Introduction

There is an influential historical consensus that 1960s radicalism in Britain had no significant or lasting impact on the social and political order. In this view, the longer-term effects of the ideas and movements, often associated with the climactic year of 1968, have been confined to popular culture, lifestyles and inter-personal relations. It is said that political institutions remained unperturbed and almost unaffected by the intellectual and ideological ferment occurring in the arts, media, universities, street politics and youth cultures. From this historical-empiricist perspective the significance of '68 in Britain was apolitical and confined to the personal and cultural sphere (Marwick 1998, 15–20; Sandbrook 2007, 543–5). Proponents of a revolution in society ended up changing little but their own life styles.

The present analysis examines sixties radicalism in Britain –and potentially more widely – as the fusion of counter-cultural and radical political ideas and movements that came together in the late 1960s to challenge the ruling socio-political order. It will critique ‘culturalist’ interpretations of this radical upsurge – as confined principally to life styles and sub-cultural institutions – on two grounds. Firstly, that the critical feature of the cultural upheavals of the high 60s, acknowledged by virtually all commentators, was not the immediate establishment of distinct and operational values.