He captured the history-making Carnival at Victoria Park, London in 1978, and demonstrations in opposition to the National Front such as the Battle of Lewisham in 1977 and the Southall Riots of 1979. Shelton's photographs document a country divided across race, class and gender. They expose the ferocity of cultural differences being hammered out on Britain's streets through the late 1970s, at a time when racist skinheads danced to Jamaican ska, punks embraced reggae and black kids reached out to punk.

This photograph was taken during The Anti-Anti-Mugging March in London. Shelton reflects, 'In August 1977, the National Front organised what they called an ''anti-mugging'' march through Lewisham and there was a big counter-demo involving a fantastic mixture of people. I was running around all day taking photographs. In this one, the civil liberties activist Darcus Howe was standing on top of a toilet block on Clifton Rise, addressing the crowd. (Don McCullin has a photograph of the exact same moment taken from a slightly different angle in his book 'In England'.) That was the day my involvement with Rock Against Racism really began. It was also a turning point in British policing – it was the first time that riot shields had been used on mainland Britain'.