Irena Gross, a student activist in Warsaw in 1968, is Executive Director of the Institute for Human Sciences at Boston University.

Do you feel that there was a global youth revolt in 1968, or were the goals of protestors in Paris, Berlin, Warsaw and Cambridge (MA) very different?

STANLEY HOFFMANN: It always fascinated me that no great historian has written on the subject of contagion. When I think of revolution, that concept seems central. Certainly, when Harvard students rebelled in 1969, there was a constant reference backward: the spur, the incentive was 1968 in France. This contagion happened even before the age of the internet.

DANY COHN-BENDIT: First of all, 1968 was the first global media revolt. You didn't need the internet to have mutual contamination. Secondly, the revolt of the 1960s was the revolt of the generation born after World War II, a revolt against the world built by the war generation. Even in communist countries it was the revolt of the generation born after the war against the form of communism instituted by the war generation. This is the core common element. That's what the two types of anti-authoritarian revolt had in common.

Dany Cohn-Bendit, you recently said that we should forget '68, that '68 is over. Is the original meaning of 1968 lost? Should it be lost?

DANY COHN-BENDIT: Neither is it lost, nor should it be lost. We live in another world. '68 was a revolt in the world of the '60s. That was the world of the Vietnam War. It was a very authoritarian, morally hypocritical society. That's the world against which we revolted. And we succeeded. We succeeded culturally. We succeeded socially. And we lost politically. ... I always say: 'thank God!'
Today I say 'forget '68' not because I want to deny something, but because I don't want to look back. We have to live, to fight in the world of today. In the 1960s, we were Promethean. The future was ours. We didn't fear the future. We didn't know unemployment - it didn't exist. AIDS we didn't know. Global warming we didn't know. Globalisation as it now exists we didn't know. So if today we talk about the necessity for a new political movement, we have to forget '68 because we live in a different world.

Why do you thank God you lost politically?

DANY COHN-BENDIT: Politically... there was a certain madness about '68. To fight for a free society and to have in mind the Cultural Revolution, you must be mad. Or if you want to fight for a better society and you have in mind Bolshevism, Leninism, Trotskyism or whatever, you must be mad. Or if you like, we were the anarchists, the libertarians...

STANLEY HOFFMANN: You cannot say 'libertarian' in America! It's no good!

[Laughter]

DANY COHN-BENDIT: I'll say it in French. We libertaires were for the Spanish Republicans in 1936, for the workers' councils in the 1917 Revolution. We were for all the movements in history which lost. We were very sympathetic, but we already identified ourselves with the losers. We had the political part all muddled: our model was backward, crazy.
The anti-globalisation movement today, what is it saying? They're saying that they want another world. But the question is: what is this other world? What is the future? To answer this question, it is wrong to look back at '68. Which doesn't mean that '68 wasn't important; it doesn't mean that Carla Bruni's husband is right in bashing the 1960s. But in our defence, we shouldn't make the mistake of making ourselves nostalgic for the '60s.

IRENA GROSSS: I want to ask you a question, Dany: we in Poland were immediately accused by the government of being the dupes of provocation. Even now people tell us: 'you were being used, you were not really the actors'. So I wanted to ask you: did you feel that you were a real actor in history?

DANY COHN-BENDIT: Yes, we completely were. At that time, for us, we were making history. Most of ... your life, history is making you. And this time, in our own minds... we thought we stopped the machine, and then we had the impression that we were going where we wanted to be going. But this charge of being manipulated, it's very funny. I was accused by the communists of being an agent for the CIA. I was accused by de Gaulle of being an agent for the KGB. Later, when I went to Israel, I was accused of being an agent of the Arabs, and the Arabs accused me of being a Zionist agent. I was the perfect agent. It was wonderful!
But there's something else behind this argument about being manipulated: they couldn't stand that suddenly young people had their own ideas. This was out of their world. It was impossible. So behind it, they thought there must be another power.

STANLEY HOFFMANN: It's still going on. Now you have the poor Tibetans who are accused of being manipulated by the Dalai Lama. To accuse their opponents of being manipulated is always the reaction of people in power.

Did the '68 movement fail because it had no clear political objective?

STANLEY HOFFMANN: I agree that politically '68 failed. If anything, then the immediate consequence, at least in France, was to consolidate the right. Yet I agree with Dany that at a cultural and social level, there were tremendous achievements.

DANY COHN-BENDIT: But this is the wrong question, and when you ask the wrong question, you get a wrong answer. In Germany and in the United States, you had a revolt: protests against the Vietnam War, against the structure of universities, etc. etc. But at no moment was the power question on the table. It was a revolt, a transformative process, and it still goes on. In France, you had a workers' movement and it didn't start with the unions. Factory by factory, the young workers went on strike. And then at the end, you had everybody with their own problems coming out with their demands against this society. By the end, you had the soccer players who stood up against the French Federation of Soccer and told them: 'Soccer for the soccer player!' This is a crucial demonstration of what happened to French society. And those in power didn't understand what was really going on.
The problem is that power did not interest the majority of people in the streets. The police were in so much trouble that they didn't even protect the ministries. You could have stormed the Finance Ministry, but that didn't interest anyone except the lefties. The lefties had it in their dreams that you must take the Winter Palace. And de Gaulle, too, saw that the question of power was on the table. He was thinking about power. But not the people: the people just wanted to take power over their own lives. Political power was not their problem.
De Gaulle's genius move was to call elections. You had de Gaulle on one side, and on the other side you had the Communists - the socialists hardly existed at that time, and we said 'election is betrayal.' So de Gaulle said 'it's me or the Communists.' So of course he won politically.
We lost politically because the political outcome of the movement was not the question for us. Though, if you like, this started a complete transformation of political life in France. The result of '68 in France was Mitterand, but it took twelve years.

IRENA GROSS: If I may add another aspect to this: even though it was leftist and paid lip-service to Trotskyism and all those ideologies, '68 really was an anti-communist movement. In Poland, in 1968, communism was finished off: with the invasion of Czechoslovakia, communism committed suicide. It was a real victory - our victory, in a sense - because this proved to us that state communism was not modifiable, that it needed to be abandoned. Within two or three years the movement towards workers' defence councils started.

DANY COHN-BENDIT: Communism started to die in 1968, but it took another twenty years.

IRENA GROSS: Look at the difference between Gomulka and Gerek. The Gerek government, which started in 1970, was already completely non-ideological. There was not a single communist in Poland in 1970, not a single one. People who joined the Communist Party joined it only for opportunistic reasons. Until 1968, communism was a corpse with some vitality, but afterwards it was just dead. So, despite everything, I consider 1968 a huge victory.

What was special about 1968 in Germany, in view of its history?

DANY COHN-BENDIT: It's very interesting that it is in Germany that you have the harshest books about '68. Götz Aly - who was part of it all in the '60s - wrote a book called Unser Kampf, which argues that the '68 movement were Hitler's children.
The 1968 movement in Germany challenged a closed society. It was an anti-authoritarian movement, and it was a movement against the handling of Germany's history by their parents. This was one of the most difficult things. It wasn't merely abstract: for most people, it was about their own parents, their own grandparents. What does it mean to ask your own mother, your own father what they did? It sounds easy, but if you're at the dinner table, and you start this debate....
That's what was special about the German movement. The French never did this. The French never asked questions about the collaboration; every Frenchman was part of the Resistance. The French Maoists in the '60s called themselves la nouvelle resistance; they could identify themselves with the good parts of French history.

What do you see as the legacy of 1968 for political and social action today? What role does the street have to play in this?

STANLEY HOFFMANN: I don't see any political or social action happening today. I really don't. In any case, nothing of any substance. But I am not too pessimistic about that. There are periods in art, in music, when nothing happens. Then, suddenly, there is a revival. Afterwards, everybody explains why it was inevitable.

DANY COHN-BENDIT: I don't agree that because the discourse is empty today, nothing will happen. For example, you could say that in the United States today, you have symptoms of something new. I don't want to overcharge Barack Obama, but what stands behind him is interesting because it is a movement of people who want real change. They believe in it. If America elected a black Democrat man, that has a real significance forty-five years after civil rights. I was in New York in 1964 and if you would have said at that time 'in fifty years you'll have a black president', everyone would have said that you were completely mad. And this is a big change in society. It's a positive sign in a negative time.

Isn't it striking, though, that each of you is putting your hopes for change on a figurehead rather than on a social movement?

STANLEY HOFFMANN: But Lincoln was a candidate for elections, and FDR was a candidate for elections. There are moments when it's important to win elections.

DANY COHN-BENDIT: I don't know where America would be without the New Deal, and the New Deal was not started by trades unions!
But first, there is a movement. You have a lot of people. Even against the war in Iraq, you have people - more and more people - who say it's enough. And in an election year it's possible, suddenly, for the hopes of all people to converge. There's a whole lot of people working with Obama. This is not just about one man: there is a momentum - not his momentum - in American society.

STANLEY HOFFMANN: There's certainly an enthusiasm among volunteers which has not happened for a long time.

DANY COHN-BENDIT: When you compare things, you always get things wrong. But there is one example. Remember when, after the 1960s, all the hope for reform in Germany was on Willy Brandt? A lot of young people were mobilised by him, by his speech 'mehr Demokratie wagen' ['dare more democracy']. This was a movement the significance of which was also the hope for change at a political level.

Finally, with the title of this magazine in mind, do you think there's a role for utopianism today?

DANY COHN-BENDIT: I think we need utopia. I can tell you utopian things about how to regulate globalisation, socially and ecologically; about how to transform the governments of the world, and the United Nations. I could talk to you about how you can organise work differently. I have a lot of utopian ideas.
My problem is that if you want to go to parliament, don't tell me that you are a utopian. In parliament, you have to organise a daily majority. In the political struggles with the Fundis [the left wing of Germany's Green Party], it wasn't about whether I'm for or against utopia: it's about what it means to be a utopian in parliament - nothing!

What, then, could be the role of utopia in politics today?

STANLEY HOFFMANN: To think of a different organisation of work remains as important today as it always was for the socialists. And environmental problems. And the reform of the UN. So there are all kinds of things which require utopian thinking. Some will never be done: others will be done piecemeal.
There, too, I think the American elections will be very important. It will affect the willingness of the American establishment to recognise that the West can't dictate everything, because the world has changed completely.

DANY COHN-BENDIT: I can give you one utopian dream. Imagine Obama or Hillary [as president] goes to the United Nations and says: 'we have to reform the UN and as a sign of goodwill we would accept the suppression of our veto.' This would be a bombshell. Then you really are at the heart of the question of how to govern the world in this and the next century...
This is a dream. But to say 'I wish this. I can't say whether it will be. I don't want to discuss whether it's realistic. I want to discuss whether it's just or unjust to suppress the veto right.' That's utopian.

STANLEY HOFFMANN: One might imagine moving piecemeal - to say that there should be no veto in certain situations, such as when there are massive violations of human rights. You could still use a veto when national security is at stake, or...

DANY COHN-BENDIT: Ok. Then you start to talk about how you can make it happen. But... I was astonished about a lot of lefties' reactions to the Kosovan issue. They said that you can't recognise Kosovo because it is against international law, that it had to go through the UN. I said: 'Ok, to the Security Council! So if you do it like this, you say that international law is made by Putin.' You could say the same about Israel. If you want to condemn Israel for the occupation, you can't because international law is made by the US. You have to get away from this. I was astonished that so few of us, concerning Kosovo, suggested that we should vote for it in the General Assembly - like Israel was voted for.

STANLEY HOFFMANN: Amusingly enough, in 1950, the Americans went to the General Assembly in order to be able to intervene in North Korea.

DANY COHN-BENDIT: So you have to be utopian, and then you have to do politics. I want you to put utopia where it should be. But if you are bargaining in a parliament, don't talk to me about being utopian, because it's not true, you know.

STANLEY HOFFMANN: It can still inspire the little steps...

The interview was conducted by Yascha Mounk, co-founder and editor of The Utopian.

The pantheon of the revolt - where is it?

You can find it easily, even if you don't know where to look. For due to our magical anniversary rituals - abracadabra: "create one, two, many Vietnams of our memory" - a pantheon for the '68 revolt is being erected everywhere. Not as one central edifice, but, in keeping with its historical self-conception, fragmented, here, there and everywhere. Scattered across all countries in which someone feels called upon to build a monument for the revolt, this pantheon, despite the inscription "Dedicated to the Year of Nineteen-Sixty-Eight", is topped by a statue showing its founders in their heroic or repentant or superior "I-always-knew-everything-anyway"-pose.

Needless to say, these are monuments in the classical sense; that is, 'historic documents', mausoleums made out of paper, revolution-origami, produced at home rather than created on the street. The material out of which they are built is easily flammable, just as the topic demands. The words, however, are spoken for eternity, even if their import is just as fractured as the 'movement' had been in those days.

'L'imagination au pouvoir' - what was once a rallying cry has now, on its 'long march through the institutions', finally arrived in reality: in fantastical memoirs, retrospectives and analyses. When one looks at how invariably serious these are, one nearly wants to believe that an epochal event is being commemorated here.

As it seems, every generation has to have something to tell, has to make up a story for itself, its story. Only he who, afterwards, has something to tell knows that he really had lived in the first place: his narration of the story proves it. Now, it is a fact about the generation of '68 in the comfortable "Free West" that, compared to the generations of '45 and '89 at least, nothing particularly striking ever happened to them. And the revolt was a purely Western phenomenon, nourished by this extreme lack of events to which no youth can resign itself (particularly not once it has reached old age). Thus can we explain a modest part of the immodest and mythological vehemence with which these events are described by the reminiscent. What was singularly, vitally important for oneself has to be affirmed in its singularity and importance for everyone else, too. I was part of it, therefore I am.

N.B. Not part of it were our neighbours in the East. Poland in 1968? If it's noticed at all, it's hastily framed in the global context and thereby done with. Anti-Semitism? Ah yes, and what about Palestine?! The CSSR in 1968? Regrettable, sure, though, on the other hand, Dubcek - the danger of counterrevolution - well, in that light Moscow somehow isn't... The fighter for the utopia of the Not-Yet has nothing in common with the fighter against the reality of the Still-So or the Yet-Again.

2

"Posterity shall not weave any wreaths for the mime"; well, in that case he'll just have to do weave one for himself, and soon enough - that is, whilst he's still alive. The mime's head is grey, the laurel, however, ever green, and, even in its dusty state, can still be used, leaf for leaf, to season a celebratory soup.

Were they playing theatre, those actors of yesteryear? Yes, street-theatre, with all the (bloody) earnestness of play, without a script, without dramaturgy, and moreover (perhaps also: therefore?) without consequences and without success.

N.B. Where the play, for a short moment, really turned serious, the protagonists no longer came from the Department for Performing Arts, but rather from the sector of "Organised Workers"; those did envisage clear and concrete goals, namely higher salaries, and they striked till they got them. In Italy, for example, a whopping 18 % in one go - that's what you call a success (a success that, in its own right, did not lack consequences, at least not for the Italian economy, which had to think back to and struggle with this for a while to come...)

3

Who is it who tried to play revolution there?

The bourgeoisie's sons and daughters, who else - for who else would have been able to free up enough free-time to free not only themselves, but all of society and the whole world, too? That, however, was only possible because the universities at that time, without anybody having noticed, were spaces of freedom, which didn't even have to be fought for, but which, rather, were available, even for 'struggles' and 'group struggles' and 'grassroots struggles' of all kinds. This freedom was simply there for the taking - take it and you have it. And it was all for free - you didn't even have to pay for it, neither with your head nor with your career. As the biographies of our anniversary-biographers clearly show, they could comfortably catch up on their careers after the world revolution, whichever country they happened to hail from.

This was an academic cockaigne without limits on how many semesters you could stay enrolled and a 'pressure to perform' which one could - and did - successfully resist, ideologically as well as practically, whilst doing 'the right thing' politically. Economic pressures were unknown, for a child of the bourgeoisie had the requisite money - be it from the hard-working (and therefore mildly ridiculed or furiously detested) parents, or from the generous (and therefore mildly ridiculed or furiously detested) state. The sole condition: that the student had successfully concluded his bourgeois school career, which, as is well-known, was easier for bourgeois children, even dim ones, than for the children of workers, even bright ones. So it was, and so it still is today, even fourty years later. And that's not because the 'system' has won: an abstract system does not exist - only people exist who form the system and carry it and protect it and use it. Rather, it is because those who, once upon a time, had rebelled have now turned into just these people. It is they who won, just as every new generation wins against the old generation, with or without a 'revolution'. They themselves, in their fourties, began to constitute the system which, in their twenties, they had aimed to defeat. And at the age of sixty they even defend the system in the name of their children and their hopes for their children's careers. Slowly but surely, the '68ers are starting to justify their adopted nom de guerre altogether peacefully: because, lustily, they are approaching 68 years of age.

4

When the bourgeois youth played revolution, which means did it employ?

Bourgeois ones, obviously: others these bourgeois children did not know, others they did not master. And the traditional bourgeois form of representation and protest, with which the Third Estate demonstrated its demands for itself as well as its demands for a better world, was the theatre. Born into a democracy (alright, into a slave state, but the existence of an army of exploited worker drones has been the - ideally tacit - foundation even of the most modern republic for two and a half millennia, irrespective of whether those Helots live in your own country or have been outsourced to another part of the world; only the democrat's dominion over his worker drones makes it possible for him to be a democrat and to cultivate his virtues of freedom and equality and fraternity amongst his peers) and raised by absolutism, theatre was forcibly passed down to its historic successors. The theatre remains a space for the bourgeois public - and, if you prefer: t h e public space to the extent that actual decision making procedures were becoming ever more complex and invisible.

A substitute for the public? Yes: the theatre represents the public, just as representative democracy need re-presentation, that is, the make-belief of the making-appear.

Theatre, until today, also provides a substitute for the public; conversely, the parliament, the state's stage, makes use of the full arsenal of theatrical means for the public presentation of politics. This arsenal of theatrical means exposes to expression and view what - far from theatre and public - has already been decided in the parliament's committees and corridors. A professional performance, which is not to say that politicians always also are g o o d actors.

To confuse politics for theatre thus suggests itself easily to the state's public: after all, this confusion is continually being suggested to the public.

Even those 'Children of May 68', the new public of the state, have succumbed to the confusion. You cannot blame them for it: after all, they were amateurs. And so their theatre, too, was amateur theatre.

If you ponder the 'protests' of that time as theatre, then their failure becomes clear for structural reasons, as it were: where there is revolution, there can be no theatre, and where there is theatre, there can be no revolution.

For theatre is the medium of legitimation. Because it feeds itself from the arsenal of the existing, its goal is the preservation of the existing arsenals; because it interprets societal reality, including power realities, it affirms them; because it shows man and destiny, it implies an existential As-Is. The theatrical act cannot lead to post-theatrical action, for its goal is concluded in itself: when the story reached its end, so does the performance. And in the best case - that is, in the case of artistic success - all appeals to emotion and understanding are sublated in the perceived happiness of perfection, in the experience of the fulfilled form.

This no reconciliation with reality. But it makes reality bearable. And that's why, politically speaking, theatre is always affirmative.

5

The engineers of society - stupid, after all, they were not - always knew this. And hence they were enemies of the theatre, like the godfather of all social planners, Plato.

However, it turned out that the reality of the unwashed humanoid always remains an obstacle to the realisation even of the cleanest plan (which is why every prescriptive social theory works best without humans: hence the tendency, inherent to all these systems, to the in-humane).

This led to the cunning attempt of taking account of the base needs of man (in this case: the need for entertainment); but to do so only in order to redirect them towards a higher goal, by making art subservient to the plan. Which brings us to the educative, and finally also: to the revolutionary, anti-bourgeois theatre.

After all?!

But no. For the Platonic idea of eradicating theatre was as unsuccesful as the Leninist idea of making theatre subservient. On the one hand because no philosopher ever came to rule anywhere, and the powerful were too wise, too sly or too indifferent to take their subjects' toy away (the Cromwells of the Western world always remain but a short episode, which serves them quite right). And on the other hand because the theatre of the Russian 'Red Spring' in the early 1920s never managed to - and never wanted to - deny its close kinship with international art movements before and during World War I. Whether Symbolism, Futurism, Dadaism, Cubism, Suprematism, Cubo-Suprematism: the theatre of the revolution, too, remained a play of forms. And this theatre passed on Ibsen and Maeterlinck, Gozzi and Chekhov, Wilde and Scribe, Racine and E.T.A. Hoffman, Shakespeare, farces and operettas - but precisely in a 'revolutionary' manner, anew, whether 'autonomous', 'synthetic', or 'biomechanical' and, no surprises there, with great success on touring performances in other European countries hungry for theatrical sensations. But the artists' assumption that communism might be accompanied by the unleashing of artistic freedoms turned out to be a serious misunderstanding of the Bolshevik conception of art. "From everyone according to his skills to everyone according to his needs"? In that case just anybody would be able to come along. Lenin ran out of time before he could enlighten artists that the time for chaos was used up, that they now needed to follow the party line. Stalin did that. And finished off Formalism, and soon after that he finished of the Formalists, too. Soviet art was kicked into the service of the state. Never had representative art been more petit-bourgeois.

Then at the latest was the idea of an internationalist and avant-garde aesthetic of revolution discredited: its legitimizing foundations had vanished. As it actually existed in socialism, it had proven that it could endure nothing. That's why this art - blind, or dumb, or sentimental, or all of these together - was so difficult to endure, particularly in light of its persistent insistence that it was founded on just such an aesthetic of revolution. From then on an eerie, hollow sound emanated from underneath the stage boards ...

6

Unless this art really just pretended to be based on an aesthetic of revolution.

In that case it was clever and wise, but only as 'anti-bourgeois' and 'revolutionary' as the needs of a bourgeois audience would allow: for that audience goes to the theatre to receive a delivery of fear and terror - happily even from the anti-bourgeois bogeyman himself - but it does not want to take the delivered goods back home. Fear and terror remain in the theatre: in safety. The audience does not take any political insights home - goods that weren't ordered need not be picked up. What the audience does take home is the emotional surplus for which it paid the price of the ticket.

Which takes us past the political theatre of the sly Bertolt Brecht.

It never reached the 'Proletarian masses': 'masses' don't fit into the theatre - and neither are they welcome there. You just need to look at the buildings themselves, old or new: they do in fact reflect a class consciousness, just that it is not a proletarian one (this beautiful, patronising fiction of the cultured proletarian). The 'thinking worker' Brecht envisaged - bussed to the theatre in groups by his unitary trade union, and, after he has seen the pedagogical play, transported back from the bourgeois sanctuary to the reality of his working world - might have gained a single insight. Which is that his working world stands in a contradiction to the lessons taught to him in the theatre, which his teachers might be able to sublate artistically, but which he himself will never be able to overcome. In this way, the pedagogical theatre of revolution might unexpectedly, in spite of itself, have had an effect by aiding and abetting a revolt against the institutionalized revolution; a counterrevolutionary effect, that is. But this would be to give too much honour to this kind of art, which hopes to disperse the fruits grown on the tree of knowledge by chucking them into the stalls - and bypasses only the bitter fruit of introspection, the realisation of its very own contingency.

But honour to whom honour is due - to the inventor of epic theatre. That, however, is not a revolutionary invention of struggle, but rather an evolutionary invention of art, a further artistic possibility in the infinite arsenal of theatrical forms and forms of theatre. Whether Brecht believed the ideological superstructure? Whether he believed himself regarding it? Whether he believed that he owed it to himself to believe in it? What he did know, in any case, is that an effect can only be produced by aesthetic means. And these means he needed to record in all their minutia. Hence the model-books, the model-productions; hence, too, the attention to even the last detail, down to the spoon which Mother Courage is carrying in her coat pocket. But does this make sure that the effect remains political? Whoever stays in the traditions of means, whoever uses the theatrical form and its conventions, however modified they might be, can exclude however much he wants in theory: yet, the use of customary means will result in customary effects. And these are emotional. Emotional enlightenment, however (concerning societal contradictions, the historic inevitability of communism, the class struggle) is a contradiction in terms. A theatrical performance affects your emotions - but it will not have any effects. Should we believe the clever man's surprise, should we picture him grinning, or should we grin at him, when he writes: 'The world premiere of "Mother Courage and her Children" in Zurich during Hitler's war, with the extraordinary Therese Giehse in the lead, made it possible for the bourgeois press - and this despite the audience in the Züricher Schauspielhaus consisting mainly of antifascist and pacifist German refugees - to call it a Niobean tragedy and to talk about the vital forces of the dam. Thereby warned, the playwright undertook a few modifications for the Berlin production'. The class-struggling poet remains silent about the success of his little modifications - they did, in any case, not change anything about the success of Mother Courage across all the world's (obviously: bourgeois) stages; neither, needless to say, did they change anything about their message's non-success. Every effective performance of the play was the result of an effective attack on the emotions of the spectators. That attack led the audience to sympathy with Mother Courage, to the audience's being devastated about her and her children's lot, but not to a cold analysis of what she has done 'wrong' in the 'capitalist' Thirty Years War. What remains is the rather general insight that man, in and of himself, might be quite good, but that war, in and of itself, is bad. And so the author felt rather misunderstood.

As always in such cases among thespians, so also in this instance for Brecht: it was the fault of the press. But: the press not only belongs to the bourgeoisie, it is made by the bourgeoisie, its readers, too, are bourgeois, including the refugees, who returned, as soon as they could, from the bourgeois theatre in bourgeois Switzerland to their bourgeois positions in their bourgeois fatherlands.

And Brecht's theatre in East-Berlin?

That, too, was the opposite of a model for the socialist revolution. A lavishly equipped theatre, a meticulously organised apparatus, season tickets, job security, the highest salaries, standard international royalties, no economic pressure. In short: the undisrupted continuation of the bourgeois theatrical model in the midst of actually existing socialism, under the very best conditions.

Where the very purchase of a theatre ticket establishes a contract regulated by the Civil Code, there can hardly be revolution inside the auditorium.

So even the institution of anti-bourgeois, anti-capitalist and of course anti-fascist theatre could not provide the necessary means for an anti-bourgeois, anti-capitalist and of course anti-fascist revolt (not to speak of a revolution).

7

Now one might object that it would be more just to review that glorious May, the fourtieth anniversary of which we are commemorating, (and which, in contrast to Brecht, fared rather badly in contemporary reviews, so that it too, like many other theatrical undertakings, can feel that it failed 'because of the press') as a piece of street theatre.

But to have success in the streets, a troupe of players needs credibility and experience of the streets - neither of which had been imparted to them in their lecture halls. Furthermore, you need a clear plot, understandable and attractive for Old and Young, Graduates and Special-Ed Students, Men and Women, Rich and Poor, i.e. for everyone - you could also say, for 'society'. Add to this a talent for improvisation, the means to attract people and to make them stay. And a lot of humour. What lacked was not only the latter, but also the ability to find and captivate an audience. Hardly a surprise, this, given that there were only two artistic means of articulation: the monologue, read, fixedly, off a sheet of paper, much too long and often - both semantically and acoustically - incomprehensible; and the chant (for which the latter was equally true).

A plot or a goal were not apparent; neither to random nor to captive audiences - and if plot or goal were apparent, then it was obvious that they were not in the audience's interest. There was no dialogue. This was not the way to enthuse the 'masses'. So they stayed away.

The actors, seminarians, had taken to the streets with a theory, rather than because they felt an urge to act. They took to the streets because they had read that power lies in the streets and that you only have to pick it up (if only they could find it...). The images they had in their head might have been images of street actions, historic or present - Trotzki enthusing the masses, Lenin as agitator, the storming of the Bastille, the storming of the Winter Palace, Ché holding a cigar or perhaps a gun, benign uncle Ho Chi Minh in front of flag-waving children, a waving Mao and his blue hat on a stage in front of an immense crowd of supporters: the world stage as an institution for moral revolution. Only: this wasn't the reality of their experiences; that reality lay in the lecture hall from which they came and in which their intellectual socialization had taken place. The icons of the revolution were available, one could parade them around the streets, but out there it was impossible to find the revolution itself. So you stand around a little stupidly (or march about). Hence the festive actors of May remained foreigners on the street-stage, hence they acted in such a displaced and wooden and helpless manner - and nurtured their tacit, secret desire to return to their academic interiors, or to conquer the stages of the enclosed auditoria. Hence, in other words, their desire to return to the state-theatrical institutions and productions which are only possible in interiors and auditoria, and by which they had been formed.

8

Revolution is the moment in which it takes place and is finished off. Afterwards, it has vanished: either 'as though it had never been', devoid of consequences once you've counted up its victims and dragged them away; or because it has become institutionalized (whilst the production of victims and their counting up and their dragging away is still going on). Revolution becomes static (one could also say: statist), a machine which preserves, propels and feeds itself.

Where there is society there are societal agreements, compacts - just as the state's stage necessitates if it is to function: conventions. And so society, by definition, is conventional; as conventional as the art of theatre which it created, and by which, in turn, it was re-created.

So: the revolution does not take place in the auditorium. But the theatre does.

What then was that which, fourty years ago, did not take place in the auditorium?

You shall recognise it for what it is by looking at its fruits.

When these 'events' bore artistic fruits, then they were aesthetic rather than revolutionary. Insofar as theatre is concerned even hyper-aesthetic fruits (shall we throw about names? Do let's throw them: Mnouchkine. Wilson. Stein): blissful, captivating art of the auditorium, what else.

And political consequences? Seriously: who finished off the Vietnam war? The answer: politics. Who 'processed' communism? The answer: economics. Fascism? The answer: the judiciary. Capitalism? The answer: well, no one. Carefully I say: the true history of the year '68 will be written when those who think of themselves as its protagonists are dead. In case that those who will still be alive then will think it worthwhile to write its history.

Preliminary conclusion: Those Revolution-Theatre-Actors, they neglected one thing and didn't act the other one out at all well.

How, after all, can you bring a freedom to the world of which you didn't even know that you had it?

Michael Wachsmann, Artistic Director of the Münchner Kammerspiele from 1986 to 2001, is one of Germany's premier translators of plays by Shakespeare, Euripides and many others.

He was the son of an officer in the occupying British army in India. His father
rose to the rank of Major General. At the age of twelve, in his final year at
St. Ronan's prep school in Kent, Lindsay Anderson saw a film which impressed
him sufficiently for him to want to share his opinion of it with his world. He
persuaded two fellow pupils to put together a magazine -- St. Ronan's News
-- which ran for four issues. Lindsay wrote the film reviews. His review of
Kid Millions, an American film starring Eddie Cantor and Ann Sothern (whom
Anderson himself would direct in The Whales of August) drew attention to a
scene in which a gangster fired a machine gun and the film turned from
black-and-white into colour. The technique and the image stayed with him all of
his life.

From St. Ronan's he moved on to Cheltenham College, where he became a prefect
and stopped the indiscriminate caning of juniors. From Cheltenham he moved on to
Oxford University to study Classics. This was 1942. The Second World War was
raging. A second consecutive generation of young Englishmen were Dying For
Their Country. Anderson wrote a film script with the aim "to combine a
present day theme with an authentic picture of features of English life all too
frequently misrepresented by the movies". The script, which told of a young
man preparing for war, opens at Public School. It features three boys, one of
whom "is passing through a stage of 'materialist' cynicism who
"indulges in a mild flirtation" with a female character called The Girl.

The film wasn't made because the British Film Industry had never taken young
men's work seriously and because there were enough people around to tell him
that he shouldn't be trying to make films, he should be busy laying down his
life. He was helped to this decision himself by a sentimental visit to his old
school, Cheltenham College, and a war-glorious lecture by an old boy. He
postponed his Oxford career, enlisted in the Infantry corp, and was stationed
for long periods on an airbase where his colleagues liked nothing better than
swearing, bullying, skiving off to gay bars and playing cards. His diaries,
which I edited for publication, paint a vivid picture of the army as a
wasteful, dehumanising machine staffed almost exclusively with philistines and
bullies. Out on a training course he fired a blank straight into his Section
Leader's face and wrote the adventure into the screenplay that, in time,
became 'if...'.

Anderson spent the final months of the war in the country of his birth, India,
having transferred to the Intelligence Corps. Essentially a desk-tied
bureaucrat, he spent his free time cycling to the cinema to watch Hollywood
films, the best of which starred Bette Davis (whom he would also direct in The
Whales of August).

At Oxford, he switched from Classics to English and he founded a film journal
called Sequence to champion the masculine poetic films of John Ford, and to
pour scorn on the British print media which was falling over itself to
over-praise the latest crop of mediocre British films. Their response to the
war film, The Way To The Stars, was particularly irksome. Anderson wrote in his
diary:

"28 April 1946: I want to write something about British films - the time is
ripe for constructive criticism. There is too much adulation flying about at
the moment... later this morning I went to see Michael and unburdened to him my
soul on the subject of The Way To The Stars, which we discussed - I becoming
more and more vehement in my condemnation as the nauseatingly smug
sanctification of English inhibition and class prejudice appeared to me more
and more distinctly in its true form."

The Way To The Stars was directed by Anthony Asquith, whose father had been the
British Prime Minister during the First World War. It claimed to tell the truth
about life on a British airbase during the War. Lindsay Anderson had lived that
life and knew that the film was offensively false. English officers on airbases
didn't have stiff upper lips and did not always act with decency. Two World
Wars in quick succession had robbed Britain of millions of citizens, but the
country's leaders were again peddling the same propaganda to a pliant public
and an compliant print media.

Sequence ran for fourteen issues and earned Anderson film writing jobs on the
Observer, The Times, Sight and Sound and The New Statesman, the last of which
he was sacked from for refusing to join in with the media praise of David
Lean's stiff-upper lip war film, The Bridge on the River Kwai. More
importantly, his Sequence writings also won him a contract to make a
documentary film about a factory in Wakefield. He called it Meet The Pioneers
(1948). Between 1948 and 1954, Anderson made four documentary films about real
people doing real work in real places; and he made Thursday's Children, a
documentary about a school for deaf-and-dumb children. It won him the American
Academy Award. Every Day Except Christmas, his film about Covent Garden
porters, won the Grand Prize for Documentary at the Venice Film Festival.

But these personal, poetic films were not appreciated in Britain. He and they
were at odds with an industry and a public that lapped up middle-class
mediocrity, propaganda and stereotypes. Unable to generate interest in his
films among those who controlled film distribution, bought films for
television, and contributed to the press, Anderson hired the National Film
Theatre in London (Sequence contributor, Karel Reisz was on the staff) and, in
six different programmes between 1956 and 1958, he screened his own films and
the early works of 'committed individuals' such as Reisz, Tony Richardson,
Francois Truffaut and Claude Chabrol. To drum up press interest he called this
'Free Cinema' and like all good revolutionaries, he issued a manifesto:

'These films were not made together; nor with the idea of showing them
together. But when they came together, we felt they had an attitude in common.
Implicit in this attitude is a belief in the freedom, in the importance of
people and in the significance of the everyday. As film-makers we believe no
film can be too personal. The image speaks. Sound amplifies and comments, Size
is irrelevant. Perfection is not an aim. An attitude means a style. A style
means an attitude.'

The films helped Tony Richardson and then himself to be employed as artistic
directors at the pioneering Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square, London. Here,
Anderson continued to break down the bourgeois restrictions of theme and style
in narrative drama in revolutionary new plays such as Serjeant Musgrave's
Dance by John Arden, which has a machine gun as a central image; Billy Liar,
which also has machine gun fire at a key moment; and a series of dark poetic
dramas by David Storey (one of which, In Celebration, he filmed in 1975). As
well as honing his skills as a director of actors, and as a creator of
feature-length productions, Anderson was assembling the team with whom he would
make 'if...' -- the designer, Jocelyn Herbert; the composer, Marc
Wilkinson; the actor Graham Crowden (destined to be everyone's favourite
bicycle-riding schoolmaster).

But there was still the considerable problem of getting British film producers
to let him make a feature film. His Oscar and festival awards were not enough
to prevent him from being rejected from the jobs of directing the film
adaptations of two hugely successful plays he brought into being -- The Long
and the Short and the Tall (1960), starring Robert Shaw and Peter O'Toole --
for which he was replaced by a hack, Leslie Norman (Barry Norman's dad) --
and Billy Liar (1962) -- on which he was replaced by TV director, John
Schlesinger.

But the revolution was gaining force. Lindsay's 'Free Cinema' friends,
Tony Richardson and Karel Reisz had a sensational critical and commercial
success with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, starring Albert Finney and
Rachel Roberts as East Midlanders ground down by social conditions and
pregnancy. Offers flowed their way. Reisz accepted an offer to produce a film
about David Storey's novel This Sporting Life, about a Northern rugby player
ground down by social conditions and a doomed relationship with his landlady
(Rachel Roberts in the film) on the condition that Lindsay Anderson was allowed
to direct it.

The film won the acting prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, and it won Oscar
nominations for its stars, Richard Harris and Rachel Roberts, but almost six
years passed before Lindsay Anderson made another film.

The main reason for the delay was that he was disillusioned by the feature
filmmaking process in Britain. In the theatre, the whole company would work
together to realise the vision of the director. In the cinema, films could only
be made under strict union rules, with huge and hugely inefficient crews who
cared more for their wages and working hours than the work itself.

Disillusioned, Anderson spent much of the coming years abroad. He took up
invitations to witness at first-hand the growing national cinemas of India
(under Satyajit Ray); Poland (under Andrzej Wajda) and Czechoslovakia (under
Milos Forman), all of whom were making Free Cinema-style films that dominated
the local box-office and the international award circuits. In April 1965,
Anderson was in Czechoslovakia at Forman's invitation. Forman screened for
him his first feature film, Konkurs (Greetings). Anderson adored the quietly
spectacular cinematography by Miroslav Ondricek. The opening scenes take place
at a motorbike race. Ondricek's camera follows the action with thrilling
skill. Meeting up with Ondricek on the location of Forman's new film, A
Blonde in Love, Lindsay was hugely impressed by Ondricek's artistry and
seriousness. Ondricek was as far from a time-watching by-the-book British
cameraman as it was possible to be. Lindsay Anderson had found not only his
right-hand man but a desire to return to filmmaking.

The following month, after the Cannes Film Festival, Anderson attended a
conference of 'New Wave' filmmakers at Pesaro. Pier Paolo Pasolini, on a
one-man crusade to the death against Italian conservatism, Catholicism,
politics, and the Italian language itself, opened the proceedings. Lindsay
Anderson talked about his own sacking from the New Statesman and the
closed-ranks state of the moribund British film industry. The conference left
him feeling invigorated and keen to make a 'national' British film that
could stand with the films of the new greats.

His theme would be 'England'. But what would be the story? and who would
write the script? and where would the finance come from?

John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, which premiered at the Royal Court, had
shaken up London theatre to such an extent that eight years after it's
premiere, the lazy popular press were still referring to Anderson and the Royal
Court team as the Angry Young Men. Anderson accepted an invitation to direct
Tadeusz Lomnicki, the star of Wajda's calling card film 'A Generation',
in a play of his choice in Poland. He took Osborne's play Inadmissible
Evidence and directed it in Polish. It worked. Perhaps Osborne could write the
British masterpiece with world appeal that he was seeking? He also took with
him a script by an unpublished writer, David Sherwin, which had been rejected
by every film company in Britain. The script was called The Crusaders. It was
about a rebellious boy at boarding school.

The script had its faults. It had a sentimental puppy love theme and the
leading man died, in true disaffected youth style, impaled on the school
railings after falling off the school roof, but some of the dialogue was
electrifyingly original:

"Run! Run in the corridor!"

"Biles, warm the lavatory seat for me."

"Ringworm, eye disease, music lessons, VD, confirmation class?"

Anderson had found his writer, and the writer had given him the locale -- the
public school with its juniors and seniors, it's traditions and codes, would
serve as a better microcosm of England than the airbase in The Way To The
Stars.

On returning to England early in 1966, he encouraged Sherwin to give the film a
more organic, epic, structure by studying Buchner's plays Woyzeck and
Danton's Dance and by screening for him the French poetic fantastia, Zero de
Conduite (1933). Then he fed him an image which encapsulated the film -- a
boy and a girl on a motorbike. The girl riding pillion but with her arms held
up to the heavens.

With the search for financing under way, Lindsay Anderson accepted an offer
from Oscar Lewenstein, the General Manager of the Royal Court Theatre, to make
a short film in a series of three on the general theme of freedom. The three
films were to be based on stories by Shelagh Delaney and called Red, White and
Blue (Krzysztof Kieslowski reworked the idea in the 1990s). Lindsay chose
White, called his film The White Bus, and, after winning the battle with the
communist bureaucrats to bring Ondricek over from Czechoslovakia, he used it as
a dry run for his Great Film About England.

The White Bus starts with the poetic image of a boy on a barge releasing a
dove, the spirit perhaps of a suicidal young woman who revisits the town of her
birth and is taken on a tourist tour of the social, industrial and educational
facilities. Like Vigo's Zero de Conduite the film ends with a speech day
ceremony where the visitors are cheekily replaced in shot by showroom dummies.
Like Cantor's Kid Millions there are sequences in colour. Arthur Lowe, in
mayoral costume, stars as the tour guide and was cast almost at once as the
guide, of sorts, on a tour around Lindsay Anderson's old school --
'if....' .

Finance for the film come in from the unlikely source of the Gulf and Western
Oil Company who had recently taken over Paramount Studios and whose top man was
a fan of Albert Finney. As founder of Memorial Pictures, Finney's name was on
Lindsay's letterhead.

Permission to film at Cheltenham College was secured by a splendid piece of
subterfuge -- a doctored script, stripped of all rudeness and savagery, which
included the disclaimer:

'The film is intended is intended to be a poetic, humorous view of life seen
through the eyes of the boys. The film will show the general life of the school
into which will be woven the lives, and also the adventure fantasies, of three
particular boys.
The overall effect of the film is to be lyrical - to show the reality of the
world and its innate lyricism.'

Because the title 'The Crusaders' had an 'action' premise and would
have prompted questions about what were the boys crusading about, an in-house
competition was held to find a title for the doctored script. The winner was
Albert Finney's secretary, Daphne Hunter who suggested "If" after the
Kipling poem.

Lindsay Anderson moved "If" to lower case and added four dots....

Adverts drafted by Anderson himself were placed in all the best establishment
newspapers (and Melody Maker) calling for 'Boys 12-19: Do you want to be a
star? THIS IS YOUR CHANCE!'

Five-Thousand-Three-Hundred-and-Twenty-Three turned up at the Marylebone Town
Hall on the first and second of January 1968. All the boys were photographed
individually holding books and holding guns.

The year of Revolution had begun.

(c) Paul Sutton, 2008

For the complete story about Lindsay Anderson and 'if....', read Paul Sutton's
books, 'Lindsay Anderson, The Diaries' (Methuen) and 'if....' (Turner
Classic Movies Guide, I.B. Tauris).

Today, the exact story behind the Piazza Fontana bombing is still unknown and the confusion which continues to reign is as much a part of the tragic tale as the actual events. Within hours, a knee-jerk reaction from the police had led to the arrest of two young Anarchists, Giuseppe Pinelli and Pietro Valpreda, although without any evidence to connect them with the bomb itself. Some time around midnight on Monday 15th December, after hours of intensive interrogation, Pinelli's body fell from the fourth floor of the police station where he was being held and thudded into the courtyard floor. At the time, the police described it as 'suicide'. It was, they claimed, a desperate act of self-accusation which only testified to his guilt. Coining a phrase which was later to be made famous by Dario Fo, the coroner termed it an 'accidental death'.

Years later, after those who had raised questions about the nature of Pinelli's 'suicide' had been hounded into silence or mysteriously killed, an exhumation revealed that his fall had been far from accidental. In the 1980s, the neo-fascist Vincenzo Vinciguerra was finally arrested and held responsible for the bomb in the Piazza Fontana. Far from being an anarchist plot to attack the heart of Milan's financial district, the tragedy was ultimately a false-flag operation which formed a part of the strategia della tensione (strategy of tension) adopted by the extreme right, designed to discredit the far left and catalyse a revolutionary situation that would allow for the return of a neo-fascist government.

Standing at the heart of the so-called anni del piombo (years of lead), the Piazza Fontana bomb and the 'accidental death' of Giuseppe Pinelli are emblematic of the darkest years of Italy's modern political history. Never fully having dealt with the heritage of Fascism, post-war Italy struggled intensely with the proliferation of extreme-right wing elements. Senior figures in Mussolini's government were integrated back into state administration and its many followers continued to keep the flame of Fascism alive in organisations such as the Movimento Sociale Italiano (Italian Social Movement) and the Ordine Nuovo (New Order). At the same time, there quickly arose from the spirit of resistance a series of new and vigorous left-wing movements ranging from the Communist PCI to the now infamous Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades). Tensions rose quickly and, fuelled by both populist and intellectual influences, campaigns of extreme violence involving acts of terrorism were mounted by both sides, sometimes involving false-flag operations like the Piazza Fontana bombing intended to heighten the already dangerous level of tension in the expectation of stirring potentially revolutionary action. Far from containing the violence, institutions such as the police and the legal system in many cases contributed to the persistence of the situation, while the kidnap and murder of Aldo Moro by the Brigate Rosse in 1978 ended the compromesso storico (historic compromise) between the Christian Democrats and the PCI which was intended to terminate the struggles.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the anni del piombo opened the doors to a period of corruption and disorganisation which, in turn, paved the way towards a crisis of confidence in the political process. Even after the tensions which had marred the 1960s and 1970s abated, the confusion and instability created by the post-war situation in many ways facilitated the involvement of private - and sometimes nefarious - interests in political decisions. By the early 1980s, the exercise of government was hampered not merely by the crippling instability which followed the collapse of the compromesso storico, but also by the connivances of industrial figures and criminal organisations seeking to influence policy formation.

Despite the mani pulite (clean hands) investigations, intended to resolve these problems, the electorate felt distant from and let down by the politicians they had chosen to represent them. A notoriously cumbersome and frequently crooked bureaucracy, coupled with recurrent and damaging economic crises placed severe limits on the growth of Italian business and foisted financial hardship onto a large number of ordinary families. Depressed and fearful, Italians were left dissatisfied by the extremes of politics and worn down by the involvement of politicians on often extremely shady dealings. Desperate for the opportunity to live and work in a secure and transparent political environment, the bulk of Italians were by the end of the 1980s crying out for the creation of circumstances in which the country's persistent economic problems could be tackled effectively and entrepreneurship could operate untroubled by the confusing effects of a corrupt political system.

The desire for political security and for economic stability ultimately proved decisive. The formation of what is termed the 'Second Republic' from 1992 onwards was an effort to make significant changes. Having finally freed itself from the torment of the strategia della tensione, the new constitution was intended to redress the massive loss of voter confidence in the political process and usher in a new period of peace and stability conducive to reaping the best from Italian business.

Despite the questions which continue to linger about the sad events of the anni del piombo, and the persistence of some controversies the establishment of the Second Republic does indeed seem to have had a radical effect. Silvio Berlusconi was swept to power for the first time in 1994 and since then - for all their shifting identity and constant reformation - Italian parties have competed more constructively for a perceived centre ground, closing the political distance between them in many respects. In the 2008 election, it was frequently observed that on many policy issues - particularly those which concerned most ordinary Italians, such as economic policy - the choice between the parties of left (PD), headed by Walter Veltroni, and the right (PdL), led by Berlusconi meant little. For many Italian voters, even in those areas with a strong tradition of aligning themselves forcefully with a particular party or figure, there is a sense of resignation to political uniformity. Gone are the days of great political divides, it seems, and long past are the years of ideological division.

Although there is no longer the same fear of internal terrorism, and there are fewer intellectual firebrands fanning the flames of tension, however, the competition for the Italian centre ground which has arisen from the formation of the Second Republic seems to have left Italians with a sense of pessimism about their future. Whenever politics is mentioned in a café or bar, the usually lively tone of the conversation becomes hushed, heads go down and hands are thrust into pockets. Italy's current problems are profound. With debt spiralling out of control and industrial growth slowing, there is a deep sense of concern about the economic future. Rubbish is still piling up in the streets of Naples and, despite the diversion of huge sums of money intended to stimulate regeneration, the south continues to sink into a financial rut. Every day, more news stories on both RAI and Mediaset channels are devoted to the rapid rise in food prices and the cripplingly high rents demanded across the country. Issues of identity and crime continue to dominate newspaper coverage and there is a prevailing sense of uncertainty over the idea of 'Italy' and its relations with stranieri. But the hope of political solutions to such problems is weak. Even though the politics of the Second Republic has led to a broader general agreement about economic and social priorities, Italian voters view the outlook as bleak. Paradoxically, the dash for a moderate form of liberal economics has led the average voter to feel that potential responses to troubling economic and social questions are limited in range and scope.

Belying the high turnout in the country's two-day polls, a sense of distaste for the sterility of political discourse pervades Italy today. Giancelso Canova, a warm-hearted and affluent Lombard doctor recently told me that in casting his vote at the last election, he felt as if he was casting a coin into a wishing well. 'All I can do is hope,' he said, his usually cheerful face falling into an expression of melancholy. 'They're all the same, the parties. No matter which box I crossed in the booth, it's just a matter of luck whether things get any better.' This is not an untypical view, but what is particularly striking is the fact that many of those who share this perspective are increasingly looking back to the legacy of the anni del piombo as a means of understanding their predicament. A strong-minded married mother of three, Giovanna Locatelli, was not slow to point the finger when I asked her opinion in the Piazza Vecchia in Bergamo. 'After all those years of troubles, we just wanted to get on with our lives, to have a chance to live quietly and make a bit of money' she said, with a sigh. 'Now, there's no more fighting, no more politics of black and white, and that's all good. But what we're left with is only shades of grey for government: Berlusconi, Veltroni - they're just saying the same things and they'll do nothing. With things the way they are, I just don't know what's going to happen.'

One of the consequences of the sense of disaffection amongst Italian voters which has sprung up in the wake of increased competition for the perceived political centre ground has been an increase in the support given to extreme right-wing parties. Although on the left, Walter Veltroni's Partito Democratico and Antonio Di Pietro's Italia dei Valori both strengthened their share of the vote, the largest rise in popular support was registered by Umberto Bossi's Lega Nord. Adopting a vigorously anti-immigration stance and making use of often controversial election materials, the Lega Nord gained 2.84% more of the vote and 34 additional seats in the Chamber of Deputies, and gained an extra 3.66% of the vote and twelve more seats in the Senate. In Lombardy, the party took no less than 21.6% of the total vote, while in the Veneto, it took a staggering 27.1% .Viewing its results as a whole, the Lega Nord's performance easily ranks as the most impressive of any individual party at the 2008 election, and with 8.3% of the total popular vote, 60 deputies and 26 senators, it is necessarily a political force to be reckoned with. Its fortunes were not, however, unique. Despite having been defeated by Walter Veltroni in 2006, the former Minister for Agriculture, Giovanni Alemanno swept to victory in the elections for the Mayor of Rome in April 2008, and as a prominent member of the Alleanza Nationale (which replaced the neo-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano in 1995) is unquestionably a mark of the scale of the success of the Italian right. Although it failed to make the 4% threshold necessary to gain a seat in either chamber, the Fiamma Tricolore - an alliance of political groups which clung to the more extreme aspects of the Movimento Sociale Italiano after its dissolution and which has publicly stated its intention to follow the thought of Benito Mussolini and the example of Alessandro Pavolini's Black Shirts - received 885,229 votes in the election for the Chamber of Deputies and 687,211 votes in that for the Senate.

The prominence of the politics of the Lega Nord, the Alleanza Nazionale and the Fiamma Tricolore is not, however, limited to elections. Building on long-standing geographical tensions and historical ties, the far-right has for many years been an integral part of the popular culture of the so-called 'Padania' and Umberto Bossi in particular has long striven to ensure that local identity and the politics of the Lega Nord enjoy a somewhat symbiotic relationship. The association is both highly visible and disarmingly accessible. Shortly before the election, I was walking around the streets of Bergamo bassa in search of a cafe. For all of its quirks, the city has a happy feel about it. People were wandering around smiling, ready to swap stories or gossip; musicians were playing happily on the steps of some of the churches and children ran laughing around the Sentierone as their parents drank coffee nearby. As I approached the end of the via Tasso, it didn't strike me as in the least remarkable that there was a gaggle of people standing outside the Provincia (the seat of provincial government), waving flags, playing zampognari (bagpipes) and singing local songs. Fathers hoisted children onto their shoulders to see better and families were singing along gaily as old men wearing garishly green sashes handed out leaflets. Unconsciously, I started humming along to the tune myself after a moment. It was only minutes later that it became horrifyingly clear that I had inadvertently wandered into a Lega Nord rally, and that the flags being waved so avidly were Padania banners. Despite its cheerful appearance and family spirit, behind the beaming zampognari players stood unnerving placards bearing a picture of a mournful Red Indian chieftain and the provocative slogan 'Loro hanno subito l'immigrazione ora vivono nelle reserve!' ('They accepted immigration, and now they live in reserves!')

This integration into local culture also has a darker side and a violent, unpleasant dimension of the far-right is never far from the surface. In Padua, proposals for the construction of an ambitious new mosque have provided the focus for open examples of intimidation and aggression deliberately encouraged by the Lega Nord and its allies on the far-right. Despite unconvincingly rejecting the claim that her party is in any way racist, Mariella Mazetto, a Paduan councillor, led a pig to the site of the proposed mosque in an attempt to arouse tensions through outright provocation. Having massively increased its support through such measures, however, the local party has since moved on to bolder and more worrying actions. Alleging a direct connection between immigration, ethnic diversity and crime, the Lega Nord has started to establish well-equipped vigilante groups which patrol the city in groups of between four and ten, proudly displaying symbols of the Veneto on their brightly-coloured jackets, and all-too ready to assert that they are 'taking back the streets'. In Verona, where similar developments have occurred, such groups - both formal and informal - have recently been connected with a series of violent and apparently unprovoked attacks on individuals in badly-lit areas. Little or no objection has been raised by municipal authorities and the suspicion of tacit acquiescence in vigilante aggression is hard to avoid. Although black shirts have given way to reflective jackets, it is difficult not to detect the spectre of Fascism's early history haunting the streets of northern Italy.

It is common to explain the rise of the far-right as - at best - a transient, but reactionary expression of protest, and - at worst - a manifestation of the seamier prejudices of certain portions of the population. Pointing to the prominence given to immigration by the media in the wake of a series of widely-reported attacks committed by extracomunitari (a term used to describe non-EU citizens, but more frequently used with pejorative connotations to denote illegal aliens) in recent months, some commentators have speculated that in taking advantage of this issue, the Lega Nord and the Alleanza Nazionale have gained only short-term support from disgruntled and ignorant groups. It is, however, misleading to view the fortunes of the far-right in such terms. Although it would, of course, be incautious to ignore the impact of campaigns directed specifically at immigration and injudicious to discount the sometimes hysterical media coverage of recent attacks, it is not possible simply to present the gains achieved by the far-right as part of a short-term protest element centred on a single issue. A major partner in governments of the past, the Lega Nord has developed a strong and stable electoral base in the Padania which has grown steadily in the past decade. In the eighteen years since 1990, the party has never polled below 11.7% in Lombardy, and received a staggering 29.3% of the vote in the Veneto in 1996. Similarly, the Alleanza Nazionale benefited from between 8.4% and 11.5% of the vote in Emilia-Romagna and between 18.9% and 28.9% of the vote in Lazio in general elections in the period 1994-2006. Support for these parties has been highest at moments of transition between centre-left and centre-right government and vice-versa.

Although its most controversial and widely-covered policies have indeed concerned immigration, the Lega Nord has worked hard to establish itself not merely as the torch-bearer for the traditional identities of northern regions against the homogenising instincts of central government, but also as the anti-monopolist defender of individual liberty against the influence of those large corporate interests which have aroused most suspicion in the highly industrialised north and created difficulties for smaller businesses. By the same token, the Alleanza Nazionale has successfully cast itself both as a Catholic bastion of family values and, despite its not unfavourable stance on some forms of privatisation, has frequently espoused direct government intervention in matters of social welfare provision and employment. Tapping into the socio-economic concerns of small enterprises, unskilled labour and the self-employed, and directly appealing to a strongly-felt sense of regionalism fuelled by dissatisfaction at over-bureaucratised central government, the far-right have successfully transcended the unpleasant and aggressive connotations of their more controversial policies to cultivate a solid base amongst groups who feel least relationship to larger, national parties and are most affected by uncertainty over financial concerns and employment. Rather than being merely protest groups whose support is essentially negative, the Lega Nord and the Alleanza Nazionale have attracted the active backing of a significant portion of the population in certain heavily-industrialised areas. Despite the unattractiveness of such a contention, it seems that support for the far right can be viewed not as a result of misplaced apathy and woeful ignorance, but as a conscious and deliberate decision to embrace a form of politics at some distance from the ideologically-starved proposals of parties which have, in the years since the collapse of the compromesso storico, abandoned interventionist social and economic policies in favour of more laissez-faire strategies that have notably failed to improve the security and future of less fortunate socio-economic groups. In a political environment created to neutralise the unfortunate effects of the anni del piombo, the great irony is that Italian voters are returning in ever larger numbers to the extreme elements which were most closely associated with the strategia della tensione and which ultimately lay behind the Piazza Fontana bombing in December 1969.

Although it is occasionally bolstered by approval of no-tolerance approaches to immigration and crime, the stability and rise of support for the Lega Nord, the Alleanza Nazionale and other far-right parties is ultimately based on addressing the economic worries of those most vulnerable to the whims of corporate interests and economic instability, and on responding to more widespread dissatisfaction with the notoriously cumbersome machinery of central administration. The social constituency of the far-right and its role in shaping their policies in recent years is thus interesting in that it seems to point to the narrowing of choices available to those who feel alienated from centrist economic and social policies pursued by parties such as Forza Italia and alliances such as L'Ulivo. The demographic groups from which the Lega Nord and the Alleanza Nazionale have attracted most support - the lower-income groups among the urban working class, the owners of small businesses, the self-employed and the unemployed - are precisely those which in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s had been accustomed to look to the interventionist politics of left-wing parties such as the PCI (which commanded 34.4% of the vote in 1976) for hope. However, in radically altering their outlook in favour of more liberal solutions to Italy's economic woes, and in indulging in frequent fruitless splits in the early 1990s, the left effectively squandered its connections with its primary social constituents. Paradoxical though it may seem, bereft of an obvious party capable of representing their interests effectively in unstable coalition governments, members of these socio-economic groups, seduced by the interventionist, anti-monopolist policies and the rhetoric of identity, have gradually made the transition from the left to the far-right. While the anni del piombo seem to have caused the collapse of the ideological left and the political death of those parties - like the Democratici Christiani and the PCI - which had previously defended the interests of the weaker socio-economic sections of society with more vigorous interventionist policies, it seems to have persuaded the far-right to adopt new and more effective strategies which have swept parties like the Lega Nord and the Alleanza Nazionale to the positions of political influence that had proved inaccessible through terrorism. The failure of the left in the years since the Piazza Fontana bombing has, perversely, created the condition for the resurgence of the far-right.

Italy's post-war history is, of course, unique. Yet the electoral trends which it has been experiencing lately - voter disaffection and the rise of support for far-right parties - is far from unusual in the European context. It would be unnecessary and even gratuitous to refer to the fortunes of Jean-Marie Le Pen in the 2002 French presidential election, but it is striking that in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, it is similarly possible to see a marked improvement in the electoral fortunes of parties on the extreme right. In Belgium, Vlaams Belang - with its stress on Flemish independence and strict immigration controls - won just under 799,844 votes for the Chamber of Representatives in the 2007 election and took 11.99% of the vote, becoming the third largest party. Although hard-hit by the strife which surrounded Jörg Haider's period in office, the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs was nevertheless able to increase its share of the vote to 11.04% and gain three extra seats in the legislature in the 2006 Austrian elections. Similarly, seemingly untouched by accusations of racism, Pia Kjærsgaard's Dansk Folkepartei retained its position as the third largest party in the Danish parliament in elections held on 13th November 2007, gaining 13.9% of the vote and twenty-five seats. The example of British politics is, however, especially illustrative - although perhaps a little less dramatic - because of that country's limited historical experience of the far right. Since 1997, the number of votes won by the British National Party at general elections has quadrupled, regularly polling in double-digits in a number of constituencies in the north-east of England. Although its aggregate total at the 2005 election was less than that of some other minor parties - gaining as it did 189,570 votes throughout England - the smaller number of candidates fielded concentrated support in small areas. In Dewsbury, the party increased its share of the vote from 8.6% in 2001 to 13.1%, while in Barking, it polled 16.9% and moved into third place, only twenty-seven votes behind his nearest, Conservative rival. In local elections in 2006, the BNP shocked the country by taking control of the council in Dagenham, a heavily-industrialised and deprived area. More recently, on 1st May 2008, Richard Barnbrook failed in his bid to become mayor of London (coming in fourth place with 69,710 first-preference, and 128,609 second-preference votes), but was nevertheless elected to the London Assembly after the party polled 130,714 votes, or 5.42%.

As in Italy, it is not that voters are necessarily becoming more aggressively racist, but rather that they are turning to the far right for solutions to pressing socio-economic problems. Although immigration continues to be a major political issue in Britain, the BNP has succeeded in expanding its voter appeal at a local level by offering simple (though impracticable) solutions to the problems suffered by vulnerable social groups in depressed areas. The party's success is predicated on the effects of a process known in Britain and America as 'triangulation', in which the policies of major parties have been determined not with regard to a specific ideological stance, but in relation to what is perceived to be the centre ground of the political spectrum. The impact of this on the politics of the Labour Party has been particularly important in determining the success of the BNP. Whereas Dagenham returned one of the Labour Party's most left-wing members - John Cruddas - to parliament at the 2005 general election and its voters remain left-leaning by temperament, it is striking that the success of the BNP in the 2006 local elections was occasioned by a burgeoning feeling that mainstream political parties were simply failing to offer constructive remedies to issues such as housing and employment. Responding to the results in his constituency, John Cruddas denied that his constituents had been attracted by the BNP's racist policies and attributed the party's success to just such a political failure. In omitting to respond to the worsening problems of inner-city deprivation and eschewing more active, interventionist policies, he argued, the Labour government had created the opportunities for the BNP to reach out to its own demographic base. "In my community," Cruddas argued, "little has improved since 1997 and some things have gotten worse." Unemployment in the area had become more severe and affordable housing had become more difficult to find. In such conditions, many people in Dagenham no longer felt that Labour represented their concerns. "As working class people," Cruddas concluded, "they were never going to vote [for the Conservatives] or [for the Liberal Democrats]. They felt that the BNP was the only way to send this message." Just as with the success of the Lega Nord and the Alleanza Nazionale in Italy, the British National Party has only been able to garner new support because the party traditionally most aligned to the interests of the urban working class was perceived to have failed.

If a cause for the rise of the far right is to be found, it lies - paradoxically - with the failures of the left. Although in Britain the Labour Party's transformation has been relatively recent, in Italy, the events of 12th December 1969 remain instructive and, sitting in a café overlooking the Piazza Fontana, with the fluttering remnants of election posters just visible, it is hard not to feel as if the ghosts of that tragic day are not in some way haunting the present. Having failed to achieve the changes they sought with the strategia della tensione, the far right learned their lessons. They regrouped and thought again. They came out wearing a mask, presenting a different face to the electorate, and adopting new tactics. They have grown stronger. Despite being ushered into government after 1969, the left did not learn. It shattered and, abandoning those it had always represented, came step by step to relinquish its capacity to speak to the problems suffered by ordinary Italians. It opened the door to the Lega Nord, the Alleanza Nazionale and the vigilante groups which prowl Padua's streets today.

The growth of the extreme right is undeniably frightening and the political climate in Italy is wont to send a chill down the spine. For those who fear the resurgence of racially-motivated intolerance and the violent actions of vigilante groups, as well as for those who remember the dark days of the anni del piombo and the strategia della tensione, it is clear that something is needed to arrest the trend. Responsibility for this, however, must lie with the politics of the left. If there is hope of blocking the inroads made by the Lega Nord and the Alleanza Nazionale, the priority must be to address more effectively and directly the needs and concerns of the most vulnerable in society. After years of gradually moving towards laissez-faire economics, and being seduced into regarding the very word 'ideology' as somehow obscene, Italy's left must return to its roots, to the hopes and aspirations of the hard-working urban classes of the industrial north, to the willingness to use the transparent influence of central government to improve directly the lives of those most susceptible to the fluctuations of an uncertain market. The ideological fervour, the socialist vigour of a half-forgotten time, energised by fresh insights and adapted to the new problems faced by the weakest in society, is the one source of hope. The burning, all-consuming desire to improve the lot of those who toil without reward and suffer without complaint which - in 1969 - still shone in the active minds of the left lies waiting to be reawakened. To senators ill-at-ease with the prospect of radical change and unsettled by the possibility of forsaking the easy assurance that the invisible hand will provide, a return to the vigorous ideology of social concern may seem an unnerving electoral gamble. To students and young professionals, seduced into comfortable apathy and blinded by a cynicism bred of deceptive consumer affluence, the concept of such a return may seem alien. But in sight of the papered fingers of Bossi's printed fist rising in defiant success above the Piazza Fontana in the May sunlight, one thing at least is clear: if the darkest days of the 1960s are not to be repeated, the utopian hopes of the 1960s must themselves live again.

Alexander Lee is a co-founder of The Utopian and author, with Timothy Stanley, of The End of Politics. He teaches at the University of Bergamo.

The popular narrative of liberal decadence and decline suggests that sometime in the 1960s the Democratic Party was captured by coalition of ethnic and political radicals. A party that was previously committed to American civil religion, anti-communism and the redemption of mans' soul through individual effort and hard work became the vanguard of rights activists, pacifists and welfare junkies. The quintessential Democrat - the patriotic, God fearing blue collar economic populist - found himself without a party and so built a new home in the GOP. Frustratingly, this is not only the opinion of the American right, but also of most historians, political scientists and even mainstream politicians. Through them it has become public orthodoxy. The implications for policy making and electoral strategy are obvious. The failure of various reform movements since the 1960s has been taken as evidence not only of poor leadership, but also that reform itself is basically un-American and, thus, unattainable.

The flashpoint of this change in American politics, that is the moment when mainstream liberalism was hijacked by the far left, was 1968. In August of that year the Democratic Party gathered in Chicago to nominate its presidential candidate. The Democrats were in disarray. Eight years of government had witnessed an explosion of inner-city violence and a costly, tragic war in Vietnam. Democratic president Lyndon Johnson had been forced to remove his name from the nominating process and the Convention bustled with anti-war activists coalesced around Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy. Outside in the city streets, anti-war activists clashed with police in a bloody confrontation that epitomised a moment of profound change and disorder within America. McCarthy and the anti-war activists were unsuccessful in the short-term; the Democratic Party entered the fall election on an ostensibly pro-war platform. But in time their protest opened the party up to the full participation of a variety of radical causes. By 1972 the anti-war movement effectively controlled the party and secured the nomination of one of their own: South Dakota Senator George McGovern. McGovern's unabashed commitment to socially liberal causes (summed up by his own running mate as the unholy trinity of 'amnesty, acid and abortion') led to a landslide defeat. Yet, the party now belonged body and soul to the radical left. Even the first family of American do-nothing centrism, the Clintons, cut their teeth among this revolutionary milieu. Bill was a state co-ordinator for McGovern and Hillary a doorstep activist for McCarthy.

The subject of this essay is the coalition of radicals that gathered in Chicago in 1968 - both inside and outside the Convention. These were the Children of '68. As this essay will demonstrate, many were far from young and most were committed to political engagement before and after that catastrophic year. But they were of '68 because the trauma of that particular 'annis horribilis' defined them in much the same way 1789 did the French, or 1917 the Russians. They were children partly because their average age was very low, but also because they consciously and unconsciously exuded a wide eyed, bloodless idealism that is unusual among revolutionaries (who are typically power theorists) and practically unique in post war American politics. In many regards they were immature and infantile - as demonstrated by their theatrics, breast beating, widespread refusal to wash and indignant surprise and horror when they failed to get their way. In many other ways they were 'beautiful' in the manner that only newborn, sinless children can be. They saw no limits to their potential and no cause to compromise.

The purpose of this essay is to correct the oft-made assumption that the children of '68 were Marxists intent on tearing down American society and reconstructing something new, socialistic and, most terrifyingly, foreign in its place. Naturally there were some elements within the New Politics movement (I shall explain that term later) who wanted to do precisely those things. But this article argues that the vast majority of the kids at Chicago were in fact radical conservatives who came from a very American tradition of anti-authoritarianism. Their aim was to challenge and reverse the growth in government that had begun in the 1930s. Not truly belonging to the far left at all, they were anti-bureaucratic and shared many similar traits with their contemporaries on the American right. Therefore, it is my contention that the wrong lessons have been taken from 1968. The New Politics was a fundamentally conservative movement, not a leftist one. Although its ideals were horribly mistranslated and even disfigured by its counter-culture style and audience, it offered a new analysis of power politics, a new manner of campaigning and a new coalition that are worthy of reconsideration. It communicated a message that is still relevant today and offers, perhaps, a fresh narrative for a party and a movement that is otherwise all out of ideas.

I

At the beginning of 1968 life was still pretty sweet for the average American. The economy was doing well; inflation and unemployment were both low. The US was lead by a popular president, Lyndon Johnson. This avuncular ex-school teacher was privately a vulgar philanderer given to bullying his subordinates and bugging the offices of his own staff as well as his opposition. But Johnson was also the last great Democratic president. A controversial one to be sure, but an incumbent whose record combined sweeping liberal reform with electoral success. After a landslide re-election in 1964, Johnson called upon Americans to construct a 'Great Society' that would balance racial tolerance and integration with publicly funded social programs. Although little interested in the redistribution of wealth the Great Society's planners were convinced of the basic efficacy of American capitalism but had an activist commitment to compensate for its problems, one of which was the persistence of poverty. Thus Johnson wished to expand opportunities for Americans without necessarily guaranteeing a greater equality of outcome. He gave massive federal aid to education (a controversial move as it threatened traditional syllabi and integrated classrooms), increased medical coverage, created public service broadcasting, instigated consumer protection, environmental programs and even an ambitious public transport system. He declared a War on Poverty, spending some $3 billion on job corps, food stamps and model cities projects. But at the very heart of the Great Society was the integration into economic and political life of African Americans. Thus, congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that forbade discrimination in hiring or housing and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that assured minority registration and voting.

Johnson was initially popular not only for his vision and compassion, but also because he conformed to and manipulated the anti-communist mentality of his age. Democrats were accused of having lost China after the country went communist in 1949 and of having effectively permitted the Soviets to develop nuclear technology. Therefore, presidential candidate John F Kennedy ran on an aggressive Cold Warrior ticket in 1960, urging Americans to spend more on military and space programs to catch up with the USSR (which in fact was far behind America in both). He committed US military advisers to Vietnam, which was engaged in a protracted civil war between the communist north and the pro-Western dictatorship in the south. When he assumed office after Kennedy's assassination, Johnson stepped up support for the beleaguered south, believing that were it to fall to Marxists then a domino effect might take place, turning the entire region Red. On 2nd August 1964 some Vietnamese torpedo boats apparently launched an attack upon a US destroyer, the Maddox, in the Gulf of Tonkin. Johnson responded with a declaration of full military support for the south and the Vietnam War, which would claim the lives of over 58,000 US troops, began in earnest. It should be stressed that the 'great game', as Vice President Hubert Humphrey cheerfully described Vietnam, was initially very popular. Opinion polls suggested that up to 1968 the public broadly favoured US presence in South East Asia and when the fateful Tonkin Resolution came before the congress it passed the House unanimously, and the Senate with only two nays.

The golden era of the 1960s - an epoch of consumer excess, full employment, noble sentiments and moonshots - came to a horrible and distressing end on 31st January 1968. The previous day the Viet Cong launched an offensive against Saigon. The US and South Vietnamese were taken by surprise as this was Tet, the Vietnamese New Year and hostilities were traditionally suspended for the festivities. On the 31st a small troop of the Viet Cong rushed the American embassy, the symbolic centre of US presence in Vietnam. The media sent back home pictures from Saigon that revealed the apparent superiority of the communists and the tenuous strength of the American forces. Their own embassy had been over-run where it mattered: live on colour TV. In fact the Tet Offensive was a failure. The Americans and Southerners responded well, pushing the Viet Cong back to Hue in the North and decimating their troop levels. But America was shaken. Some responded to the humiliation by demanding that the president allow the US military to expand and intensify the war, a war many felt bureaucrats and politicians did not allow the generals to win. Some began to call for the immediate and total withdrawal of all troops from Vietnam. This was the spark that ignited the New Politics.

Vietnam was not the only issue that divided Americans and it is the argument of this essay that it has for too long been regarded as the sole raison d'etre of the New Politics too. The Civil Rights revolution filled many white Americans with status anxiety and raised expectations within the African American community that typically went unfulfilled. Many black ghettos in America's industrial heartland (notably Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles) erupted in riots and looting in response to police brutality, joblessness and poverty. Worse still, in early 1968 the economy began to overheat and it burnt the consumer hardest. Johnson's dictum that the United States government could fund both 'guns and butter', that is Vietnam and the Great Society, was economically short sighted. Spending rose rapidly, but Johnson refused to increase taxes to curb rising prices. When he did so it was too late, the economy had become imbalanced and borrowing and wages were out of control and out-marching productivity. As a result, throughout 1968 consumer prices jumped 4.3% and in October consumer prices leapt at a frantic 7.2% annual rate. Americans had not witnessed such a sudden rise in living costs since the early 1950s and, having experienced only a pleasant harmony of growth and stability for a whole decade, they were unused to it. Some put the blame on Vietnam. Many more put it on rising welfare rolls and entitlement programs for ethnic minorities. The Great Society had become in the eyes of some a Great Handout to the poor at the expense of hardworking Americans. Thus, the issues of civil rights and inflation were intertwined and the New Politics revolution was as much about economics as it was war.

In November 1967 Senator Eugene McCarthy declared that he would challenge President Johnson for the Democratic Party nomination. His campaign was initially driven solely by the issue of the Vietnam War and it was lucratively funded by a coalition of liberals from the Northeast. McCarthy was written off as a protest candidate but, after Tet, he began to draw greater attention from the media. He gathered around him a generation of young liberal activists dubbed the 'Children's Crusade'. They became 'clean for Gene', cutting their fashionably long hair into reassuringly short crew cuts and trudging through the snows of the New Hampshire primary for their champion. Among them one could find, to quote one of the movement's biographers Norman Mailer, 'young men with a full chop of beard and a fifty pound pack on their back, young poetesses, pale as Ophelia, prim as Florence Nightingale, college boys in sweaters with hints of Hippy allegiance, Madison avenue types in side-burns, straw hats, and a species of pill-taking panache.' McCarthy was an urbane, witty man with a gentle, laconic disposition that served him well on television and suited a public desperate for idealism tempered with conviviality in a violent and uncertain era. McCarthy's narrow 49-42% defeat in New Hampshire on 12th March 1968 was a moral victory. Facing certain defeat in the upcoming Wisconsin primary, Johnson quit the race on 31st March and told a stunned nation that he would neither seek nor accept his party's nomination for re-election. On 27th April Hubert Humphrey, Johnson's garrulous, verbose Vice President, declared that he would run too, effectively picking up the Great Society mantle.

In late March New York Senator Robert Kennedy announced his own candidacy. The brother of a murdered president, Robert brought charisma, passion and a shared national memory to the race. He ran well among blacks, latinos and the very poor. Both strongly opposed to the Vietnam War, Kennedy and McCarthy swapped victories throughout the spring and early summer. The primaries played out against a background of hope and despair. Martin Luther King was shot dead on 4th April and the US descended once more into riots and disorder. On 5th June Robert Kennedy too was assassinated, after winning a wafer thin victory over McCarthy in California. The shocked and exhausted McCarthy vowed to carry his campaign on to the convention, winning every single primary that lay before him. But all this was in vain. The Democratic nominating convention was composed of a small minority of directly elected delegates (selected in the primaries) and a vast contingent of unelected delegates appointed by party and state officials. Among these delegates, Hubert Humphrey had built up an insurmountable advantage.

When he arrived at the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, McCarthy had won all but four state primaries, yet he trailed Humphrey for votes by 601 to 1,759. The ambition and idealism of the early primaries had descended into chaotic anger and mob fury. A campus fuelled movement of Hippies, Yippies, socialists and peaceniks descended upon Chicago to demonstrate against the war. There they were met with the full force of Mayor Richard Daley's police, who ruthlessly broke up rallies and marches. When the kids ignored an order not to sleep in Lincoln Park, the police over-reacted. They used nightsticks and teargas to dispel the largely peaceful crowds, hitting, among others, Allen Ginsberg, Jean Genet and William Burroughs. In an embarrassing international incident a holidaying British MP was maced in her hotel lobby and thrown into the back of a police van. A good illustration of the horror of Chicago was given by this report in the New York Times.

For no reason that could be immediately determined, the blue-helmeted policemen charged the barriers, crushing the spectators against the windows of a Haymarket Inn, a restaurant in the hotel. Finally, the window gave way, sending screaming middle aged women and children backward through the broken shards of glass. The policemen then ran into the restaurant and beat some of the victims who had fallen through the windows and arrested them.

Like the Tet Offensive at the beginning of the year, the anarchy of Chicago took place where it mattered: live on colour TV. Indeed it was one of the few moments in modern history when the revolution was televised. The images forced America to face its own terrible divisions and inner-fascisms. The police brutality sent a clear message that no revolution, be it peaceful or ugly, would not be tolerated. A combination of unelected delegates and 'Gestapo tactics' confirmed the nomination of Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey went onto face a narrow defeat at the hands of Richard Nixon, by 42.7% to 43.4%. In early 1969 seven 'leaders' of the insurrection were arrested and tried for conspiracy to incite a riot. Among the most infamous were New Left activist Tom Hayden and Yippies Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. In February 1970 all seven defendants were found not guilty of conspiracy, two were acquitted completely, and five were convicted of crossing state lines with the intent to incite a riot. Those five were each sentenced to five years in prison and fined $5,000. At the sentencing Abbie Hoffman suggested the judge try LSD and kindly offered to set him up with a dealer he knew in Florida.

II

The police violence was partly the result of bad coordination and rumours of intended mass violence (Mayor Daley took seriously rumours that demonstrators planned to spike Chicago's water supply with hallucinogens). But it was also symptomatic of a wider culture war. The protestors at Chicago were perceived to be radical anarchists and Marxists who wanted to violently overthrow the American system and replace it with a bizarre panacea of drugs, sex, communal living, miscegenation, abortion on demand and a generous rate of welfare provision. One of their number stated that, in advance of Chicago,

Gentlemen, joy, nookie, circle groups, laughing, dancing, sharing, grass, magc, meditation, music, theatre and weirdo mutant-jissomed chromosome-damaged ape-chortles have always been my concern for Lincoln Park. Yours for the power of the lob-throb, Ed Sanders.

The rest of America perceived the children of '68 through the prism of the counterculture. But the prism distorted reality. The first problem that faces the historian addressing the children of '68 is one of precise definition. From his vantage point, Norman Mailer concluded that they comprised three groups: the utopian liberals who signed up to campaign for either McCarthy or Kennedy, the socialists and the existentialists. The utopians were mostly middle class students. The socialists were largely drawn from the process-obsessed New Left, which was 'interested for the most part in altering society (and being conceivably altered themselves - they were nothing if not Romantic) by the activity of working for a new kind of life out in the ghettos, the campuses and the anti-war movement.' The existentialists were condensed into the Youth International Party (Yippies) and were considerably less didactic. They were devoted to 'a politics of ecstasy... programmatic about drug taking, Dionysiacs, propagandists by example, mystical in focus (Rubin had once burned some money in the middle of a debate with a Trotskyist).'

In many regards these groups were very different and often antagonistic towards one another. But they were united in several respects. They were all opposed to Vietnam, all detested the established method of doing politics and, for 1968 at least, felt a generational kinship. There was a moving moment at Chicago when the police forced the Yippies and New Left agitators into the square beneath McCarthy's campaign headquarters. The teargas from the street drifted up into McCarthy's office, along with wounded protestors covered in blood, bruises and shards of broken glass. The McCarthy people began to weep, partly because of the gas and partly through sheer anguish and exhaustion. The Yippies down below sent message that if they supported them, McCarthy's people should flash the building's lights on and off. Like a giant birthday cake, the Hilton began to blink with tiny points of flickering light. The crowd below cheered.

All these radicals marched under the banner of the New Politics, a necessarily vague term that comprised a number of movements that were often bound together by isolated points of policy congruence (Vietnam, social liberalism, racial tolerance), scepticism towards the efficacy of Great Society reform, institutional conflict and their mutual desire to revise the New Deal political and electoral order. Their unity at election time hid a variety of internal conflicts and contradictions. Nevertheless the term New Politics is appropriate because it reflects the conscious alliance building that took place and because it was used by contemporary commentators to understand the collection of movements that sprung from the 1960s too. To quote Time it was the method by which 'the traditional deployments of blocs and bosses would be short-circuited by new-mold men and electronic eloquence'. It was a revolution in style and process, from which emerged substance.

For some critics the New Politics was defined purely by generation and demography. In his masterly study of the Democratic Party reform movement, Byron E Shafer concluded that as much as the politics of Johnson's liberalism was shaped by the memory of poverty and joblessness, the politics of the counterculture was shaped by affluence and indolence. He interpreted the conflict of the late 1960s as a wholly social and institutional one, between a New Class and an Old Class of American voter. The emergent New Class, 'whose core appears to be college educated professionals and managers in the public sector - in government and in educational, professional, and other social-service institutions,' had not experienced the misery of the Great Depression and as such did not appreciate the benefits of an enlarged, generous state. The Old Class, whose centres of power were located in party, state and city machinery and the trades union movement, was older, toughened by the experience of total war and less inclined to take free schools, healthcare and pensions for granted.

For Shafer, the New Class found expression through the New Politics. Opening up a whole new sphere and style of political activism, the New Politics gave a fresh voice to a brilliant generation. Inevitably, generational style is idiosyncratic, exclusivist and defined by its rejection of everything that had gone before. The New Politics generation saw itself as being outside of machine politics, it was 'a national mobilization of irregulars' that 'sought no specific gain or advantage for any special bloc, or for themselves personally.' The New Class was 'beautiful' in that it was unsullied by tired dichotomies of class, region, neighbourhood, gender or even family. Crucially, it thought nothing of personal material or political gain. Where the Old Class had fought for investment, growth and 'jobs for the boys', the New Class fought for justice and liberty on their own terms. It was a situation within which partisanship spawned philosophical identity, not vice-versa. More radical liberals, so Shafer argued, allied themselves with this New Class to produce an alliance of convenience. In this manner, long-term conflicts of interest between Democratic Party factions came to catalyse the birth of a reform movement. At its heart was 'the new wave of party insurgents who had surfaced in the losing nomination campaigns of 1968, but its troops were the organized reform factions which existed within many regular parties across the country.'

Much of Shafer's argument is self evident. The New Politics was indeed dominated by the young and they, by accident of history, necessarily had a very different set of cultural values to their forebears. But to suggest that the politics of 1968 was bereft of ideology and motivated purely by hormones, funk and frustration is disingenuous at best. In diametric opposition to Shafer, many historians of the late 1960s have emphasised principle over style - typically in a manner that reflects the concerns of their own narrow subject area. Historians of the progressive movement have dubbed it a second flowering of Midwestern progressivism. Historians of the New Left have placed it in the context of shifting ideologies on the far left - of the struggle of an enlightened generation of anti-bureaucratic students against the new power elites. Increasingly influential is the view that Vietnam was an umbrella for a cacophony of liberal, socialist, New Left, identity-driven and often oddball politics. The centrality of Vietnam to the movement's cause belied its philosophical disunity and ambiguity. Opposition to Vietnam was a banner under which stood a coalition of the deluded and confused.

Yet the New Politics was remarkably consistent in its opposition to the war in Asia, arguably more so than most mainstream liberals have been to the war in Iraq. Vietnam defined the presidential candidacies of Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy like no other issue. It caused many to interrupt otherwise promising political careers to pursue a point of principle that at the very least deferred their goals. Senators Frank Church of Idaho, Fred Harris of Oklahoma and Mike Gravel of Alaska were elected on moderately pro-war platforms from deeply conservative states, yet all three chose to break rank and to risk presidential disfavour in opposing it. Outside of the mainstream Democratic Party and the large, established trades-unions no social protest movement supported the war and all were vociferous in their opposition. Age did not preclude anti-war sentiment or presence at the