The experience and memory of youth in England c.1960-c.1969

Thesis

This thesis offers the first lived experience study of youth in 1960s England. Previous histories of post-war youth have tended to focus on representations of young people rather than their daily lives. This thesis therefore uses contemporary social surveys, Mass Observation directives and oral history interviews to examine the experiences, memories and meanings of youth for working- and lower middle-class young adults, born between approximately 1940 and 1955, across England. It analyses young adults’ experiences in work, leisure and personal relationships. Popular memories of the ‘swinging sixties’ tend to present young adults in the period as hedonistic, permissive, promiscuous, subcultural rebels in constant generational conflict with their parents. However, this thesis shows that young adults’ lived experiences were more ‘mundane’ or ‘ordinary’ than these images suggest – most did not experience a ‘swinging sixties’. This thesis argues that age, gender, class, family, location and economics fractured and shaped the experiences of youth, meaning that there was no singular or homogenous youth culture. Young adults did have enough experiences in common, however, to be united by a shared sense of being part of a distinct generation at a distinct historical moment. Indeed, the socio-economic and cultural landscape of the 1960s necessarily shaped young adults’ lives and what it meant to be a young adult in the 1960s. The thesis also examines the relationship between popular memories of the ‘swinging sixties’ and personal memories of life in the period to demonstrate that both act together to influence people’s selfhoods and what it meant to be a young adult in 1960s England. Ultimately, this thesis shows that youth was as much about identity and a sense of belonging as it was about a set of common experiences.

Authors: Mills, HC

• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: 1960s; youth; cultural history; oral history; social history; gender; British history; memory
• Subjects: Social history; History; Cultural history; British history