I got into a rather heated debate last night in my local pub regarding the 'Swinging London' of the 1960's.
Did this really exist or was it all just manufactured by the marketing men of the time?

It was real enough! To put it in perspective, though, one also needs to bear in mind how stuffy, drab and conformist earlier decades had been.

Just in case people think I'm joking, I'd mention that when it first became fashionable (or at least acceptable within the peer group) for young men to wear long hair and sport what was in effect a 'unisex' hairstyle, many older people reacted with pure rage!

The 1960s had seen a whole series of 'liberal' reforms starting with the decriminalization of attempted suicide in 1960. Later changes saw the decriminalization of homosexual acts between consenting men aged 21+ (subject to a range of restrictions) and easier divorce ...

There were new kinds of popular music - the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and others.

In suburbia, moustaches started a-twitching and many older people succumbed to fits of the shrieking ab-dabs ... Absolutely furious readers' letters appeared in some newspapers about how far women could enjoy sex ...

There was the mini-skirt, the sudden arrival of what were originally marketed as "kinky boots" - till the manufacturers discovered that the name was - even in the new "permissive" atmosphere of the time - so daring, not say shocking, that it was discouraging some women from buying them, and a new name was found for them. (There were, after all, limits ... )

Early in the 1960s the contraceptive pill became available, too.

There was a new hedonism, even shamelessness. Antonioni's film "Blow Up" (1966) encapsulated some of the brashness of it:

http://www.cinematheque.bc.ca/archives/blow.html

The late 1960s (c. 1967 onwards) also saw student protest on a hitherto unimaginable scale. Some of it was directed against U.S. involvement in Vietnam but also against petty-fogging regulations at the British universities.
(In those days it was still quite possible for a students to be expelled from university without any kind of formal proceedings, just on the say-so of the Vice-Chancellor, for such catch-all "offences" as "bringing the good name of the university into disrepute"). At the time, university students in Britain were a very, very small minority of their age-range - the figure rose from about 2% in 1960 to 8% in 1970 - and protests and demonstrations by what was regarded as a very privileged, small elite weren't well received by the public

Before continuing, however, there's an important point. It was above all the young who were the bearers (and consumers) of much of this.

In the 1960s I was first at school, then at university. Like many others, I was ambitious, and I found I had to work very hard indeed. I also felt I owed it to my parents to make a success of things and to keep out of real trouble.

As for politics and the new radicalism, I was never more than half convinced ...

Personally, I felt I was a spectator rather than an active participant in most of this.

______


PS. Many "traditionalists" view the 1960s with horror. See, for example, this link:

http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles/archives/000567.html

Well I was right in the middle of it... very real indeed. I shopped in Berwick St Market, wheeled my daughter through it in her pram, as we lived in Soho. Carnaby Street, Mary Quants, Liberty's , the Eye's Coffee Bar, King's Road, the French pub and all the other haunts remain vivid in my memory.It was a great life, we partied every weekend, our clothes were to be seen to be believed. I wish I had kept the photos.No era was anything like Swinging London in the 60's.

I'd go along with Ren, though I was a young child those were happy memories. As well as Carnaby Street, you had places like Portobello Road and Hampstead full of long-haired hippies in flowered clothes, and posters and psychedelic art in shops, houses and all over. I can't think of any era I was happier in, and London did have a concentration of what was then the latest fashion, and it did last a number of years before the disco culture of John Travolta and the like took over in the early 70s.

Yes, all those places were important and had an "iconic" signficance, too. I tend to think first and foremost of King's Road, Chelsea.

The London of the 1960's certainly seemed to be swinging (as my Mum used to keep telling me), but my memory only goes as far back as the early 1970's.
Unfortunately when I left school in the early 80's, there was mass unemployment (especially for the 16-21 yrs group),
Inner-City riots, IRA bombs, the outbreak of AIDS and spiralling crime.
It's amazing how much can change socially in the space of just a few years.

Yes. The economic situation in the period from about 1976 till about well into the early 80s wasn't at all good.

I still have my grocery order book and , even though it is over forty years ago, the prices seem ridiculously low then.
My whole weekly bill was never more than 3 pounds!

Doesn't it seem like yesterday? Hard to believe all this time has passed.