Moral Panic in the Industrial Town: Teenage ‘Deviancy’ and Religious Crisis in Central Scotland c. 1968–9

Abstract

Abstract This article argues that Falkirk—a medium-sized industrial town in Central Scotland—became the scene of a localized, yet typical moral panic about teenage deviancy in the late sixties. Located within a broader context of secularization and changes to popular youth cultures, the panic was sparked by a succession of trials. As a result of these, several teenage boys were charged with cannabis possession, and a 19-year-old man was convicted of unlawful intercourse with a 15-year-old girl. Responding to public outrage, local moral entrepreneurs attributed the changing attitudes and behaviours of numbers of young people to a decline in churchgoing and religious piety. With assistance from North American and Canadian evangelicals, they attempted to mobilize a mass religious revival in the style of Billy Graham’s ‘Crusades’. By seeking to reassert the discursive power of Christianity in the face of moral change, their enterprise sought spiritual remedies to complex social and cultural developments. However, by the time evangelicals arrived, the panic had subsided due to the court case providing a measure of closure, and many churchgoers in Falkirk felt uncertainty about whether a greater role for churches in policing morality was desirable. Thereby, this article challenges literature that has sought to downplay secularization in Britain during the sixties and which emphasizes the influence of discursive change within Anglican Christianity on the sexual and moral revolutions of the 1960s. It contests London-centric conceptions of moral change and demonstrates that this was a product of regionalism as well as cosmopolitanism.