Fashion

Fashion in the sixties could almost have been described as explosive. So many new hip styles were being introduced all over England, particularly in London. This was now the trendy, swinging place to be, the ‘Scene’ as it was called by Time magazine. There was new confidence and boldness breaking out everywhere, and so many different fashions were going through circulation that the period was described by Harper’s Bazaar as ‘enjoy-it-today-sling-it-tomorrow’ fashion. New materials were used, reflecting the excitement and technology of the space age, like Melinex, Lurex and PVC, but perhaps the biggest change in fashion is that it ceased to be an exclusively female concern. Men became interested in fashion and ‘became peacocks’, many of them relishing the change to the colourful, flowery looks that became so popular.

Very few fashions are actually new, many are just old ones coming back into style, for example, women’s fashion at this time echoed the sensual 1920s, a slinky boyish look with heavily made up eyes, pale lips and sleek hair in the new geometric styles championed by Vidal Sassoon.

Music

During the sixties, there was a tidal wave of bands and artists, with hundreds of new acts popping up all over the music scene. One of the most popular were the Beatles, who’s Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released on June 1st,1967, ushering in a new ‘psychedelic’ form of pop music and fashion combined. This is sometimes known as the hippy movement. Sgt Pepper was spiced with unusual instruments, tunes played backwards, bizarre lyrics based on Victorian circus posters, and coded references to hallucinogenic drugs. In fact by the end of the sixties many artists were constantly on drugs to find inspiration for new things, and the lyrics to many songs that were written ‘under the influence’ seemed very odd in a normal state of mind, but people went with it. The national anthem of the hippy tribe was: ‘you don’t have to try and explain it, you just had to feel it.’

London/Liverpool

London has already been described as the ‘Scene’ during the 1960s, but not all the innovation came out of London. Northern cities built up their own scene based on pop. The music capital of Britain was Liverpool, not just for The Beatles, but also for Cilla Black, The Searchers, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J.Kramer, the Swinging blue Jeans and more than 300 other bands.

Entertainment and TV

Television was fast evolving during the 1960s. In the early stages television was little more than a surge of advertising, everything from detergent to cigarettes to Kit-Kats. This was the Britain of the 2-minute commercial break, and it was a reassuring place to live, with lots of nice, normal people advertising nice, normal things. As the decade unfolded, television advertising took an ever stronger hold upon the national consciousness. Jingles were sung in school playgrounds, and the catchphrases used in advertising were almost more popular than the products they promoted.

Satire

One of the most famous satirical programmes aired during the sixties was That Was The Week That Was (TW3 for short). Beginning in 1962, the young and ruthlessly funny TW3 team heaped scorn on the government and all of its works, using the semi-official BBC to do it. There were many complaints about shows of this type. Mrs Whitehouse of the National Viewers’ and Listeners Association described TW3 as ‘Anti-authority, anti-religious, anti-patriotism, pro-dirt.’ These however were the things that people liked about the programme.

Not only in television were people mocking the government, but they were doing it in magazines as well. A classic example of this is OZ magazine, which was described by the News of the World as ‘Obscene and dirty.’ OZ came to London in 1966, with publishers Richard Neville, Felix Dennis and Jim Anderson pushing the limits of permissiveness with every edition. But prosecution for obscenity followed the 1970 ‘school kids’ issue’ which included, among other outrages, and obscene cartoon of Rupert the Bear.

Politics

The government changed hands a few times during the sixties. From 1957 to 1963 Harold MacMillan of the Conservative party was Prime Minister, but he had a health scare and thought he was going to die, so he resigned in 1963 and Lord Home became Prime Minister, but before he could do so he had to change his title to Sir Alex Douglas Home as Lords could not get involved in politics. Both of these men were from the Conservative party, and both went to Etan and Oxford.

In 1964 Sir Alex Douglas Home lost the election to Harold Wilson of the Labour party who was Prime Minister until 1970. Surprisingly Harold Wilson also went to Oxford, but before that to Grammar School.

Sport

The sixties were a memorable sporting period for many people. In the 1960 Olympics in Rome, the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo and the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City British athletes did outstandingly well to win the multitude of medals that they received.

The sixties also happened to be the golden age of Formula One, producing four British world champions: Jim Clarke (1963, 1965), Graham Hill (1962, 1968), John Surtees (1964) and Jackie Stewart (1969).
Tennis was widely appreciated as well, especially in 1961, when the women’s final at Wimbledon was an all-British affair, with Angela Mortimer beating Christine Truman 4-6, 6-4, 7-5 in a close and exciting match.

Also in heavyweight boxing in 1963 Henry Cooper became one of the very few men to put Cassius Clay on the deck, despite Clay having the overall victory after the referee called a halt in the fifth round.
Despite all of these great sporting moments many of them didn’t come close to being as widely remembered as England’s victory in the World Cup final against Germany.

Social Behaviour and Habits – ‘Permissive Society

During the sixties there was a change to many people’s attitude to sex. Two events, one legal and one medical, heralded the sexual revolution.

The legal turning point was the prosecution trial of Penguin Books because of it publishing D.H. Lawrence’s novel 'Lady Chatterley’s Lover', the story of an upper class woman and her affair with her gamekeeper. The book was considered to have broken a number of social and sexual taboos. It was an absurd trial, and the jury found Penguin not guilty, and the whole ordeal made censorship seem out of place in a free society.

The medical turning point was the introduction of the Pill into British society. For the first time in history women had a foolproof defence against unwanted pregnancy, and it gave people the chance to have spontaneous, carefree and relaxed sexual relations with each other.

Other things became more acceptable, drugs for example, which were freely taken by hippies and people who wanted to expand their minds and to have a good ‘swinging’ time.

Economic Change

For almost the first time in the century there was not the threat of, or recovery from, war for people to worry about. Another thing that was a change was that they had money to spend on things that they wanted, rather that just on what they needed. This increase in personal wealth gave people more money in their pockets, which obviously needed something to be spent on. Soon the market became flooded with products to suit peoples needs, and this provided people with jobs which meant that they were earning money that they could spend on other things, and so the economy was in an upward spiral for much of the sixties.

Immigration

In the course of the decade the number of immigrants from the Commonwealth more than doubled. Most of these were West Indians; the others were mostly Asians with roots in the Indian subcontinent or in East Africa.

Unlike the West Indians, Asians made virtually no impact on pop music or football, but contributed to the life of the nation in many ways. On of the most common contributions that they made, which is still going strong even today, was the enlivening of the national cuisine, making the curry house a tradition to rival the chip shop; with their tireless industry and talent for commerce they rescued the dying institution of the corner shop.

There were of course many people who disagreed with immigration. One of the most famous cases of this was when Enoch Powell, a Conservative MP, spoke out against immigration and was branded as a racist and an ‘evil’ person. He was sacked soon after the incident in 1969.

From this point on Britain was a multicultural society, and it has remained so to this day.