BRIGTHON RIOT 1964

M O R A L   P A N I C

Brigthon Riot 1964

The contrast between Rockers and Mods is very distinctive. Rockers are wearing leather jackets and ride heavy motorcycles, they listen to 1950’s Rock and Roll like Elvis and Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent. Rockers considered Mods as snobs, effeminate and weak. Mods in the contrary are wearing sharp suits and driving scooters; they love Ska, R&B and northern soul music. Mods saw Rockers as uncultured and slightly dirty.

Mods

Rockers

On the Easter weekend in 1964, around midday Mods and Rockers gathered in Brighton at the Palace Pier chanting and jeering at each other and threw stones. The teenagers staged a mass sit-down on the promenade when police were using horses and dogs trying to disperse them.
The situation escalated that over a thousand Mods and Rockers were fighting at Brighton beach and the promenade. They bullied tourists, locals and frightened elderly residents; they threw deckchairs at each other, broke them up and set them alight. Council flat windows were smashed, a hardware shop and a pub were destroyed.

Brigthon Riot 1964

A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order. According to Stanley Cohen, author of Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972) and credited creator of the term, a moral panic occurs when " condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests." Those who start the panic when they fear a threat to prevailing social or cultural values are known by researchers as "moral entrepreneurs", while people who supposedly threaten the social order have been described as "folk devils."

Moral panics are in essence controversies that involve arguments and social tension and in which disagreement is difficult because the matter at its center is taboo. The media have long operated as agents of moral indignation, even when they are not self-consciously engaged in crusading or muckraking. Simply reporting the facts can be enough to generate concern, anxiety or panic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic

Brigthon Riot 1964

                                                                                                                         

                                                                                                                Annette Heart