Few things get the right wing media into a lather more than outbreaks of social disorder involving working class teenagers. It’s an added “bonus” for the Mail,Express, etc when some “offending” youths are also non-white. Tabloid moral outrage over the past couple of weeks has focused on groups of teenagers converging on shopping areas in Clapham and Milton Keynes, some of whom engaged in antisocial behaviour.
Nowadays we also have Faragist propaganda outlets joining traditionally Tory papers in the outcry against “feral youth”, particularly when it presents an opportunity to have another go at Sadiq Khan as well as reinforcing the racial prejudices of Reform supporters.
This is clearly evident on the GB News online platform where extremist views are allowed to escape the scrutiny of OfCom. “They don’t see themselves as part of the nation” and “they all look like feral blicks (sic!)” are just some of the comments, together with calls to bring back the birch and saying Trump’s right about “lawless London”.
Posts also alleged the police are “going soft” on teenagers because of their ethnicity, unlike the way anti-asylum-seeker rioters were treated. Evidently those thinking that way can’t distinguish the difference between shoplifting Easter eggs and burning down hotels with people in them. Nevertheless, attacks on retail staff, many of whom are young people themselves, cannot be acceptable and the shop workers’ unions will hopefully advance measures needed to protect shop workers from intimidation.
The social phenomenon of teenagers maybe misbehaving badly at Easter time isn’t new.
Prior to World War Two working-class youths were drilled into being “mini me’s” of their parents. Leaving school at 14, they went straight into work and adulthood. The economic boom of the 1950s created youth subcultures, or male youth subcultures at least, perceived as a threat to the establishment.
First it was “teddy boys”, then, in the sixties, two rival subcultures. Mods rode around on scooters, wore Ben Sherman shirts, and liked soul music. Rockers were into motorbikes, leathers, and rock and roll.
Both sets of youths were perceived by sections of the media as unruly and violent. During Bank Holidays in the first half of 1964 the British media went overboard playing up confrontations between Mods and Rockers who’d congregated in seaside resorts such as Margate, Brighton and Clacton. Could some of those “looking for trouble” back then have morphed into Farage voters sixty years later?
Punch-ups and arrests did occur, but the media predictably exaggerated it all. A popular myth had it that the Daily Mirror paid some teens to run amok along the beach so the journos could spice up a “Battle of Brighton” story.
Moral panic
Sociologist Stanley Cohen developed the concepts of “folk devils”, “moral panic” and “deviancy amplification” from the Mods and Rockers episodes. He pointed to plenty of outbreaks of violence at weekends when the pubs closed or at football matches which the media never made a fuss about.
Moral panics over youth subcultures continued with respect to skinheads, hippies, punks, etc., all of whom supposedly threatened society by resorting to violence and/or drug use. A particularly insidious vilification of black youth in the 1970s was the media obsession with “mugging”, a crime that doesn’t exist in English law. They promoted fear it was unsafe to walk the streets of London at night in much the same way as the far right does today (amidst much lower crime rates).
The male offspring of the upper classes behaved badly, too, but their antics tended to go underreported, or to be dismissed as “youthful high spirits”. The notorious Bullingdon Club — past members including Boris Johnson and Dave “hug a hoodie” Cameron — immediately springs to mind. Their frequent sprees of vandalism were shrugged off because they had the money to pay for the damage their jolly japes causes in the pubs and restaurants they wrecked.
Young men in the privileged classes, whose parents dominate most of the institutions in capitalist society, are never at a loss when it comes to having things to do. They go to private educational institutions offering a wide range of sport and leisure facilities. There’s never a question of selling off playing fields in those schools! They also have a pretty comfortable home life and the money to enjoy social activities.
But working-class youth often find themselves having f**k all to do and nowhere to go that they can afford. Boring though the Bank Holidays might have been in the 1960s, the lack of provision for young people may even be worse.
Austerity
Tory austerity policies have cut youth services to the bone. According to the YMCA, local authority funding for youth services in England has fallen by 76% in the last 14 years. The physical spaces where young people can hang out — youth clubs, community centres, affordable public venues — have largely disappeared. The main meeting place now appears to be online.
The Labour government is legislating to bring down the voting age to sixteen. Reform is opposed to this, believing that teenagers who bother to vote won’t be putting a cross against their candidate. That can’t be guaranteed though. Farage has the biggest following by far of any politician on TikTok, and the AfD in Germany have used social media skilfully to gain support amongst the young.
The left must make an effort to engage with teenagers, particularly those not still in education. When the Healyites ran the Young Socialists in the early 1960s, they were particularly adept at recruiting youth by organising discos, although also likely to maim them politically if drawn into intensive activity. Even the Militant controlled Labour Party Young Socialists of the 1970s, though much duller, had a respectable membership. A socialist youth movement is needed again, only with honest politics!
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