Miniskirts

In the mid-1960s London suddenly became a centre for international youth fashion.

One of the most characteristic fashion developments of Sixties London was the miniskirt designed by Mary Quant (at six inches - 15cm - above the knee, the shortest skirt in fashion history up to that time). These have become symbolic aspects of a new feeling of opportunity and freedom that marked the decade.

The availability of pantyhose (rather than stockings) and of roll-up leggings made it possible for women to wear short skirts without fear of unintended flashes of thigh. While there may have been some aspect of sexual liberation in young women showing off the shapes of their legs, there was also an important element of women's liberation: the design was inspired by the desire for a skirt that wouldn't hamper a young woman running for a bus.

A Rank cinema newsreel about Sixties fashion, with a characteristically Sixties sneer:



A collage of images of Sixties fashion:



Extensive pages on the fashion and fabrics of the period can be found on the website of the Victoria & Albert Museum

The Mini

The Arab oil embargo at the time of the Suez Crisis had stimulated demand for small cars that were economical to run, such as the Citroën 2CV and the Volkswagen Beetle. British manufacturers had not previously considered the market for cars with low fuel consumption, so were in a hurry to build something to compete.

The most successful design for a low cost car was the mini, designed by Alec Issigonis and produced by the British Motor Corporation. Like the miniskirt, pop music, and buses that passengers could hop in and out of at will, the mini became an icon of the new, young, stylish Britain. In 2009 it was one of the "British Design Classics" celebrated on a special stamp issue.

Foreign manufacturers could not understand how Morris was making the Mini so cheaply, but in fact poor costing meant that the mini was initially being sold at a loss. This is bleak testimony to the general inefficiency of postwar British industry.

Pop becomes national news

British Pathe News reports on The Beatles playing at the ABC Ardwick, Manchester, 1963.



Note the audience reactions, the Stoicism of the cinema staff, the lone policeman as security, and the length of hair that passed for "long hair" in the early 1960s.

Apartheid

The racist attitudes that had prevailed at the high point of European colonialism were, in much of the world, eroded in the late 1950s and the 1960s with the creation of independent Black African states and the movement for Civil Rights in the U.S.A. The first postcolonial African state was Ghana, which became independent in 1958 under President Kwame Nkrumah.

Recognition of the legitimate aspirations of African Nationalism was signalled by the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in 1960, in a speech given in Cape Town that got the name "The Winds of Change" (even though the phrase he actually used was "a wind of change" - click here for an extract). By the end of the 1960s, Britain's imperial presence in Africa had become negligible.

In Southern Africa, however, racist attitudes became more entrenched and institutionalized. In 1961 South Africa (which then included Namibia) broke away from the Commonwealth to preserve minority White rule, and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), did the same in 1963. What had been known in British English as the "colour bar", and in American English as "segregation", reached its furthest development in the Republic of South Africa under the Afrikaans name "Apartheid". While African Nationalists were calling for Black rule in Africa, the first president of the Republic of South Africa held that it was only fair that white people should be in charge because they were more civilized.

Almost every facet of life in Southern Africa was dominated by the institutionalized racial classifications, separations, and inequalities of the Apartheid system, an injustice that put South Africa increasingly at odds with international opinion throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s. The symbolic face of the struggle against Apartheid was Nelson Mandela, leader of the African National Congress militia, who was in prison from 1964 to 1990, and served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999.

Decolonization

Ireland was the last predominantly "white" part of the Empire to become self-governing, with the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922, and it was one of the first parts of the Empire to break with Britain completely, with the creation of the Republic of Ireland in 1949.

In 1947 India was partitioned into a Hindu-majority state (India) and a Muslim-majority state (Pakistan), both of which became independent. Pakistan, initially made up of two parts on either side of India, was later to separate into Pakistan and Bangladesh (previously East Pakistan). Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Burma became independent in 1948. There were no more significant moves towards independence for almost a decade, when Malaya and Ghana became independent in 1957 and Singapore in 1959. In the intervening years, the Suez Crisis of 1956 had demonstrated that Britain could no longer function as an independent imperial power.

In the 1960s there was a total withdrawal from Empire in Africa, a policy exemplified by Harold Macmillan's "Winds of Change" speech. At much the same time, the most viable territories of the West Indies were also granted independence: Jamaica (1962), Trinidad and Tobago (1962), Barbados (1966), Guiana (1966), the Bahamas (1973).

British withdrawal from Kenya (1963) and from Yemen (1967) were particularly bloody and traumatic (although nothing like as bad as the French withdrawal from Algeria or the Belgian withdrawal from Congo). Also problematic was the continued maintenance of minority White rule in Southern Africa after the end of British control (see here).

The most recent major withdrawal, and presumably the last for some time, is the handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China in 1997.

There are still a number of British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean, the South Atlantic (most significantly the Falkland Islands), the Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean (Gibraltar, and an exterritorial military base on Cyprus).

From Empire to Commonwealth

In the immediate postwar period Britain still thought of itself as an imperial nation. At its height the British Empire was the largest empire the world has ever known, comprising territories in North America, the Carribean, the South Atlantic, West Africa, Southern Africa, East Africa, South Asia, South-East Asia, parts of China, and most of Oceania. After 1919, parts of the Middle-East were also ruled by Britain under mandate from the League of Nations.

Each of these territories had its own status and method of government, varying according to how it had become part of the British Empire, pre-existing customs (as the British understood them), the strength and cohesion of native elites, and other local or regional conditions. The five most important parts of the Empire were Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa (sometimes called the "four pillars" of the Empire) and India. Queen Victoria’s two most important titles were Queen of Great Britain and Empress of India. Victoria’s successors also bore the title Emperor of India until renouncing it in 1948, the year after India became independent. The only 20th century British monarch never to have been emperor or empress of India was Elizabeth II.

Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa were settler colonies: large numbers of British and Irish (and other European) settlers emigrated to these territories. These were the first colonies to attain significant measures of self-government: Canada from 1867, Australia from 1901, New Zealand from 1907, and the Union of South Africa from 1910. They remained tied to Britain in various ways, for instance supplying troops during the two world wars, recognising the British monarch as Head of State, and (until 1967) often holding their currency reserves in Sterling.

As more and more imperial territories became self-governing, the Empire was transformed into a free international association, the Commonwealth of Nations. This is an international organisation, currently of 53 states (listed here), all of which (with the exception of Mozambique) were once part of the British Empire.

Elizabeth II is not only the head of the Commonwealth, she is also head of state in 16 of the states that are members of the Commonwealth: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, and Saint Kitts and Nevis (listed in order of independence). She is also Lord of Man, and titular Queen of Fiji.

Commonwealth countries are often proud to have legal systems, armies, educational institutions, and structures of government and administration modeled on British examples, although they are equally proud of the fact that the British are no longer running them.

The Commonwealth also provides sporting exchanges in the Commonwealth Games (a sort of mini-Olympics), and part of the legacy of Empire is the way that the games cricket and rugby are played across the globe, primarily in Commonwealth countries (unlike Association Football, which has been adopted by many countries that were never part of the British Empire).

One of the legacies of the Empire is the existence of a collection of nations around the world in which the English language is widely spoken in everyday life and is used as a literary language, not simply a lingua franca for negotiation and exchange. Even the U.S.A., the main English-speaking country outside the Commonwealth, was originally a collection of British colonies in North America. The Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to the Nigerian novelist Wole Soyinka (1986), the West-Indian poet Derek Walcott (1992), the Irish poet Seamus Heaney (1995), the Indo-Trinidadian travel writer V.S. Naipaul (2001), and the Southern African novelists Nadine Gordimer (1991), J.M. Coetzee (2003), and Doris Lessing (2007). All these, and many others who have not received the same accolade, write in English for a world-wide readership, and contribute to an international literary culture that cannot be described by any model that simply puts Britain at its "centre".

Imperial and Commonwealth history is also important in determining post-war patterns of mass migration into the British Isles, creating a much more multiracial and multicultural society there, as well as earlier patterns of migration in other parts of the world (such as from India to the West Indies and to East Africa).

Wind of Change

The key part of Harold Macmillan's famous speech on "African national consciousness" in February 1960:

In the 20th century, and especially since the end of the war, the processes which gave birth to the nation states of Europe have been repeated all over the world. We have seen the awakening of national consciousness in peoples who have for centuries lived in dependence upon some other power. Fifteen years ago this movement spread through Asia. Many countries there, of different races and civilisations, pressed their claim to an independent national life. Today the same thing is happening in Africa, and the most striking of all the impressions I have formed since I left London a month ago is of the strength of this African national consciousness. In different places it takes different forms, but it is happening everywhere. The wind of change is blowing through this continent, and whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact, and our national policies must take account of it.