Actress Vanessa Redgrave addressing anti-Vietnam War protestors in Trafalgar Square on 17 March 1968
The Swinging Sixties was a youth-driven cultural revolution that took place in the United Kingdom from around 1964 to 1970 as part of the global counterculture movement of the 1960s. Centered around "Swinging London", the Swinging Sixties was, according to Jonathan Green, "Years of revolt, years of carefree, sinless excess, of drugs, music, revolution...of the ever-exciting tomorrow." It saw the widespread popularity of the Beatles and other "British Invasion" bands, the miniskirt, models such as Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton, the mod subculture, increased political activism, and the Sexual Revolution. Unlike the American counterculture movement, the Swinging Sixties was less violent in Britain and was accompanied by peaceful parliamentary reforms, such as the abolition of capital punishment, the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1967, and the relaxation of divorce laws. The era ended with the breakup of The Beatles in 1970 and the Oz trial in 1971, but Britain remained an innovative center of pop music and fashion.
Background[]
Lady Chatterley's Lover
There were stirrings of a new spirit in Britain from the mid-1950s. Established conventions of public decency and respect for authority were increasingly challenged. In 1956, the success of John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger - a tirade against the hypocrisy of British society - led to the invention of the label "Angry Young Men" for writers critical of the established order. In the same year, the arrival of American rock 'n' roll in Britain occasioned some un-British riotous misbehavior by young fans. In 1960, censorship was challenged by the publication of an unexpurgated Penguin edition of D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. The book was cleared of obscenity in a landmark trial.
History[]
The defining characteristic of Britain in the 1960s was the blend of a welfare state with a consumer society, of "cradle-tograve" social security and full employment with enterprise and social mobility. Society was more egalitarian than it had been in the past and people were more prosperous than they had ever been. The spread of home and car ownership was accompanied by consumer spending, evident in the growing popularity of package holidays to Europe. The country's popular leisure activities centered around the home: television, gardening, and do-it-yourself home improvement. Despite growing prosperity, Britain did not become complacent. Instead, a modest but growing affluence was accompanied by innovation in culture and lifestyles. The decline in respect for authority was one of the most obvious changes in the British mentality. In the 1950s, the mass media banned jokes about religion or the monarchy, and government ministers never faced hostile interviews or inquiries into their private lives. This was abandoned in the satire boom of the early 1960s. The theatrical review Beyond the Fringe, the magazine Private Eye, and the TV programme That Was the Week That Was breached traditional restraints - for example, by having an actor caricature the Prime Minister.
In 1963, the burgeoning culture of disrespect was gifted a first-rate political scandal, revolving around War Secretary John Profumo's involvement with Christine Keeler. The unravelling of this complex affair brought explicit sexual references to news broadcasts and considerable disrepute to the ruling classes. The defeat of the much-ridiculed Conservatives in a general election in 1964 brought no relief to politicians, for the Labour government of Harold Wilson was subjected to a torrent of ridicule through its six years in office.
Popular culture[]
Police holding back Beatles fands at Buckingham Palace, October 1965
Britain's youth and pop culture displayed the same spirit of irreverence that animated political satire. Youth was a burgeoning market, not because most young people had a lot of money, but because they were prepared tos pend all the money they had on records and clothes. Bright young working-class men and women, beneficiaries of new educational opportunities in the postwar grammar schools and art colleges found openings for ambition in pop music, acting, fashion, or photography. However, the relevance of class was limited - Mick Jagger and John Lennon were from middle-class backgrounds, and many prime movers of pop culture were public-school educated. The mass hysteria of Beatlemania in 1963 was the point at which the world began to picture a different Britain. The Beatles took the United States by storm the following year, opening the way for a series of other creative British bands.
Swinging London[]
The film Blow-Up, directed Michelangelo Antonioni in London in 1966, is a typical foreigner's view of Britain at the time, and focuses on fashion photography, casual sex, and recreational drugs
In 1966, Time magazine created the label "Swinging London" and the fashion shops of Carnaby Street became a tourist attraction. Fashion designed Mary Quant's mini-skirt became an icon of the decade. In many British households the generation gap between the attitudes and tastes of children and their parents was a daily reality. Schools resisted the fashions for long hair for boys and short skirts for girls.
The Pill became widely available in the later 1960s, but there is little evidence of a sexual revolution. Recreational drugs circulated - pills early in the decade, pot later - but alcohol remained the most widely favored intoxicant. The drug-fuelled world of free love and psychedelic style that centered around London "underground" magazines and music clubs of the late 1960s was very much a minority scene.
Protests and legislation[]
As in other countries, Britain underwent a large-scale expansion of university education in the 1960s. British students singularly failed, however, to form the revolutionary force seen in Europe and the United States. An anti-Vietnam War demonstration in London, in March 1968, was the sole example of violent protest. Real liberalization came through due parliamentary process. The House of Commons voted to abolish capital punishment in 1965, homosexual acts between consulting adults were decriminalized in 1967, abortion was legalized, and by the end of the decade, the divorce laws had been liberalized. Also important were the first Race Relations Acts, which banned all forms of discrimination against Britain's growing immigrant population.
These reforms were hotly contested by groups with more conservative attitudes. Groups such as Mary Whitehouse's National Viewers' and Listeners' Association campaigned against the relaxation of censorship and general moral decadence. In 1968, Conservative MP Enoch Powell articulated white fears about immigration in an infamous speech forseeing "rivers of blood" in Britain's streets.
Even though this period brought bitter social conflict to much of Europe and the United States, a general benevolence reigned in Britain - typified by the supprot expressed by The Times, a newspaper of the Establishment, for members of The Rolling Stones arrested on drugs charges in 1967. Essentially secure, Britain accepted youthful rebellion for what it mostly was - fun.
Aftermath[]
In a general election held in June 1970, the Labour government suffered a shock defeat to Edward Heath's Conservatives. This did not, however, mark any sharp change of direction in society or culture. The end of the 1960s cultural movement could be symbolized of the breakup of The Beatles in 1970, or by the trial of radical journalists of the "underground" magazine Oz for obscenity in 1971. Britain continued to earn its reputation as an innovative center of pop music and fashion. Political policies were not reversed. For example, the transition from grammar and secondary modern schools to comprehensives initiated by the Labour government accelerated under Conservative Education Secretary Margaret Thatcher.
However, a relatively liberal Conservative government faced a sharp rise in political radicalism. As well as suffering the overflow from violence in Northern Ireland, Britain had its own urban terrorist group in the Angry Brigade, which carried out a score of bombings from 1970 to 1972. Various revolutionary Marxist groups, barely present in British universities in 1968, attracted substantial support among students in the 1970s. The women's movement, gay liberation, and ecology movement also flourished after 1970 from limited beginnings in the previous decade.