Sixties

 

 

I was fascinated on reading Andrew Marr’s book on the “History of Modern Britain” to find he sees the end of the sixties signalled by the Angry Brigade bombing of the Biba store in London. Biba was closely associated with cheap throwaway fashion exploiting the new emancipation of women particularly young women. Marr sees this as symbolic conflict between the anarchic stream of political thinking with an emerging consumer economy.

Others would see the end as the massive free Rolling Stones concert at Altamont in the US. Billed as a wonderful event like Woodstock but stewarded by Hell’s Angels this turned very ugly with audience members killed.

My own personal ending was when the Beatles split up. Their music had been the sound of the sixties for me and although the split was obviously coming it was still a signal that an era had ended..

Strange to start discussing an era by thinking about its ending. The sixties has exerted a great fascination in British history. Although its iconic nature is fading a little it is still, fifty years later, of magnetic interest. And yet; as Marr makes clear, the events people recall involved very few and in a very specific place.. For most people they were just a well publicised backdrop to a country which evolved slowly. Even so those new attitudes did influence life in the wider country.

For myself the decade divides down the middle, in the first half a student, in the second trying to make my way at work. In the middle I married so my whole domestic life changed. More of an evolution than revolution as I had courted Annette all through the first life and for the latter two years we had enjoyed some measure of independent living. By this I mean I had a bedsiiter and Annette visited as she wished, and cooked for us both. In contrast I couldn’t visit her.

The things associated with the sixties such as the “hippies” might have been associated with students or more generally young people. As far as I was concerned the immediate practical effect was that clothing became more informal. As a student I started with collar, tie and tweed jacket and ended with polo necked jumper and casual trousers. Interestingly I worked at Bostik in my industrial year alongside someone who was an early jeans fanatic at a time when they were virtually unknown in the UK. I thought he was quite mad to be buying his in the USA by mail order.

The sixties have become famous as the time of sexual freedom. As Larkin said, in a famous poem, sexual intercourse began in 1963. Ample jokes were made about this. David Frost later remarked if all the girls in London were laid end to end he wouldn’t be at all surprised. This was really only applicable to a tiny metropolitan minority. Outside these the traditional beliefs remained. Annette’s mother would have been utterly scandalised if we had lived together before marriage. When we went on holiday together we had to have separate rooms. Many landladies would not have accepted an unmarried couple sharing a room and would have been very suspicious if any effort at subterfuge was made.

Clothing for girls was becoming more overtly sexual. The mini skirt became ubiquitous. This was a fashion which was enabled by tights being a replacement for stockings. Fashion generally became much more important with rapid changes. I recall a time when long coats ( maxicoats ) became a fad in the latter part of the decade. We visited London at a time when they were seen everywhere; Annette bought one, wore it during our visit and probably never wore it again.

The effect on men’s fashion was slower to evolve. When I started work white shirts were virtually compulsory. As the decade wore one some brave souls ventured into lightly coloured or decorated shirts. It was however quite shocking when one particularly self confident guy wore a pink shirt.

I was not sympathetic to hippy/yippy culture with its leftish pretensions. After the poverty of student life ( actually not that poor in retrospect ) I was pleased to be working and earning. When Annette also had finished teacher training and embarked on her career we were briefly quite will off until children arrived.. Certainly well enough to study house style magazines and buy upmarket furniture only available in London. This was almost hand made in the workshop of Christian Sell. We also patronised Habitat even going 50 miles to buy things not available locally.

The decade sound was pop music by groups like the Beatles and the Stones. This was a great change from the pop music of the fifties with crooners like Perry Como regularly being best sellers. From 1964 onwards it seemed that groups were springing up everywhere. Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas, Gerry N Marston and the Pacemakers, the Animals …..the list went on and on. I was an ardent Beatles fan and spent ( too many ) tea breaks at Bostik arguing their virtues. From being seen as rebellious at the start of the decade the rock’n’roll style came to dominate. Starting with covers of American hits it became normal for groups to write at least some of their own material.