Aug. 3, 1964 - Highly drilled police formations backed by airborne reinforcements smothered outbreaks of teenage hooliganism today which threatened to turn southern England coast resorts into a battleground.
Two dead youths were found along the shore this morning after a weekend of turmoil involving police and two teenage gangs, the Mods and the Rockers. Police said one could have been the victim of foul play.
Police helped hustle Mods and Rockers out of Hastings as the three-day holiday ended. Some estimates said 5,000 of the rival gang members had concentrated there.
Twenty more arrests were made today, bringing the total for 48 hours to 74. Special courts were established to deal with them.
Police broke up another Mods-Rockers fight this evening on the beach at Margate, scene of Pentecost weekend rioting. Several youths were arrested.
Things appeared to be shaping up for a second Battle of Hastings (the first was in 1066) yesterday when thousands of youths on motorbikes and scooters swarmed into the picturesque township of 65,000 people.
Hastings police asked Scotland Yard for help. The Yard dispatched, by plane, a riot squad of 69 men.
When skirmishes started breaking out again this morning, Hastings sent a new appeal and again a planeload of officers dropped in.
Police were largely successful in preventing any big concentration of the gang members — the nattily dressed Mods, who favor motor scooters, and the leather-jacked Rockers, whose favored transport is motorcycles.
An aftermath of yesterday’s disturbances at Hastings and other towns was the discovery of the two bodies along the shore.
One was a 15-year-old unidentified boy who floated ashore on a beach near the Queens Hotel in Hastings. Police were unable immediately to determine the cause of death but said foul play could not be ruled out.
The other was Robert Lancaster, 18, who tumbled down a 50-foot cliff at Margate. He was one of a big teenage crowd camping out on the clifftop. Police seemed satisfied his death was accidental.
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