History of Great Britain - 60s and 70s

Historical Context: 60s and 70s

The 60s was a decade of huge changes--> marked the beginning of the consumer society: things that were considered to be useless, now are essential.
There is a new target=teenagers/young people-->completely different from the teenagers of the previous decade. In the previous decade children just wanted to do the same things as their parents (wear the same clothes etc...) ----> now there is the so called ‘’generational gap’’=teenagers did not want to make the same choices as their parents=for this reason parents and children did not understand each other.
Period of freedom= in particular for women. Furthermore, homosexual couples began to express their sexuality openly (until the 60s being homosexual meant to be a criminal).
London became the core of the fashion= invention of miniskirts here.
Teenagers started to eat American food (coca cola for example) and started to listen to American music= Beatles and Rolling Stones--> rock ‘n’ roll marked a gap/a new age.
In the 60s and in beginning of the 70s people started to be involved in peaceful movements (movements for peace) =period of Vietnam war--->very tough period tough for the cold war-->people involved in these movements, because they wanted to change the decision of the government, and people who started to withdraw from society=lived in their own communities and are known as ‘hippies’.

The 70s: At the beginning of the decade there was a conservative party in UK.
The most relevant event: in 1973 UK joined the European Union.
Anyway, at the beginning of the 70s there were lots of problems with miners=strikes, because they did not want their wages to be fixed by the government--> because of coal miners strikes there were problems of energy=in order to save energy there were even regular blackouts during the day. Miners started to work just three day a week, because they did not know how to go on. For this reason, were set up new general elections in the second part of the 70s: the labour party was elected, and sort of agreements between miners and government---> but at the end of the decade discovered oil and gas in the sea near the coast of Scotland (offshore)=because of that at the end of the 70s coal became less important, and UK started to exploit gas (industries became dependent on gas) =miners lost their importance.
End of the decade: new general election, which brought Margaret Thatcher as being the first woman ever to be prime minister: she was very conservative. She was labelled as being ‘’the iron lady’’, because of her personality: she was strong and firm.
She was for freedom in markets and against any kind of financial support to the national system (she was against any statal involvement in the public) for this reason, she cut funds=the English national system (born at the end of the XIX century) that was considered to be one of the best in the world (an example), became weaker and weaker=she managed to destroy the national system.
She wanted even to cut financial support to schools and universities=just thanks to some sort of protests/riots that she renounced in doing that.
New kind of people: ‘’money makers’’=the ones who managed to exploit new discoveries to become very rich--> supported by Thatcher.