Political Revolt in the 1960s

The Beatles

Revolution /Revolution 1 You say you want a revolutionWell

you knowWe all want to change the worldYou tell me that it’s evolutionWell you knowWe all want to change the worldBut when you talk about destructionDon’t you know you can count me outDon’t you know it’s gonna be alrightAlright alrightYou say you got a real solutionWell you knowWe’d all love to see the planYou ask me for a contributionWell you knowWe’re doing what we canBut when you want money for people with minds that hateAll I can tell you is brother you have to waitDon’t you know it’s gonna be alrightAlright alright

You say you’ll change the constitutionWell you knowWe all want to change your headYou tell me it’s the institutionWell you knowYou better free your mind insteadBut if you go carrying pictures of chairman maoYou ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhowDon’t you know know it’s gonna be alrightAlright alright

‘Revolution 1’ recorded first in May 68, but released on ‘White’ album in Nov 1968.’ Revolution’ recorded July 68 and released as b-side to ‘Hey Jude’ on 26 Aug in US)

The Rolling Stones

Street Fighting ManEverywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy/Cause summers here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy/But what can a poor boy do/Except to sing for a rock n roll band/Cause in sleepy London town/There's just no place for a street fighting man/No

Hey! think the time is right for a palace revolution/But where I live the game to play is compromise solution/Well, then what can a poor boy do/Except to sing for a rock n roll band/Cause in sleepy London town/ There's just no place for a street fighting man/No

Hey! said my name is called disturbance/Ill shout and scream, I'll kill the king, I'll rail at all his servants/Well, what can a poor boy do/Except to sing for a rock n roll band/Cause in sleepy London town/There's just no place for a street fighting man/No

Released 31 August 1968

Civil Rights Showed that people could

bring about change

Articulate, christian, respectable, non violent?

Grass roots and leadership

Global sense of civil rights

Brown decision (1954)

Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-6)

Little Rock, Arkansas 1957

Civil Rights in the 1960s Sit in movement,

Greensboro’, N.C. 1960

Freedom Rides, 1961

Birmingham, 1963

Freedom Summer, 1964

Civil Rights Act (1964)

Selma, Alabama, 1965

Voting Rights Act (1965)

The fragmentation of the movement Watts Riot 11 Aug 1965

34 killed, 3,500 arrests

Newark, Detroit etc 1967

King and Chicago, 1966

4, April 1968

Malcolm X and the Black Muslims (killed 21 Feb 1965)

SNCC, CORE and the Black Panthers

Alabama Soul, and by late 1960s, funk:

James Brown, Otis Redding, ella Fitzgerald, Marvin Gaye, Sly and the Family Stone.

Rock (Hendrix)

Jazz: John Coltrane ‘Alabama’. (Spiritual dimension.)

‘A Love Supreme’ (1964) (a watershed). Died 17 July 1967

Free Jazz

Ornette Coleman, Coltrane Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler

The New Left Students for Democratic

Society (1961)

The Port Huron statement (1962)

The Free Speech Movement, 1964

Spread to other campuses, and to other countries

The significance of Bob Dylan.

The counterculture Sex, and drugs and

rock’n’roll

Music key – radio, records, tours. Reaches young people across the globe

Dylan and Beatles take on countercultural elements

Acid tests

Haight Ashbury

CC and New Left convergence. ‘Yippies’

The anti war movement Vietnam teach ins, 1965

SDS organise march, April 1965. 20,000 attend.

International Days of Protest, 1965 and 1966

Protest grows March on the Pentagon, 1967

Grovesnor Square, London, March and October 1968. Violence and arrests.

1968 A tumultuous year

Tet offensive

Splits in Civil Rights and New Left

King and Kennedy Assassinated.

Democratic National Convention, Chicago

Nixon elected

Paris, May 1968 2 May 1968 After ongoing

struggle shut down Uni of Paris at Nanterre.

3 May, Students at Sorbonne show support. Occupied by police.

6 May Thousands of students, lecturers and radicals marched in Paris towards the Sorbonne. Met with baton charges and tear gas. Missiles thrown

Back from the brink of Revolution 10 May; Further march and

conflict

Trade Unions join in with 1 day general strike

18 May Factory Occupations of up to 2M.

29 May De Gaulle flees to Germany

30 May march, counter march and election called.

June election victory for Gauliists

Unrest continued.

Be Realistic. Demand the Impossible!

Marxists, Socialists, Trotskyites, Anarchists and Situationists

‘The objectives were self-management by workers, a decentralization of economic and political power and participatory democracy at the grass roots’. Turn down pay solutions

The world beyond Paris

PCF: students as ‘false revolutionaries’. Urging workers to return and seeing electoral advantage. Realism or selling out?

The Prague Spring Unrest from 1966

Dubceck became first sec of the Communist Party in early 1968

‘Socialism with a human face’ 5 April 1968. Move towards greater democracy, end of censorship and related reforms

‘Warsaw Pact’ invasion 20/21 August

John Palach protest, 19 Jan 1969

Dubceck reversed reforms, before being replaced in April 1969

Conclusion Violence and the limits of the

system

A revolution that never was?

Richard Nixon elected President in 1968

Order ‘restored’ in Paris and Prague

Feminism, Identity politics and the end of the cold war

The ‘triumph’ of neo-liberalism?

Counterculture as consumerism

Personal freedom and the long 1960s