1968 The year that changed History

[Catalpa]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/observer/gall ... =332107927

Some vivid pictures here - pity though that none from Ireland considering the outbreak of violence in the North in that year!

That was some year for News - I remember it well!

If politics.ie had been around then it would have been buzzing!

[TradCat]

If politics.ie had been around then it would have been buzzing!

If political talkboards had been around it is possible that the streets of the world would have been much quieter. Who needs to go on a demonstration when you can make the point from the comfort of your armchair.

[corkman2007]

Weird that there's no mention of the Derry Civil Rights march of October 1968* in this story:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/s ... 35,00.html

*http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/derry/sum.htm

[Starkadder]

As has been mentioned elsewhere, in Ireland there would have been
some radical groups like Irish Voice on Vietnam and the various Housing Action Committees
(Dublin,Cork, Derry) out protesting.

[restless]

Just a mention of 'the rebirth of the IRA' a couple of paragraphs from the end....but that's what happens when you're regarded as a remote colony far away and mostly out of mind. What shouldn't be forgotten is just how few and unconvincing the students in People's Democracy seemed at first to those of us who were even slightly older.

It was the incredible over-reaction by the unionists which changed everything, helped by the fact that the People's Democracy were so obviously better , more decent people. When the likes of Bernadette Devlin took on the lies and brutality of the ancien regime and followed them right to Westminster no-one with spirit could stand aside.

Mostly the Irish people, then as now, weren't marxist revolutionaries, but at least in the North we weren't about to stand by while the RUC led loyalist mobs in burning and sacking nationalist areas in Derry or Belfast.

I've no hesitation in admitting that I was shamed onto the streets in August 1969 as were a lot of my contemporaries. We weren't noble and dedicated - we just couldn't take it anymore.

[toxic avenger]

The year that made the authorities introduce daytime TV to keep half-baked idiot students the world over off the streets.

[Starkadder]

Daytime TV didn't arrive until the 1980s, by which time the forces of
reaction (Reagan, Thatcher, Haughey,Mulroney in Canada) were on the march.

[Goldwater]

How did it change the world? A few idiot rich kids threw bricks at the police (actual members of the working class), and after they got bored, settled down to a life of share-dealing, mild drug-abuse and adultery. So what.

Sadly, there are some sad people who still think that those times need to be revisited. IN this country, they can be found in the staff canteen in RTE, and writing for the likes of the Irish Times and Magill magazine

[toxic avenger]

Daytime TV didn't arrive until the 1980s, by which time the forces of
reaction (Reagan, Thatcher, Haughey,Mulroney in Canada) were on the march.

Pebble Mill on the BBC, and Crown Court on ITV, were invented in the 1970s just for this reason...

[Starkadder]

Daytime TV didn't arrive until the 1980s, by which time the forces of
reaction (Reagan, Thatcher, Haughey,Mulroney in Canada) were on the march.

Pebble Mill on the BBC, and Crown Court on ITV, were invented in the 1970s just for this reason...

In the 1980s, BBC boss Michael Grade spent several million pounds trying to
set up a daytime service in order to pre-empt ITV's one.

So did the 1960s generation change the world? Yes, but more
slowly than they thought. The anti-Vietnam protests turned
public sympathy against the war, the Black Civil Rights movement
helped end much discrimination against that community and
feminist and gay rights movements got going.

On the other hand, protestors in NI failed to break the sectarian
deadlock, and the Soviets crushed the Prague Spring.