ABSTRACT
The 1960s, as Arthur Marwick ( 1998 : 3) has noted, rouse ‘strong emotions’ in everyone – whether those individuals lived through them or not. They are perceived very differently: some would see them as a time of exciting changes that have improved the world for the better, while others view them as the moment when everything began to go wrong and blame them for every problem we have faced since then. Still others see the 1960s as a wasted time when fun and frivolity ruled and nothing changed. They were certainly a period when ordinary people saw considerable changes in their everyday lives: refrigerators, washing machines, television, vacuum cleaners were no longer only for the rich. Supermarkets began to appear in increasing numbers, car ownership more than doubled between 1960 and 1970, motorways began to be built, the expansion of higher education meant that increasing numbers of young people went on to universities and polytechnics after school – and school was increasingly likely to mean a comprehensive one (Marwick 1982 ; Sandbrook 2007 ).
