Every contribution to our symposium can be accessed directly by clicking on the name of the individual author below. You can also discuss issues raised by the symposium, and by our latest issue, on?First Drafts, Prospect's editorial blog.
Bryan Appleyard,Arthur Aughey,Cheryll Barron,Peter Bazalgette,Vernon Bogdanor,Rudi Bogni,Joe Boyd,Samuel Brittan,Lesley Chamberlain,Stephen Chan,Robert Cooper,Emma Crichton-Miller,René Cuperus,William Davies,Meghnad Desai,Anthony Dworkin,Geoff Dyer,David Edgerton,Duncan Fallowell,Timothy Garton Ash,Anthony Giddens,Robert Gore-Langton,David G Green,Johann Hari,David Herman,Michael Ignatieff,Pico Iyer,Josef Joffe,Alan Johnson,Eric Kaufmann,Tim King,Denis MacShane,Jean McCrindle,Edward Mortimer,Onora O'Neill,PJ O'Rourke,Paul Ormerod,Mark Pagel,Ray Pahl,Jonathan Power, Gideon Rachman,Jonathan Rée,Bridget Rosewell,Bob Rowthorn,Jacques Rupnik,Dominic Sandbrook,Roger Scruton,Jean Seaton,Anne-Marie Slaughter,Erik Tarloff,Tzvetan Todorov,Emily Young,Slavoj Zizek.
Parisian theatre
by Edward Mortimer
In the spring of 1968, my first year as assistant Paris correspondent for the Times, two front-page stories plopped straight into my lap: the Vietnam peace talks and, happening at the very same time in the same city, "les événements de mai."
Hordes of American correspondents descended on Paris for the talks, only to find there was nothing to report. I suggested to some of them a detour to the quartier latin, where pitched battles were being fought. "Yeah, the students," they said. "A nice story, but New York's not interested." Still, three weeks later many of them were back. French workers had emulated the students, bringing the country to a standstill and causing General de Gaulle to do a disappearing act.
De Gaulle had in fact gone to check on the loyalty of French army units in Germany, but no one knew that at the time and the most delicious speculations were possible. A vast march of (mainly) communist trade unionists paraded through Paris, right past the untenanted Elysée, and I wondered why they didn't go in and take over. Then de Gaulle suddenly reappeared and addressed the nation over the radio—a choice dictated by the fact that the television was on strike, but which nonetheless conveyed an echo of his wartime broadcasts from London. Amplifying that echo, he announced that he was naming the regional prefects "commissaires de la république," a title of no significance whatever but one which had been used during the 1944 liberation. And then he declared: "I hereby dissolve, today, the national assembly"—meaning there would be new elections, which was in fact the main demand of the opposition, but now sounded like some kind of Gaullist coup. François Mitterrand, who was handed the microphone immediately afterwards with no time at all for reflection, fell straight into the trap. Instead of congratulating de Gaulle on allowing the people the last word, he proclaimed in portentous tones, "the voice we have just heard is that of the 18 brumaire, of the 2 décembre, of the 16 mai…": a list of counterrevolutionary dates that probably meant nothing to most of his audience. Meanwhile, a vast and well prepared Gaullist demonstration marched down the Champs-Elysées, and petrol miraculously reappeared at the pumps, allowing people to head for the seaside for the Whit weekend. The episode culminated in a big Gaullist electoral victory at the end of June.
At the time, like almost everyone else, I was full of sympathy for the students and horrified by the "fascist" baton charges of the riot police. Only much later, when I read the memoirs of the man in command of those police, did I realise how careful both he and de Gaulle had been to minimise the use of force. But my true epiphany came in 1971, at a performance of Ariane Mnouchkine's 1789—a play which sought to portray the original French revolution with the audience cast in the role of the crowd. A 16 year old standing next to me joined with obvious conviction in a mass chant of "Louis XVI, salaud, le peuple aura ta peau." And then it suddenly came to me: this was what the whole of France had been doing in May '68—re-enacting a great 19th-century revolutionary journée, complete with barricades. It was one of the largest and most brilliantly executed pieces of theatre ever staged, a Stanislavskian tour de force, with the actors wholly convinced by their own performance.
Edward Mortimer is senior vice-president of the Salzburg Seminar
The drugs
by PJ O'Rourke
I thought, "Bad acid!"
I immediately knew—from extensive practice of introducing wrong chemicals into my brain—that wrong chemicals were in my brain. I went to a doctor. We fiddled around with drugs, just like I always used to, except legally. We found something that worked. I have the right chemicals in my brain. And I feel great.
My square friend, on the other hand, he… Well, to tell the truth he did exactly the same thing I did. He's got the right chemicals in his brain too, and he feels great. But there's a key difference between sandals-and-pot era me and white-bucks-and-beer era him. He keeps asking his doctor when he can get off his meds. I keep asking if I can get more.
PJ O'Rourke is an author and humourist
Eastern mysticism
by Cheryll Barron
Cheryll Barron writes frequently about south Asian affairs
Realists versus rejectionists
by David G Green
Before 1968, the progressive left was dominated by people who wanted to improve social conditions. Afterwards it was dominated by activists who wanted to overturn society. Reformism was not just second best but a betrayal—relieving human suffering made people less likely to demand revolution.
If you were a community activist and Labour party member in Newcastle in the early 1970s, the "spirit of '68" was a powerful force. The central doctrine was rejection. For me, two episodes embody the ethos of those times. In about 1971 I saw a hit-and-run car accident. A car came around a corner too fast at night, the driver failed to see a pedestrian, hit him, paused for a second and then drove off. I happened to see it and took down the car number and gave it to the police. Before the case was due to be heard by magistrates I came under pressure from friends—a mixture of people from the Labour party and various Marxist groups—not to give evidence in court because to do so was to support the system. Courts were a façade for the corrupt power of big business. (I thought knocking people over and driving off without helping them was wrong, gave evidence, and lost a few friends.)
Rejectionism also meant animosity to any "bureaucracy," including organised community action. I was the secretary of an action group in the Elswick area, pressing the council on slum clearance, play facilities and other local issues. A public meeting was called by a few revolutionaries who packed it with outsiders and took over the building we used as an advice centre. During their brief reign they destroyed the files containing correspondence with the council, MPs, the police and government departments. They did so to reject bourgeois bureaucracy. Years of campaigning were thus undermined by people who regarded themselves as morally superior. To point out that it was useful to keep correspondence with the council revealed bourgeois tendencies. I became a "careerist" Labour councillor and spent five years trying to improve social conditions bit by bit.
Romantic recollections of the spirit of '68 are appearing in print, but for me it symbolises a time when self-centred people with no personal scruples and no concern for the common good assumed a posture of moral superiority—and got away with it for a decade or so.
David G Green is director of Civitas
Challenging lessons
by Stephen Chan
What 1968 taught me was that the establishment could be challenged—but also that the establishment was very good at absorbing challenge and taking on the cultural characteristics of change without actually changing. 1968 taught me therefore about structural and systemic deceit.
Stephen Chan is professor of international relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies
Bragging rights
by Mark Pagel
The most lasting legacy of the 1960s? That we can brag to our children that they have done nothing as interesting as we did.
Mark Pagel is an evolutionary scientist
Great reportage, bad votes
by Gideon Rachman
Best of the 1960s: one of the greatest pieces of political journalism ever, Mailer's Miami and the Siege of Chicago. Worst: Either Nixon as president or the crushing of freedom in eastern Europe for another 21 years.
Gideon Rachman is the FT's chief foreign affairs columnist
Optimism and experience
by Bridget Rosewell
It's the optimism that change was both possible and good that is the simultaneously the strongest and the worst legacy. I was living amongst the Colonel Blimps and the shock to complacency was so energising at the time. Now I look back and know that much of that youthful enthusiasm was misdirected and damaging. At least, however, I know this. Some people never learnt this lesson.
Bridget Rosewell is an economist
Music and little else
by Bob Rowthorn
Apart from pop music, my balance sheet for the 1960s does not contain many positive items. In the political sphere, 1968 was a disaster. The crushing of "socialism with a human face" in Czechoslovakia by Soviet tanks destroyed any hope that communism could be reformed. The assassination of Robert Kennedy eliminated a man who could have become one of America's greatest presidents. The killing of Martin Luther King got rid of another great leader. All in all, 1968 was not a good year.
Bob Rowthorn is an economist
Tarnished liberalism
by Erik Tarloff
Sadly, the biggest effect of 1960s-style radicalism was to tarnish liberalism for a generation. Almost all the industrial democracies entered a sustained period of centre-right dominance, and their centre-left parties grew more conservative at the same time. On the other hand, feminism, and arguably the entire sexual revolution, is an enduring legacy that hasn't betrayed the period that produced it.
Erik Tarloff is a novelist
The irrelevance of 1968
by Dominic Sandbrook
In all the fuss about the 40th anniversary of the events of 1968 in Britain, people always forget that there were actually two Grosvenor Square demonstrations, not one. On 27th October, seven months after the famous punch-up outside the American Embassy, around 30,000 people marched through London to demand peace in Vietnam.
In the weeks beforehand, the press foamed with anxiety. The Tories advised home secretary Jim Callaghan to close the capital's stations and prepare the Guards regiments to retake the city. And what happened? Nothing, which is why nobody remembers it.
It feels almost cruel to point it out, given the emotional investment some people have clearly made in a fantasy of their youth, but most of the year's emblematic moments were essentially irrelevant. The peace demonstrators did not end the war in Vietnam, as they so often claim; in fact, the war went on for another seven years and ended only with the military victory of Communist North Vietnam. In the US, the civil rights movement fizzled out, liberalism lost its way and Richard Nixon ushered in a new era of conservative dominance. In France, the Gaullists won a big majority and de Gaulle eventually gave way to Pompidou. Even in Prague, perhaps the most inspirational of all the year's flashes of idealism, the iron fist reasserted itself. It is easy to say now that the Prague spring heralded the eventual collapse of communism, but it was hardly obvious at the time.
In a British context, it is hard to make a case that 1968 was a year of youthful idealism and romantic dreams. The pound had just been devalued, wages were stagnant, strikes were on the rise and the Wilson government was looking jaded. The biggest political story of the year was Enoch Powell's speech attacking immigration. Far more people wrote to Powell supporting his views than ever went on an anti-war march.
It was similar in the US. 1960s veterans remember the assassination of Martin Luther King, but they rarely remember that he had lost much of his momentum even before his death, with his campaign to tackle residential segregation in the urban north a clear failure. They also lament Robert Kennedy's murder, but they rarely remember that he was almost certain to lose the Democratic nomination anyway.
Young people voted for Nixon in their droves, and indeed polls show that on both sides of the Atlantic many, even most, young people remained conservative in their political and cultural attitudes.
The events of 1968 are now almost as distant from our experience as the general strike was for Tariq Ali and Germaine Greer. They have become a pleasant romantic myth, a diverting concoction of television producers and misty-eyed grandfathers, a useful stick with which to beat the purportedly cynical and self-centred youngsters of the present day. But while we will presumably mark 1968 every ten years until the last of the Grosvenor Square generation are gone, perhaps we can then turn our attention to the events of a decade later—the Islamic revolution in Iran, the rise of Pope John Paul II, the birth pangs of Thatcherism and Reaganism. Less inspirational than the events of 1968, but in the long run, for good or ill, they were far more important.
Dominic Sandbrook is the author of two books about the 1960s: Never Had It So Good and White Heat (Abacus)
A form of romanticism
by Arthur Aughey
The radicalism that infected politics was a form of romanticism. Like all romanticisms, it could be nihilistic. Sympathy for various "liberation movements"—political romantics with guns—became the curse of radicalism. This was certainly the case with those fellow travellers of the Provisional IRA who confused ethnic rage in Northern Ireland with radical subversion of imperial capitalism.
Arthur Aughey is a political scientist
