The Long ’68

1968 saw an extraordinary range of protests across much of the western world. Some of these were genuinely revolutionary – around ten million French workers went on strike and the whole state teetered on the brink of collapse. Others were more easily contained, but had profound longer-term implications; terrorist groups, feminist collectives, gay rights activists could all trace important roots to 1968. ‘The Long ’68’ is a striking and original attempt half a century on to show how these events – from anti-war marches in the United States to revolts against Soviet oppression in eastern Europe – which in some ways still seem so current, stemmed from histories and societies that are in practice now extraordinarily remote from our own time. The book pursues the story into the 1970s to show both the ever more violent forms of radicalization that stemmed from 1968, and the brutal reactions from those in power that brought the era to an end.