Fifty years ago, in May 1968, France was on the brink of a radical revolution. The sporadic demonstrations by university students for educational reforms, begun on May 3 at the Sorbonne University in Paris, culminated in the setting up of barricades. Eventually the students occupied the Sorbonne buildings and converted it into a commune.

These resurgent actions by students were complemented by stoppages of work ordered by the trade unions aimed at lending support to the students.  As this unrest spread to other universities it turned into a radical revolution as the students seized the Paris stock exchange building and raised a communist red flag.

The De Gaulle government through its appeal to law and order and at same time threatening to take drastic actions managed to gain control of the situation. By June 12 the students were evicted from the Sorbonne.

This resolute action by the De Gaulle government was tempered with conciliations as workers were given higher wages and improved working conditions while a major reform Bill was passed intended to modernise higher education.

These events in France were symptomatic of the prevalent reformist mood in the 1960s which in the annals of history is perceived to be an epoch of profound cultural and social change.

Perhaps the event that ushered this change was a court sentence in the UK in 1960 which gave its consent to Penguin to publish the novel by D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover. This court sentence was considered to be a symbolic moral victory in the literary world as it sent a clear message that even morality is governed by the rules of relativism.

It was indeed the prelude to the new mentality that posed a serious challenge to the traditional dominant values. The change became very visible in the clothes and the entertainment being sought as jeans and rock music became the symbols of the young generation.

 Naturally, this wind of change had its ramifications in the spiritual world. The new generation could no longer hold steadfastly to a belief that we have to bear with the anguish of body and mind inherent in our daily life and reconcile ourselves to mourning and weeping in this valley of tears until we are eventually delivered from this anguish. This spirituality in the 1960s had to grapple with a new belief that it is possible to attain the joys of heaven in this earth. 

This new mentality, generating vocal protests among the young generation, posed a serious threat to the core values of society. The vocal protests of the students in Paris and the unrest that they evoked were the epitome of the new social order which the youths of the 1960s were dreaming of setting up.

However, elusive this utopia appears to be this call for a new social order served as a rallying cry to the young generation and was vehemently expressed through the fanatical enthusiasm shown during the concerts held by The Beatles.

Malta was not completely immune to the new wave of thinking associated with the 1960s

As this ‘here and now’ idea became a more realistic option the protests were aimed at dismantling what was believed to be the inbuilt repressive element within the apparatus of the State. This utopian vision of a new social order widened the gap between aspirations and achievement.

Such a disjunction inevitably gave rise to a deep angst feeling  the symptoms  of which were being punctuated in songs such as the one by the  Rolling Stones in 1965, I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.

This sense of rebellion against a perceived repressive establishment was also manifest in US as the American youths, under the conscription law, were being forced to take part in the Vietnam war which to most of them seemed to be meaningless. The song Give Peace a Chance written by John Lennon in 1969, became the anthem of the American anti-war movement.

What should be noted is that the Catholic Church felt the need to bend with this wind of change. Pope John XXIII summoned an ecumenical council in order to open up the Church to the new realities. The principal changes that emerged from this council was more dialogue with other religions, the use of the vernacular language instead of Latin during the Holy Mass and more active participation by the laity in the liturgical functions.

 What effect did this wave of change have on Maltese society?  The ongoing religious-political issue during the sixties between the Maltese Catholic Church and the Malta Labour Party (MLP) characterised by constant bickering in the public had a  stifling effect  on the mindset of the Maltese.

 Ironically amid   this sea of change, defined by writer Ian Macdonald as a Revolution in the Head, the political debate in Malta was still tinged with the argument about the interdict imposed in 1961 by the Maltese Church authorities on members of the MLP executive.

It should also be noted that in 1964 Malta attained its independence from Britain. The preoccupations about the pre-natal, natal and post-natal process of a sovereign independent State might have distracted the Maltese from the events occurring on the European mainland.

Nevertheless Malta was not completely immune to the new wave of thinking associated with the 1960s.  In the realm of Maltese literature a movement, Qajmien Letterarju (Literary Awakening), emerged showing clear signs of a detachment from the confines of the narrow provincial viewpoints which tend to be characteristic of the insularity inherent in a small island State.

The authors associated with this movement such as Frans Sammut, Oliver Friggieri and their contemporaries were instrumental in the articulation of a narrative mode that depicts the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through one’s mind. A thicker and deeper veneer of this stream of consciousness became much more visible in Maltese literature.

Most of the elders of the present generation of elders, to which I belong, were in their adolescent or young adulthood stage during the 1960s. In spite of the insularity, maybe made more pronounced by the religious-political issue at that time, we did not remain untouched by this wind of change.

In recalling the past we somehow cannot escape pondering about the transformative forces, peculiar to this decade, that acted as catalysts for a radical change in a value system that was perceived to be reinforcing the status quo.

 This paradigm shift in culture which may still be ringing bells in some hidden corners of our psyche has been transmitted, perhaps unknowingly, to the generations that followed.

Saviour Rizzo is a former director of the Centre for Labour Studies at the University of Malta.