London’s Working-Class Youth and the Making of Post-Victorian Britain, 1958–1971 | 2021
The Creation and Use of Public Space
Abstract
In the 1960s, Britain feared that the triumph of the television would mean that citizens all over the country stayed indoors. New formats such as pop programmes directly catered to the interests of British youth, allowing teenagers access to fashion, music, and youth culture without leaving their homes. This chapter investigates how public space such as parks and street corners were still used by teenagers for social interaction and cultural production, and thus still had an impact on fashion and other forms of youth cultural expression. The popularity of modern pop culture meant that it was soon so omnipresent that in London, municipal institutions such as the Parks Department before long began to reconceptualise their annual outdoor programmes, allowing pop concerts to take place in parks. Further, the chapter explores how, thanks to its role in the everyday cultural practices of youth, the street became a popular motif in pop culture. At the same time, loitering and the occupation of space provoked moral panics; people were alarmed when youth cultural tribes clashed on the streets, and by the late 1960s, Hippies had begun to turn squatting and the use of public space into a political statement. Similar hysteria accompanied the use of spaces and places around London, which young people were newly able to visit as a result of the growth in individual mobility. The arrival of London’s teenage crowd in seaside towns caused a spectacle and became the focus of public attention when local politicians and the media reported clashes between teenagers and police. The chapter adds a new perspective to the vast research literature on the history of the seaside town riots in 1965–66 by analysing the conflicts between youths, local authorities, and business owners that resulted from a lack of opportunities.