̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Sixties

Did the Sixties dream die in 1969?

ta385 — Fri, 01 Nov 2019 07:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��Sixties are generally remembered as an era of freedom, innovation and visionary experience. It’s the period, after all, that gave us ̽��ֱ��Beatles, the Summer of Love, the civil rights movement, the Woodstock Festival and the Apollo 11 Moon-Landing. Scores of autobiographies, hagiographies and cultural histories have helped to further embellish this iconic status by presenting the Sixties as the crucible of the Hippie ‘dream’, a loosely defined, youth-led attempt to establish an alternative, harmonious, post-war world. It’s a glorious story, but one that tends to end in tragedy.

At ‘the end of the Sixties’, or so the story goes, the Hippie dream ‘dies’. It’s brought to a crashing halt in the latter half of 1969 thanks to the terrible murders perpetrated by Charles Manson and ‘the Family’, the deaths attributed to the so-called ‘Zodiac Killer’ and the violence at ̽��ֱ��Rolling Stones’ concert at the Altamont Speedway. These events appear to hold up a dark mirror to the positive social and cultural advances of the preceding years.

While this narrative may suit the matrix of popular culture and nostalgia that constitutes the Sixties, it bears little resemblance to the historical actuality of the 1960s. ̽��ֱ��decade did indeed usher in a wave of progressivism and it also had its shadow-side, but such negativity was not limited to its final days. If anything the darkness, so to speak, was present from the start and across the 1960s it hovered particularly close to the decade’s much-vaunted counterculture.

Assassinations, nuclear tensions, globalised conflict, civil unrest, the growth of apocalyptic religious groups: the 1960s were suffused with violence, anxiety and a sense of looming doom. A fraught and difficult decade, the 1960s left a social, cultural and economic legacy of which still exerts a powerful influence on the contemporary world.

̽��ֱ��Sixties, by contrast, continue to exist in a bubble of comforting misremembrance, regularly offering up another anniversary, exhibition or reunion tour. Altamont and the Manson murders were of course very real events with a terrible human cost, but they have both become part of a narrative of disaster that helps to shore up this exceptionalism. What else are we to expect from such a supernova of an era as the Sixties than a spectacular curtain fall?

Imagining the disastrous end of both the hippie ‘dream’ and the wider countercultural project is ultimately a tool of celebration. If only Manson and the Family, hadn't appeared, the unique work of the Sixties would have carried on and given rise to a beautiful future.

For those invested in the period’s nostalgia industry, framing the sixties as a kind of cultural Shangri-La, a lost world that we strive to return to is, surely, better than acknowledging the pedestrian reality of how the 1960s actually ended. That’s the real horror: the slow, inconsequential shift of a dynamic counterculture into adulthood, suburbia and ‘proper’ jobs (the 1970s, in other words). Although misleading, this vision of flower power ending in blood-soaked catastrophe retains its grip on the public imagination. Case in point, the recent release of Quentin Tarantino’s Manson-era epic Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (2019).

̽��ֱ��end of the 1960s did not mark the ‘death’ of the Hippie ‘dream’. As the 1970s took hold, the countercultural impetus merely recalibrated and flowed in different directions. That has not stopped contemporary culture from obsessively revisiting and repeating the events of 1969, as if they signal some kind of terminus, yet to be fully understood.

Meanwhile, the world of the early twenty-first century continues to plough headlong into its own deeply troubling period of postmodern politics, creepingly malevolent soft power and weaponised ‘fake news’. When we live in such interesting times, why dwell on the illusions and disillusions of the 1960s and its double?

Fifty years ago protests took place across reasonably well-defined battle lines against clearly identifiable targets. Now, in today’s sphere of edited reality and policies that change as fast as they can be tweeted it's difficult to pinpoint where the source of power is, let alone how to protest against it. To navigate this type of situation it's important to understand the mechanics at play – how representations are manipulated and how agendas are embedded in seemingly innocuous narratives. This is what the 1960s can teach us.

By interrogating and unpacking the link between the decade and the era, the 1960s and the Sixties, we can observe, in process, the forces that transform recent history into modern myth. It's also useful to be shocked by how much things have changed. If you are curious, look into the details of the Manson case and think about what it meant in 1969 to ‘follow’ someone. What you find might make you spend a little less time on Twitter.

̽��ֱ��year 1969 is held up as the end of an era, but fifty years on are we still buying into a dangerous myth? Counterculture expert James Riley delves into the darkness of the Sixties to sort fact from psychedelic fiction.

̽��ֱ��1960s were suffused with violence, anxiety and a sense of looming doom

James Riley

Dr James Riley

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Dr James Riley is Fellow and College Lecturer in English at Girton College. His book, ̽��ֱ��Bad Trip: Dark Omens, New Worlds and the End of the Sixties was published by Icon Books in 2019.

James will be speaking at Heffers Bookshop in Cambridge on 6th November 2019.

This is an extended version of an article published in Horizons issue 39.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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̽��ֱ��Creative Campus

sjr81 — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 10:05:32 +0000

This was 1960s Britain, when radical students dramatically tipped the power balance of education. Their movement: bold, polemical and revolutionary, transformed the university system conclusively.

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge historian Dr David Fowler is an academic with special interest in youth movements and student protest of the 1960s and ’70s.

He will be discussing student sit-ins, lock-outs and their impact in a talk entitled ̽��ֱ��Creative Campus on Thursday 20 October, 5.30-6.30pm, at Mill Lane Lecture Rooms as part of Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Festival of Ideas.

̽��ֱ��Festival of Ideas is the UK’s only arts, humanities, and social science festival and this year offers over 160 free events to participants of all ages between October 19-30.

Dr Fowler, who teaches in the interdisciplinary Faculty of Human, Social and Political Science, has formerly argued that “ ̽��ֱ��Beatles were capitalists”, stating that a clear distinction should be made between ‘pop culture’ which is media driven, and ‘youth culture’ which he describes as organically driven.

Despite his argument sparking an indignant backlash of musical patriotism, it cannot be denied that a dark chasm existed between the rock ‘n’ roll life of ̽��ֱ��Beatles and the Rolling Stones and their fainting teenage fans.

In his new book, ̽��ֱ��Creative Campus: Student Protest and the Remaking of British Culture in the Global 1960s, Fowler seeks to re-define the interpretation of ‘Youth Culture’ during the 1960s and 1970s.

Not largely documented in historical literature, Fowler uses sources uncovered at British universities such as Cambridge, Oxford, Essex, York and Queen’s Belfast in Northern Ireland. His book is an analysis of the motivations, methods and consequences of both prominent and underground student movements. ̽��ֱ��research throws light on a fascinating topic. Ideas disseminated by students during this period completely transformed the education system, posing challenging questions examining the interaction between youth and culture. These questions still hold huge importance and relevance today, as students are back in the spotlight of the media and universities come under further intense scrutiny.

Post-war Britain saw a huge increase in the number of young people going to university, doubling during the 1960s alone. This new cohort included more women, working-class and lower middle-class students than ever before, becoming the active ingredient in this new recipe for change. ‘Swinging London’ had put on its dancing shoes, allowing liberation in the workplace, personal relationships and British culture.

Fowler said: “ ̽��ֱ��1960s was a period of joy, music and optimism. By the early 1970s, there was a huge change in the economic and educational climate, culminating in the Oxford and Cambridge protests which erupted in 1972-4. Were the students reacting to political events? Or were they forming a cultural movement bigger than their own focus?”

This generation of university students took on the challenge of a complete re-invention of the education system and, according to Fowler, had “clear, concrete, tangible educational goals”. Feeling increasingly constrained by stuffy traditional subjects in a rapidly evolving world, students were keen to explore cutting-edge areas of research.

They championed the study of subjects such as sociology, psychology and development studies, among many others. He added: “There was huge demand for a different approach – it really was history from below. Students wanted to study the politics of Latin America, radical political movements and the lives and thought of revolutionary leaders such as Che Guevara, alongside the Henrician Reformation. This imaginative, interdisciplinary engagement was completely unheard of, especially in Oxford and Cambridge.”

̽��ֱ��pressure for a new curriculum was coupled with demands for a new type of university to house it: the campus. Visionary students dreamed of creating a new physical and intellectual community to cater for their progressive philosophy. A campus university, built on rural greenfield sites outside towns such as York, Warwick, Sussex and Leicester, appealed to their ideas of an educational and enriching sanctuary. Everything that a modern student may desire was available on campus, from everyday amenities to birth control to chaplaincy. Fowler notes that iconic architectural additions, such as the man-made lake on York ̽��ֱ�� campus, are clear indications of the students’ grandiose plans for a utopian learning experience.

̽��ֱ��Free ̽��ֱ�� Movement, started by students at King’s College Cambridge, was at the forefront of cultural change. Consisting of young students from all socio-economic backgrounds, its members included Guardian journalist Simon Hoggart, and historians Simon Schama, David Cressy and the late Roy Porter.

“King’s College especially was a laboratory for creating a new culture which included both students and workers. It was not socialist, but anti-establishment, taking the monopoly of culture away from the high-brow, middle-aged, metropolitan establishment,” Fowler explained.

̽��ֱ��movement was apolitical and egalitarian, and its aims were to cultivate a national environment of mutual learning between teachers and pupils. ̽��ֱ��first classes were held at the ‘Arts Lab’ on Mill Road, where teaching consisted of discussions, seminars, talks and film showings with members of the public invited to participate. Fowler claims that “Despite being run by an intellectual elite, the movement itself was far from elitist”; it represented a fervent attempt to overcome the problems of ‘Town and Gown’ which had metaphorically separated residents and students of Cambridge for centuries.

Most importantly, Fowler underlines that the students were an “iconoclastic generation”. Articulate and outspoken, they accompanied their struggle with the publishing of books and newspapers, and regular appearances in the media. ̽��ֱ��universities became centres to nurture this ambitious social and political change with peaceful and intelligent action. With this in mind, it is not surprising that Fowler remains unsympathetic to the November 2010 student protests; the crimes committed by Charlie Gilmour and Edward Wollard only demonstrate a lack of creativity, imagination and true egalitarian objective when compared with the student movement of the 1960s.

Fowler worries that contemporary student radicalism lacks real ideological depth. He points to the closure of Grammar schools under the Labour government in the late-1970s (he attended one of the last surviving state grammar schools, Nunthorpe, in York), which he argues significantly reduced the number of working-class and lower middle-class students.

He added: “Many working class students became revolutionary spirits and iconoclasts of cultural movements of the 1960s. ̽��ֱ��most creative of these students were Grammar school educated, and affected social and political movements outside of the education sector. Today, universities shamefully lack this diversity in the student body, which can only serve as a lesson to education policy makers.”

Dr David Fowler will be speaking on Thursday 20 October, 5.30-6.30pm at Mill Lane Lecture Rooms. Please visit /festivalofideas or phone 01223 766766.

Students ripped up their university exam papers in protest against established authority and in rejection of formal qualifications; a progressive sociologist assigned his students the storming of a public office as field-work; avant-garde writers, street theatre and poets moulded a bohemian sub-culture was dramatically reshaping university life.

̽��ֱ��1960s was a period of joy, music and optimism. By the early 1970s, there was a huge change in the economic and educational climate.

David Fowler

Student protests, London, 2010, via chrisjohnbeckett on Flickr

Dr Fowler believes that contemporary student protests, such as the one in London last year, are a pale imitation of their 1960s counterparts

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