ABSTRACT
At the time of the promulgation of the Charter, the Netherlands was a society striving to recover from the ravages of war and the loss of Indonesia, and from the consequent decline in its international status. 1 Politics were dominated by the traditional Christian democratic, social democratic and conservative liberal parties. From 1958 the country was ruled by centre-right coalitions, while most of the major cities were ruled by centre-left coalitions. This in reality would make little difference: politics was generally handled by elites who cooperated in accord with one another, while their rank and file were still expected to stick to their own sociopolitical group. Not only politics, but also the education system, labour unions and leisure were driven by the logics of ideological or religious networks, with the pinnacles of each network linked at the top by the logics of consociation. All was dictated by the drive for economic growth and the longing to become a reliable Atlantic partner. This left little room for polarisation in either the ideological arena or in class relations.
