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The Younger Generation: The Labour Party and the 1959 Youth Commission

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2013

Catherine Ellis
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Extract

In 1956, Martha Gellhorn spent an evening exploring the uncharted territory of London's espresso bars. Her impressions were recorded in an article on “the younger generation”: “Full of expectations and ignorance, I made the long sight-seeing trip through the Espresso-bar country of London, stared at the young natives, and came gladly home at last with many pictures in my mind but little understanding …. The youthful Espresso-ites remained hopelessly strangers, in their strange, small, chosen land; I can only report what I have seen.” Gellhorn's account was punctuated by references to the “strangeness” of her experience. The decor of the bars invoked “distant places” with “bull-fight posters, bamboo, tropical plants, an occasional shell or Mexican mask.” As she traveled through this “strange country,” the sight of a tortilla was “terrifying,” the customers' clothing was breathtakingly exotic, and their skin tones suggested amalgams such as “Chinese-Javanese-Siamese” or “Spanish-Arab-Cuban.” At times, Gellhorn heard French and Italian spoken freely among the espresso bars' young patrons.

The foreign topography of youth culture described by Gellhorn was not unusual among accounts of young people in the 1950s, yet until recently this period has been characterized principally as a time of social peace and political apathy, “an age of prosperity and achievement” shaped by “consensus” and a return to normality after the disruption and sacrifices of the Second World War. Following an extended period of austerity, the welfare state and the managed economy seemed to have ensured full employment and an unprecedented standard of living, while the election of successive Conservative governments in 1951, 1955, and 1959 has been explained as the political reflection of rising personal prosperity and security.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , April 2002 , pp. 199 - 231
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2002

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References

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32 University College, London (hereafter UCL), Hugh Gaitskell Papers, C193, Gaitskell to Tommy Steele, 20 March 1959, and Larry Parnes to Gaitskell, 25 March 1959.

33 The majority of men were married before the age of 25, while most women were married by age 22. LPA, Youth Commission Papers, YC. 1, “Youth Commission,” April 1959.

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37 LPA, General Secretary's Papers, GS/YOCOM/10, Gerald Gardiner to Morgan Phillips, 2 September 1959, GS/YOCOM/12, Arthur Bax to Morgan Phillips, 9 September 1959, GS/YOCOM/13, press release for Labour Party, The Younger Generation, 13 September 1959Google Scholar; LPA, Research Department, RD. 17, Home Policy Committee, “Youth Commission,” January 1960; and UCL, Hugh Gaitskell Papers, C193, Hugh Gaitskell to Gerald Gardiner, 16 September 1959.

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48 LPA, Youth Commission Papers, YC. 13, “Analysis of Correspondence to Roxy & Marilyn,” May 1959, and YC. 25, Rosemary Timperley, “Reveille: Correspondence from Readers,” June 1959.

49 LPA, Youth Commission Papers, YC. 11, Mark Abrams, “The New Consumer,” May 1959.

50 LPA, Youth Commission Papers, YC. 1, “Youth Commission,” April 1959.

51 Quoted in MacDonald, Sally and Porter, Julia, Putting on the Style: Setting Up Home in the 1950s (London, 1990)Google Scholar, unpaginated.

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54 Convictions for violent crimes rose proportionately, from 1,709 in 1956 to 4,422 in 1961, while the Borstal population increased from 2,800 to over 5,000 between 1956 and 1960. Ibid., pp. 15–17. On the difficulties associated with defining and policing juvenile crime and the tendency to idealize the behavior of earlier generations, see King, Peter, “The Rise of Juvenile Delinquency in England, 1780–1840: Changing Patterns of Perception and Prosecution,” Past and Present, no. 160 (1998): 116–66Google Scholar; Hendrick, Harry, Images of Youth: Age, Class, and the Male Youth Problem, 1880–1920 (Oxford, 1990), esp. pp. 119–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Humphries, Stephen, Hooligans or Rebels? An Oral History of Working-Class Childhood and Youth, 1889–1939 (Oxford, 1981)Google Scholar; Pearson, Geoffrey, Hooligan: A History of Respectable Fears (London, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chaps. 2 and 3; and Smithies, Edward, Crime in Wartime: A Social History of Crime in World War II (London, 1982), pp. 171–85Google Scholar.

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61 Industrial Welfare Society, What I Expect from Work (London, 1959)Google Scholar; LPA, Youth Commission Papers, YC. 16, Standing Conference of National Voluntary Youth Organisations, “Memorandum of Evidence to the Central Advisory Council for Education (England) from the Standing Conference of National Voluntary Youth Organisations, Dec. 1957,” June 1959, and YC. 23, Albu, Austen, “Apprenticeship and Training of Young People,” June 1959Google Scholar.

62 LPA, Youth Commission Papers, YC. 17, Hacker, Rose, “Sex, Love and Marriage,” June 1959Google Scholar; and Logan, and Goldberg, , “Rising Eighteen,” pp. 340, 343Google Scholar. A Church of Scotland survey in 1955 found that 38 percent of boys and 12 percent of girls saw nothing wrong with premarital relations provided that the couple was engaged, but far fewer expressed approval if there was no engagement. See Abrams, , “Facts of Young Life,” p. 42Google Scholar.

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67 Galbraith, J. K., The Affluent Society (Harmondsworth, 1958)Google Scholar; and Labour Party, Signposts for the Sixties (London, 1961), pp. 7–8Google Scholar.

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70 For example, Abrams, Rose, and Hinden, Must Labour Lose?; Crosland, Can Labour Win?; Crossman, Labour in the Affluent Society; and Goldthorpe, Johnet al., The Affluent Worker, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1968–1970)Google Scholar.

71 MacInnes, Colin, “Pop Songs and Teenagers,” in England, Half English (Harmondsworth, 1961), p. 57Google Scholar. Similar sentiments had, however, already been expressed by J. B. Priestly, observing youth in the 1930s: Priestly, J. B., English Journey (London, 1934), pp. 402–3Google Scholar.

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73 Young, Michael and Willmott, Peter, “Research Report No. 3: Institute of Community Studies, Bethnal Green,” Sociological Review 9 (1961): 203–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Townsend, Peter, “A Society for People,” in Conviction, ed. Mackenzie, Norman (London, 1959), p. 112Google Scholar. I am grateful to Lord Young for bringing the research report to my attention.

74 Crosland, C. A. R., “Aims of Social Policy: A Contribution to Labour Party Thinking,” Fabian Journal (July 1956), pp. 19–20Google Scholar. See especially the contributions of Townsend, and Abel-Smith, to the Labour Party's old-age pension plan, National Superannuation (London, 1957)Google Scholar.

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78 On youth and class, see also Hebdige, Dick, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London, 1995)Google Scholar; and the work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Birmingham, including Hall and Jefferson, eds., Resistance through Rituals.

79 LPA, Youth Commission Papers, YC. 11, Abrams, Mark, “The New Consumer,” May 1959Google Scholar.

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81 LPA, Youth Commission Papers, YC. 17, Hacker, Rose, “Sex, Love and Marriage,” June 1959Google Scholar; and Tiratsoo, , “Popular Politics, Affluence, and the Labour Party,” pp. 50–53Google Scholar.

82 For a general discussion of youth and consumer society, see Benson, John, The Rise of Consumer Society in Britain, 1880–1980 (London, 1994), pp. 164–76Google Scholar.

83 See, e.g., Labour's internal discussion of appropriate policies on commercial television: LPA, Research Department, R. 517, Policy and Publicity Sub-Committee, “Television Policy,” April 1955Google Scholar, and RE. 511, Sub-Committee on Television and Radio, “Recommendations on Third Programme and Television Policy (Revised),” February 1959.

84 Crosland, C. A. R., “Introduction,” in his Orientation: Socialism Today and Tomorrow (Amsterdam, 1959), p. 39Google Scholar.

85 Crosland, C. A. R., “Monopoly, Advertising and the Consumer,” in his The Conservative Enemy (London, 1962), p. 54Google Scholar.

86 British Library of Political and Economic Science (London), C.A.R. Crosland Papers, 4/8/23, “Britain,” n.d. [1960–64], and 13/20/1, “Looking at the News: Rock n' Roll,” 21 September 1956.

87 Crosland, C. A. R., The Future of Socialism (New York, 1956)Google Scholar, and “Monopoly, Advertising and the Consumer,” pp. 50–67.

88 Crossman, , Labour in the Affluent Society, p. 5Google Scholar.

89 Labour Party, Younger Generation, pp. 5–6Google Scholar.

90 Ibid., p. 7.

91 Ibid., pp. 40, 35–37.

92 Ibid., pp. 38–40.

93 See, e.g., Labour Party, The Nonsense about Youth (London, 1961)Google Scholar, Labour and the Scientific Revolution (London, 1963)Google Scholar, and What the New Britain Will Be Like When Labour Wins (London, 1964), p. 12Google Scholar.

94 Labour Party, What the New Britain Will Be Like, p. 15Google Scholar. See also the manifesto, Labour Party, Let's Go with Labour for the New Britain (London, 1964)Google Scholar.

95 LPA, Research Department, RD. 35, Home Policy Sub-Committee, “Notes on the General Election,” March 1960; and Butler, and Rose, , British General Election of 1959, pp. 193, 197Google Scholar.

96 Mark Abrams, “Why Labour Has Lost Elections,” pts. 1, 2, 4 [sic], and 5, Socialist Commentary (May–August 1960); LPA, NEC Sec. no. 106, “Socialist Commentary Survey: Why Labour Lost Elections,” 13 July 1960. The Socialist Commentary survey was subsequently expanded and published as Abrams, Rose, and Hinden, Must Labour Lose? The electorate's view of Labour during this period is examined in Brooke, Stephen, “Labour and ‘the Nation’ after 1945,” in Party, State and Society: Electoral Behaviour in Modern Britain, ed. Taylor, Miles and Lawrence, Jon (London, 1997), pp. 153–75Google Scholar.

97 LPA, Research Department, RD. 87, Home Policy Sub-Committee, “A Note on Dr. Abrams' Survey,” September 1960. By contrast, a survey conducted in 1956 had found that 54 percent of young people supported Labour, while the Conservatives had the support of 40 percent. See Abrams, , “Facts of Young Life,” p. 41Google Scholar.

98 Phillips, , Labour in the Sixties, pp. 15–16Google Scholar.

99 Ibid., p. 17; and LPA, General Secretary's Papers, GS/YS/52, “The Young Socialists: A New Organisation for Labour's Youth,” 21 January 1960.

100 Labour Party, How, When and Why: A Guide for the Young Socialists (London, 1960), p. 6Google Scholar.

101 LPA, National Executive Committee (NEC), “Report and Recommendations of the Youth Working Party,” 25 November 1959Google Scholar; and NEC, General Secretary's Papers, GS/YS/44, “Organisation of Youth: Observations by the General Secretary,” 16 December 1959.

102 LPA, General Secretary's Papers, GS/YS/29, Windsor, Maureen, Jarvis, Fred, Morris, Peter, and Rust, W. Bonney, “The Labour Party and Youth,” September 1950Google Scholar; and Layton-Henry, , “Labour's Lost Youth,” pp. 285–90, 293Google Scholar.

103 Layton-Henry, , “Labour's Lost Youth,” p. 294Google Scholar; and Butler, and King, , British General Election of 1964, p. 63Google Scholar.

104 LPA, General Secretary's Papers, GS/YS/55, J. K. Hewitt to Morgan Phillips, January 1960.

105 LPA, General Secretary's Papers, GS/YS/62, Desmond Donnelly to Morgan Phillips, 21 March 1960.

106 LPA, General Secretary's Papers, GS/YS/63i, Arthur Bax to Morgan Phillips, 24 March 1960, and GS/YS/64, Phillips to Donnelly, 8 April 1960. For an example of the gramophone sleeve style, see Labour Party, Too Young? (London, 1960)Google Scholar.

107 LPA, General Secretary's Papers, GS/YS/65, “Young Socialists,” 8 April 1960, and GS/YS/61, notes for press conference, 21 January 1960.

108 Layton-Henry, , “Labour's Lost Youth,” pp. 295–304Google Scholar; Shipley, Peter, The Militant Tendency: Trotskyism in the Labour Party (Richmond, 1983), pp. 27, 31–33Google Scholar; and Butler, D. E. and Pinto-Duschinsky, M., British General Election of 1970 (London, 1971), pp. 277, 287Google Scholar.

109 For example, Gardner, Llew, “The Fringe Left,” in The Left, ed. Kaufman, Gerald (London, 1966), pp. 136–39Google Scholar; and Tiratsoo, Nick, “Labour and Its Critics: The Case of the May Day Manifesto Group,” in Coopey, and Tiratsoo, , eds., Wilson Governments, p. 173Google Scholar.

110 Compare Labour Party, Britain Belongs to You, p. 2Google Scholar, and Let's Go with Labour, pp. 13–14, 18.

111 See table 1. In 1969, the Representation of the People Act fulfilled one of Labour's promises by lowering the voting age to 18, and although many newly enfranchised youths were not registered, and their turnout in the 1970 election was low, Labour was nevertheless the main beneficiary of their support. On the role of young voters in the elections of 1964, 1966, and 1970, see Butler, David and Stokes, Donald, Political Change in Britain: The Evolution of Electoral Choice, 2d ed. (London, 1974), pp. 239–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

112 Labour Party, Younger Generation, p. 40Google Scholar.