Mods, Working-Class Youth, and London’s Transformation into a Modern Post-war Metropolis

Abstract

London’s working-class youth grew up in a city that in the 1960s began to move away from the London their parents had known during their own childhood. This chapter illustrates how the making of a post-Victorian Britain can be viewed as a project that took place and was materialised across a variety of social sub-systems, and it covers topics such as urban planning and the cultural life of cities. It reconstructs, firstly, the ways in which politicians and creatives formed a symbolic relationship between urban working-class youth and modern town planning, and in the process popularised a concept of urban modernism in the 1960s in which ordinary working-class kids had become “hopeful passengers” who were shifting London’s self-narrative from its role as the former hub of the British Empire into that of a world leader in terms of global teen and popular culture. Secondly, therefore, it looks at the impact of internal migration on London’s transformation into a global city known for cultural production, as well as the ways in which themes of new urban modernism, such as increasing physical mobility among working-class people, interacted with modern youth identities. Thirdly, this chapter introduces the reader to the rise and fall of the “Swinging London” narrative and discusses its role as the invention of a former imperial metropolis in a period which was dominated by the decline of the Empire. It describes how the city and its key actors, from local authorities to business owners, started to see London’s reinvention as a new weapon at a time when competition between global cities called for efficient city marketing, and examines the extent to which the new image of the capital interacted with its historical past.KeywordsUrban changePost-war renewalGlobal architectureSwinging LondonUrban modernismMotorisationmobility1960s LondonScooterMotorbikesRockerModsChildhoodInternal migrationYouth cultureUrban planningSuburbanisation