Margate’s beach has seen plenty of sights over the years – but few as memorable or headline-grabbing as the running battles between 400 youths and police in 1964.
As families flocked to the sands to paddle and soak up the mid-May sun, so did two very different youth sub-cultures – both on a collision course.
The result was deckchairs splintered and hurled as makeshift weapons, running fights across the beach between knife and cosh-wielding yobs, brawls along the promenade and outside Dreamland, police manhandling those responsible to the ground and coming to the aid of those left nursing injuries.
Businesses were vandalised, bottles thrown and the tabloid press whipped everything up to grip the nation into a panic about the youth of the day, fuelled by the fact the scenes had been replicated at other seaside resorts.
Welcome to the era of the Mods and Rockers – or to use a newspaper term at the time ‘Margate’s Whitsun Wild Ones’.
“These long-haired, unkempt, mentally unstable, petty little sawdust Caesars can only find courage hunting in packs like rats,” said Dr George Simpson, chairman of Margate magistrates as more than 60 people were arrested and hauled before the bench.
“They came here intent with disturbing the life and property of the whole town. I intend to discourage these youths and their vicious virus.”
He was clearly a man not to mince his words.
The majority of the arrested troublemakers were given fines, although three were handed three-month jail terms and five sent to detention centres for up to six months.
Doing his very best not to endear himself to the youngsters, Dr Simpson added: “It is strange to see this procession of miserable specimens, so different from the strutting hooligans of yesterday.”
So just who were the Mods and Rockers – and why did they decide to shatter the piece in such a remarkable manner on that fateful day?
The year 1964 was a pivotal one in the evolution of the nation. The austerity of the post-war 1950s was being shaken off and the youth of the day were enjoying the freedoms generated by a buoyant jobs market and a world in the early grip of Beatlemania.
The swinging Sixties and 1967’s Summer of Love was just around the corner.
As is so often the case, the youth splintered in different subcultures – many aligning themselves to the past or present. In the 1950s, the Teddy Boys had been the most notable.
The Rockers, to use some broad generalisations, were leather-clad, motorbike-riding fans of classic US rock ‘n’ roll. And their hair reflected their cross-Atlantic influences – the pompadour was the default hairstyle. It is said Marlon Brando’s character in the then-banned 1953 movie The Wild One was a particular inspiration (he leads a violent motorcycle gang and British movie censors felt it could incite trouble among the nation’s disaffected youth).
The Mods (short for ‘modernists’), on the other hand, were inspired by music and fashion. They opted for suits and drew their influences from the likes of soul, ska and beat music and dabbled in amphetamines. Their transportation of choice? The scooter; Lambrettas and Vespas.
Tensions between the two were stoked both by the police’s handling of the rival factions and the inevitable injection of those aligning themselves to both groups who enjoyed a bit of violence.
Those tensions had started to spill over earlier that year.
On Easter Monday, which fell in March of 1964, Mods and Rockers clashed in “running battles from Cliftonville Lido along Margate High Street to the entrance of Dreamland”, according to reports at the time.
One teenager, a 17-year-old boy, was left with a knife-wound to his back.
It is said around 100 Mods from north London had descended by scooters on the town while, separately, a group of Rockers had arrived. Both groups are reported to have caused a disturbance before they came face-to-face outside Dreamland.
It prompted the then-mayor of Margate to demand, a few days later, for the return of judicial corporal punishment when he called to “bring back the birch” to deal with the trouble-makers.
But the main trouble that long weekend was in Clacton, the seaside town in Essex. Around 1,000 Mods and Rockers had come to the town from London. But the wet weather did little to dampen their tempers and when the two youth tribes came face-to-face brawls broke out which the police struggled to contain.
The headlines the following day spoke of scooter groups bringing “a day of terror” to the streets.
And the trouble would continue throughout the summer months.
Trouble erupted in Hastings and, perhaps most famously, Brighton. The events there inspiring the 1979 movie Quadrophenia (which, itself, was inspired by The Who’s 1973 rock opera on the subject matter).
Perhaps the good weather failed to calm hot heads but by the time the Margate riots occurred the nation was being gripped by a moral panic over the behaviour of the younger generation.
Generation X was a book written by Charles Hamblett and Jane Deverson, published later that same year and designed to capture a snap shot of the mood of the youth.
In it, the authors spoke to an 18-year-old mechanic from London, John Braden.
He explained: “Yes, I am a Mod and I was at Margate. I’m not ashamed of it – I wasn’t the only one. I joined in a few fights. It was a laugh. I haven’t enjoyed myself so much in a long time. It was great, the beach was like a battlefield. It was like we were taking over the country.
“You want to hit back at all the old geezers who try to show us what to do. We just want to show them we’re not going to take it.
“I felt great, part of something important instead of just being something they look down on.
“What these old squares don’t realise is we’ve got far more guts than they ever had, and don’t talk to me about the bleedin’ war. War is for ginks. That magistrate was protecting his own kind, you can’t blame him for that, but why take it out on us?”
Was it as bad as the headlines suggested? Most likely not. But they were different times and disturbances of such a nature were easy fodder for the national press.
There have even been some suggestions fights between the two groups were actively encouraged by the red top tabloids knowing that the stories and pictures would sell newspapers.
The troubles which followed the Mods and Rockers during the summer of 1964 faded out soon after – diluted by other emerging sub-cultures during a decade of significant cultural and political upheaval.
Today, it would be hard to draw comparisons with sub-cultures – but the tensions would be replicated over the years as clashes erupted between other groups which aligned themselves with fashion and other popular culture genres.
But that era of Mods and Rockers, punks, hippies and skinheads is now over – although forever immortalised in the evolution of youth culture and the influences they still exude.
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