What Did the Baby Boomers Ever Do for Us?

Routledge Revivals What Did The Baby Boomers Ever Do For Us? First published in 2010, this book explores the legacy of the baby boomers: the generation who, born in the aftermath of the Second World War, came of age in the radical sixties where for the first time since the War, there was freedom, money, and safe sex. In this book, Francis Beckett argues that what began as the most radical-sounding generation for half a century turned into a random collection of youthful style gurus, sharp-toothed entrepreneurs and management consultants who believed revolution meant new ways of selling things; and Thatcherites, who thought freedom meant free markets, not free people. At last, it found its most complete expression in New Labour. The author argues that the children of the 1960s betrayed the genera- tions that came before and after, and that the true legacy of the swinging decade is in ashes. This page intentionally left blank What Did The Baby Boomers Ever Do For Us? Francis Beckett First published in 2010 by Biteback This edition first published in 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2010 Francis Beckett The right of Francis Beckett to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact. A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 2010671722 ISBN 13: 978-1-138-94742-9 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-1-315-67003-4 (ebk) What Did the Baby Boomers Ever Do For Us? Why the children o f the sixties lived the dream and failed the future Francis Beckett First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Biteback Publishing Ltd Heal House 375 Kennington Lane London SE11 5QY Copyright © Francis Beckett 2010 Francis Beckett has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. Ah rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the publisher s prior permission in writing. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. ISBN 978-1-84954-026-1 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Set in Joanna by SoapBox, soapboxcommunications.co.uk Printed and bound in Great Britain byTJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall Contents Author’s note and acknowledgements vii Introduction ix 1. How the baby boomers got their freedom: 1945-51 1 2. When we were very young: 19 5 0-5 6 14 3. The cradle of the sixties: 1956 29 4. The baby boomers go to school 47 5. What if Mr Macmillan’s out? 1957-63 61 6. The very model of a modern fluent technocrat: 1964-67 78 7. The end of the adventure: 1968 97 8. How the baby boomers destroyed the trade unions and made Thatcherism: 1969-79 118 9. The radical conservatives: 19 7 9-9 7 144 10. The baby boomer Prime Ministers: 1994-2010 163 11. The children of the baby boomers 180 Notes 199 Index 207 This page intentionally left blank Author’s note and acknowledgements The precise definition of a baby boomer is disputed, but I have defined it as anyone born between 1945 and 1955. David Willetts in his book The Pinch defines it very differently, as people born between 1945 and 1965, but he is quite wrong, because this period contains not one but two baby booms, separated by a small slump. The classic baby boom ers, born between 1945 and 1955, were a completely different sort of generation from those born at the start of the sixties. The complaint may be made that I have not written an objective history of the sixties, but have selected those events and quotes that bear out my thesis. I have a ready answer to this, which is: yup, thats what I’ve done. I have told the story of the baby boomer generation partly through the lives of individuals. Among many others, I have made use of the lives of the only two baby boomer Prime Ministers Britain has ever had, or is ever likely to have, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown; of the singer Marianne Faithfull, whose autobiography Faithfull is full of insights into what the children of the sixties thought they were, and what they really were; of the student-Trotskyist-turned-far-right-commentator Peter Hitchens and of Paul Mackney, student Trotskyist who kept the faith and became an important and successful trade union leader; and of Greg Dyke, representing that part of the baby boomer generation which made a fortune in business, in a peculiarly sixties way. I’m particularly grateful to three of them - Greg Dyke, Peter Hitchens and Paul Mackney - for long and illuminating interviews; and to Gordon Brown for an interview while I was writing his biography, which has helped me here too. Other baby boomers make occasional appearances, and some of them have been kind enough to read and comment on certain passages and chapters, or to help with information. They include Eddie Barrett and Tony Russell, who between them — or so it seems to me — know V ll everything there is to know about popular music (and this book was completed in Eddie Barrett’s charming house in Calabria, looking out at islands and mountains). They also include the playwright Steve Gooch, and old university friends who were especially helpful on 1968: Mike Brereton, Malcolm Clarke, Marshall Colman, John Howkins, Marina Lewycka, Linden West and Martin Yarnit. I also want to thank the readers of U3A News, the magazine of the University of the Third Age, and the best place in the world for anyone writing about events in the last fifty years or so to find people who will remember them. Among the generation betrayed by the baby boomers, I would like to thank in particular two Leeds University graduates in their twenties for information and insights: my son Peter Beckett, now a political lob byist, and the former National Union of Students president Kat Fletcher. yin Introduction The baby boomers saw themselves as pioneers of a new world — freer, fresher, fairer and infinitely more fun. But they were wrong. The world they made for their children to live in is a far harsher one than the world they inherited. The first of the men and women born in the baby boom that followed the Second World War started to come of age in the radical six ties. Not since 1918 had the young talked serious revolutionary politics as they did in the sixties. But in 1918, the men who came back from the war knew that the world was amiss, and knew what they wanted to do about it. So when at last the generation that fought the First World War came to power, in 1945 under Major Clement Attlee, they changed the world. The 1942 Beveridge Report had called for the abolition of the ‘five giants’ - Want, Ignorance, Disease, Squalor and Idleness - and between 1945 and 1951, despite a war-ruined economy, the Attlee government set about a systematic and remarkably successful assault on those evils. Exactly fifty years later, revolutionary talk was heard across the land again. But the generation of 1968 was not at all like the generation of 1918. Sixties radicalism decayed fast. It decayed, not because it was groundless, but because it was not grounded. What began as the most radical-sounding generation for half a century turned into a random collection of youthful style gurus who thought the revolution was about fashion; sharp-toothed entrepreneurs and management consultants who believed revolution meant new ways of selling things; andThatcherites, who thought freedom meant free markets, not free people. At last it decayed into New Labour, which had no idea what either revolution or freedom meant, but rather liked the sound of the words. The sixties really began in 1956 with John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, but few people noticed until the Beatles released ‘Love Me Do’ in October 1962. By then the oldest of the baby boomers were fully seventeen years IX old, and within three years they were to know everything there was to know, from the secrets of the universe to the correct way to roll a joint. The short sixties - from the release o f‘Love Me Do’ to the student sit-ins and the Paris événements of summer 1968 - was a wonderful time to be young.

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