There were no crash barriers, lighting, or hard shoulders on the M1, Britain’s first big motorway, when it initially opened in 1959. There was also very little traffic.
Oh, and the speed limit was nonexistent.
The racing driver Jack Sears wanted to test his AC Cobra sports car before the 24-hour race at Le Mans one June morning in 1964, and he did a few drives up and down the M1 motorway from Watford Gap fuel station—at speeds of up to 185 mph.
In the parking lot, two police officers did approach Sears to inspect the Cobra.
Because no rules were committed, it was more probable that they would ask for a signature than issue a ticket, according to Sears afterwards.
That was accurate. It did not happen frequently before five in the morning, but being a good type, he slowed down to approximately 120 when there was another vehicle in order to avoid giving the driver a heart attack. And scarcely anybody would have known until something was spoken in a Fleet Street pub, at which point it was reported in the media.
When Harold Wilson’s Labour administration set a 70 mph restriction, first experimentally and then permanently, some people held him responsible. However, there was unquestionably a need for a more safety-conscious strategy on British roadways.
There used to be daily death toll bulletins published by the government and extensively covered on bank holidays. With a total of 84 fatalities during the Whitsun weekend in 1964, the statistics were appalling. In Great Britain, the number of road fatalities peaked in 1966 with 7,985, more than four times the number in 2019 (wartime omitted).
On Monday, October 9, 1967, at midnight, the breathalyzer went into effect, but for many years, getting caught driving while intoxicated was seen as one of life’s minor dangers, similar to cunning speed traps.
Children’s play started to disappear from the streets due to both the increase in urban traffic and the widespread belief that the vehicle was king, which peaked in the 1960s.
As home after house got their Escort or Cortina and required a place to park, automobiles also gained control of the pavement in tiny residential streets. Nothing, not even the urban 30 mph speed restriction, which was never respected nor enforced, could stop the vehicles from moving.
One amazing fact about driving in the 1960s is that the M1 facilities at Watford Gap and Newport Pagnell were seen as hip spots to hang out and even dine.
On November 10, 1960, the 6th Earl of Craven made a move into the latter. On that day, Penguin Books released Lady Chatterley’s Lover, a contentious book by DH Lawrence, in an unexpurgated paperback edition.
The Earl, who was among the lords who reacted to the book with the greatest hysteria, subsequently remarked to the House of Lords that “at every serving counter sat a snigger of teenagers.” Each of them was holding a copy of the book up to their faces while simultaneously forking food into their open mouths with the other hand. They sowed the seeds of suggestive desire, which was clearly shown by a look or comment to the females who served them.
It was planned for Lawrence’s graphic portrayal of Lady Constance Chatterley’s liaison with her husband’s gamekeeper to serve as the first test case under the new Obscene Publications Act. Even if it didn’t turn out to be the first, it was close.
In 1960, a man named Frederick Shaw revived a Charles II-era custom by publishing a book called the Ladies’ Directory that provided contact information for London prostitutes. This was helpful for prospective clients because the Street Offences Act of 1959 had banned touting for business in public places.
However, the courts did not find it to be helpful. Shaw was sentenced to nine months in prison for “conspiracy to corrupt public morals,” and from that point on, women had to put messages in newsagent windows that were coded, such as “FRENCH LESSONS GIVEN” or “LARGE CHEST FOR SALE.”
Young people in Britain and the wealthy, free globe let their hair down, raised their hemlines, engaged in sex with fewer formalities, and even shared marijuana at parties.
Beyond that, their lives carried on much in the same way as before. Many others believed that the decade was only occurring overseas. When sociologists interviewed Tyneside shipbuilders, they discovered that each one of them was being questioned about the allegedly free love offered at universities.
One of the plumbers said, “It’s all fun down south, isn’t it?”
Despite the fact that the Pill saved working-class women from becoming pregnant machines, the usual means of obtaining it was via your doctor or the Family Planning Association, neither of which could be trusted to provide covert pity.
Women had to answer questions on a form at the FPA about how often they had sex. If a spouse responded more than three times a week, he could be summoned in for a talking-to. And you really needed a spouse for the FPA to work with you. The end result was that the wealthy may discover a back door where the poor would struggle, similar to medical abortions.
This implies that the UK in the 1960s was far less advanced than we may think.
The headmaster of a Catholic secondary school in Kent declared that mini-skirts “bordered on immodesty” and the more extreme variant, micro-skirts, “bordered on indecency.” At a Dickens festival in Broadstairs, a barmaid appeared in the streets wearing a “Dickensian mini-skirt.” Mini-skirts have been banned from wearing in exams since the 1970s.
The festival secretary said, “We believe it’s extraordinarily awful manners, really foolish, and not humorous.”
There was once a useful argument in favor of the mini. Adult clothing had a length-based purchase tax, therefore minis were much more affordable. Other from the obvious prurient desire, the outfit also had an odd impact on males. Stockings and their accompanying suspenders were no longer practical after the hemline rose several inches above the knee. Women then started wearing tights, which became a lasting fashion.
These needed a lot more nylon, which was in low supply among manufacturers of men’s shirts. Since they did not need ironing and were sweaty and uncomfortable, nylon shirts had grown popular in the 1950s.
Maybe the sweatiness of the 1960s made men more conscious of their own personal habits. According to cricketer Mike Brearley, “anyone who used deodorant or after-shave would have been considered as a fancy-dan when I first entered the Middlesex dressing room in 1961.” The material was all over the place four years later.
ITV is thought to have been the biggest offender. In 1951, just 3% of British homes had televisions; by 1963, that number had increased to 80%. And the majority of viewers were often observing the BBC’s competing commercial broadcast.
Lifebuoy soap, with its accusing phrase “Someone isn’t using Lifebuoy,” followed by the whisper “B.O.,” was a major advertiser, as were Old Spice.
More people were exposed to it, and it was becoming more professional and aspirational at the same time. The iconic example was the advent of Rowntree’s After Eight mints in 1962.
They engaged in price competition by purposefully charging nearly nine times as much as the average bar of chocolate. Everything about this mint, including the name, box, design, individual wrapping, and thinness, exuded class.
The shops’ broader selection of vegetables helped the British become a little more daring in their eating habits, which they did nervously and shakily.
The UK’s six Indian restaurants in 1960 had increased to 1,200 by 1970, and the Wimpy bar, the country’s equivalent of a fast food restaurant, had spread like wildfire.
The 1960s saw a steady rise in wine consumption, but the major jump was yet to come. And along with it, a new kind of class separation slowly emerged: wine drinkers believed themselves to be superior than non-drinkers. Asti Spumante and Blue Nun drinkers were looked down upon arrogantly by those who purchased drier, more expensive wine and consciously smelled it.
The middle-class housewives of the new generation were far more open to trying new things at home than their parents had been. Prawn cocktail, Sole Véronique, fondue, spag bol, paella (but not yet pizza), and many variations of the prior special occasion meal, chicken, were all considered stylish. Chicken Maryland, chicken-in-a-basket, chicken chasseur, and coq au vin (which is referred to as “sex in the back of a truck” in some translations) were all available. And if a Black Forest gateau wasn’t served after that, it may have been profiteroles.
Garlic, which was formerly only available in one London store after the war, changed from being strange and offensive to acceptable for the really elegant dinner party. Additionally, olive oil became widely accessible outside of pharmacies that sold it as an earache treatment. Indeed, progress.
Initially, tradition ruled in other areas of life. The national anthem was still performed at the conclusion of the evening showing at theaters, but the haste to leave in advance in order to get final orders or the last bus was becoming a running joke.
The national anthem was being played before the opening of movies in 1964 at the ABC chain of theaters, but this experiment never took off, and the entire tradition eventually died away.
The sports community was likewise stumbling into the future. The Cambridge rugby squad was instructed to board the cart in 1962, two weeks before to the annual Varsity match.
Their rivals mocked this unconventional strategy, saying, “We believe in a good old after-the-match thrash in the bar,” according to Oxford captain Joe McPartlin. “My crew is really joyful and fun-loving,” Sadly for fans of sports as entertainment, Cambridge prevailed.
Tennis players from Britain could be as informal. Spain’s Manuel Santana, the defending Wimbledon champion, was defeated by an unknown American named Charlie Pasarell in 1967. In response to reporters’ astonished questions, Pasarell revealed: “For the past two days I have been practicing in the locker room – skipping and doing press-ups.”
Bobby Wilson, the most gifted British not-very-hopeful of the time, said, “I don’t believe in training.”
Hooliganism in football was becoming a significant issue. Referees threatened to boycott games at Millwall, British Rail halted all football specials from Merseyside, and Tottenham Hotspur permanently banned four youngsters for vulgar shouting.
The people involved weren’t all the conventional suspects, however. Ex-soldier Bill Brown entered the field of play during a non-league game in Lytham, Lancashire, to partake in a brawl. His 82nd birthday was that day. I could never resist a good scrap, he admitted.
And Essex housewife Sheila West left her two kids in the stands when she rushed down to hit the referee when fights broke out during a West Ham-Stoke match. She was so embarrassed that the following day she went to Swansea and knocked on his door to apologize. A true guy, she said.
32.3 million people, or more than half of the British population, saw England win the 1966 World Cup, although the broadcast was in black and white, and the following year’s Wimbledon tournament saw the introduction of color television.
It was also the last Wimbledon for amateur players. The prize money the next year was £2,000 for the male champion and £750 for the female winner.
However, there was a consensus in Britain that material wealth did not always guarantee long-lasting contentment. Vivian Nicholson, a Yorkshire miner’s wife who initially gained notoriety after her husband Keith won £152,000 (about $3 million today) on the football pools and coined the statement that clung to her: “I’m going to spend and spend and spend,” served as the cautionary story throughout the 1960s.
She maintained her promise, and the rest of her lengthy, wretched, and poor slide included three more brief marriages.
David Threlfall, a 25-year-old Preston bachelor who bet £10 on a man landing on the moon before 1971 at odds of 1,000-to-1, met the same fate.
As soon as the Eagle landed, he was given his £10,000 check in the ITV studio. It was a significant victory that would be worth at least 16 times as much today, but he passed away a year later in a vehicle accident.
Although scarcely a British success, the Moon landing had been a significant victory for capitalism and liberal democracy. It was now up to other countries to pave the way to other planets as we had gotten closer to establishing dominance than any other country had.
When Operation Hope Not, Sir Winston Churchill’s funeral, which had been long planned, had to be put into action, it was thought that the British Empire had been put to rest more than four years earlier.
The whole globe came together to commemorate his 90th birthday in November 1964, sending him thousands of cards and 120 cakes.
Churchill had a stroke six weeks later and passed died over the next nine days. Before a chilly January came to a conclusion, the world’s great and (mostly) good traveled to a chilly London for the state burial.
Most notably, when the barge carrying Churchill’s casket went by, the dockside cranes dropped the jibs in his honor.
Although Paddington would typically be the station used to go to Sir Winston’s final resting site in Bladon, Oxfordshire, the coffin then departed from that location. The decision may have been made based on proximity to the river, but the story that Churchill insisted on Waterloo in order to irritate French President General de Gaulle over the station’s name is just too good to resist.
De Gaulle nonetheless had the last say. He said, “Britain is no longer a major power.”
They grieved not just him and everything he represented, but also everything they had been, are no longer, and will never be again, observed Churchill biographer William Manchester.