“Blissfully Ignorant”: Young People’s Political (Dis)Engagement in 1960s Britain

Catherine Ellis, Department of History, Toronto Metropolitan University

In early 1962, the London firm Odhams Research conducted a “Young Persons Survey” to gain insights into British teenagers’ views of politics and political parties. The report on the survey concluded, “The youth of this country are wide open to be captured – if captured they may be.” This formulation neatly encapsulated the contradictory typologies of postwar British youth as simultaneously angry and apathetic, active troublemakers and passive consumers. These models fuelled strong tendencies among politicians and policy-makers to over-estimate young people’s distinctiveness and magnify or distort their importance. This paper will draw on sources such as the Young Persons Survey, the British government’s Youth Enquiry (1967), and the archives of political parties’ youth branches to examine the context within which political decisions about youth were made in Britain in the 1960s. Politicians and policy-makers received plenty of evidence that teenagers and young adults were “blissfully ignorant” about current affairs and generally disengaged from politics. Nevertheless, they remained fearful that both the passivity and activity of young people heralded the demise of democratic engagement and civil society. Such fears drove adults to propose significant reforms such as the lowering of the voting age and extensions of formal education.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 151. Children as Political Agents and Subjects