Very successful! For the first time British bands leading in the music scene (not US as usual). The most successful band were of course, The Beatles, a working-class band from Liverpool. Changed names from The Quarry Men to Silver Beatles to Beatles. Started international career in Star Club in Hamburg, won international acclaim on US-tour in 1964. Harmonious music with elements of folk, blues and rock. Texts highly important: ironical, critical, thoughtful, poetic, deal with everyday experiences. The Rolling Stones tougher and rougher in musical style, more aggressive in lyrics. Middle-class boys, London based.

Political music: Bob Dylan, Joan Baesz (both US). Also harmonious music, but texts more directly attacking injustices and especially the Vietnam War ("Blowin’ in the Wind"). (Songs played).

Borderline between poetry and pop lyrics thin. Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, Brian Patten = the Liverpool poets close to Beatles (their poetry also called "Mersey sound"). Simple language, repetition and refrains as in folksongs, references to popular culture, often witty, but some also very political, e.g. "Tell Me Lies about Vietnam" by Adrian Mitchell. Other Vietnam poems by James Fenton, war correspondent in Vietnam.

General features: Proliferation of fringe theatre; end of censorship in 1968 triggers more violence and sex on the stage. A new generation of dramatists appears.

Tom Stoppard: intellectual drama, drawing on the drama of the absurd and on popular drama, comic elements. Postmodern play with the "grand texts of tradition": Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1974) refers to Hamlet: they do not understand their own role in the play. Disorientation of modern man, but not seen as tragic, rather as comical. Word play important.

Edward Bond: most shocking of dramatists. "Theatre of Cruelty", influenced by French dramatist Antonin Artaud. Aim: to expose cruelty of modern world. First play Saved (1965), staged in Royal Court. Naturalistic drama about young couple Len and Pam, who live with her parents in a miserable, almost wordless relationship. A scene in which Len’s hooligan friends torture and kill Pam’s baby, shocked the audience. The message is, however, not desperate: As Len does not run away, but sticks to Pam and her family, he is "saved."

Early Morning (1968) caused an even greater shock: no longer naturalistic, but symbolical drama, playing with historical figures (Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, Florence Nightingale, Disraeli) to show the roots of the deplorable state of present society. Some of the details were so shocking (Queen Victoria rapes Florence Nightingale, all end up cannibals) that the play was banned after the first night.

Other plays: Lear (1971; of course, using Shakespeare as a reference point), The Worlds (1979), Restoration (1981; exposing British involvement in slavery).

Political Drama after 1968: David Hare, Trevor Griffith, David Mercer, David Edgar, etc. Mercer and Griffith started off in TV, Hare and Edgar came from the fringe (blurring of borderlines between institutions of "high" and popular art). Mercer’s main topic is crisis of the left intellectual in face of the "really existing socialism" (examples: After Hoggarty 1970; Cousin Vladimir 1978), Griffith’s is disillusion with ideological fights of groups and subgroups (example: The Party 1973). Hare wrote comedies of manners about the state of the nation (examples: Slag 1970, Great Exhibition 1972, Brassneck 1973, etc.), his appeal is more moral than political. Edgar started off with agit-prop theatre and moved to social realism in historical framework (examples: Destiny about end of Empire and growth of fascism in GB, That Summer (1987) on the great miners’ strike of 1983/4), political debate (Maydays 1983). Warning: they all wrote many more plays and developed in various directions, Edgar in 1980, for instance, produced a famous overlong, two-evening dramatic version of Nicholas Nickleby at the RSC!!)

For further information (beyond the books already recommended) see: Peter Paul Schnierer, Modernes englisches Drama und Theater seit 1945. Eine Einführung, Tübingen: Gunter Narr 1997.

In fiction this is the time when postmodernism entered British fiction writing. A famous early example is John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969). The novel starts off like a 19^th century novel (a young gentleman, holidaying and collecting fossils in Lyme Regis on the South Coast meets a mysterious woman, socially his inferior, and falls in love….), but suddenly the illusion is broken: in the famous 13^th chapter the author comments on his own position and the writing process (metafiction), later he appears as a character in the novel, and, finally, two endings are offered to the reader, who is asked to make his own choice.

An even earlier – and less ironical - example is Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook (1962), a novel about a woman writer with a writer’s block, which no longer tells a chronological story. Lessing takes up the postmodern concept of the fragmented I (self) and divides the book into four notebooks, in which the heroine Anna Wulf explores different aspects of her self (black notebook: her youth in Africa, red: her political past as a communist, yellow: a love story of an alter-ego figure; blue: running commentary of Anna’s present life, including her psychoanalysis.) The notebooks thus deal with politics, psychoanalysis, literature, relationships, race relations, etc. They are set within a frame story, set in the present and, as it turns out later, written by Anna. The golden notebook, finally tells the story of a disastrous love affair, which, however brings healing to Anna as she re-discovers her creativity. The fragmentation of the text mirroring the fragmentation of the self, the use of various text types and metafiction are symptoms of postmodernism. The book is, of course, also an example of feminist writing blooming at the time.

Anthony Burgess’ Clockwork Orange (1962) is an example of the increasing use made by writers of "voicing": the story of violence and psychological destruction is written from the point of view and in the language of youthful criminal.

Angela Carter’s collection of stories The Bloody Chamber (1979) represents a further facet of feminist postmodern writing: Carter re-writes popular fairy tales to expose the patriarchal suppression of women in the originals, which were used to train girls into a position of submission and into repressing their sexuality. The ironical de-constructing of myths and the use of different voices and styles in each story are typical features of postmodern writing.

Some recommendable secondary sources: Malcolm Bradbury, The Modern British Novel, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1994; D.J. Taylor, After the War. The Novel in England since 1945, London: Flamingo 1994; Irmgard Maassen & Anna Maria Stuby, eds., (Sub)Versions of Realism – Recent Women’s Ficiton in Britain, A & R 60, 1997.

Today "Balck British" and "Asian British" are used.

1.Long history of immigration to Britain: begins in Elizabethan times. Britain deeply involved in slave trade. Therefore a considerable number of blacks came to Britain in 18^th century: Ottabah Cuguano, Olaudah Equiano and Ignatius Sanchez, all former slaves writing autobiographies, mean the beginning of black writing in English literature. After abolition of slavery in 1833 more blacks came and settled. After World War I, in which many soldiers from the colonies fought for Britain, some remained in or moved to Britain. 1931: 100.000 Blacks in Britain. Yet the big wave of immigration started after World War II.

After 1945: Again many Blacks, Indians and other Asians had fought in the British Army, several were stationed in GB (e.g. bomber pilots). The British Nationality Act of 1948 gave all people living in the colonies and ex-colonies British citizenship. So people could move freely, were even encouraged to come by advertising campaigns of the British Gov.: labour shortage in GB. Especially hospitals and London Transport needed workers.

2. Chronology of arrivals and legal framework:

1948 – arrival of the Empire Windrush with 492 immigrants from the Caribbeans – by now a symbolical event in history. The numbers soon increased.

1950s: an average of 18.000 p.a. came

1957: 35.000

1960: 60.000

1961 dramatic increase: over 100.000

1962 (under Conservative Gov.) first Commonwealth Immigration Act – attempt to stop flow. People from independent Commonwealth countries were only allowed in if they had a job or special skills (doctors, nurses).

1962/ 1963: after independence of Uganda and Kenya large numbers of Asians, merchants in these countries, fled to Britain for fear of persecution by blacks.

1968 (under Labour) Second Immigration Act: quota for East African Asians fixed to 1.500 p.a.

Parallel: 1966 and 1968 Race Relations Acts passed to fight discrimination and improve situation of immigrants in GB.

1971 Immigration Act: introduces principle of "partiality". Conditions of immigration: at least one grand parent must have British passport or a stay of already at least 5 years in GB (naturalisation).

Result: By late 1970s only 75.000 p.a. came, less than emigrated from GB.

1981 British Nationality Act (still valid): indtroduces 3 types of citizenship. 1. British citizens (all people born in GB or by British parents overseas), 2. British Dependent Territories (Gibraltar and some small islands which are still colonies), 3. British Overseas (former colonies – have not right of settlement)

3. Numbers today: 5,5 – 6 % of the population are black and Asian British, i.e. about 3,5 mio. 75 % of them are British citizens, 46 % of them born in GB. Most of them live in London (at least 1/3, some estimates say 2/3), Birmingham, Manchester (16 % of population), Bradford. In London concentration in certain parts of the Inner City and south of the river: Hackney, Spitalsfield, Brixton, Lambeth, Southwark, etc.

1958 first race riots in Nottinghill and Nottingham where there was a great concentration of blacks.

1981 riots in Brixton/London, St.Pauls/Bristol and Toxteth/Liverpool. Fights with police rather than with population. E.g. "Operation Swamp 81": police controls every night in certain quarters, terrorising blacks in particular.

1989: 6 racial attacks every day. Notorious case 1992: the murder of Stephen Lawrence, a black youth, by white hooligans was not pursued properly by police, became symbol of police bias.

Most recent riots: Oldham this year, where Asians where involved.

Labour originally against restriction of immigration, but, when in power, changed politics. Restricted immigration, but at the same time tried to balance this by anti-discrimination laws. Different principle from German policy!

Fascism reawoke: In 60s many splinter groups, which in 1967 joined to form the National Front. 1968: 4.000 members, 1973: 17.500 members, had success in some by-elections. Their ideology had influence on Conservative Party, which took over some of their positions. After Immigration Law of 1981 influence of NF declined, but it still exists.

Enoch Powell, Convervative politician, Spokesman for Defence in Shadow Cabinet, held passionate speeches against immigration. Most famous his "Rivers of Blood Speech" (1968), in which he foretold violent conflicts: "Like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with blood". Was dismissed by Heath from Shadow Cabinet, but an opinion poll showed 75 % of population sympathized with Powell.