Corrections and clarifications
To clarify my below post (though Francis Beckett does a lot of it for me), I think there was a fundamental conflict (which could not have been fully understood at the time) between 60s/70s pop culture's supposed (but compromised more often than not) aim of absolute, unequivocal freedom for all and the full implications of the mass Americanisation it also called for. It all comes down to the point Reynolds made years ago - in a Neil Young review, appropriately enough - about the multiple and conflicting meanings of the word "freedom" (how can a word beloved both of 60s leftists/revolutionaries and of those such as Kenneth Williams who ranted against "the futility of the mixed economy", let alone his unnamed friend who called for a military coup against the Labour government in 1969, be anything but elusive and ambiguous?). And I also think of a rather different Melody Maker alumnus, Chris Welch, using the terms "Nanny State" and "1984" in MM in 1967 about Wilson's anti-offshore-radio legislation (the key issue where the supposed Old Labour conservatism which was nevertheless far more progressive than what followed is concerned) and the general old-elite attitude to pop at the time - I would *love* to know what Welch made of Thatcherism.
I think - whatever anyone else says - that it would perfectly fair, and probably perfectly accurate, to say that when Blair denounced those opposed to the Iraq war as "conservatives" (or when John Reid said the same about those opposed to the quasi-privatisation of the NHS) he was making a mental equation (as opponents of his idea of "progress" - confused, of course, but then this is the man who used "anti-science" as an insult, when condemning the anti-GM movement, yet allied himself so closely with as anti-science an administration as we're likely to see in the West) between the entire anti-war movement, whether leftist or Old Rightist, and the people who told him off for listening to "All Right Now" at Fettes (and see also the way Ian McEwan used the term "parochial" to refer to elements in the anti-war movement, a sure sign - especially in the light of 'On Chesil Beach' - of the way boomers often *subconsciously* equate wholly different forms of Americoscepticism today with the anti-pop fogeys of their youth).
I also think it would be perfectly fair to say *now* that the boomers were excessively determined to break away from the certainties of the post-war settlement and did not realise either the good that settlement had done or the bad that future leaders would do in the name of that very anti-statism. But I think it would be equally fair to say that *they didn't know*.
I think - whatever anyone else says - that it would perfectly fair, and probably perfectly accurate, to say that when Blair denounced those opposed to the Iraq war as "conservatives" (or when John Reid said the same about those opposed to the quasi-privatisation of the NHS) he was making a mental equation (as opponents of his idea of "progress" - confused, of course, but then this is the man who used "anti-science" as an insult, when condemning the anti-GM movement, yet allied himself so closely with as anti-science an administration as we're likely to see in the West) between the entire anti-war movement, whether leftist or Old Rightist, and the people who told him off for listening to "All Right Now" at Fettes (and see also the way Ian McEwan used the term "parochial" to refer to elements in the anti-war movement, a sure sign - especially in the light of 'On Chesil Beach' - of the way boomers often *subconsciously* equate wholly different forms of Americoscepticism today with the anti-pop fogeys of their youth).
I also think it would be perfectly fair to say *now* that the boomers were excessively determined to break away from the certainties of the post-war settlement and did not realise either the good that settlement had done or the bad that future leaders would do in the name of that very anti-statism. But I think it would be equally fair to say that *they didn't know*.