This revolution was partly a reaction to the austerity of the post war years, increased prosperity and spending power, and advances in technology and science.
Young people woke up to the idea that that they could have an identity and lifestyle different from their parents.
Teenagers started to break free from the traditions and rules of previous generations in fashion, lifestyle and sexual behaviour. They wanted their own music, clothes and freedom to do their own thing.
The Teenage Boom
In the early 19th century teenagers were treated as 'big children' or 'little adults' but this was to change from the 1950s and 60s.
The 1960s saw young people liberated from Victorian and post-war taboos, limitations and inhibitions.
It was the age of the contraceptive pill, drug culture and the permissive society.
Music provided the soundtrack for a generation with groups like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Kinks topping the charts.
Fashion Revolution
The fashion revolution had its roots in the 1950s when Mary Quant opened her first shop, Bazaar, on Kings Road Chelsea in 1955.
But it was the Sixties that were to be the fashion decade with models like Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton hitting the headlines.
London's Carnaby Street was the height of fashion whilst boutiques sprung up across the country selling affordable versions of the latest fashion gear.
Even the boys weren't left out with the new mods and rockers snapping up fashions to create their own tribes.
Hemlines went up and down with the mini, the midi and maxi skirt enjoying success with trendy shoppers. Then there were hot pants which caused a fashion sensation in the late 60s and early 70s.
Mods vs Rockers : 1964
One weekend in 1964 residents and holiday-makers in the seaside towns of Brighton, Bournemouth and Margate, were rocked by a sudden influx of young, cool gangs. They were Mods and Rockers, and the culture clash that occurred that weekend, described in the articles below in The Daily Sketch, Daily Mirror and others, has become iconic in the history of youth culture.
Mods and Rockers were easily identifiable by their distinctive clothing styles: the Mods wore Fred Perry and Ben Sherman clothing covered by a Parka jacket; while the Rockers wore leather biker jackets and jeans. Mods also rode European scooters like Lambrettas and Vespas and listened to a mix of Motown and Ska.
The Rockers favoured motorbikes and listened to American rock and roll such as Eddie Cochrane and Elvis.
The violent clashes between the two gangs were seized on by the media and used by moralists to exemplify the outrageous liberties enjoyed by British youth.
Here is an interesting section from the full article:
"On the Whitsun weekend of the 16-18 May 1964, the youth of Britain went mad. If you believed the newspapers, that is, who went with screaming headlines like ‘Battle of Brighton’, and ‘Wild Ones 'Beat Up' Margate’ . Editorials fulminated with predictions of national collapse, referring to the youths as 'those vermin' and 'mutated locusts wreaking untold havoc on the land'.
Whitsun 1964 has become famous as the peak of the Mods and Rockers riots, as large groups of teenagers committed mayhem on the rain-swept streets of southern resorts like Margate, Brighton, Clacton and Bournemouth. Extensively photographed and publicised at the time, these disturbances have entered pop folklore: proudly emblazoned on sites about Mod culture and expensively recreated in the 1979 film Quadrophenia.
Yet, as ever when you're dealing with tabloid newspapers, things are not quite what they seemed. What was trumpeted as a vicious exercise in national degeneration was to some extent, pre-hyped by the press. It was also not as all-encompassing as the headlines suggested: although an estimated 1,000 youths were involved in the Brighton disturbances, there were only 76 arrests. In Margate, there were an estimated 400 youths involved, with 64 arrests. While unpleasant and oppressive, this was hardly a teen take-over."
The Media's Response
The main conduit for 'news' in the early 1960s was newspapers - these had a much higher circulation than today and were, effectively, the dominant media of the time.
Why do you think this was the case?
Let's take a look at some of the newspaper reports relating to these events.
The video below shows how the media in the 1960s reported the clashes between mods and rockers and considers whether or not the media coverage exaggerated the scale of events leading to a 'moral panic' in relation to the behaviour of these youth subcultures.
This is evidence of historical creation of collective identity for British youth cultures.
In what ways do the media texts referenced above create a representation of young people as being a danger to society?
The moral panic surrounding youths was created through the over exaggeration by the media. Military connotations were thematic throughout newspaper articles, comparing teenagers to the violent scenes that occurred twenty years ago in World War II. Headlines such as 'Wild Ones Invade Seaside' reinforced the apparent aggressive nature of the Mods and Rockers by the verb 'invade', as if their rebellion was going to be the downfall of society in Britain. As well as this, by using the location of a seaside, the teenagers are equated to the Germans who attacked the beaches in WW2 which is also famously known in Churchill's speech 'We Shall Fight On The Beaches'.
Additionally, by associating the young, social groups with 'Wild Ones', it acts as a use of intertextuality, referring to the film 'The Wild Ones' which was released in 1953. The movie is about two motorcycle gangs who have ongoing conflict with one another which causes terrorising within a small town. By making obvious connections between 'The Wild Ones' and the youths, the media promoted even more negative, hostile implications regarding teenagers resulting in many older generations being fearful and disdainful of them.
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