Mods and rockers

This article is about 1960s British youth subcultures. For the film festival, see Mods & Rockers Film Festival.
Three rockers on Chelsea Bridge.
Nine rockers on their motorcycles.
Two mods on a scooter.

The mods and rockers were two conflicting British youth subcultures of the early to mid-1960s and 1970s. Media coverage of mods and rockers fighting in 1964 sparked a moral panic about British youths, and the two groups became labelled as folk devils.

The rocker subculture was centred on motorcycling, and their appearance reflected that. Rockers generally wore protective clothing such as black leather jackets and motorcycle boots (although they sometimes wore brothel creeper shoes). The common rocker hairstyle was a pompadour, while their music genre of choice was 1950s rock and roll, played by artists like Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, and Bo Diddley.[1]

The mod subculture was centred on fashion and music, and many mods rode scooters. Mods wore suits and other cleancut outfits, and preferred 1960s music genres such as soul, rhythm and blues, ska, beat music, and British blues-rooted bands like The Who, The Yardbirds, and The Small Faces.[2]

Physical conflicts

In the United Kingdom, rockers engaged in brawls with mods.[3] BBC News stories from May 1964 stated that mods and rockers were jailed after riots in seaside resort towns in Southern England, such as Margate, Brighton, Bournemouth and Clacton.[4] Mods sometimes sewed fish hooks or razor blades into the backs of their lapels to shred the fingers of assailants; the same thing was done by Teddy Boys in the 1950s.[5] Weapons were often in evidence; coshes, bike chains and flick knives being favoured.

The mods and rockers conflict led sociologist Stanley Cohen to develop the term moral panic in his study Folk Devils and Moral Panics,[6] which examined media coverage of the mod and rocker riots in the 1960s.[7] Although Cohen admits that mods and rockers had some fights in the mid-1960s, he argues that they were no different to the evening brawls that occurred between youths throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, both at seaside resorts and after football games. He claims that the UK media turned the mod subculture into a negative symbol of delinquent and deviant status.[8]

The conflict came to a head at Clacton during the Easter weekend of 1964.[9] Round two took place on the south coast of England, where Londoners headed for seaside resorts on Bank Holidays. Over the Whitsun weekend (18 and 19 May 1964), thousands of mods descended upon Margate, Broadstairs and Brighton to find that an inordinately large number of rockers had made the same holiday plans. Within a short time, marauding gangs of mods and rockers were openly fighting, often using pieces of deckchairs. The worst violence was at Brighton, where fights lasted two days and moved along the coast to Hastings and back; hence the "Second Battle of Hastings" tag. A small number of rockers were isolated on Brighton beach where they – despite being protected by police – were overwhelmed and assaulted by mods. Eventually calm was restored and a judge levied heavy fines, describing those arrested as "sawdust Caesars."[10]

Newspapers described the mod and rocker clashes as being of "disastrous proportions", and labelled mods and rockers as "sawdust Caesars", "vermin" and "louts".[6] Newspaper editorials fanned the flames of hysteria, such as a Birmingham Post editorial in May 1964, which warned that mods and rockers were "internal enemies" in the UK who would "bring about disintegration of a nation's character". The magazine Police Review argued that the mods and rockers' purported lack of respect for law and order could cause violence to "surge and flame like a forest fire".[6]

Cohen argues that as media hysteria about knife-wielding, violent mods increased, the image of a fur-collared anorak and scooter would "stimulate hostile and punitive reactions".[11] As a result of this media coverage, two British Members of Parliament travelled to the seaside areas to survey the damage, and MP Harold Gurden called for a resolution for intensified measures to control hooliganism. One of the prosecutors in the trial of some of the Clacton brawlers argued that mods and rockers were youths with no serious views, who lacked respect for law and order. Cohen says the media used possibly faked interviews with supposed rockers such as "Mick the Wild One".[12] As well, the media would try to get mileage from accidents that were unrelated to mod-rocker violence, such as an accidental drowning of a youth, which resulted in the headline "Mod Dead in Sea"[13]

Eventually, when the media ran out of real fights to report, they would publish deceptive headlines, such as using a subheading "Violence", even when the article reported that there was no violence at all.[8] Newspaper writers also began to associate mods and rockers with various social issues, such as teen pregnancy, contraceptives, amphetamines, and violence.[6]

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Subcultures List - Mods and Rockers Archived May 2, 2016, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 2012-2-14
  2. ↑ The Liverpool Project; The Scotland Road Group website; Part 2- The Mods Archived May 1, 2016, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 2012-2-14
  3. ↑ Covach, John; Flory, Andrew (2012), "Chapter 4: 1964-1966 The Beatles and the british invasion | XII Other important British blues revival groups | E. The Who", in Covach, John; Flory, Andrew, What's that sound?: an introduction to rock and its history, New York: Norton, ISBN 9780393912043, 6. The Rockers emulated Marlon Brando's motorcycle gang leader character in "The Wild One" film (a) wore leather clothes; (b) rode motorcycles; and (c) often engaged in brawls with the Mods Book preview. Archived April 22, 2016, at the Wayback Machine.
  4. ↑ 1964: Mods and Rockers jailed after seaside riots, London, England: BBC | On this day, 18 May 1964
  5. ↑ Goldman, Vivien (29 August 2004). "Jeepers creepers". New York Times. Retrieved 30 June 2014.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Cohen, Stanley (2002). Folk devils and moral panics: the creation of the Mods and Rockers. London New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415267120.
  7. ↑ British Film Commission (BFC) (PDF), Film Education, archived from the original (PDF) on 4 July 2008
  8. 1 2 Cohen, Stanley. Folk Devils and Moral Panics, p. 27.
  9. ↑ Carder, Timothy (1990). The encyclopaedia of Brighton. Lewes: East Sussex County Libraries. ISBN 9780861473151. Excerpt at My Brighton and Hove | Home | Topics | 1960s | 1960s: Mods and Rockers Archived August 16, 2016, at the Wayback Machine.
  10. ↑ Ainsworth, Clark (1 October 2011). "Margate capitalises on 1964 Mods and Rockers' riots". Margate, Kent: BBC News. Retrieved 30 June 2014. An exhibition called Talking Bout My Generation is being hosted in the building where the offenders were sentenced.
  11. ↑ Cohen, Stanley. Folk Devils and Moral Panics. page 28
  12. ↑ Cohen, Stanley. Folk Devils and Moral Panics. page 31
  13. ↑ Cohen, Stanley. Folk Devils and Moral Panics. page 29
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