All Dressed Up: The Sixties and the Counterculture

by Jonathon Green

Jonathon Green's oral history of the sixties 'underground', "Days in the Life", has been until now the most complete account of that celebrated - and much maligned - decade. In "All Dressed Up" he expands on that book to provide a fascinating and controversial overview of the cultural and political events of the decade. Comprehensive, detailed, often hilarious, this will be the definitive account of the sixties in Britain, challenging the myths fostered by those who were there and enlightening those who were not. Green's sixties begin with the invention of the 'teenager', with the Teds, the Beats and CND; they end with the OZ trial and with two of the decade's most lasting the women's movement and gay politics. In between his focus is on the whole panoply of that extraordinary decade, from sex, drugs and rock'n'roll to student protest, the anti-Vietnam movement and the radical social legislation - on abortion, obscenity, homosexuality and corporal punishment - pioneered by Roy Jenkins. The underground press, the Arts Lab 'Swinging London', Anti-psychiatry, the hippie trail, the festivals, the drug busts - Green surveys them all with affectionate but critical eye, celebrating the prevailing optimism of the sixties while remaining far from blind from its absurdities.

Genres: History, Cultural, Music

482 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

I am a lexicographer, that is a dictionary maker, specialising in slang, about which I have been compiling dictionaries, writing and broadcasting since 1984. I have also written a history of lexicography. After working on my university newspaper I joined the London ‘underground press’ in 1969, working for most of the then available titles, such as Friends, IT and Oz. I have been publishing books since the mid-1970s, spending the next decade putting together a number of dictionaries of quotations, before I moved into what remains my primary interest, slang. I have also published three oral histories: one on the hippie Sixties, one on first generation immigrants to the UK and one on the sexual revolution and its development. Among other non-slang titles have been three dictionaries of occupational jargon, a narrative history of the Sixties, a book on cannabis, and an encyclopedia of censorship. As a freelancer I have broadcast regularly on the radio, made appearances on TV, including a 30-minute study of slang in 1996, and and written columns both for academic journals and for the Erotic Review.

My slang work has reached its climax, but I trust not its end, with the publication in 2010 of Green’s Dictionary of Slang, a three volume, 6,200-page dictionary ‘on historical principles’ offering some 110,000 words and phrases, backed up by around 410,000 citations or usage examples. The book covers all anglophone countries and its timeline stretches from around 1500 up to the present day. For those who prefer something less academic, I published the Chambers Slang Dictionary, a single volume book, in 2008. Given that I am in no doubt that the future of reference publishing lies in digital form, it is my intention to place both these books on line in the near future.

Reviews

[Graham Power · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Lennon, in his notorious 1970 interview with Jan Wenner, said that ‘nothing happened in the ‘60s except that we all dressed up’. It was classic Lennon - blatant exaggeration which undeniably contained a kernel of truth. Despite all the noise and heat of the 1960s the fundamental structure of society remained unchanged. Indeed, contemporary British society is even more unequal and socially divided than back then. Jonathon Green’s book, however, borrows Lennon’s quote for its title but reframes it to more positive effect. In his view, if the 1960s was a sort of glorified fancy dress party, it was a necessary and liberating one after the decades of sacrifice, austerity and conformity which preceded it.

When did the ‘60s start? Not on January 1st 1960, that’s for sure. For Green preparations for the ‘60s blowout began in the ‘50s with the Beats, Angry Young Men and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), and it was all over by the early ‘70s, but the festivities were in full swing from about 1965 to 1971; these were the years of the counter-culture and an analysis of the British manifestation of this forms the heart of the book.

The counter-culture or underground or alternative society was easy to recognise but difficult to define. It took its immediate inspiration from America but Green traces its lineage through the upper class rebels of Bloomsbury, Dada, Surrealism and 19th Century Romantics like Shelley. As he makes clear, it was more an attitude and style than a coherent ideology: sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll and ‘revolution in the head’. A cultural rather than political alternative to mainstream society it constituted a sort of psychedelic parallel universe with its own newspapers (IT and Oz), institutions (the London Free School, the Antiuniversity and the drug counselling service Release, founded in 1967 and still going strong today), and it’s own hierarchies and leaders (John Hopkins, Richard Neville and Mick Farren). If it was an alternative society it was certainly a very small one, London-centric and overwhelmingly middle class. The 1960s was essentially the revolt of privileged youth; dropping out not being an option for those who were never in to begin with. Behind the revolutionary rhetoric lay considerable entrepreneurial energy and the pioneering vegetarian restaurants, fringe theatres and arts centres of the counter-culture gradually proliferated and became mainstream.

I was fascinated by the mutual antipathy between the hippies and ‘freaks’ of the counter-culture and the more conventional politicos of the New Left. IT published articles attacking the student rebels of the London School of Economics as ‘boring’ and ‘bureaucratic’; and also, rather astonishingly in retrospect, an editorial following the anti-Vietnam War March in March 1968, denouncing the leaders of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (to be fair, many counter-culture figures did take part in the march). The politicos, in their turn, regarded the hippies as self-indulgent and superficial.

Freedom might have been a keyword for both sides but, for the hippies, a socialist state in which every worker was guaranteed a job in a factory was no kind of freedom at all. For them the personal was political and commitment to changing the world demonstrated by lifestyle rather than by spouting ideology. The hippies, in other words, represented a revolutionary form of libertarianism. This can be reduced to the caricature of ‘ I just want to do my own thing, man’, but in a Britain still haunted by the ghost of Queen Victoria, their concern with sexual freedom and personal liberty was by no means trivial.

Ultimately, for all their alleged self-indulgence and superficiality, the hippies were vindicated. The political revolution remained a pipe dream; the cultural and social revolution, albeit in severely compromised form, actually happened. This is where the rather unlikely hero of the book emerges - 1960s Labour Home Secretary Roy Jenkins. Certainly no hippie, he nonetheless played a pivotal role in liberalising law reforms relating to homosexuality, abortion and censorship. I was rather taken aback by Green’s description of the somewhat staid and sober Jenkins as a ‘visionary’; on reflection, given the far-reaching nature of the changes he enabled, it might well be justified. He was certainly the most liberal and progressive Home Secretary in British history.

Books about the 1960s tend to divide between cosy pop culture nostalgia and serious social history. All Dressed Up is emphatically in the latter category; impressively comprehensive it puts the events and movements of the period in a longer historical perspective. Green writes with the instinctive sympathy of the insider - he wrote for the underground press in its later years - while never oblivious to the failings of the counter-culture: its rampant sexism, frequent intellectual incoherence and banality, and infantilising wish-fulfilment.

The counter-culture may have been over by the early ‘70s but the radicalism of the previous decade continued with the Gay Liberation movement, feminism and environmentalism. Green is surely correct that the most important and enduring legacy of the 1960s is greater personal liberty; the freedom to live your own life in your own way unconstrained by an externally imposed notion of morality. 21st century Britain, if more unequal, is certainly more liberal than it was in the 1960s. So much that was marginal or considered extreme then is now accepted and part of the legislature. Not that I mean to sound complacent; the right-wing backlash against the new freedoms began almost before the freedoms themselves and is currently being pursued with great vigour.

This history of the 1960s has a curious history of its own. It was published in August 1998 - a sequel to Days in the Life, Green’s excellent oral history of the ‘60s - and promptly withdrawn two weeks later as a result of two libel actions. A paperback edition, with the litigious section dutifully excised, followed a year later but this is also now out of print. It’s a pity as All Dressed Up is one of the most perceptive books I’ve ever read on this subject; happily, secondhand copies are still easily available at sensible prices.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jonathon Green was a participant in the 1960s London counterculture, though he came late, editing the underground publication Friends in the early 1970s. However, he made the acquaintance of many longtime players and developed a keen interest in documenting this magical era. His Days in the Life is a collection of oral histories about the Sixties and the counterculture, and he followed that book up with this one, All Dressed Up, a comprehensive survey of the decade. It is getting somewhat hard to find: the original hardpack printing included an assertion about Caroline Coon, the founder of Release, that led to a libel case. A paperback printing went through in the meantime, but after Coon won the case, all copies of this book were taken off the market. It's a shame, as this is a highly informative chronicle of the era.

The borders of "the Sixties" are ill-defined, with many feeling that the counterculture started three of four years into that decade and continued to at least 1971. Green prefers to err on the safe side and opens with the 1950s Beat movement and its impact on Britain, as many of the early players in the counterculture had in fact been active in Beat literary circles. His survey goes on to about 1972 or 1973, when the counterculture was more or less dead but out of its ashes arose Britain's gay rights and women's liberation movements.

After a long introductory section describing the Beats, the rise of youth culture, teds, mods and "swinging London", All Dressed Up is divided into three main parts: Dope, Revolution and Sex in the Streets. each of which consists of chapters dedicated to various sub-themes. Under "Dope", Green describes the poety reading at the Albert Hall in 1965 where the underground came together for the first time, the birth of the underground newspaper International Times, the use of LSD and cannabis and the authorities' crackdown and the hippie trail. "Revolution" describes the student revolts of the late 1960s, the movement against the war in Vietnam, the Angry Brigade's bombings and the eventual trial of several members and finally the Black Power movement. "Sex in the Streets" features chapters on the underground press and obscenity trials, gay rights, women's liberation and the era's rock music scene.

The afterword is a poignant one, as it often is in books on this era. Green notes that in hindsight, the counterculture was somewhat parasitic on mainstream society, it didn't manage to transcend the middle class and appeal to the working class masses, and it lasted as long as a booming British economy did. However, in a libertarian fashion, Green summarizes the 1960s counterculture as a force that removed the restrictions on what adults could do to their own bodies (drugs) or to each other in consentual relationships (sex), on the kind of literature they could write and consume, and also as a force empowering hitherto marginalized groups like women, gays, blacks, students and the Third World. In the years that followed, some of the counterculture bore lasting fruit, but just as many hopes were dashed. Green briefly vents some spleen against Thatcher, under whose administration the Sixties counterculture's idealism was attacked as the cause of so many ills. He seems to have not been a fan of New Labour either.

I have developed quite an interest in the 1960s London counterculture and have read a number of books on the subject. I am happy that I found a copy of All Dressed Up, and it does fill a niche; few other works discuss the anti-psychiatry or gay rights movements in detail (or at all) like Green does. However, two things disappointed me about this book. One is that there may be more unfounded hearsay and rumour here than just the claim about Caroline Coon. For example, Green claims that one participant at a counterculture ball nearly asphyxiated because he had painted his body and "forget to leave an uncovered patch of skin to breathe through" -- that fanciful execution method from the James Bond film Goldfinger has been proven to be without foundation, people don't have to breathe through their skin, and Green was unquestionably passing along someone's misremembering of the evening.

The other problem with this book is that Green brings up many figures without really telling the reader who they were, the book becomes a sort of list of names. Now, since I've read so much about this era, I had heard most of these names before, but I think many readers would feel overwhelmed. The more concise survey High Sixties by Roger Hutchinson (like Green a latecomer to the counterculture but a passionate historian) offers a better introduction to the era, and after reading that you'd be more prepared to move on to Green's book.

[Hewitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

They say if you can remember the 1960s then you obviously weren’t there. This is an informative and serious, though by no means humourless, history of the 60s counterculture by someone who very much was there and remarkably seems to be able to remember all of it. If you weren’t there but would like to know about it this is a good place to start.

[Peter Sumby · Rating 4 out of 5]

the 1960s are still a culture war. in retrospect, much seems silly. but if I could I would still time travel to be part of it