Why those turning 50 in 2018 should reflect on world-changing events that happened in year they were born
movie Barbarella, uncomplaining, at the time, about being regarded as a sex-object.
It was also marked as the year when ‘free love’ gained popularity as sexual mores changed. The Paris student rebellion actually began with a protest in favour of (forbidden) mixed dormitories in university accommodation. Traditional values elsewhere also disapproved of all this free love: in America, the poster for the movie The Graduate was banned by transport authorities — it showed Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft in bed together.
After deliberating long with his advisers, Pope Paul VI finally came out with his decision that artificial contraception would not be approved by the Vatican. Many conscientious Catholics were bitterly disappointed and courageous Cork priest Fr James Good — still with us — openly dissented. However, some 50-year-olds might not be celebrating their birthdays at all in 2018 if the decision had gone the other way.
In Ireland, Captain Terence O’Neill, liberal Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, was voted Man of the Year, for his willingness to come to Dublin and talk to Taoiseach Jack Lynch.
And 1968 was also a year of radicalising globalism — TV was now reaching across the world. The most significant picture of the year, possibly, was the photograph of the earth taken from space by Apollo 8.
That affecting picture of planet Earth, our common home, surely launched the environmental awareness that, 50 years on, is so very much part of our world today.