1968: the year of reckoning

Historian article

By Hugh Gault, published 2nd March 2018

Hugh Gault explains why, 50 years later, 1968 is still remembered as a dramatic year.

1967 was 'the summer of love', and that spirit continued into 1968; but there were also many events in 1968 that were of a different sort, when the liberty of 1967 was accompanied by a questioning of the establishment and its values. If innocence is thought the defining characteristic of 1967, it was soon overtaken by awareness in 1968 that there was more to life than ‘flower power’– not just to protest but with the aim of changing things for the future. The summer of love had become a year of conflict.

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