April 22, 2008
1968 v 1978
Brace yourself for the wave of 1968 nostalgia that will hit us next month - the anniversary of the May events in Paris. All those soixante-huitards will be strutting their stuff in the papers. Who knows Le Monde may even consent to start publishing again?
Well I’m not a soixante-huitard - more like a soixante-dix huitard. And I’m pleased to see that we 1978ers are also getting our small moment of nostalgic glory. This weekend they are re-staging the famous (well, quite famous) “Rock Against Racism” concert that took place in Victoria Park in Hackney in 1978. There was a big article last weekend in the Observer about the original concert.
I finally managed to impress my daughter by informing her that I had been at the original concert back in 1978. She is 14 - the same age as I was in 1978 - and is planning to go to the re-union concert this weekend. (I have been forbidden from coming along, even though I would quite like to.)
This weekend’s concert is much more of a production than the original event in 1978. Back then, there was only one stage - and no tickets. On Saturday, there will be three stages, security checks, tickets etc. But some of the same bands are appearing - The Tom Robinson Band, Polly Styrene; bits of The Clash. (Joe Strummer will not be playing, on account of being dead.)
The mythology around the original concert is that Britain was in the grip of a wave of racism - and that the concert mobilised the young against nascent fascism. I can’t say that I really noticed the racist wave of 1978 in Britain - although I suppose my parents were immigrants from South Africa, so these things are all relative.
Still, I do think that 1978 marked a turning point of sorts. Britain had a kind of raw, depressed, crumbling feeling back then. The following year, Margaret Thatcher was elected and things began to change. I think the Britain of 2008 is recognisably the same country as the one that Thatcher moulded and governed. But the seventies really were a different era.
GR “This weekend they are re-staging the famous (well, quite famous) “Rock Against Racism” concert that took place in Victoria Park in Hackney in 1978. ”
Barack Obama, a son of Kenyan father and white American mother was 16 in 1978…and he will hopefully be the next President of the US!…
Posted by: Lisa-Helene Lawson | April 22nd, 2008 at 7:01 pm | Report this commentI think much is made about his being the first black American president, as it should be…but at the same time, perhaps not enough about his being bi-racial….so many beautiful babies are NOW being born from the mixing and matching of race, religion, and ethnicities in the western world…I am looking forward to their concerts in 2028! And just hoping they are not restaging them on world hunger and racism like we do every few years! Gosh, I sure hope Obama wins! It sort of balances out the sad need that some 30 years after the fact, there needs to be a re-staging of a concert against racism!
The 1970s were definitely a different era, a bygone age. Everything is much more artificial today, neat and tidy, instant global communication (like on this blog). Materially, there is no doubt the world is better off. But there is a price to pay for that, a loss of innocence. The 1970s were tough, but there was also a concomitant feeling of optimism, that the world might become better. There was creativity (just compare the rock bands then to the music produced today — there is no comparison) and excitement in the air.
Today’s world is flat. Flat is more comfortable, but it is also two-dimensional and boring.
Posted by: RCS | April 22nd, 2008 at 7:15 pm | Report this commentWell, I must add, I wasn’t even close to your age back then, but so I was told, and it seems to fit the evidence.
Posted by: RCS | April 22nd, 2008 at 7:21 pm | Report this commentCurious is the fact that by then English Capitalism was more Socialist than what now is called “Rennanian Capitalism” or Continental Capitalism.
By then the U.K. was precisely one of the most socialist countries in Western Europe and, of course, much more than Spain. With a lot of subsidies and state intervention (hmm, now it comes back with Northern Rock) Britain and “Anglo-Capitalism” meant exactly the opposite that what they mean today.
British wanted to export their Socialism to Spain from the back door….but Spain was saved as Felipe González became Prime Minister when the UK started a u-turn, and at the same time as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher became President and Prime Minister, so Spain just adopted half the Anglo Social-Capitalism.
Posted by: Enrique | April 23rd, 2008 at 12:18 am | Report this comment.
68 rocked , the music was brilliant with London a Mecca for the young , miniskirts a glory to behold
Posted by: jeannick | April 23rd, 2008 at 9:56 am | Report this commenteconomics had the texture of Mediterranean blue sky
the space age was ON , alternative thinking made the old interested and the young dizzy .
Gangs of expatriates Aussies happily torched convention , Germaine Greer was a scrumptious babe with attitude
truly there was the impression that the future would be molded into new form and directions
Presumably at 14 you were too young to be into the sex and drugs side of 1978, and had to make do with only the rock ‘n’ roll? Then you didn’t get the full effect …
As an 18 year old at the time - who was also at the Vicky Park gig - I can confirm that to be young that year was very heaven.
You are right to suggest that the year marked a turning point. As other commenters note, much of the change has been for the better.
But not all of it. ‘Crumbling’ and ‘depressed’ though you might have found Britain as a newcomer, there was at least a sense that there was such a thing as society.
Excluded teenagers were not knifing each other in the streets of London or hanging themselves by the dozen in Bridgend.
Middle-aged men are habitually nostalgic about their youth of course. But I really don’t feel that all the changes brought about by Thatcherism were for the better.
Posted by: David Osler | April 23rd, 2008 at 11:32 am | Report this commentCan’t wait. It must be at least 10 minutes since some bloated, out-of-touch baby boomer has given me a lecture on how their generation had a real sense of political engagement, and was going to change the world, whilst bemoaning the general indifference of young people nowadays.
Posted by: Jon, 28 | April 23rd, 2008 at 2:20 pm | Report this commentwell, sometimes things change less than they seem . . . 40 years ago, you had Bobby Kennedy and Clean Gene McCarthy battling it out for he Democractic nomination against the backdrop of a disasterous war. Now you’ve got Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama . . . at least they both made it out of Pennsylvania alive. I suppose that’s progress, of sorts. Now, if the lady takes the black dude, anybody wanna bet that the guys who gave her that margin of victory for the nomination will vote in the general election for she-who-dodged-sniper-fire (not) over a bona fide Congressional Medal of Honor winner? Let’s not talk about the defections of the loser’s frustrated backers. Consider the defections of those who voted for the lesser of two evils in the primary. And things will have changed less than expected.
Posted by: Dwight | April 23rd, 2008 at 5:31 pm | Report this comment.
Don’t worry , if one follows the lesson of history and consult the omens , this generationnal wave aged betwwen 0 and 40 has good chances of living in unprecedented challenging times .
it will stretch their abilities to the limits,
force them to overthrow the past and it’s guardians into new , unexplored actions .
it will supply material for books filled with heroes and villains ,fated and saved .
Good luck to you all !
a last word from the youth of soixante huit wave
…..NEVER trust anyone over forty
.
Posted by: jeannick | April 24th, 2008 at 12:07 am | Report this commentThe 60s were a unique period, one, which we who lived through it knew was unique at the time.
It was a time of immense personal liberation. The combination of a booming economy and full-employment allowed us to concentrate on the opportunities that effective birth control and the absence of all the ghastly, sexually transmitted, diseases that plague us today afforded us: opportunities which made the 1960s a paradise similar to the one Al Qaeda sells to its recruits.
I count myself blessed to have been young at the best time in the history of humanity to be young.
If nothing else the May 68 of Paris gives us a festive symbol of all of it.
Posted by: David Seaton | April 24th, 2008 at 7:39 am | Report this comment1978 was an exciting time to be young, 1976 even better - a long dreamlike summer.
Britain has a pretty “raw, depressed, crumbling feeling” right now, our newspapers are full of hysteria and paranoia.
The Punks of the late 70s expressed a disgust with the soullessness and superficiality of living ‘in a supermarket’.
Today, our supermarkets are the envy of the world, while our crumbling public infrastructure, education and health systems are a joke and the source of near constant rage.
Well done Thatch and all your little fanboys.
Posted by: David | April 24th, 2008 at 12:01 pm | Report this comment