Only social workers, tailors, barbers and intellectuals have a good word for teddyboys, and they themselves use the word pejoratively. Cinemas, milk bars, public houses and cafes are being closed to them, mothers try to stop their daughters going out with them, men ridicule the dress as effeminate. In areas where the fashion is nearly universal fine lines of distinction are drawn; the New Cross Palais, for instance, bars high double-breasted waistcoats but not low ones.
The Edwardians currently face more discrimination than any race-group in this country. Much of it is unfair. The majority of teddyboys are not delinquents, even in a delinquency-producing neighbourhood, probation officers say. Not all are gang-members; nor are most gangs criminal. The adolescent gang-forming habit is in any case a permanent feature of our society and should be considered separately from Edwardanism.
Once a boy receives his first wage-packet, he expects no longer to help Mum with the washing-up or go to the pictures with Dad; by custom as well as by inclination he is thrust into the society of his contemporaries.
The wearing of Edwardian clothes has visibly re-emphasised the separateness of adolescents and so increased their tendency to quarrel with the rest of society. But there is more to it than that.
A boy adjusts his personality to his clothes. The Edwardian personality which has developed with these high white collars is a startling one in a working-class environment. In cafes, public houses or milk bars which teddyboys favour there is no singing on a Saturday night. Girls sit together waiting to be picked up by somebody but terribly correct about it all, The picking-up begins with long-distance badinage, both sides remaining seated.
