The Mods and Rockers were two conflicting British youth subcultures of the early/mid 1960s to early 1970s. Media coverage of Mods and Rockers fighting in 1964 sparked a moral panic about British youth, and the two groups became labelled as folk devils.
The rocker subculture was centred on motorcycling, and their appearance reflected that. Rockers generally wore protective clothing such as black leather jackets and motorcycle boots (although they sometimes wore brothel creeper shoes). The style was heavily influenced by Marlon Brando in The Wild One. The common rocker hairstyle was a pompadour, while their music genre of choice was 1950s rock and roll, played by artists like Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, and Bo Diddley.
The Mod subculture was centred on fashion and music, and many mods rode scooters. Mods wore suits and other cleancut outfits, and preferred 1960s music genres such as soul, rhythm and blues, ska, beat music, and British blues-rooted bands like The Who, The Yardbirds, and The Small Faces.
In the United Kingdom, Rockers engaged in brawls with mods.BBC News stories from May 1964 stated that mods and rockers were jailed after riots in seaside resort towns in Southern England, such as Margate, Brighton, Bournemouth and Clacton.