Establishment or Anti-establishment

'The man who is not a socialist at 20 has no heart, but if he is still a socialist at 40 he has no head'.
Former French Prime Minster, Ariside Briand' Perhaps this answers your question!!!!

Ah, but we were all conformist in the 60s as well. We were ALL going to sweep away old conventions etc etc. We just all went along with the current conformity. Except of course that all young people in the 60s weren't into military jackets with beads and flares etc. Some did, but an awful lot didn't, we just tend to mix with people like us, whatever our 'us' might be.

Back in the 60s I wasn't into flower power, in fact I was rather cynical about it. I had studied history, I remembered stories about the 'war to end all wars' and 'never again', but the young people who thought that were back at war within 20 years. Even then I thought that most of the people enjoying summers of love would be married with mortgages and children and being conventional within 10 years - and they were - and would agree to fight wars (remember the Falklands War?), and vote for conservative governments - and they did (and still do)

I was an active member of the Young Liberals, a very minority sport, but good fun, lobbying MPs. I wore very short skirts and was busy pursuing a career in industry, another minority sport for a woman then.

nigglynellie he pinched it from John Adams 1799- ??A boy of 15 who is not a democrat is good for nothing, and he is no better who is a democrat at 20.??
Winston Churchill used it as well- but I wouldn't regard him as a role model more a career opportunist politician.
MOnica love your remembrances but how do you feel now? I know everyone's views do modify but some seem to be very reactionary now.

OMG it's at it again!! Won't do quotation marks now-get question marks

Well, I certainly haven't changed my politics, nor was I surprised by how the Lib Dems behaved in government, as I said before I am cynical about high flowing decisions. I was a radical in the 1960s and I remain a radical. If I think I have accidentally jumped on a band wagon, like the one labelled Jeremy Corbyn, I jump off pdq - and wait for the crash.

I was once, not that long time ago, described as 'deeply subversive'. I trust I remain so.

Monica, with a few minor changes, I could have written your post myself.

Both of your posts.

I think the young of the '60s did go a long way in affluent countries to change things and not just their mode of dress. Those of us who were fortunate enough to be funded through University by grants gave back big time to the country and our communities by becoming the teachers, nurses, doctors, social workers etc. Our parents had been the shop workers, factory workers, miners etc. I think this enabled a lot of us to see the gross inequalities that existed in society and to challenge. I think too we appreciated those who didn't have our advantages but never the less buckled down and got on with life and even became rich through their own hard work and efforts because they gave employment to others. Somewhere along the line that changed and I think you began to get people who were mainly interested in acquiring wealth for its own sake and for the status it gave them and who drew the ladder up behind them.
I think that is what we need to address in society. Narrowing that gap again so people feel they have a chance.

M0nica - reading your post reminds me of my husband who applied for a post he was well qualified for but didn't get. They took someone with much less experience. He was approached afterwards and told he hadn't got the job because his then headteacher had described him in the supporting letter as 'a red revolutionary'. By such means is the 'establishment' sustained.

I think it's a love of this country's history that keeps me wanting to keep the ancient established rituals. Do you enjoy history trish?

Yes ardent local historian, but I prefer the history of working people and the struggle for human rights. We could still have the rituals and pageants, re-enactment societies do these really well

I was politically aware and engaged from quite a young age, and concerned about inequalities and injustices not just in Britain but around the world.

I think a part of the reason that people tend to become more right wing as they age is because with age often comes more affluence (though not always). Those who have paid off, or nearly paid off, their mortgages, who are still employed in reasonably paid sectors or who have good pensions, are more likely to put that down to their own efforts and embrace the idea that the poor are responsible for their poverty (though, again, not always). Thus, right wing policies that re-affirm the belief that it is individual agency that determines success rather than a certain degree of good luck, are more likely to appeal to them.

Although we are quite comfortably off now, I have not abandoned my view that this country could be a much better and fairer place for everyone - though amongst my friends my left of centre views are certainly not typical. If someone thinks that makes me a fool, then so be it.

I love history but my interest is social history , I don't realy care about the Spanish Armarda etc, but in the poor law, the movement of people around the UK and why they moved

The new conformity is to endow the working classes with a certain level of sanctity, and, implicitly, make anything that is socially above that faintly distasteful, almost immoral.

To study the social and local history of 'ordinary working people' is to gain plaudits, study the wealthy and unless the work is aimed at discrediting them, then you are discredited.

I am fascinated by the history of the landscape and I really do not care whether the person who formed it was a Saxon peasant or a great landowner. Many of the latter were enlightened and benevolent, others, of course, weren't, but the same thing applies at every level of society. My family are Irish. My mother remembers signs in windows of rooming houses saying 'No dogs, no children, no Irish and I can remember only too well the racial hate in working class areas of London like Notting Hill in the 1960s.

I am not criticising the study interests of the posters above. Any research is fascinating and adds to the sum of human knowledge. It is just the feeling that they feel a need to emphasise the working class nature of their work to justfy doing it.

The reason I choose working people (and working women in particular) MOnica is not because of any "endowing the working classes with a certain level of sanctity* but simply because it is an overlooked area with a great deal of information that has never been researched and that still hasn't the recognition it deserves. It has widely been held that working women did little politically, that isn't true. For example between 1906 and 1918 there was an organisation called the Women's Labour League that brought thousands of women into the Labour movement. In 1918 it was absorbed into the Labour Party and virtually forgotten. That is why it interests me.

I've gone the other way. I started off as 'establishment', heavily influenced by my mother (bless her), but as I get older I lean towards my father's anti-establishment views (bless him!). Neither of my parents are around now but I suspect my mother would have been shocked recently when I said I certainly would not curtsey to the queen or to anyone else. My father would have applauded, though!

Trisher I didn't say that about you and I made that clear in the last paragraph. My first comments were generalised ones about attitudes. There are always very good reasons for studying any sector of society.

I have no need to justify anything I choose to do

I was going to say exactly the same myself trisher. I expect many of us had the dates of the various monarchs and wars drummed into us at school but little attention was given to working people - who, although being the majority - seemed to be hardly visible. Women were doubly disadvantaged.

MOnica I don't believe there is a disproportionate number of books about the lives of working class people. There are certainly still plenty of books published about World War I, Hitler and The Empire. We were all taught about our kings and queens in history and about other famous people but little attention was paid to the everyday lives and achievements of working class people. Some historians have partly redressed the balance. Prof Carl Chinn, for instance said " "ordinary" people have too often been excluded from or marginalised by formal history."

The racist and bigoted views and behaviour of the working classes cannot be denied but they were certainly not confined to the working classes. Supposedly highly educated people who one would have thought should have known better were every bit as prejudiced - as the admiration of Hitler by several members of the British aristocracy amply demonstrated.

Our history is distorted as a result of the bias.

My political views began to be formed by Miss Slater's teaching of history when I was 13. We studied the slave trade, drew diagrams of the triangle between Africa, USA and Britain and learned about the terrible exploitation of some people by others, with the aim of making huge profits. The suffering of the so called 'white slaves' who worked the cotton mills in Lancashire wasn't covered by Miss Slater but I was an avid reader and talked with my grandparents who'd worked in the mills.

One way in which my anti establishment views have softened is that I no longer stand silent when the national anthem is sung. I'm not a royalist but I no longer believe the country would be better off without the Queen. I honestly can't think of anyone who could carry off the role of head of state as well as she does and I find it impossible not to admire her 60 years of public service. Yes, I know, all those castles and palaces, all those hopeless sons but I no longer get het up about the monarchy. I don't know if this makes me 'patriotic'. I love britain, feel I'm English, enjoy the odd sense of humour, the peculiar monarchy and the irony with which many Brits regard it.

I dislike 'patriotism' for its own sake. It reminds me that my grandfather's believed there would never be a repeat of 'their' WW1 because my generation, that is we hippies in the 60's and 70's wouldn't respond as they did, to "the king or the kaiser like the German lads did". Grandpa's both saw us as better educated and informed and so unlike them, we wouldn't be sheep to the slaughter.

The queen won't go on for ever Iam64 - then what?

I am from Hull. I was taught all about the slave trade in my primary school. We used to go to the Wilberforce Museum.
It was fortunate that I was because the high school I went to probably had descendants of the slave traders, which is why I knew a bit about another class of people, and became a socialist, although I didn't know the word at the time.
I did not study history at the high school, but I have found I have learned more from studying family history. I have quite a few books about studying your ancestors, including women in the wars, coalmining ancestors, servant ancestors, ancestors childhood and aristocratic ancestors.
Some of these books go back to Norman times, and give history from ordinary people's lives, not just the winners.

I'm neither one thing nor the other. My DF always brought us up to question everything and to form our own opinions independently of what others around us might be thinking or saying. It wasn't easy when I was young. The young seem to want to conform but I stuck to my guns and drew up opinions on an issue by issue basis. Still the same today. Question everything and don't necessarily believe what I am told or read. So I'm not establishment or anti establishment just an independent thinker.