April 18, 1957: Britain Ends National Service, With Unintended Consequences

"Teddy Boys"

April 18, 1957: The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland ends compulsory "national service" for men aged 18 to 21. This involved serving in the armed forces, or in other "vital" positions, such as on farms, in factories, in mines, in forests, in service roles in hospitals.

Britain did not completely "demobilise" as World War II ended in 1945: Those already in the armed forces were given a release class determined by length of service and age. In practice, releases began in June 1945, and the last of the wartime conscripts had been released by 1949. However, urgently needed men, particularly those in the building trades, were released in 1945, although some restrictions on their immediate employment were supposed to be enforced. All women were released at the end of the war.

The National Service Act 1948 streamlined the process of young men serving: From January 1, 1949, healthy males 17 to 21 years old were required to serve in the armed forces for 18 months, and remain on the reserve list for four years. They could be recalled to their units for up to 20 days for no more than three occasions during these four years. Men were exempt from National Service if they worked in one of the three "essential services": Coal mining, farming, and the merchant navy for a period of eight years. If they quit early, they were subject to being called up. Exemption continued for conscientious objectors, with the same tribunal system and categories.

National Service ended gradually from 1957. It was decided that those born on or after October 1, 1939 (thus turning 18) would not be required, but conscription continued for those born earlier whose call-up had been delayed for any reason. In November 1960, the last conscripted men entered service, as call-ups formally ended on December 31, 1960, and the last conscripted servicemen left the armed forces in May 1963.

Britain has had an all-volunteer military ever since, just as America has had with the post-Vietnam ending of the draft in 1973. Both countries have found that having an armed forces staffed entirely by men and women who want to be there works far more effectively.

But having so many more men ages 17 to 21 out on the streets, without an equivalent of America's G.I. Bill to send them to college, led to unintended consequences, including the creation of some subcultures that became nationally infamous, and then world-famous.

This was around the time that England's first rock and roll bands were being formed. It is no coincidence that 1957 was also the year that 17-year-old John Lennon met 15-year-old Paul McCartney in Liverpool; and that, early in 1958, they met 15-year-old George Harrison. By that point, 17-year-old Richard Starkey was already drumming in a band, and would begin calling himself "Ringo Starr" a year earlier.

After The War, young men in delinquent gangs who had adopted Edwardian-era fashion -- in the style of the years from 1901 to 1910, when the King was Edward VII, or "Good Old Teddy" -- were sometimes known as "Cosh Boys" or "Edwardians." On September 23, 1953, the national newspaper the Daily Express shortened "Edwardian Boy" to "Teddy Boy," and the name stuck.

Long coats, high "drainpipe" trousers, bolo ties and suede shoes -- with retroactive irony, sometimes called "beetle crushers" -- became a rebellion against postwar austerity, and, just as American teenagers had begun to be able to afford to indulge in the postwar prosperity by 1955, it became possible in Britain as well, especially after national service ended in 1957. There were also "Teddy Girls," a.k.a. "Judies" (even though King Edward's Queen was named Alexandra), who wore drape jackets, pencil skirts or rolled-up jeans, straw boater hats and espadrille shoes.

On August 24, 1958, white Teddy Boys, angry that black immigrants from Britain's Caribbean territories were taking the jobs their no-longer-draftable selves thought they were entitled to, began assaulting black teenagers in West London, beginning 2 weeks of "the Notting Hill Riots." There were 140 arrests, but no deaths.

By the early 1960s, the fad had ended the way most fads do: The originators grew out of it, and moved on. But 2 new subcultures took the Teddy Boys' place: The Mods and the Rockers. The Rockers were based on motorcycle culture, inspired by Marlon Brando in the 1953 film The Wild One. (Brando played a character named Johnny, which caught John Lennon's attention. And the film included a motorcycle gang named the Beetles. But the Beatles were named as a play on Buddy Holly's band, The Crickets.)

The Rockers wore leather jackets, leather pants or blue jeans, and leather boots, and generally made nuisances of themselves everywhere they went. Their choice of music was that of the early rockers who had toured Britain: Bill Haley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent. (Cochrane and Vincent had completed a tour of Britain in 1960, and were heading home to London's Heathrow Airport when their driver crashed, killing Cochran and badly injuring Vincent.)

The Rockers were leather-clad slobs. The Mods were different. They dressed up. And instead of big motorcycles like the kind produced in Britain and America, they preferred scooters, small and efficient enough for getting around streets in the countries that were producing them, Italy and France. If they could work in Rome and Paris, it was reasoned, they could work in London. But, what was more, you could show up to work dressed like a Mod, and keep your job. It was "respectable."

Their musical tastes were different as well. They were originally called "mod" because they preferred "modern jazz," instead of "traditional jazz," whose fans became known as "trad." But they also embraced rock and roll, not the harder stuff of Elvis and Chuck Berry, but vocal groups with the black and Italian "doo-wop" sound. 

Pete Townshend, lead songwriter and guitarist for The Who, defined the Mods for Americans in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine for their September 28, 1968 issue:

It was a movement of young people, much bigger than the hippie thing, the underground and all these things. It was an army, a powerful, aggressive army of teenagers with transport. Man, with these scooters and with their own way of dressing.

It was acceptable, this was important; their way of dressing was hip, it was fashionable, it was clean and it was groovy. You could be a bank clerk, man, it was acceptable. You got them on your own ground. They thought, "Well, there's a smart young lad." And also you were hip, you didn't get people uptight. That was the good thing about it.

To be a mod, you had to have short hair, money enough to buy a real smart suit, good shoes, good shirts; you had to be able to dance like a madman. You had to be in possession of plenty of pills all the time and always be pilled up. You had to have a scooter covered in lamps. You had to have like an army anorak to wear on the scooter. And that was being a mod and that was the end of the story.

The Mods seemed like the perfect counterweight to the Rockers and their predecessors, the Teddy Boys. They launched the 1960s culture that became known as "Swinging London." But, soon enough, it would be fists that would be swinging, between the Mods and the Rockers.

On May 18, 1964, the 1st warm weekend of the calendar year, it came to a head in several seaside communities in England. The worst of the Mod vs. Rocker violence was in Brighton in Sussex, where, as all surviving sources agree, the Mods started it, not the Rockers with what was then the more aggressive reputation. The fighting moved along the coast, to Hastings, which led to the media calling it "the Second Battle of Hastings."

There were also beach and beach-town battles in Margate, Kent and Clacton, Essex. Newspapers called the groups "vermin" and "louts." The Birmingham Post warned that Mods and Rockers were "internal enemies" who would "bring about disintegration of a nation's character." The Who were not directly involved, but Townsend would write the rock opera Quadrophenia about the events, releasing it in 1973. It became a film in 1979.

The Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night was filmed in March and April 1964, a few weeks before the Brighton violence, but not released until after: July 6 in Britain, and August 11 in America. If Americans had heard about Brighton at all, they had quickly forgotten about it. In the film, a female reporter asked Ringo, "Are you a Mod or a Rocker?" And with the "cheeky humour" for which the group was then known, he answered, "I'm a Mocker!"

Every so often, as with other fads, the British youth subcultures come back. Teddy Boys had a revival in the Glam Rock period of the 1970s. The subsequent rise of punk rock in 1976 brought the Rocker subculture back. The "Northern Soul" movement of the 1980s, centered around Manchester, revived interest in the Mods. And The Stray Cats, an American retro-rock band, proved more popular in Britain, and, wittingly or not, was another revival of the Rockers.

But the lack of a military draft sometimes combines with a lack of jobs, or a lack of satisfying ones, that has left young people, in Britain as in any other country, with little to do. Punk band The Sex Pistols sang, "No future for you!" in their 1977 song "God Save the Queen."

Soon, right-wing groups like the National Front and the English Defence League, espousing the very bigoted ideals that the last large group of British draftees fought, began recruiting young men, particularly at football matches, knowing that the "hooligan firms" that had begun to form in the late 1968, and seemed to be peaking in the late 1970s, were easy pickings for their rhetoric of camaraderie in Englishness, whiteness, and "Christian"-ness. This helped to make the 1980s the nastiest era in the history of English soccer.

In light of these events, some people have occasionally asked for a return to national service for Britain. In 2009, actor Sir Michael Caine, a British Army veteran of the Korean War, said, "I'm just saying, put them in the Army for six months. You're there to learn how to defend your country. You belong to the country. Then, when you come out, you have a sense of belonging, rather than a sense of violence." In 2015, Prince Harry, an Army veteran of the Afghan phase of the War On Terror, made a call to bring back conscription. 

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April 18, 1957 was a Thursday. Football was out of season. The NBA season had ended 5 days earlier. The Stanley Cup had been awarded 2 days earlier. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox, 3-2 at Fenway Park in Boston. It was tied 1-1 going into the 9th. Cliché Alert: Walks can kill you, especially the leadoff variety. Mickey Mantle drew a walk. After 2 outs, Gil McDougald tripled him home, and Elston Howard singled him home. The Sox scored a run in the bottom of the 9th, but Bob Grim shut them down, getting the win in relief of Johnny Kucks. Ted Williams went 2-for-4.

* The New York Giants beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 6-2 at the Polo Grounds. Ruben Gomez outpitched Curt Simmons. Willie Mays went 1-for-3 with a walk.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 6-1 at Ebbets Field. Sal Maglie, the former Giant ace who never looked right in a Dodger uniform, went the distance for the win. Gil Hodges and Duke Snider hit home runs. Roberto Clemente did not play.

* The Washington Senators beat the Baltimore Orioles, 6-4 at Griffith Stadium in Washington. Brooks Robinson went 0-for-2.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Detroit Tigers, 8-3 at Briggs Stadium in Detroit. (The ballpark was renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961.) The Tigers' bullpen collapsed in the top of the 11th inning, including allowing the 1st major league home run of an Indians rookie named Roger Maris. Al Kaline went 0-for-5.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Kansas City Athletics, 6-2 at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

* The Milwaukee Braves beat the Cincinnati Redlegs, 1-0 at Milwaukee County Stadium. (The Reds were called the Redlegs from 1954 to 1958.) Lew Burdette pitched a 6-hit shutout. Hank Aaron hit a home run. Frank Robinson went 1-for-4.

* And the Chicago Cubs beat their arch-rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals, 10-2 at the original Busch Stadium, formerly the last Sportsman's Park. Ernie Banks went 2-for-5 with a walk. Stan Musial went 0-for-3 with a walk.