Douglas-Home, the Conservative Party
and the Threat of Rebellious Youth, 1963-64
Stuart Mitchell
In October 1963, Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister since January 1957, relinquished the
direction of a fractious Conservative Party to Lord Home of the Hirsel. In attitude his heir
could not have been more different. Where Macmillan had been urbane, Home offered
earnestness: substituting moral purpose for his predecessor's broad-mindedness and Christian
sacrifice for the affluent society. Shortly after his assumption of the Premiership, Home was
asked by the Conservative Research Department to prepare a 'statement of personal beliefs' an attempt to define his reasons for entering politics. The resultant draft was saturated with a
sense of duty and honesty. 'I have never really believed that the well-off society is the answer
to everything,' wrote the new Prime Minister. He continued: 'If people gain riches and lose
their feeling for religion and service they are poorer and will be discontented and bad
neighbours'.1 Few better documents exist in state records to demonstrate a Prime Minister's
motivations or values; likewise no single piece of evidence better illustrates the difference of
approach between Home and his immediate forebear. What, then, was the importance of
Home's accession?
For at least the previous two years the Conservative Party had been convulsed by a
sense of crisis, a premonition of its mortality as governing Party. Throughout 1962 and 1963,
plus a large segment of 1964, in the Parliamentary Party at least, a sense of conspicuous
crisis developed as by-election defeats, scandals, back-bench rebellions, and policy collapse
(most notably the failure to gain entry to the Common Market) spilled humiliation onto an
Administration that had previously basked in its appearance of competence. By February
1963, the Conservatives' poll ratings had dipped below 30%, and remained mired there except for a brief 'blip' in May - until October of the same year. 2
The Party's grassroots, too, were unsurprisingly fractious. Under circumstances in
which the Tories could be seen to be winning elections and sustaining popularity in the
country, this seldom mattered; in any case discontent was generally swallowed at times when
the Party was on public show, conferences and elections. In 1962, however, a motion critical
of the Conservative government's strategy and communications was debated and passed at
the main Party conference. Though allegedly poor communication with the electorate had
been a regular feature of party controversy for the previous 15 years, this was the first such
unremittingly critical motion on this subject approved at conference in the post-war period,
expressing its 'deep concern at the lack of understanding of Government policy on the part of
large sections of the community' and urging 'the Government to give immediate… priority to
explaining… the vital need for the success of its policies'.3 This was only the most publicly
visible aspect of grassroots restlessness. It is not unreasonable to suppose that many
constituency associations (at least in comparable suburban areas) held the view of the
Richmond and Barnes Association, as expressed by its historian, W.S. Carroll:
The first eight years of Tory rule had not overjoyed the Tory rank-and-file, but the
only alternative was something far worse so, hoping for better luck in the next five
years, even for some Conservative legislation, [in 1959] they rallied to the Party
Flag again... They were doomed to disappointment. The Party Leaders seemed to be
determined to commit suicide. They succeeded.4
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Douglas-Home, the Conservative Party and the Threat of Rebellious Youth: 1963-64
University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 4 (2002)
2
The crux of grassroots' opposition to the Party Leadership, the pith of traditionalist
Tory antipathy to Macmillanite policies, could hardly have been expressed more curtly than
in the implication that the Government was not even following a recognisably Conservative
line in policy. Within the Party, this was the bloc to which, specifically, Home appealed.
George Lichtheim, the American journalist and expert on European politics, observed
trenchantly that the foremost reason for Home's appointment was that 'he was needed if trueblue Tories were to be kept busy working for the Party in next year's election'.5 In other
words, his appointment meant that the Party was freer than it had been under Macmillan to
define a position that would more satisfy the grassroots' majority in its idea of what
Conservative policy ought to be. Keith Middlemas has noted that, due to the increasing
volume of criticism directed at the quasi-corporate state and its palpable failure in some
areas, the 1960s began the process by which, incrementally, the centre ground was surrended
by both major parties as they attempted to bind their (generally more uncompromising)
followers back in to their respective causes.6 What follows is an attempt to delineate how, in
practice and on one particular issue - the threat posed by youth rebellion - this adjustment
emerged.
'A world of triviality, vulgarity, and irresponsibility' was how the President of the
Incorporated Association of Headmasters described it in his annual address of 1963.7 He
spoke of the world of the teenager in early 1960s' Britain. Nor was he alone in his reproval
for youth culture - on the 24th May 1964, the Glasgow Sunday Mail carried the following
leader column:
For years now we've been leaning over backwards to accommodate the teenagers.
Accepting meekly on the radio and television it is their music which dominates the
air. That in our shops it is their fads which will dictate our dress styles… we have
watched them patiently through the wilder excesses of their ban the bomb marches.
[And] Smiled indulgently as they've wrecked our cinemas during their rock and roll
films…8
Though reaching a pitch of rare hyperbole and confounding two more-or-less separate
issues - youth culture and the campaign for nuclear disarmament, this text is interesting in
that its very existence is indicative of a sense of moral fright amongst certain elements of
British society about the seeming transgressions of youth. As Stanley Cohen has noted, this
type of language, laced with disapprobation, was not unusual in the opinion columns of the
provincial press.9 Why? The piece was written in the first instance in response to the teenage
Mods-and-Rockers 'riots' which occurred at Clacton, Margate, and Brighton on successive
bank holidays in April and May, and the fear that these disturbances might spread
nationwide; yet these events simply provided a focus for an otherwise widespread, but
nebulous, fear of youth culture. After all, the leader mentions a number of trends - albeit in
an exaggerated form - that were clearly not directly connected to the bank holiday rampages,
but with which the newspaper was happy to combine them to establish the overall effect of a
generational conflict saturating all activities and levels in civil society. Moreover, there is
evidence that such attitudes were not merely the product of journalists sweating the last drops
of sensation from a story.
To begin with, the public displayed a healthy scepticism about newspaper elaboration
on the Mods-and-Rockers issue: a Gallup poll taken shortly after the Clacton disturbances in
April showed fewer than half of the sample believed the disorders to be as serious as reported
in the newspapers. However, the Margate and Brighton incidents over Whitsun swelled that
figure to 56%, and by August - when another series of similar occurrences broke out in
Hastings and Great Yarmouth - 64% of the Gallup survey had discarded any cynicism about
press reporting on the matter.10 It is, of course, easy to dismiss opinion poll findings as
Stuart Mitchell
Douglas-Home, the Conservative Party and the Threat of Rebellious Youth: 1963-64
University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 4 (2002)
3
ephemeral reactions to contemporary concerns, but the growth in public perception
demonstrated by Gallup's discoveries that youthful acts were a threat is suggestive of a far
deeper reservoir of civic concern than might be imagined. Anxiety about sliding moral
standards was almost ubiquitous throughout 1964 - from the launch of the topless bathing
suit in June eliciting a 77% disapproval rating on Gallup,11 to a surprisingly high level of
public displeasure over the relatively benign existence of pirate radio stations (which began
broadcasting in this year).12
The suspected lax attitude of youth towards sexual relations, allegedly encouraged by
popular music and television, heightened the moral backlash observed here. When Dr.Peter
Henderson, the Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Education, declared in the August of
1963 that young couples were not 'unchaste' if they had sex before marriage, the indignation
his remarks provoked was widespread. Again, a Gallup poll showed only 17% of the sample
agreed with his view.13 This event also served as the origin of Mary Whitehouse's 'Clean Up
T.V.' campaign, officially launched the following January, which fastened onto the ill-effects
that the portrayal of sex and violence in that medium was creating.14 A well-publicised first
public meeting in Birmingham, itself almost de-railed by violent youth protests (no doubt
adding to the climate of moral reproval), served to heighten the profile of Mrs.Whitehouse's
campaign.15 By mid-1964, 'Clean-Up T.V.'was claiming over 230,000 signatories to its
petition, plus an advanced network of clergymen promoting the cause.16 In truth, the sexual
revolution (if such it was) was in its infancy in the early 1960s - Michael Schofield, Research
Director of the Central Council for Health Education, discovered in his survey entitled The
Sexual Behaviour of Young People (published in 1965) that only 20% of boys and 12% of
girls in his teenage sample admitted to any experience of sexual intercourse.17 The
magnifying effect of the media, though, coupled with moralist campaigns like that of
Whitehouse, lent to developments a moral urgency which was infectious.
What then of Governmental responses to these happenings? Home was unlike
Macmillan, whose instincts that the realm of moral judgement and the realm of state activity
ought to be kept rigidly apart were well summed-up by his comment upon moral purpose that if people wanted it they should get it from archbishops, not from politicians. In blunt
contrast, Home saw the two fields as fundamentally interwoven: 'The evidence of history is
conclusive that the greatest acts of public life have been inspired by positive moral values or
a conscious rejection of them'.18 Given this more overt Christian moralism, the new Premier
was ready to lend a well-disposed ear to the arguments of moral re-armers who saw in youth
excesses the beginnings of the devastation of British society's fabric. Hence, in the case of
misuse of 'Purple Hearts' (a drug combining amphetamine and barbiturate, popular with the
Mods) he was quick to respond to press comment, asking the Home Secretary for action 'on
this colourful subject' in February 1964; fortunately, Brooke already had a Bill in
preparation.19 On the other hand, Home initiated very little in the way of policy in this area
(or indeed any other), contenting himself with lending support where necessary to Ministerial
initiatives. This style of leadership - though in truth, given the nature of his accession, Home
could do little else if he was to keep his Cabinet intact - meant that a whole-hearted strategy
of resistance to changing moral standards was less likely to emerge. Conservative policy, in
this as in so many other areas after Home's accession, took on an uneven nature.
Many grassroots' Conservatives and backbench MPs continued their campaign for
traditionalist Conservatism of course; in fact, their voices became even more shrill. They
continued (correctly) to identify a not inconsiderable reservoir of moral indignation and
electoral promise that the Government was failing to tap. For instance, in June 1964
Ludlow's MP Jasper More wrote to Frank Pearson, Home's Parliamentary Private Secretary,
to warn of the Government's laxity in not exploiting the ready-made issue provided by Mary
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Douglas-Home, the Conservative Party and the Threat of Rebellious Youth: 1963-64
University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 4 (2002)
4
Whitehouse's crusade. 'The campaign,' recorded the agitated Member, 'is assuming the
dimensions of a mass movement… and could have a significant influence on public
opinion… I think it is fair to say that, potentially, the leaders of this movement are
Conservative supporters'.20 The correspondence between More and Pearson reached not only
Home, but also William Deedes, Minister without Portfolio, who tended to deal with
televisual matters. Deedes confessed: 'Like my colleagues, I sense she [Whitehouse] is right,
which is maddening…It is beyond doubt that some BBC programmes, especially those on
sex themes, are harmful to the young, therefore a duty exists that we are not fulfilling… A
cautious note in the manifesto would be desirable'.21 In a memorandum to the Home Affairs
Committee in late July, he went further - stealing More's phrase about 'Clean-Up T.V.'
becoming a mass movement, and adding:
No doubt there are cranks in this movement… but its views are shared by a growing
number people in many different sections of society… I think… we should be
prepared to make some more positive response to [the campaign's] demands,
perhaps some indication that the institution of a body such as a Consumer Council is
by no means ruled out.22
In the event, Prosperity With a Purpose contained no mention of the harmful effects
of television, nor did Deedes manage to elicit any policy promises from the Home Office,
despite that some attempt to make concessions to the Whitehouse campaign would have
fitted agreeably with the Home Secretary's campaign against obscenity in the area of
publishing. Such omissions were substantially due to Brooke's caution. Afraid of pre-empting
the report of the Noble investigation into the impact of T.V. on the young, which had been
convened in July of the previous year, he wrote to the Prime Minister. In a phrase that
seemed to reveal where his fears really lay, Brooke argued that 'it is by no means proved that
the moral tone of T.V. programmes, as distinct from the moral tone of society at large, is
harmful to young people'.23 Though the issue was shelved, this does not mean that the
incident is without implication; rather it demonstrates that the moralist movement was
already well organised in the country - or at least Conservative politicians believed it was,
that Conservative backbenchers were beginning to exert pressure on the Executive to
acknowledge its arguments, and, crucially, that at least one Cabinet member (and probably
more) recognised the electoral importance of this cause.
On another subject, this time youth violence, the Government showed itself relatively
more enthusiastic to legislate. Henry Brooke was initially reluctant to do so. His first
statement on the disorder at Clacton maintained that penalties for vandalism were adequate
and did not require revision.24 In the light of the Brighton attacks, his optimism evaporated.
In late May, hoping for a deterrent effect, the Home Affairs Committee of the Cabinet
encouraged Brooke to legislate for larger penalties to be levied against those causing criminal
damage in disturbances such as those at Clacton and Brighton.25 The emergent proposal, the
Malicious Damage Bill, was mainly the result of upwards pressure on the Home Office from
backbench MPs, the provincial and national press, local Chambers of Commerce, and
regional councils.26 The Bill itself was very mild, merely updating a provision in the 1914
Criminal Justice Act to enable magistrates to fix a maximum fine of £100 in cases of
vandalism, but it was necessary if the Government were to be seen to be acting in the defence
of a populace increasingly fearful of youth violence. Even upon the Bill's publication,
Conservative MPs were attempting to raise the ante. A motion to deny the Bill a Second
Reading was tabled by Teeling, the Tory Member for Brighton Pavilion, on the basis that the
proposed legislation failed to provide sufficiently heavy punishment for young offenders. In
a letter to Brooke, Teeling explained his logic: 'Don't think my amendment means I am
opposed to the Bill…[It] is far too urgent to put in any clauses in Committee - I want it
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Douglas-Home, the Conservative Party and the Threat of Rebellious Youth: 1963-64
University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 4 (2002)
5
hurried through… I ask you to do more for the Police and to air my themes before the House
rises'.27 The backbencher's concerns were widely felt throughout the Conservative Party, and
if Brooke himself was as cautious over the Malicious Damage Bill as over the Whitehouse
campaign - refusing, for instance, to insert a clause into the Bill to allow for the confiscation
of driving licences or vehicles of suspected troublemakers28 - the theme of moral crusade was
passionately seized by others in the Party. Backbench MPs, with one eye on their electoral
popularity, eschewed the Home Secretary's guarded language. Whilst several called for the
reinstatement of judicial corporal punishment, still more were active in supplying a readily
tapped stream of quotes on the subject to the press.29 Party literature, too, tended to be more
forthright about the danger posed by 'juvenile delinquency'. A leaflet in the 'Ten Minute
Topic' series on Mods and Rockers had its quotes selected with care to highlight the stern
reaction of the Party élite to the Whitsun skirmishes: hence it was 'of deep concern that half
of all those found guilty of indictable offences each year were under twenty-one', whilst the
bank holiday disturbances had 'thrown an alarming spotlight onto juvenile misbehaviour' that
was, according to the Home Secretary, 'a disgrace to our modern age'. Only towards the end
of this leaflet was it acknowledged, again in Brooke's words, that it was 'not enough to
condemn it… we must be sure we understand the causes of it'.30
If Brooke was willing to understand, some of his colleagues were less so. In the same
vein as the tendency for MPs to make gestures towards the grassroots and to their
constituents beyond the strictures of the official Government view, a minority of candidates
departed from the Party's template for election addresses in order to address the juvenile
delinquency issue in rather more blunt language. 'Some of our younger generation have
begun to injure, steal and destroy for the sheer fun of it', opined the Member for South West
Hertfordshire.31 West Gloucestershire's candidate was more brutal still: 'The soft bed
treatment of criminals has been given a fair run - and it has failed. I advocate much harsher
penalties, especially for those arrogant young bullies who delight in… attacking and
maiming the innocent, the old, and the frail'.32 Such hyperbole was not very common in
election addresses, but its existence, at a time when youth violence had receded as a General
Election issue, is illustrative of the continuing relevance of the moralist stance even after the
Government had implemented legislation to dampen the problem.
By contrast, the Labour Party was strangely silent on the issue of youth 'delinquency',
both at national and local level. One reason for this was the necessity not to bring public
attention to their own increasingly extremist youth section, the Young Socialists, the
activities of which were causing serious concern amongst the Party hierarchy in mid-1964;33
another was the perception that the Labour Party must not be seen to attack young people
overtly, since its much-vaunted policy of 'modernisation' was particularly popular with the
young. 'Modernisation' was indeed a popular policy with younger voter categories - though
there is evidence that those in these categories preferred the Tory version by some 10%.34
However, most of the young people directly touched by the Conservative Party's legislation
were under the age of majority. Such mute bi-partisanship on Labour's part allowed the
Conservatives, in their highly partisan Weekly Newspaper, to caricature Labour's hierarchy as
being in thrall to their petulant youth movement.35 The Streatham branch of the Y.S. handed
the Tories a propaganda triumph in producing a leaflet entitled Up the Mods! Up the
Rockers! in which they explicitly aligned themselves with the Mods and Rockers and gave a
spurious political slant to the Whitsun disturbances. The Streatham constituency party
speedily disbanded their youth section, which enabled Conservative Central Office to extract
even more mileage from a comparatively small drop of political fuel by claiming
simultaneously that the Labour Party was excessively controlling and that its youth section
was out of control.36 It is, of course, unlikely that such propaganda had all but the most
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Douglas-Home, the Conservative Party and the Threat of Rebellious Youth: 1963-64
University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 4 (2002)
6
marginal of effects on voter behaviour (it may have shored up a few Tory votes, but little
else). Yet it was again illustrative of the Party's approach to the youth violence problem: its
rhetoric was clearly couched in terms alluring to the Tory grassroots, yet the reality of its
policy was more inchoate.
If the lower levels of the Party led on the issues of youth sexual behaviour and
violence, in one case the Executive was in advance of them: drug-taking. The connections
between youth culture and the taking of 'pep' pills became a live press issue in early 1964 though the problem had been identified by Brooke earlier. It had been debated by the Cabinet
sub-committee on Home Affairs in July 1963, but rejected as a suitable subject for legislation
at Enoch Powell's insistence.37 Most of the newspaper reports had been broadly
condemnatory of the practice, and had been lent credence by the Pharmaceutical Society
calling for a ban on illegal possession.38 The extent of usage of amphetamine and
amphetamine/barbiturate mixes (variously known as black bombers, French blues, and the
notorious purple hearts - after the colours of the pills) by young people is difficult to judge. A
survey of new arrivals to remand homes carried out in 1964-65 demonstrated that 17% of
admissions had traces of amphetamine in their urine, but this may have signified nothing
more than the propensity of some habitual law-breakers to use stimulants.39 'Pep' pills were
(unlike cannabis, with which elements of the press, in their negligence to check facts, were
willing to confuse them) very much the young working classes' drugs of choice, but again
this by no means meant that their use was habitual amongst those classes; though evidently,
due to over-prescription by doctors, a fair amount of amphetamine was seeping out into grey
and black markets.40 Rather more worrying evidence of the extent of drug-use was uncovered
in a survey conducted by the Brighton Council of Youth around the time of the town's
Whitsun disturbances. The faintly dubious truth of its findings - that 62% of self-confessed
Mods and 42% of Rockers had sampled drugs - was of less consequence than the Brighton &
Hove Gazette's packaging of its conclusions, in which the drug-use figures formed only one
half of the headline paragraph, the other half being evidence of escalating sexual activity
amongst the young. Rather more dramatically than Michael Schofield's data, the
investigation found that 73% of male Mods, 28% of female Mods, 60% of male Rockers and
12% of female Rockers admitted to having had sex - though clearly the survey was both less
methodical and less broadly representative than Schofield's.41 Presented in the same edition
of the Gazette that also carried pictures of the swarms of young people in Brighton over the
Whitsun holiday, a rich cocktail containing the three major elements of youth threat violence, sex and drugs - was mixed for the Brighton readership. Such evidence that the
supposed collapse of sexual mores was profoundly entangled with a pill-popping, degenerate,
aggressive youth lifestyle can hardly have failed to augment the popular perception that such
activities were both common and a menace.
Home, as we have seen, was swift to urge his Home Secretary to act; Brooke,
unwittingly exhibiting his own acceptance of the idea that stimulant misuse was rife,
responded in uncharacteristically strong language: 'There is ample evidence that
[amphetamines] are available in the clubs and cafés frequented by young people… This is an
evil that ought to be stamped out'.42 Brooke's position was enthusiastically supported by the
Prime Minister - 'I am very glad you can act on Purple Hearts this session', he scrawled in the
margin of Brooke's letter43 - but, as on numerous issues, his influence was limited to setting
the moral tone in which such pieces of 'resistance' to youth rebellion could become effective.
Published on 31st March, the Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Bill was quickly incorporated
into the edifice of 'resistance' - though this was neither Brooke's intention nor Home's - the
mass media happily co-opting it into a package of measures ostensibly produced in response
to the disturbances in Clacton, despite its much longer gestation.44 This reaction, however,
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unintentionally produced a felicitous dividend for the Government, making it appear as if a
coherent legislative programme to deal with threats to the civic fabric was already well
advanced. Consequently, the measure was well-supported by the public. Many citizens would
not have considered drug misuse to have been a major youth problem until press reports of
Clacton made the (specious) connection between drug-taking and violence: but here, already,
was the Government, moving promptly to tackle the menace! Unsurprisingly, the Daily
Sketch made the connection explicit: 'Mr.Brooke has based his new Bill… on a dossier which
shows that many outbreaks of 'wreckermania' have started with pill-taking sessions'.45 Such
easy correlations undoubtedly increased public support for Brooke's measure. There was
some criticism of the legislation, in particular from The Economist, which accused the
Government of 'unreasoning prejudice against a new and unexamined product of affluence
[youth culture]', concluding that this was 'a bad basis for social legislation'.46 The Bill was
certainly poorly drafted. Indeed the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis had to request
of Brooke that an additional clause be incorporated in Committee to provide the Police with
powers to arrest those in possession of 'pep' pills, otherwise the Bill would be ineffective.47
The clause was duly inserted, and proved to be, with the press at least, one of the especially
popular facets of the Bill.48
It is tempting, purely from the large number of legislative and policy modifications
carrying a moral purpose that originated under Home's Premiership - not just the Malicious
Damage and Drugs Acts discussed above, but also the Obscene Publications Act, the
Refreshment Houses Act (which regulated the 'near-beer' trade), the Police Act, and the
beginnings of moves against Radio Caroline and her ilk - that the presence of the Fourteenth
Earl at the helm ushered in a moral agenda. Though, belatedly, Brooke tried to portray the
various strands mentioned above as 'a programme of plugging gaps in social legislation',49 in
reality it was not nearly anything as sophisticated as a 'programme'. Legislative inertia
carried over from the Macmillan years accounted in large part for measures like the Police
Act and the Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Act; whilst the Malicious Damage and Obscene
Publications Acts originated in pressure from below the Executive, and moves to appease the
Whitehouse campaign and to legislate against pirate radio remained in the sphere of rhetoric
rather than concrete legislative action. That said, though, Home's persona was vital in
creating a tone in which these pieces of legislation were perceived, at least amongst Party
workers, as a coherent, genuinely Tory approach to the new threats apparently besieging
British society. In truth, the Prime Minister made few comments either about or directed
towards British youth in his year at Downing Street (though rather more than Macmillan in
any comparable period), but those he did express reflected the same sense of moral purpose
that informed almost all his public acts. When addressing the Young Conservatives in
February 1964, for instance, he argued meticulously that 'no man, especially no young man,
is complete unless he has learned to serve. Service is the main duty laid upon us by the
Christian religion. Young people instinctively seek something bigger than personal pleasure
and gain'.50 Baldly and passionately, here was his belief in the essential goodness of the
young, and implictly, his diagnosis of why some young people behaved in an apparently antisocial manner. The other effect of his Premiership, less discussed here, was that he was able
to reassure both the Party and Conservative incliners in the electorate that the modernising
strand of Conservative policy - kept alive primarily by Edward Heath after Macmillan's
resignation - would not be pressed at the expense of Conservative mores. Above all, Home
had one clear strength politically: his presence as leader in the noblesse oblige tradition was
reassuring to activists at a time of potentially great social upheaval.
It seems likely that had the Conservatives remained in office, more legislation
intended to protect the fragile morals of youth (or, alternatively, to further 'resistance' to the
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cultural revolution) would have been advanced. Only one month before the election, for
example, Brooke had convened a meeting with a deputation from the London County
Council to discuss the problems of 'uncontrolled' dancing clubs. The Home Secretary was
'anxious about the moral dangers to which young people were exposed' and 'was prepared to
take action as he had done over the… Refreshment Houses Act' if the situation warranted it.51
Similarly, it is doubtful that grassroots' pressure to bring broadcasting within the pale of the
Obscene Publications Act (which was eventually realised by a later Conservative
government) would have subsided; and, of course, further spates of Mods-and-Rockers'
violence were to break out in 1965 - which would have re-ignited the hooligan controversy.
These thoughts are speculative, and conclusions drawn from them must be tentative at best,
but it seems that the policy of 'resistance' was one that was interrupted long before its
maturity.
What do we conclude? The Tory Party did not suddenly embark on a well-defined
programme of moral resistance, it did not perform an authoritarian lurch to the right in its
policies towards youth, nor did its leaders over-night fall under the spell of the moral rearmers. It is also obvious that different rhetoric was used at different levels of the Party, and
that rhetoric, not surprisingly, was adapted more quickly than policy. However, certain
incremental movement can be discerned in the relationship between its élite and its
grassroots and natural supporters on this issue. Though possibly unduly swayed by the
attitude of the press, a clear constituency - those concerned about the effect of apparent moral
decline - did emerge in this period and, in the main, its influence spread upwards through the
Conservative Party. Home's leadership, the surety of his moral beliefs, his commitment to
duty and service, assisted in creating an environment in which such anxieties were taken
seriously. The passing of the Malicious Damage Act was merely the most concrete
illustration of this movement, where Brooke, the cautious empiricist, succumbed to political
pressure to legislate. Although progress on different topics was uneven and the Executive
moved slowly, it did move. Significantly then, the Conservatives' approach to this issue, in
this period, represented an early but crucial step in the journey of the Party towards what
W.S.Carroll would have doubtless approvingly termed 'true Conservatism'.
1. Public Record Office (PRO), London, PREM 11/5006, Alec Douglas-Home draft note to Sir Michael Fraser,
n.d. (December 1963).
2.Gallup Political Index no. 44 (September 1963). Unlike the Gallup figures that were published in the Daily
Telegraph (which generally presented Gallup poll findings on the state of the parties) - the figures used here
do not exclude 'Don't Knows'. It is worth noting that on voting intention indicators in the other major national
poll - the NOP - the Tories performed rather better, though still consistently under 40%. By the same token,
though, the Labour Party's figures on the NOP were better than those on Gallup. Figures for NOP reproduced
in R.L.Leonard, Guide to the General Election (Pan, 1964), p.195.
3. Craig, F.W.S., Conservative and Labour Confernce Decisions 1945 - 1981 (PRS, 1982), p. 19. A motion
similar had been passed in 1952, but this latter at least acknowledged that the Government was tackling the
apparent failure to convey its ideas - the stark absence of such analgesic in the 1962 motion stands in contrast.
4. Carroll, W.S., 92 Years: A Chronicle of the Richmond and Barnes Conservative Association 1880-1972
(Thameside Property Trust, 1972), p.97. [My emphasis]
5. Commentary, vol.36 no.6, (December 1963).
6. Middlemas, K., Politics in Industrial Society: The Experiences of the British System since 1911 (Andre
Deutsch, 1979), p.423.
7. The Times, 3 Januray 1963.
8.Glasgow Sunday Mail, 24 May 1964, quoted in S. Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics (Paladin, 1973),
p.59. [Emphasis as original].
9. Cohen, S., Folk Devils, pp.59-60.
10. Gallup Political Index no. 52 (July 1964) & no.53 (August 1964).
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9
11. Gallup Political Index no. 52 (July 1964).
12. Gallup Political Index no.53 (August 1964). 30% of respondents in this survey objected to the existence of
pirate stations.
13. Gallup Political Index no.43 (September 1963).66% were opposed to Henderson's position, the remainder
undecided.
14. Manchester Guardian, 22 June 1964.
15. Whitehouse, M., Quite Contrary: An Autobiography (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1993), pp.15-17.
16. PRO PREM 11/4646, Membership leaflet from 'Clean Up T.V.' campaign, n.d. (prob. July 1964).
17.Figures cited in Marwick, A., The Sixties (OUP, 1998), p.75. Marwick does note, however, that though
intercourse was comparatively rare, sexual experimentation short of this was more widespread.
18. Extract from Home's speech to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland on 28 May 1962, contained
in Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Peaceful Change: A Selection of Speeches (Arthur Bkaer Ltd., 1964), p.48.
19. PRO PREM 11/4951, Home to Brooke, 6 February 1964. I am grateful to my research assistant, Jane
Swann, for alerting me to this source.
20. PRO PREM 11/4646, More to Pearson, 24 June 1964.
21. PRO PREM 11/4646, Deedes to Groves, 2 July 1964. [Emphasis as original]
22. PRO CAB 21/5121, 'Draft Memorandum: Television and the Young', 23 July 1964.
23. PRO CAB 21/5121, Brooke to Home, 28 July 1964. [My emphasis]
24. Hansard, Debates (Commons) vol.694 col.92, 27 April 1964.
25. PRO CAB 21/5121, Brooke to Home, 1 June 1964. This note refers to the Home Affairs Committee's
meeting of 29 May 1964, in which remedies for 'teenage hooliganism' had been discussed.
26. Cohen, S., Folk Devils, pp.136-137. The members of local Chambers of Commerce were more prone to be
Conservative supporters than to incline to any other party - hence, tentatively, we may say that their influence
upon the decision to legislate on this matter was likely to have been important. For examples of their
reactions see East Essex Gazette, 10 April & 1 May 1964.
27. PRO HO 291/454, Teeling to Brooke, 20 June 1964. The types of penalty Teeling had in mind were nonmilitary 'boot camps' and 'hard labour'.
28. PRO PREM 11/4692, Brooke to Home, 1 June 1964. In this letter, Brooke notes the stark pressure put upon
him by some Conservative MPs to legislate for the confiscation of means of transport, and also his
determination not to do so.
29. Daily Sketch, 19 May 1964.
30.British Library of Political and Economic Science Archive (BLPES), London, Coll Misc. 718/774/5,
Misbehaving Mods and Rockers, Ten Minute Topics, no.35, June/July 1964. This series of leaflets was
produced by the Conservative Political Centre (CPC) and was intended to provide fodder for debate at local
constituency association meetings.
31. BLPES, Coll. Misc. 401/476/Conservative box, 1964 Election address of G.Longden (S.W. Herts).
32. BLPES, Coll. Misc. 401/476/Conservative box, 1964 Election address of Dr.P.Barnard (W.Gloucestershire).
33. See for example, Archives of the Labour Party, Harvester Microfilm Coll.: Part 1, Minutes of the NEC
Youth Sub-Committee, 5th Meeting, 13 April 1964. Also, see the Report of the Chief Officer on the Young
Socialists' Conference, presented as a paper at this meeting.
34. N.O.P. Bulletin, January 1964. The 10% lead for the Conservatives over Labour on which party had the best
policy to modernise Britain was recorded in the 21-24 age group.
35. Weekly Newsletter, 20 June 1964 (vol.20, no.25).
36. Weekly Newsletter, 13 June 1964 (vol.20, no.24).
37. PRO PREM 11/4848, Brooke to Home, 18 February 1964. Powell had been Health Secretary at the time
when the issue was first brought before the Home Affairs Committee.
38. Daily Mirror, 6 February 1964.
39. Scott, P.D., & Willcox, D.R., 'Delinquency and the Amphetamines', cited in M. Schofield, The Strange Case
of Pot (Penguin, 1971), p.69.
40. Marwick, A., British Society Since 1945 (Penguin, 1982), p.146. Marwick uses the phrase 'black market',
though at least some of the traffic in stimulants was in grey markets.
41. Brighton and Hove Gazette, 22 May 1964.
42. PRO PREM 11/4848, Brooke to Home, 18 February 1964.
43. Ibid.
44. Cohen, S., Folk Devils, p.134.
45. Daily Sketch, 1 April 1964. This mysterious 'dossier' was probably the result of the investigations of Anne
Sharpley, an Evening Standard journalist, that had appeared in that paper 3-6 February 1964.
46. The Economist, 4 April 1964. [My insert]
47. PRO CAB 21/5121, Brooke to Dilhorne, 6 May 1964.
Stuart Mitchell
Douglas-Home, the Conservative Party and the Threat of Rebellious Youth: 1963-64
University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 4 (2002)
10
48. The Public General Acts and Church Assembly Measures 1964 (Part II), (HMSO, 1964), Drugs (Prevention
of Misuse) Act, s 2. This details the powers given to the police to arrest anyone suspected of giving a false
address or likely to abscond. See for example the Daily Mail, 18 June 1964, for press comment.
49. Hansard, Debates (Commons) vol.697 col.311-312, 23 June 1964.
50. Extract from Home's speech to Young Conservatives on 15 February 1964, contained in Douglas-Home,
Peaceful Change, p.70.
51. PRO HO 300/8, Note of meeting held at the Home Office, 15 September 1964.
Stuart Mitchell
Douglas-Home, the Conservative Party and the Threat of Rebellious Youth: 1963-64
University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 4 (2002)