Swinging 60s | Vale of Evesham Hist

Remembering the Swinging 60s

with Ray Sturdy

29 January 2026

Ray Sturdy’s talk to the Vale of Evesham Historical Society on 30th January was a trip down Memory Lane for most of his audience, rather than a presentation on an historical topic. He was speaking about the Swinging Sixties and he began with VE Day in May 1945 as the starting point for the Baby Boomer generation. People born after that date and up to the point when they would be too young to appreciate the decade would all have various memories of the swinging sixties. In a wide-ranging talk, Ray covered everything from politics to science and the arts and social history in general.

It was amazing how much was achieved in that decade, and how profoundly society changed.

In politics we had the Profumo affair in this country. We had the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of President Kennedy and of Dr Martin Luther King. The threat of nuclear war was present to everyone’s mind, and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament marched from London to Aldermaston on a regular basis.

As regards transport, construction of the motorway network began, and we saw the introduction of parking meters and the breathalyser test. As the road system expanded, Dr Richard Beeching began closing railway stations. The sixties saw the introduction of the Mini and the Jaguar E-Type. Package holidays became common.

At the start of the decade, Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space, and at its end, in July 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon.

Ownership of a transistor radio or a record player was every teenager’s dream. The start of a revolution in communications began with Telstar – the first communications satellite. One of the biggest societal changes began with the introduction of the contraceptive pill.

Barclays Bank in Enfield, North London, installed the world’s first cash machine. You could withdraw up to £10 and your money would have gone a long way in those days. £1 would have bought eight pints of beer.

In popular music, the era of rock’n roll and the crooner gave way to the twist and the rock group – the Beatles and the Rolling Stones being the most famous exemplars. As the decade advanced, we saw the coming of Flower Power and Woodstock.

Time and space are too short here to cover everything Ray mentioned (and speaking of time and space, Dr Who started in 1963). There were no questions as such after the talk. Everyone was too eager to start their own reminiscing! And there was a lot of it!