The East Anglian Film Archive, the first and largest Regional Film Archive in England, was established in 1976. Since 1984, EAFA has been owned and operated by the University of East Anglia, Norwich (UEA), to support research and work to preserve our moving image heritage. More than 250 hours are freely available online as examples of the wide range of film which attracts interest the world over.
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Holiday Hooliganism
Easter Monday crowds pour off the trains at Skegness and in Yarmouth, mods and rockers skirmish with the Police on Marine Parade.
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Overview
The long, sandy beaches at Great Yarmouth offer donkey rides and two piers, and the ‘Golden Mile’ seafront boasts twelve amusement arcades as well as numerous other attractions. The beaches both hold Blue Flag awards for cleanliness. Skegness and Great Yarmouth, both seaside towns, were popular bank holiday rendezvous points for East Anglian mods and rockers in the sixties and early seventies, when trouble between youths and the Police was a regular occurrence.
While most of the youths featured in this Anglia TV report don’t appear to follow the fashion style of mods or rockers, the scale of the crowds indicates some cohesive intentions. The rocker subculture centred around motorbikes and so they chose to wear black leather jackets and boots or brothel creepers. They wore their hair fairly long and swept upwards off the face. Mods, on the other hand favoured clean-cut, smart suits and haircuts, and many rode Vespa scooters, or similar. Music was important to both subcultures, and music venues and gigs were often the trigger points for hostilities.
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