Ali - Street fighting years: an autobiography of the sixties

What is it about anniversaries that compels us to mark them in some way? In the case of successful revolutions English, French, Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cuban the reasons are obvious. But what of the upheavals that were drowned in blood? The 1857 armed rebellion against British colonial rule in India; the Paris Commune of 1871; the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin; the Spartacist insurrection in Berlin, 1919; Che Guevaras doomed struggle in Bolivia, 1967. These events are often remembered for the remarkable form of struggle that emerged. Furthermore they have become invaluable in educating future generations to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

Where should we place the year 1968, or the period 19671975, within this constellation? There are no easy analogies. What distinguishes this period is its astonishing global scope. Every continent was affected, far beyond the well-rehearsed narratives of uprisings in Europe and the United States. In retrospect, it is clear to see that the most blood was, in fact, spilt in Vietnam, Mexico and Pakistan.

In the last of those examples, the military dictatorship was toppled after an escalating three-month struggle led by students, workers and other social strata. At that time, democracy was the pill that the military and civilian elite could not swallow, with inevitable results. A vicious civil war, unleashed by the military, saw the implosion of the Pakistani state. In the ensuing conflict, tens of thousands of Bengalis were butchered by their Muslim brethren from Western Pakistan. This forced a majority of the population to decamp and set up a new nation, Bangladesh.

The Tet Offensive, launched by the Vietnamese in January 1968, marked the beginning of the end of the American war in Vietnam. In April 1975 the US accepted defeat and withdrew their armies and close collaborators.

Ten days before the opening of the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, the country exploded. Hundreds of thousands of Mexican students and workers marched against the regime. The image we remember is that of two African-American US athletes giving the clenched fist salute in solidarity on the podium after receiving gold and silver medals. Between four and five hundred people were shot dead by the military in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in the Tlatelolco district of Mexico City. All the universities were occupied by the army. Graffiti proclaimed: The Mexican Army is the best educated in the world. It never leaves the University.

There was to be no success in Europe, East or West. The closest a European country came to a situation of dual power was Portugal in 197475. But here Portuguese social democrats promised the masses radical socialism plus democracy. This was how they outwitted and defeated forces to their left the Communist Party and far-left currents who offered people who had already suffered seventy years of a rightwing dictatorship another variety in the shape of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It was a strategic error that led to their marginalization. The social democrats, heavily funded by the Ebert Foundation, restored stability. To imagine, as the Portuguese Communists and the far-left groups did, that a revolution could happen without its features being specified was short-sighted. As if the invasion of Prague in August 1968 to crush socialism with a human face had never happened.

Elsewhere, radical and anti-imperialist politics helped create the womens and gay liberation movements. The ideas of Lenin, Mao, Che and others spread through African-American youth, leading to, among other things, the formation of the Black Panther Party in the United States.

The most lasting impact has been that of the movements for sexual liberation, though the backlash refuses to disappear. Here, too, some of the demands of the gay movement have been incorporated by capitalist states: same-sex marriage, for instance, has become a prerequisite for adherence to the values of the neo-liberal elites in most of Europe and North America.

The once dominant socialistfeminist current of the womens movement is barely perceptible today, except during emergencies such as when defending truncated abortion rights in Poland and demanding a referendum on the subject in Ireland. In the United States of 2016 many older feminists saw their principal task to be propelling Hillary Clinton into the White House; a case of identity subsuming politics. The younger generation of women were more steadfast in backing Sanders and not shy of stating why.