Part III: Mods vs. Rockers.......

In May 1964 News stories stated that mods and rockers were jailed in seaside resort towns on the south coast of England, such as Margate, Brighton, Bournemout, and Clacton for large scale fighting, public rioting, and destruction. Although this was true, the media distorted these altercations massively. It can be safely said that the media itself may have helped to instigate these confrontations. The persistent media reporting created a sharp division between the Mods and Rockers. Prior to the reporting, there was no major rivalry or hatred between the Mods and Rockers. Through the media's distortion and manipulation of the event, the rivalry between the Mods and Rockers was amplified and a moral panic was created amongst the public. That is, as a result of the exaggerated media reports, the general public imagined the Mods and Rockers to be deviants, and became outraged at their behavior.

Fights occurred where territories overlapped or rival factions happened upon each other. There was an urban–rural split, meaning that the groups could only fight if brought together for some reason – most often the seaside during summer. Common weapons carried were blackjacks, chains and switch blades. On Easter weekend in 1964, the rivalry created by the media between the Mods and Rockers finally boiled over in the town of Clacton. The fight between the two gangs resulted in several broken windows and the destruction of some beach huts. However, the media reported the altercation in national newspapers, suggesting there had been large scale riots and wholesale breakdown of public order. In actual fact, the incidents were not serious and gained little attention in the local press. It seems that in the absence of other newsworthy material, the national press, including the "New York Times" and "New York Herald Tribune", focused upon these rather harmless events. Headlines such as "they are hell-bent for destruction" were created as well as feature articles which suggested that the Mods and Rockers had intentionally set out to cause serious trouble.

Round two took place on the south coast of England, where Londoners head for seaside resorts on Bank Holidays. Over the Whitsun weekend (May 18 and 19, 1964), thousands of mods descended upon Margate,Broadstairs and Brighton to find that an inordinately large number of rockers had made the same holiday plans. Within a short time, marauding gangs of mods and rockers were openly fighting, often using pieces of deckchairs. The worst violence was at Brighton, where fights lasted two days and moved along the coast to Hastings and back. A small number of rockers were isolated on Brighton beach where they – despite being protected by police – were overwhelmed and assaulted by mods. The Brighton riots were later immortalised as the centrepiece of the cult film ‘Quadrophenia’.

Newspapers described the mod and rocker clashes as being of "disastrous proportions", and labelled mods and rockers as "sawdust Caesars", "vermin" and "louts". Newspaper editorials fanned the flames of hysteria, such as a Birmingham Post editorial in May 1964, which warned that mods and rockers were "internal enemies" in the UK who would "bring about disintegration of a nation's character". As a result of this media coverage, two British Members of Parliament travelled to the seaside areas to survey the damage, and MP Harold Gurden called for a resolution for intensified measures to control hooliganism.

Eventually, when the media ran out of real fights to report, they would publish deceptive headlines, such as using a subheading "Violence", even when the article reported that there was no violence at all. Newspaper writers also began to use "free association" to link mods and rockers with various social issues, such as teen pregnancy, contraceptives, amphetamines, and violence.