A shared mood, many local causes
In 1967 students in many countries challenged their universities and governments. It is tempting to describe this as one global movement, but the causes differed. Some protests were about the Vietnam War, some about crowded and authoritarian universities, some about dictatorship, and some about the rights of students themselves. What they shared was a generation unusually large and unusually educated, a growth in higher education that had outpaced the institutions designed for smaller numbers, and a communications environment in which television, travel and the underground press carried images and ideas across borders. Historians tend to be cautious about drawing too direct a line between countries, and many of the events described here were not coordinated.
The peak came in 1968, with the May 1968 strikes in France, the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia and protests in Mexico, Poland, Italy and elsewhere. This article is about the year before, when much of the groundwork was laid.
Western Europe
West Germany saw the most dramatic events. The shooting of the student Benno Ohnesorg by a police officer in West Berlin on 2 June 1967 during a demonstration against the visit of the Shah of Iran turned a small student left into a mass movement.
In Italy, student occupations in the autumn of 1967 included the University of Turin, which was occupied in November, and the Catholic University in Milan, with protests against university reform plans and authoritarian management. Italian universities had expanded rapidly while teaching methods and the exam system stayed rigid, and the student unrest continued into 1968 and was followed by labour unrest in 1969.
In Britain, students at the London School of Economics held sit-ins and protests in 1967 over the appointment of a new director, whose links with Rhodesia attracted objections, and the London campus became a centre of activism. Opposition to the Vietnam War was also growing, and the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign organised a large demonstration in London in March 1968.
France was relatively quiet in 1967 but not calm. Tensions at the new Nanterre campus over residence rules, overcrowding and a government plan for university reform grew during the year, and these are generally seen as part of the background to the events of May 1968. The Society of the Spectacle, a book by Guy Debord published in November 1967, influenced the group that took part in those events, although it was not widely read at the time.
In Spain, students defied the Franco regime by forming unofficial unions and holding protests, and in Greece the Greek junta that seized power in April 1967 suspended many civil liberties and cracked down on university activism. Such protests were riskier and often had harsher consequences than in democracies.
Central and Eastern Europe
In Czechoslovakia, a student protest on 31 October 1967 at the Strahov dormitories in Prague over poor electricity supply drew a heavy-handed police response. The incident is usually regarded as a sign of growing criticism of the Communist leadership, and it came shortly before the change in party leadership that opened the Prague Spring of early 1968. In Poland, student discontent over censorship grew in 1967 and 1968 and led to major protests in March 1968. The pattern in the Eastern bloc was different from the West, as students demanded reform within socialism, and often cultural freedom, rather than rejecting the system.
Asia
Japan had a strong student tradition in the federation Zengakuren, which was divided into rival factions. On 8 October 1967, students clashed with police near Haneda Airport in Tokyo, trying to prevent Prime Minister Eisaku Sato from leaving for a visit to South Vietnam, and a student, Hiroaki Yamazaki, was killed. A second clash followed in November. Japanese protests were also directed at the US military presence and at plans for visits by American naval vessels.
In China, university and school students had become the foot soldiers of the Cultural Revolution. The Red Guards, which began in 1966, were encouraged by the leadership, so they represent a very different case from most of the activism described here. The disturbances also spilled over into Hong Kong, where the Hong Kong riots of 1967 pitted pro-Beijing activists against the colonial government.
The Americas
In the United States, the movement was tied to opposition to the Vietnam War and the draft, with campus protest against Dow Chemical and military recruiters, and with organisations like Students for a Democratic Society. Canada saw its own antiwar activism and became a destination for American draft resisters.
In Latin America, student politics was often tied to national politics and sometimes to guerrilla ideas. The death of Che Guevara in Bolivia in October 1967 turned him into a symbol among many young people, including many who knew little about his actual campaign. Brazil’s military government faced growing student opposition, which peaked in 1968. In Mexico, protests that culminated in the violent events of October 1968 were still ahead.
Links and limits
Students did watch one another. Visitors, publications, and in Europe the wide coverage of American civil rights and antiwar protest spread tactics such as sit-ins and teach-ins. But the story should not be exaggerated: the movements often had different demands, and in many places they remained small minorities of their student populations. What 1967 shows is that, by the end of the year, a shared sense of possibility existed in many places at once, shortly before it produced the biggest upheavals of the decade.