We need to know where we come from to understand where we are going. Pierre Dac would not disagree, as he claimed that “the future is ahead of Mr. and he will have it at his back every time he turns around.” While so many dark clouds are gathering over the old continent, and the arduously built Europe is threatened from all sides, let’s take a look at the world we lived in just fifty years ago.
- In France, the Matignon agreements signed after May 1968 put students back to their studies, workers back in their factories (there were still some at that time), and Georges Pompidou in orbit for the Élysée. Ultimately, the summer was less hot than the spring…
- In England, people were swaying to the Stones and the Beatles in the pubs of swinging London.
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In Berlin, people were already working hard.
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In Mexico, Bob Beamon made a huge leap at the Olympic Games, smashing the world record.
That was the pleasant news from a period of economic prosperity that led to lightheartedness and carefreeness. Although…
- In Greece, the colonels imposed their dictatorship. Opponents would be deported to islands turned into penal colonies, some tortured. This chronicle of ordinary hate lasted until 1974. (Athens, so close to our little Mediterranean corner).
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In Poland, the influence of the Soviet big brother was increasingly unbearable to the youth. Protests, universities closed before the first major strike at the Gdansk shipyards which was harshly suppressed. (two and a half hours by plane from Nice).
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In Spain, the caudillo continued to rule the country with an iron fist behind his dark glasses, probably not to see the executioners with a garrote, a barbarous method which, in comparison, makes our guillotine look like a friend of human rights. (Madrid, from 40 euros from the Côte d’Azur on a low-cost flight).
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400,000 soldiers and 6,300 tanks from the “Warsaw Pact” swept into Czechoslovakia to suppress the Prague Spring, a city only 1,200 kilometers from Cannes by road…
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In the USA, the mobilization of a flower-power and politicized youth began to move away from the Vietnam War. But Martin Luther King was assassinated in April in Memphis, just before the Democrat Robert Kennedy, a candidate for the White House. Riots, repression, violence…
Was it better before? Yes, there is no doubt: in those happy times, there was not too much sugar in ready-made dishes, no ineffective weight loss diets. None of those big life problems we face today…
Was it really better before?
by Jean-Michel Chevalier, Les Petites Affiches
