Northern Yobs: Representations of Youth in 1950s Writing: Hoggart, Sillitoe and Waterhouse

Abstract

The late 1950s was a period that saw the emergence of the teenager in Britain – a figure that was often demonized by both the popular press and the emerging New Left. Representation of this figure, often centred on urban environments in northern England, became synonymous with images of delinquency, social depravation and the turning away from older ‘organic’ forms of working-class culture towards the ‘shiny barbarism’ of popular fictional genres, comics, American films, rock’n’roll and milk-bars (Hoggart 1958: 193). Americanization was considered to be affecting the whole of British culture, and it was on northern towns and cities in particular, with their supposed long-standing and often insular communities, that this cultural phenomenon was felt to be having its greatest impact. This chapter explores the representation of northern working-class youth in three 1950s texts: Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy, Keith Waterhouse’s Billy Liar and Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.