BEING A MOD IN SWINGING LONDON

Being a Mod in Swinging London seemed like the only thing to be at 16. I was a boy crossing the bridge to the man, and I was about to discover that justice and injustice are divided by the same narrow gap.

The Mods are Coming

As a Mod, I had all the gear, a Vespa GS 160, a white one with blue stripes on the bubbles, and a long aerial topped by a squirrel tail. No helmet, naturally. I wore a fishtail parka with a black cross on the back, Beatle boots from Anello and Davide, a three-button jacket and thin tie.

I was part of the Waltham Cross gang. We listened to The Who and the Yardbirds. Chasing girls, rarely catching them, took up so much time there was none left to study for my A-levels. What did it matter? I was a Mod.

The word went around London early in 1964 that the Mods would be gathering over the Whitsun Bank Holiday in Margate and thousands of scooterboys on their Vespas and Lambrettas raced down the A4 to the coast. We paraded through Dreamland, the amusement park, and came across four Rockers with slicked back greasy hair at the shooting gallery. Most of the Mods were teenagers and these Greasers were older, men in their twenties.

We stood in a half circle jeering and shouting. They carried on firing at the targets until they had finished. We jeered louder and they turned, suddenly with chains in their hands. One of them snarled: Come on then. They took a step towards us and 200 Mods ran for their lives.

Being a Mod Dancing

Later that afternoon, I was on the beach with Mickey Dolan, a boy from the council estate. He had taught me when your scooter didn’t start to remove the spark plug, douse it in petrol and set it on fire. With the clean warm plug screwed back into the cylinder head, it starts first time.

We spotted a couple of girls sitting on deck chairs in short skirts with knee boots and pointy bras. Mickey was so excited after our run in with the Rockers he started to dance, throwing his arms about in a sort of Irish jig. He was in mid-performance when a line of Bobbies swept across the beach in a blue tide chasing the Mods who were chasing the outnumbered Rockers.

One of the officers saw Mickey showing off and must have thought his raised arms were a threatening gesture. He grabbed him in a neck hold and dragged him to the open doors of a Black Maria, bundling him into the back. I could hardly believe what was happening. Mickey hadn’t done anything. He was a gentle boy who would never hurt a soul. My throat was dry. My heart beat faster. This was a Rubicon moment. The police had moved on. It was quiet. I had lost interest in the two girls. I walked back to the station where the scooters were parked and drove home, keeping to the speed limit with the squirrel tail metaphorically between my legs.

Mickey Dolan was one of about 100 Mods and a few Rockers who appeared before the Margate Bench a few days later. Most were fined £50 or £75 – equal to about £1,000 today. Mickey, was one of the four sentenced to three months in Borstal.

Margate’s Chief Magistrate, Dr George Simpson, made a name for himself describing the defendants as, “These long-haired, mentally unstable, petty little hoodlums, these sawdust Caesars who can only find courage like rats hunting in packs.” The phrase sawdust Caesars was picked up in the tabloids and entered the language.

Two years later, at 18, with rubbish A-levels, future unknown, my Aunt Alice directed me to an ad for a junior reporter on the Isle of Thanet Gazette – in Margate. I had wanted to become a journalist and this was a big opportunity. I went for an interview and, by the time my friends had started at university, I was covering the magistrate’s court where Dr Simpson presided. I had sold my Vespa and drove around the coastal villages on the what was called the ‘district calls’ on the newspaper’s Royal Enfield Interceptor. I had shed the fishtail parka and now dressed in a Burton’s suit, one of three bought for me by my grandfather.

Mods and Rockers were already out of date. They were restyling themselves as Skinheads and Hippies. Everyone I knew was growing their hair long but Mike Marples, my editor, sent me once a month to his hairdresser for a short back and sides. I still chased girls, but never across Margate beach. From the Isle of Thanet Gazette, I would move to Maidstone as a sub-editor, then Greece working for The Athens News and stringing for The Guardian and the BBC. I don’t recall ever seeing Mickey Dolan again.