Mods and rockers were two conflicting British youth subcultures of the late 1950s to mid 1960s. Media coverage of the two groups fighting in 1964 sparked a moral panic about British youth, and they became widely perceived as violent, unruly troublemakers.
The mod subculture was centred on fashion and music, and many mods wore parkas and rode scooters. Mods wore suits and other cleancut outfits, and listened to music genres such as modern jazz, soul, Motown, ska and British blues-rooted bands like the Yardbirds, the Small Faces, and later the Who and the Jam. The Who wrote a portrait of the cultures with their 1973 album and movie score Quadrophenia.[2]
Conflicts took place at Clacton and Hastings during the Easter weekend of 1964.[5] A second round took place on the south coast of England over the Whitsun weekend (18 and 19 May 1964), especially at Brighton, where fights occurred over 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."[6]
Newspapers described the mod and rocker clashes as being of "disastrous proportions", and labelled mods and rockers as "vermin" and "louts".[7] 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".[7]
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.[citation needed]
There were occasional incidents thereafter. In 1980, during the mod revival, the punk rock band The Exploited recorded the song "Fuck the Mods" on their EPArmy Life, whose back cover stated "To all the Edinburgh punks and skins – keep on mod-bashing!!" The band performed in Finsbury Park, London in 1981 on the same night that The Jam were playing nearby, and there was fighting after the gigs between the mods who had watched The Jam and the rockers who had watched The Exploited.[8]
Academic debunking
The sociologist Stanley Cohen was led by his retrospective study of the mods and rockers conflict to develop the term "moral panic". In his 1972 study Folk Devils and Moral Panics,[7] he examined media coverage of the mod and rocker riots in the 1960s.[9] He concedes that mods and rockers had some fights in the mid-1960s, but argues that they were no different from the evening brawls that occurred between youths throughout the 1950s and early 1960s at seaside resorts and after football games. He argues that the UK media turned the mod subculture into a symbol of delinquent and deviant status.[10]
Cohen argues that as media hysteria about knife-wielding mods increased, the image of a fur-collared anorak and scooter would "stimulate hostile and punitive reactions".[11] He says the media used possibly faked interviews with supposed rockers such as "Mick the Wild One".[12] The media also tried to exploit 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.[10] Newspaper writers also began to associate mods and rockers with various social issues, such as teen pregnancy, contraceptives, amphetamines, and violence.[7]
Media
The 2010 remake of the 1948 film Brighton Rock is set in the era of mods and rockers, with Bank Holiday tribal clashes on Brighton promenades and beaches.
The 1979 film Quadrophenia starring Phil Daniels as Jimmy, Leslie Ash as Steph and Sting the lead singer of the English band Police as Ace Face, is set against the background of the 1964 Brighton clash with the incident featuring prominently.
In the Beatles' 1964 film A Hard Day's Night, Ringo Starr was asked by a reporter, "Are you a mod or a rocker?" Starr answered, "I'm a mocker."[14]
↑ 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 (eds.), What's that sound?: an introduction to rock and its history, New York: Norton, ISBN9780393912043, 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 modsBook preview.Archived 22 April 2016 at the Wayback Machine
↑ 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.
A skinhead or skin is a member of a subculture that originated among working-class youth in London, England, in the 1960s. It soon spread to other parts of the United Kingdom, with a second working-class skinhead movement emerging worldwide in the late 1970s. Motivated by social alienation and working-class solidarity, skinheads are defined by their close-cropped or shaven heads and working-class clothing such as Dr. Martens and steel toe work boots, braces, high rise and varying length straight-leg jeans, and button-down collar shirts, usually slim fitting in check or plain. The movement reached a peak at the end of the 1960s, experienced a revival in the 1980s, and, since then, has endured in multiple contexts worldwide.
A moral panic is a widespread feeling of fear that some evil person or thing threatens the values, interests, or well-being of a community or society. It is "the process of arousing social concern over an issue", usually perpetuated by moral entrepreneurs and mass media coverage, and exacerbated by politicians and lawmakers. Moral panic can give rise to new laws aimed at controlling the community.
Clacton-on-Sea, often simply called Clacton, is a seaside town and resort in the county of Essex, on the east coast of England. It is located on the Tendring Peninsula and is the largest settlement in the Tendring District, with a population of 53,200 (2021). The town is situated around 77 miles northeast of London, 40 mi (65 km) east-northeast of Chelmsford, 58 mi (93 km) northeast of Southend-on-Sea, 16 mi (26 km) southeast of Colchester and 16 mi (26 km) south of Harwich.
Folk devil is a person or group of people who are portrayed in folklore or the media as outsiders and deviant, and who are blamed for crimes or other sorts of social problems.
The deviancy amplification spiral and deviancy amplification are terms used by interactionist sociologists to refer to the way levels of deviance or crime can be increased by the societal reaction to deviance itself.
Stanley Cohen was a sociologist and criminologist, Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, known for breaking academic ground on "emotional management", including the mismanagement of emotions in the form of sentimentality, overreaction, and emotional denial. He had a lifelong concern with human rights violations, first growing up in South Africa, later studying imprisonment in England and finally in Palestine. He founded the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at the London School of Economics.
Quadrophenia is a 1979 British drama film, based on the Who's 1973 rock opera of the same name. It was directed by Franc Roddam in his feature directing debut. Unlike the adaptation of Tommy, Quadrophenia is not a musical film, and the band does not appear live in the film.
Mod, from the word modernist, is a subculture that began in late 1950s London and spread throughout Great Britain, eventually influencing fashions and trends in other countries. It continues today on a smaller scale. Focused on music and fashion, the subculture has its roots in a small group of stylish London-based young men and women in the late 1950s who were termed modernists because they listened to modern jazz. Elements of the mod subculture include fashion ; music and motor scooters. In the mid-1960s when they started to fade out, the subculture listened to rock groups with jazz and blues influences such as the Who and Small Faces. The original mod scene was associated with amphetamine-fuelled all-night jazz dancing at clubs.
Greasers are a youth subculture that emerged in the 1950s and early 1960s from predominantly working class and lower-class teenagers and young adults in the United States and Canada. The subculture remained prominent into the mid-1960s and was particularly embraced by certain ethnic groups in urban areas, particularly Italian Americans and Hispanic Americans.
The 20th century saw the rise and fall of many subcultures.
Rockers are members or followers of a biker subculture that originated in the United Kingdom during the late 1950s and was popular in the 1960s. It was mainly centred on motorcycles and rock 'n' roll music. By 1965, the term greaser had also been introduced to Great Britain and, since then, the terms greaser and rocker have become synonymous within the British Isles, although used differently in North America and elsewhere. Rockers were also derisively known as Coffee Bar Cowboys. Their Japanese counterpart was called the Kaminari-Zoku.
The 59 Club, also written as The Fifty Nine Club and known as 'the 9', is a British motorcycle club with members distributed internationally.
Youth subculture is a youth-based subculture with distinct styles, behaviors, and interests. Youth subcultures offer participants an identity outside of that ascribed by social institutions such as family, work, home and school. Youth subcultures that show a systematic hostility to the dominant culture are sometimes described as countercultures.
Fashion of the 1960s featured a number of diverse trends, as part of a decade that broke many fashion traditions, adopted new cultures, and launched a new age of social movements. Around the middle of the decade, fashions arising from small pockets of young people in a few urban centers received large amounts of media publicity, and began to heavily influence both the haute couture of elite designers and the mass-market manufacturers. Examples include the mini skirt, culottes, go-go boots, and more experimental fashions, less often seen on the street, such as curved PVC dresses and other PVC clothes.
Bodgies and widgies refer to a youth subculture that existed in Australia and New Zealand in the 1950s, similar to the rocker culture in the UK or greaser culture in the United States. Most bodgies rode motorbikes but some had cars, many of which were embellished with accessories such as mag wheels and hot dog mufflers. Males were called bodgies and females were called widgies.
A social panic is a state where a social or community group reacts negatively and in an extreme or irrational manner to unexpected or unforeseen changes in their expected social status quo. According to Folk Devils and Moral Panics by Stanley Cohen, the definition can be broken down to many different sections. The sections, which were identified by Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda in 1994, include concern, hostility, consensus, disproportionality, and volatility. Concern, which is not to be mistaken with fear, is about the possible or potential threat. Hostility occurs when an outrage occurs toward the people who were a part of the problem and agencies who are accountable. These people are seen as the enemy since their behavior is viewed as a danger to society. Consensus includes a distributed agreement that an actual threat is going to take place. This is where the media and other sources come in to aid in spreading of the panic. Disproportionality compares people's reactions to the actual seriousness of the condition. Volatility is when there is no longer any more panic.
ESDS Qualidata is a specialist service of the Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS), led by the UK Data Archive at the University of Essex, jointly funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The service provides access to a wide range of qualitative data from the social sciences as well as user-support, promoting the increased use of secondary analysis in social research and related learning and teaching resources.
Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers is a 1972 sociology book by Stanley Cohen. It was the first book to define the social theory of moral panic.
A scooterboy is a member of one of several scooter-related subcultures of the 1960s and later decades, alongside rude boys, mods and skinheads. The term is sometimes used as a catch-all designation for any scootering enthusiast who does not fall into the latter three categories.
Quadrophenia Alley is located between number 10 and 11 East Street Brighton and was the location for a scene in the 1979 film Quadrophenia. The Alley has become a shrine to the Mod movement, and people come from all over the world to find this alleyway. The cult film was set in Brighton in 1964, the period of the Mods and Rockers.
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