The Daily Telegraph magazine 24th November 1967
The turning point in the 1960's both sides knocking mods as the Island splits into two definite style prongs of attack; hooligan and hippy. It's been banded around often in articles and books on the beginning of the end for the youth mod movement and it appears to be documented in an almost fly on the wall article in this Telegraph magazine.
Was this possibly the very weekend the British public decided it was to be Hooligan or Hippy. At the tail end of swinging London one faction left the U.K to find themselves, let everything grow and hitched in an eastwardly direction. The other crowd stayed put and the hair got increasingly aerodynamic. This Sunday supplement blog from The Daily Telegraph perfectly defines the splitting of the mod atom.
If there is one thing I simply cant abide its flat tonic and lime quarters, does my head in. The lime should be in slice form. As the cover suggests the Brits were exporting hooligans and hippies. The top brass at The Telegraph had no time for the once canon fodder troublesome boys, bring back The Cat o' nine tails - what what!
This is an early article on the rise of organised football violence and reminds us that outside of British clubs being banned from European games in the 1980's it had started back many seasons prior. It only really got the attention of the media around 1967. The sharp dressing, cafe lounging, record shopping mods had disbanded and got more interested in football after Englands success at the 1966 world cup. In simple terms the harder footie loving crowd evolved into Suede then Skinheads and the long haired searched enlightenment and sandals.
'In a sense, the mindless aggressiveness of the Mods and Rockers has spread on to the football terraces, and perhaps the wonder of it is that it has not happened long before'
The top left now iconic image is of Scotland and Spurs legend Dave Mackay grabbing Billy Bremner by the scruff of the neck. The shot was taken during a Tottenham Hotspur v Leeds match in 1966. in the words of Mackay 'He kicked me in the leg I'd just come back from breaking twice. If he'd kicked the other leg I could have accepted that. But he kicked the broken one and that really annoyed me. I could have killed him that day'.
'football is a game for gentlemen played by hooligans, and rugby union is a game for hooligans played by gentlemen' went the original maxim by Arthur Tedder (chancellor of Cambridge university) 60 years ago. In more recent years the saying has been doctored to 'rugby is a game played by animals and watched by gentlemen and football is a game watched by animals and played by gentlemen' -no one is winning this match.
It makes absolute sense that the old bill had clay thrown at them, they were in Stoke the heartland of Englands pottery afterall.
And now 10 pages further into this Telegraph Magazine issue 164 is the turn of the Hippy bemoaning the mods that they had most probably been themselves the previous summer.
Geneva/Monday
'Our driver is, in fact, driving to Sofia.....................No we don't fancy that Eastern bit. Just a lot of stupid mods, pill-happy' says the pasty yellow bearded hippy with a union jack sewn onto his jungle cap.
Thats about it there are two more pages but hippy's don't half ramble on so we'll cut it short. I'll leave you with something warming from the same issue an advertisement from Sunhouse Vistarama. In the words of the original Son House, Grinnin' in your face