Britain’s 1968-74 social crises drove state recourse to law and coercion

Evidence

On one front after another, the social formation began to fracture. Student protests and occupations; global movements against the Vietnam War; the alternative lifestyles of the counter-culture detaching sections of young people from identification with “the system”; the unhinging of stable patterns and moral points of reference; the surge of social anxiety focusing on a hedonistic, “permissive” youth culture; the aroused moral guardianship of organizations like the National Viewers and Listeners Association; the trial of the magazine Oz for obscene publications.… In all this, “1968” marked something of a climacteric. Increasingly, the state turned to the law to contain the crisis: squatting was met by strengthening the laws against trespass; industrial militancy by the Industrial Relations Act; the “troubles” in Northern Ireland by the Emergency Powers Act and “low-intensity operations”; IRA bombing campaigns by “Bloody Sunday.” There emerged the Angry Brigade, new fears about hijacking and terrorism, public-sector strikes, and the three-day week. At one point, Mr. Heath declared the country “ungovernable.” — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1062

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Hall’s wider concept of authoritarian populism in Thatcher-era Britain; also parallels the moral-panic dynamic in the reader’s existing article on moral panics.