ABSTRACT
This chapters shows that we can learn more about the sources and consequences of youth cultures by dwelling upon their enduring features than by struggling to keep pace with every fad and fashion. Before 1939 the majority of Britain’s youth left school aged 14. Their risks of unemployment were considerable, especially in the older industrial regions. The 1950s saw the birth of commercialised youth cultures. Working-class teenagers possessed the necessary spending power. Financial independence led to cultural independence, and the leisure industries began to recognise youth as a distinct market. The ‘youth problem’ of the 1950s – the commercialised youth culture that became associated, in press reports and public opinion, with rising levels of criminal and sexual ‘delinquency’ — was overwhelmingly a working-class phenomenon. Another development encouraging its acceptance has been youth culture transcending class divisions. During the 1960s middle-class youth attending grammar schools, comprehensives, even public schools, and certainly in the universities, ceased dressing and behaving like mini-middle-class adults.
