The Lost World of the Sixties

Abstract

Even without looking through the sanitary prism of nostalgia, it is easy to see that some things really were better twenty or so years ago. There was consensus that ‘full employment’ should be maintained, the principle of reducing income inequalities occupied a space on the political agenda, and the idea of reducing the prison population by encouraging alternatives in the community was taken seriously. Others may remember the Sixties differently, but it is hard to imagine that any person, sensitive to human suffering and hardship, could be indifferent to or not grieve over the disappearance of these modest liberal objectives.