1. Roads to Freedom Performer - Culture & Literature
Marina Spiazzi, Marina Tavella,
Margaret Layton © 2013

2. 1. Turbulent times in Britain
Roads to Freedom
A New World Order
1. Turbulent times in Britain
The 1960s were characterised by:
technological changes which influenced social organisation;
social reforms which
increased the gap between
the old and the young.
Performer - Culture & Literature

3. 1. Turbulent times in Britain
Roads to Freedom
A New World Order
1. Turbulent times in Britain
1967 was an annus mirabilis as regards sexual mores:
Abortion Act
National Health Service (Family Planning) Act
Sexual Offences Act
Divorce Act (1969)
Matrimonial Property Act (1970)
Performer - Culture & Literature

4. 1. Turbulent times in Britain
A New World Order
Roads to Freedom
1. Turbulent times in Britain
The young were sensitive to the spiritual problems
of the age:
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the pacifist march in Trafalgar Square led by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1961).
A mood of rebellion  university occupations and demonstrations.
Race  a new source of open social conflict.
A student demonstration.
Performer - Culture & Literature

5. 1. Turbulent times in Britain
Roads to Freedom
A New World Order
1. Turbulent times in Britain
The 1970s were marked by
a global economic slowdown and industrial strife
episodes of violence, racial tension and terrorism
an energy crisis and rising unemployment
the UK’s joining the European Economic Community (1973) partly to share the new European wealth
Performer - Culture & Literature

6. Roads to Freedom
A New World Order
2. Margaret Thatcher
4th May 1979: Margaret Thatcher (right wing of the Conservative Party) became Prime Minister.
She tried to solve the UK’s economic decline and to reduce the role of the state in the economy.
Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister between 1979 and 1990.
Performer - Culture & Literature

7. 3. Mid-century America After World War II
Roads to Freedom
A New World Order
3. Mid-century America
After World War II
American families  had cars, phones, washing machines, refrigerators, their own houses.
Education  higher enrolment in universities and colleges which received government financial support.
A 1950s housewife.
Performer - Culture & Literature

8. Roads to Freedom
A New World Order
3. Mid-century America
American foreign policy was defined by the Cold War ( ), started between the United States and the Soviet Union.
The USA controlled the military affairs of Europe through NATO, while the Soviet Union did it through the Warsaw Pact.
Performer - Culture & Literature

9. Roads to Freedom
A New World Order
3. Mid-century America
John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s funeral in 1963.
In 1961 John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the Democratic candidate, won the elections. He was the first Catholic and the youngest president ever elected.
Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963; his death put an end to the social hopes his election had awakened.
Performer - Culture & Literature

10. Roads to Freedom
A New World Order
3. Mid-century America
1961: the Soviets launched the first manned spaceflight.
1962: President Kennedy faced a tense nuclear showdown with Soviet forces in Cuba.
1969: the USA succeeded in sending two astronauts onto the Moon.
Neil Armstrong on the Moon’s surface, 20 July 1969.
Performer - Culture & Literature

11. Roads to Freedom
A New World Order
3. Mid-century America
1964: Civil Rights Act which prohibited discrimination of all kinds based on race, colour, religion or national origin.
The Civil Rights Movement, led by the African American Martin Luther King, Jr., fought against segregation and discrimination adopting Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violent resistance.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Performer - Culture & Literature

12. 3. Mid-century America 1959-1975: The Vietnam War
A New World Order
Roads to Freedom
3. Mid-century America
: The Vietnam War
A widespread countercultural movement grew, mixing opposition to war, black nationalism and feminism.
University students protested in the hundreds of thousands against
the Vietnam War in London, Paris, Berlin and Rome.
Performer - Culture & Literature

13. Roads to Freedom
A New World Order
3. Mid-century America
: The Watergate scandal  the FBI, Congress and the press discovered a series of crimes and abuses committed by the president’s staff.
Richard Nixon was forced to resign.
1970s: Carter’s administration, marked by stagflation.
The Watergate hotel in Washington.
Performer - Culture & Literature

14. 4. The cultural revolution
Roads to Freedom
A New World Order
4. The cultural revolution
Great interest in music, fashion, drinks and vehicles
Working-class adolescents spending money on pleasure and free time.
Poster for ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ (1955).
Performer - Culture & Literature

15. 4. The cultural revolution
Roads to Freedom
A New World Order
4. The cultural revolution
Leisure activities  dancing and listening to rock and roll.
Negative mood of the ‘Angry Young Men’  moral independence, sexual ethics, public decency.
Performer - Culture & Literature

16. 4. The cultural revolution
Roads to Freedom
A New World Order
4. The cultural revolution
London became the new centre of fashion, replacing Paris. Important fashion boutiques were opened in Carnaby Street.
Mary Quant, fashion designer credited for inventing the miniskirt and the hot pants.
Performer - Culture & Literature

17. 4. The cultural revolution
Roads to Freedom
A New World Order
4. The cultural revolution
The Swinging Sixties = the quest for self-expression and liberation
 drugs, discos, progressiveness in education, pop music and poetry, one-parent families, the contraceptive pill, abortion and homosexuality legalised.
1968  the birth of the Women’s Liberation Movement.
The cover of Led Zeppelin III
Performer - Culture & Literature

18. The ‘Winter of Discontent’
Roads to Freedom
A New World Order
5. The decay of the 1970s
Unemployment spread in the heavy industrial areas
Economy
The ‘Winter of Discontent’
Race riots
Society
Drugs and juvenile violence
Performer - Culture & Literature

19. 5. The decay of the 1970s Factories with waste material Pollution
Roads to Freedom
A New World Order
5. The decay of the 1970s
Factories with waste material
Pollution
Oil tankers, chemical fertilizers, noisy aircraft, traffic
Individualism, selfishness, punk culture, nihilism, political struggle, radicalism (no pacifism), racism
‘Me’ decade
Performer - Culture & Literature

20. 6. Street style in Britain
Roads to Freedom
A New World Order
6. Street style in Britain
Teddy boys
Reputation for violence, delinquency, racism
Edwardian-style clothes
A 1962 photo of some Teddy boys.
Performer - Culture & Literature

21. Typical rocker outfit: black leather and a white scarf.
Roads to Freedom
A New World Order
6. Street style in Britain
The rockers
Battered clothes
Outsiders
Aggression towards women and immigrants
Typical rocker outfit: black leather and a white scarf.
Performer - Culture & Literature

22. 6. Street style in Britain
Roads to Freedom
A New World Order
6. Street style in Britain
The skinheads
Tattoos and shaved heads
Welcome conflict and aggression
Extreme-right political views = racism
No girls
‘This is England’ (2006).
Performer - Culture & Literature

23. 6. Street style in Britain
Roads to Freedom
A New World Order
6. Street style in Britain
The punks
Nihilistic battle cry ‘no future’
Nothingness
Safety pins, coloured hair
Outcast status
A tourist attraction
A group of English punks.
Performer - Culture & Literature

24. 6. Street style in Britain
Roads to Freedom
A New World Order
6. Street style in Britain
The hippies
Status and sex minimised
No certainties  drugs
Escape from time and modern life
Natural materials in the style of dress
Love, not war
Hippies at a concert.
Performer - Culture & Literature

25. 7. Anglo-American music from the 1950s to the 1980s
Roads to Freedom
The Great Depression
7. Anglo-American music from the 1950s to the 1980s
1950s: Rock‘n’roll, soul.
1960s: Folk revival, rock music.
1970s: Progressive rock, punk rock, fusion, Ddisco music, reggae, funk, electronic.
1980s: Metal, electro-pop, new wave, hip hop.
The Beatles: Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, John Lennon
Performer - Culture & Literature

26. The Great Depression
Roads to Freedom
8. Rock music
Rock as an opportunity of unifying art, music, design, fashion and youth in a single experience
Rock as energy for the motor of social change
Rock as a necessity to take a social position
Rock as an experience of community and togetherness
(Peter Wicke, ‘Rock music’)
Elvis Presley.
The Rolling Stones.
Performer - Culture & Literature

27. 9. Beatlemania The phenomenon originated in the UK in 1963.
The Great Depression
Roads to Freedom
9. Beatlemania
The phenomenon originated in the UK in 1963.
‘Beatles’ + ‘mania’.
Linked to the intense level of hysteria demonstrated by fans both at the concerts played by the band and during the band’s arrivals and journeys to and from different places.
Policemen’s struggle to restrain young Beatles fans outside Buckingham Palace as The Beatles receive their MBEs (Member of the British Empire) in 1965.
Performer - Culture & Literature