(Image Credit: Thanks to Garry O’Neill, ‘Where Were You’)
In October 1966, young teenagers grabbed national media attention by demonstrating on the streets of Dublin against the hugely negative attention that was being brought onto ‘Beat Clubs’ by the press and authorities. A part of the popular ‘Mod’ youth culture of the period, these were clubs were youngsters danced away to the popular hits of the scene. Amidst scare stories that these emerging popular youth music clubs were attracting drug users and trouble makers, a small determined band of teens paraded down O’Connell Street and other city centre streets with placards proclaiming “WE ARE NOT DRUG ADDICTS”, WE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT” and “THIS IS 1966 NOT 1906″. One placard even proclaimed that “IT’S A MOD WORLD.” Teenagers handed a petition with 2,500 signatures on it into Leinster House for the attention of the Minister for Justice
The Sunday Independent noted that “onlookers who watched yesterday’s marchers were left in little about about how the city’s teenagers feel about the accusations which have been levelled against them both by the Garda authorities and in Dail Éireann.” To the paper it was Dublin’s “most colourful and possibly most enthusiastic protest”, with “mini skirts and trouser-suits, long hair and beards: blasting loudspeakers, chanting teenagers and screaming motor cycles.”
The issue of Beat Clubs was raised in the Dáil on more than one occasion in the 1960s. On one occasion a Fine Gael TD, Paddy Harte, asked a government Minister to clarify just what ‘Beat’ and ‘Beat Clubs’ meant. Unsatisfied with the response, he stated “obviously the Minister does not know. He is a square.”
The media interest in teenagers and the places they congregated in the 1960s and 70s makes for interesting reading material today. In 1970 it was reported by the Sunday Independent that “”fifty teenage girls from Finglas are to boycott a Dublin Beat Club were they dance six times a week and spend about £2 each, because the club has banned Dublin’s newest cult, “girl skinheads.” One of the girls told the press that “we go with boys who are skinheads and weirdos, but we are definitely not looking for rows because we got our hair cut like this.”
Sunday Independent 19 April 1970.
