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The proto-rebellions of the 1950s, the pronouncements of the angry young men, the discovery of the working classes, were followed by a wider set of challenges to received authority, in Europe, in the United States and in Britain. Now the often inchoate intention was not simply to assert the interests of this or that group but to make a criticism of the post-war settlement in general and to canvass alternatives. Arguably, the impact of the upheavals of the period was greatest in the sphere of the arts and in some areas of social mores. Overall, a period of social/cultural reform but with little political-economic structural change, indeed, the optimistic reform line of the period had its counterpart in all those activities which paved the way for the rise of the neo-liberals who were to command the following decades. Nonetheless, the reforms in the arts and society endured and have been further unpacked down the years. The period is now recalled as "the sixties".

DOI: 10.1057/9781137023834_7

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