‘Culture, Change and Continuity in the 1970s’, Aberystwyth University, 14–15 September 2011

Abstract

‘It started with rubbish on the streets and it finished with rubbish on the streets.’ It was, perhaps, fitting that a symposium convened to reflect on continuity and change during the 1970s began by acknowledging this historical symmetry. Playwright David Edgar provided an entertaining and engaging opening to the event with his semi-autobiographical address ‘Why Me? Living and Writing Through the Seventies’. Exploring the many ways in which the 1970s can be understood as a liminal decade, Edgar unravelled the complexities of a period that began as a hangover from the 1960s and transformed into a breeding ground for the conservative backlash that was to follow. As an overview of the significant cultural, political and social changes of the decade, Edgar’s address provided an invaluable framework for discussion throughout the rest of the symposium. The event encompassed a wide range of papers which reflected on a diversity of issues and themes, such as the role of nostalgia, the spectre of public controversies and the changing nature of cultural and political landscapes. These were explored through a broad spectrum of different forms including the novel, cinema, experimental performance, popular music and sporting events. In their parallel papers on cultural controversies of the era, Heike Roms and Nia Edwards-Behi considered debates circulating in the British press that occurred at either end of decade. Edwards-Behi provided an overview of the reception of Straw Dogs (1971) by the mainstream press, while Roms revisited the art controversies of the late 1970s. Although the papers reflected on the press response to