age 20. “The key change was getting away, to Nottingham, becoming a self-taught filmmaker, begging and borrowing to make films.”

Perhaps understandably then, “This Is England,” which arrives on New York screens next Friday, avoids reveling in the darker side of the group dynamic — the aggression that Combo hopes to unleash.

“In a lot of skinhead films, you have many, many acts of violence.” said Mr. Meadows, whose last film, the vigilante drama “Dead Man’s Shoes,” had a punctuated rhythm akin to a slasher film. “Here I wanted just the threat to build and build.” The resulting approach avoids seducing and disgusting the viewer, and is balanced by Mr. Graham’s tormented take on Combo’s desperate, even pitiful masculinity.

Consistent with this careful take on the subculture, Mr. Meadows chose “iconic tunes” for the soundtrack. “We used the Maytals, and the old Trojan label records we remember so well,” he said, referring to the pioneering ska and reggae group and to an old partner label of Island Records. The opening montage of ’80s British pop-culture touchstones is scored to the Maytals’ “54-46 That’s My Number.”

“It was important from day one to have this music,” Mr. Meadows said. “The producer cut in the people who own the Trojan catalog as part of the financing.”

The film’s title, of course, comes from a Clash single. It’s a weighty name to bestow on any drama, but it’s borne out by the universal feel to the story’s rise and fall. For all the period detail, Mr. Meadows isn’t primarily interested in making a past cultural moment feel immediate. With its climax, “This Is England” enacts the dawning of a nightmare, rooted in false promises — a violent sensation that resonates far beyond any one time period.