ABSTRACT
It is no less difficult to untangle the reasons for the societal reaction to a form of deviance or social problem than it is to understand why the behaviour or condition is there in the first place. In this concluding chapter, I would like to suggest some of the reasons for the reactions to the Mods and Rockers and place these in the specific historical and cultural context in which the phenomenon developed. The crucial question to ask is not the simple transactional one of why the behaviour was seen as deviant at all – the answer to this is fairly obvious – but why the reaction took the particular form and intensity it did at the particular time. What was it that prompted the control culture’s responses, the Margate magistrate’s remarks, the indignation of people like Blake or a Brighton newspaper editor’s description of the incidents as ‘without parallel in English history’?
