Political Revolt in the
1960s
The Beatles
Revolution /Revolution 1
 You say you want a revolution Well
you know We all want to change the
world You tell me that it’s
evolution Well you know We all want
to change the world But when you talk
about destruction Don’t you know you
can count me out Don’t you know it’s
gonna be alright Alright alright You
say you got a real solution Well you
know We’d all love to see the
plan You ask me for a
contribution Well you know We’re
doing what we can But when you
want money for people with minds that
hate All I can tell you is brother you
have to wait Don’t you know it’s
gonna be alright Alright alright
 You say you’ll change the
constitution Well you know We all
want to change your head You tell me
it’s the institution Well you know You
better free your mind instead But if you
go carrying pictures of chairman
mao You ain’t going to make it with
anyone anyhow Don’t you know know
it’s gonna be alright Alright 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 Man
Everywhere 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