Youth Milk Bar Cowboys with their motorbikes in Queen Street, Auckland, in the 1950's. Photo / File
Youth Milk Bar Cowboys with their motorbikes in Queen Street, Auckland, in the 1950's. Photo / File
OPINION:
While much of the country is thinking about the musical chairs at the top of the government, I’ve been thinking crime. Not the spike in ram-raids that has consumed the news this last year, but instead I’ll look at a different wave of crime that utterly consumed the countryin the 1950s; and importantly what it can teach us as we enter an election year, which is all of a sudden reinvigorated by the rise of Police Minster Chris Hipkins.
During the 1950s, the term “teenager” took on widespread use. Technological labour-saving devices in homes had freed young people up from domestic chores, they could command high wages in a tight labour market, and many were purchasing cars and motorcycles, giving them a trifecta of time, money and freedom. These things, all together, added up to something which previous generations had never known.
A number found trouble. Between 1950 and 1960 charges brought before the Children’s Court leapt from 3662 to 10,365. Make no bones about it, there were real issues.
Commentators and MPs linked the problem to a boisterous youth subculture called the “bodgies”. Following British trends (where they were called “teddy boys”), bodgies’ attire included long coats and brightly coloured shirts, slim ties and garish socks. Their striking style was a contrast to the drab sartorial trends of the 1950s in New Zealand. Their female equivalents, the “widgies”, were similarly flashy, and wore tight slacks, a skirt with a split at the back, coloured blouses, patterned scarves and colourful sweaters. Today’s oversized hoodies seem a bit boring by comparison.
The term bodgie was used genetically for juvenile delinquency, it often had folded into it another youth subculture; the milk bar cowboys, who donned leather jackets and rode motorcycles.
Youth crime became the problem du jour, not unlike it is now. Much of this surrounded youths in vehicles, which were not just used for transport but also thrills and entertainment. As one report from the time noted, drag racing, either against the clock or against an opponent, was “a popular pastime for certain moto-cycle or car gangs, when they could get away with it”.
The crime and disorder were covered extensively and constantly in the media. And this came to a head in 1954, with a series of incidents including a sex scandal and a grisly murder.
Pauline Parker (left) and Juliet Hulme on way to preliminary court hearing 1954. Photo / Christchurch Star Photo
In 1954 a police investigation into a group known as Elbe’s Milk Bar Gang revealed what one newspaper described as a “shocking degree of immoral conduct among adolescence in the Hutt Valley”. A month earlier, armed with a brick in a stocking, 16-year-old Pauline Parker and 15-year-old Juliet Hulme had taken turns caving in the head of Pauline’s mother in a quiet Christchurch park.
With an eye on a looming election, the government set up an inquiry into the troubles of the country’s young people, and the report that followed blamed all manner of things including a lack of Christian guidance, a decline in family life through working mothers, “unsettlement” following two world wars, increased use of contraceptives, divorce, and new psychological ideas undermining traditional morality.
The report was sent to every household in New Zealand, something never done previously or since.
But the particular focus picked up on by politicians from the report was the influence of pop culture on the country’s youth. Three bills were hastily drafted and passed before the November 1954 election, the most significant of which was the Indecent Publications Amendment Act, which sought to restrict materials deemed to be corrupting the country.
The media and academics railed against the haste with which the measures were introduced and passed, but boy oh boy was the new law enthusiastically embraced by officials.
Hundreds of books and comics were banned from New Zealand, including the classic Nabokov novel Lolita. Even the Lone Ranger wasn’t immune: he was knocked off because he wore a mask at night without lawful cause, a crime in New Zealand.
This was part of a broader censorship drive in which the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation banned swaths of rock ‘n’ roll hits including Little Richard’s 1955 hit Tutti Frutti. Film, too, was in the government’s sights with the Marlon Brando classic Wild One, released in 1954, not making the cut because of the impact they felt it would have on rebellious teens.
While censorship will always have its debates and necessities, the strict censorship drive of the 1950s was a folly and a distraction, and the laws and regulations were changed to correct it. It does, however, offer an example of how politics and vote-chasing can take over in difficult times, and offers one of many examples whereby the cure can be worse than the cause if we allow emotion to get the better of us during difficult times.
