Students are invited to look afresh at the 1960s and think about whether popular memories, tinged with genuine or invented nostalgia, are justified or not. Was it, as is often suggested, a decade of transition, of major cultural, political and social change, or should one not with hindsight revise that view? Was it a period of carefree rebellious youth indulging more or less innocently in pop music and mind-expanding drugs, or a descent into a trendy form of moral turpitude? Was it a lost opportunity to achieve a genuine revolution in society? Was it a period of unmitigated economic decline, from which Britain never really recovered, the last years of post-war prosperity? Was it a period of unprecedented artistic and cultural creativity, or little more than superficial effervescence? Was it a time when education broke free of the rigidities of the 50s to focus on the aspirations of children and encourage the development of free, balanced individuals with a fair place in society, or was it a disastrous period of low standards, weakened authority and lax morals?
Particular attention will be paid to the following:
The problematic is succinctly laid out in the first page or two of Arthur Marwick's book, The Sixties (see bibliography).
A small selection of texts for discussion in seminars can be displayed and downloaded as 2 pdf files, page 1, and pages 2 to 17
Data from a survey published in the New Statesman in 1969 (pdf)
to reach me by Wednesday 25 April at the latest (e-mail or secrétariat d'anglais)
Discuss the following quotation by Roy Hattersely:
"The 1960s were the liberal hour of modern British politics - but the liberating zeal was amost all directed towards middle-class causes.". HATTERSLEY, Roy. Fifty Years On: A Prejudiced History of Britain since the Second World War. London: Abacus, 1997, p. 174
1. (15/02/01) Background
2. (28/02/01) Theatre and the Arts (Tony Dunn, University of Portsmouth)
3. (07/03/01) Censorship, satire and sleaze: TW3, Private Eye, Lady Chatterley, Rachman, Profumo
4. (14/03/01) The economy (part I, 1964-1966): The problem: Balance of Payments and Sterling. The solution: the Plan ...
5. (21/03/01) Foreign and defence policy - withdrawal from Empire. Decolonisation, Rhodesia and UDI
6. (28/03/01) Education and a fairer society; The “raft of liberal legislation” (part I)
7. (04/04/01) The “raft of liberal legislation” (part II); Race relations, sex discrimination, women’s lib
8. (18/04/01) The economy (part II): Sterling crises and devaluation (1966-1970), trade union reform; foreign and defence policy - East of Eden, Vietnam, Biafra, Europe
9. (02/05/01) Cultural change, music and fashion
1. 27/02 discussion: periodisation, changing perceptions (see opinion poll evidence)
2. 13/03 commentary text 1: the Lady Chatterley trial. Students might find the following link useful: www.booksunlimited.co.uk
3. 20/03 commentary text 2: Britain and the EEC
4. 27/03 commentary text 7: Wilson and the choice between the Edwardian age and the jet age
5. 03/04 commentary text 17: The Influence of Education: Limitations on Equal Opportunity
6. 17/04 Text Callaghan and permissiveness. From "For Callaghan the student demos were another unwelcome aspect of the mood of the times" to "Callaghan's public credit that he had done so.", Kenneth O. MORGAN. Callaghan, a Life. OUP, 1997. p. 318-322
7. 24/04 Extract from the debate on Foreign Affairs: the Labour government’s position with regard to the Vietnam War. Web, Word, PDF
8. group A Wednesday 9 May (to be confirmed), group B Wednesday 16 May, 10.00-11.00, amphi 2 (text to be distributed)
9. 15/05 (text to be distributed)
Election manifestos for the Conservative, Labour and Liberal parties (Politicos web site)
MORGAN, Kenneth O. The People's Peace. Oxford University Press (any of the three editions)
MARWICK, Arthur. British Society since 1945. Penguin, various editions. Read Part Two, "Roads to Freedom, 1958-1973". Ch. 7 "Affluence, Appliances and Work", Ch. 8 "Critiques, Boutiques and Pop", Ch 9 "The End of Victorianism", Ch 10 "Social Structure and Social Strains", ch 11 "False Optimism".
MARWICK, Arthur. The Sixties. OUP, 1998. (especially the Introduction)
PARSONS, Michael (ed). Looking Back: the Wilson Years 1964-1970. PUP, 1999
SKED, Alan & Chris COOK. Post-War Britain: a political history. Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1979 (and subsequent editions)
see also the books presented on the Wilson Years page
June 2000
Discuss the following edited extract from a talk by Ben Pimlott, Harold Wilson’s biographer (Institut du Monde Anglophone, Paris, 1999):
"The 1960s is arguably the episode of greatest transition and change in the post-war period. It was a period of coming to terms with a new prosperity and it was a period of rapid cultural and social change. It was a period of very important humanitarian reforms. I think that what one sees in this period is in fact a combination of social and moral reform and loosening up and libertarianism and so on — most of which was I think progressive —, and on the other the huge area of economic failure, with the high and unrealistic hopes that were raised in the 1950s and the early 1960s about the possibility of planning the economy. I think that the final point, which is perhaps related, was a sort of coming to terms with decline. You could say that that coming to terms with decline was a product of failure. But it was the period during which Britain finally abandoned East of Suez, it was the period when Britain abandoned the Commonwealth as a serious economic option, it was the period in which the notion of us as some kind of superpower was finally abandoned."
September 2000
Discuss the following quotation with respect to the 1960s in Great Britain:
“ People showed extraordinary energy, imagination and critical awareness directed at their own society. A vital factor was the existence, and expansion, of the liberal and progressive element within the structures of society … ”
adapted from Arthur Marwick. The Sixties. OUP, 1998, p. 806
The 1960s began 15 years after the end of the Second World War, 9 years after the end of the post-war Labour government which introduced a comprehensive system of social security, linked with full employment (apparently grounded in Keynesian economic ideas of demand management, with the State accepting a substantial role in people’s lives. The Welfare State was supposed to eliminate poverty.
1939 WW2
1940 Coalition government
1942 Beveridge report
1945 Labour victory at general election, end of war, A-bomb used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Domestic success: welfare state etc
Cold war
Korea 1950-1953
1955 Independent Television
Suez 1956
The Treaty of Rome 1957
Harold Macmillan PM 1957 - 1963
Angry Young Men
Richard Hoggart and The Uses of Literacy
Ending of national service 1960
Lady Chatterley’s Lover trial Oct 1960
Immigration restricted 1962
Pill in UK 1962
Nassau agreement (Polaris etc) December 1962
“Sex begins in 1963” (the English poet Philip Larkin)
Profumo 1963
Beatles 1963-1970
Wilson 1964-1970
BBC2 1964
Mary Quant’s miniskirt 1965
Churchill’s funeral 1965
Abolition death penalty (begins 1965)
UDI 1965
World Cup 1966
Devaluation 1967
BBC Radio reorganised 1967
Abortion, homosexuality Acts 1967
Rolling Stones sentenced for possession of cannabis (1967)
Torrey Canyon 1967 (ecology etc)
Student unrest in London, troubles in Northern Ireland 1968
2001 A Space Odyssey (1968) Stanley Kubrick
(The Prisoner)
Age of majority reduced to 18 (1969)
Isle of Wight pop festival 1969
Concorde’s first flight 1969
(Women’s Lib) (Germaine Greer’s Female Eunuch, etc)
In a secret agreement 1960 Eisenhower had promised Macmillan Britain would get Skybolt to replace V-bombers as Britain’s delivery system for nuclear weapons. However, the Skybolt programme began to run into difficulties. In 1962 in Paris, Robert McNamara, Defense Secretary, announced the programme was being scrapped. Britain, he said, would get Polaris, but only part of Atlantic Multilateral Force (i.e. that would have been the end of Britain’s independent nuclear stance). Macmillan met Kennedy and was able to obtain an agreement according to which the US would sell Polaris to Britain, thus prolonging Britain's position as a (relatively) independent nuclear power
Kennedy elected Nov 1960 (Democrat)
Berlin wall erected (August 1961)
Cuba missile crisis (October 1961)
Dean Acheson Dec 1962 in a speech delivered at West Point, claimed that “Britain has lost an empire and not yet found a role”
JFK assassinated (Nov 63) - LBJ becomes President
Vatican II (1963)
Vietnam war (1965-1973)
Race Riots in the US (Watts etc)
Cultural Revolution in China (1966-1969)
Biafra (1967-1970)
Six Days War (1967)
First heart transplant 1967
Assassination Martin Luther King (1968)
Prague Spring (1968)
May 1968 in Paris
November 1968 Richard Nixon elected (Republican)
First man on the moon July 1969
"The wind of change is blowing through this continent, and, whether we like it or not, the growth of [African] national consciousness is a political fact" speech at Cape Town, 3 February 1960. Harold Macmillan 1894-1986 Prime Minister 1957-63
"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man" inaugural address, 20 January 1961. John F Kennedy 1917-1963 35th President of the US 1962-63
"Ich bin ein Berliner" speech in West Berlin, 26 June 1963. JFK
"There was only one catch and that was Catch 22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind . . . Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to" Catch 22, 1962. Joseph Heller 1923-1999 American novelist
"We're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age" (referring to the North Vietnamese). Curtis E LeMay 1906-90 American air force general
"We're more popular than Jesus now" 4 March 1966. John Lennon 1940-80 Member of the Beatles
"Some people are on the pitch, they think it's all over. [Geoff Hurst scores] It is now." 1966 World Cup Final England v West Germany, Wembley. Kenneth Wolstenholme Football commentator
Enoch Powell 1912-98 Conservative politician "Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependents, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre. As I look ahead I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood'" speech at Birmingham on the consequences of mass immigration, 20 April 1968
"A week is a long time in politics" probably first said at the time of the 1964 sterling crisis. Harold Wilson (1916-1995)
"Let us be frank about it, most of our people have never had it so good." Harold Macmillan, Conservative party rally at Bedford 21 July 1957
"The wind of change is blowing through this continent, and whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact". Harold Macmillan, Address to Joint Assembly of Union Parliament, Cape Town, 3 February 1960
On Europe: "It does mean, if this is the idea, the end of Britain as an independent European state … it means the end of a thousand years of history." Hugh Gaitskell, Labour Party Conference, Brighton, 3 October 1962
"In all our plans for the future we're redefining and we're restating our socialism in terms of the scientific revolution. But that revolution cannot become a reality unless we are prepared to make far-reaching changes in economic and social attitudes which permeate our whole system of society. The Britain that is going to be forged in the white heat of this revolution will be no place for restrictive practices or for outdated methods on either side of industry." Harold Wilson, Labour Party Conference Scarborough, 1 October 1963
Page created by Michael Parsons, last updated