Peace & Love

The next major development in the cultural influence
of The Beatles can be summed up in the 60s phrase,
"Peace and Love."

Again, they didn't invent the ideas of peace and love,
even within the 60s context, but they certainly
pushed it into mass popularity with my generation.

There were Ban the Bomb type demonstrations in favor
of nuclear disarmament in the early 1960s, but these
came mostly from fringe left-wing and pacifist
groups, far from the mainstream and far from the
consciousness of the young people of the time.

The passage of the Resolution in 1964 after
the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the introduction
of American combat troops to Vietnam in the summer
of 1965 did initially mobilize some opposition,
but mostly from New Left type groups.

There were a number of New Lefties looking for a
cause, since the white ones had just been kicked
out of the New Left Civil Rights organization,
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee -- and
told by the blacks involved to organize in their
own communities.

So Vietnam came just in time for them, but they
were still on the fringe.

And by 1966 the anti-war cause was beginning to
attract a little more broad-based support, at least
among previously inactive students. That was the
year Jerry Rubin held some kind of student
demonstration against troop trains.

The Beatles did keep their peace and love stuff
pretty non-political. They came from a place lit
by LSD, full of bright colors. They wanted everybody
to love each other and all of us to live in
peace, and nobody could quarell with that.

It's hard to believe they supported US involvement
in Vietnam but, perhaps because they were British
and not directly involved, or because they decided
as a group to stay away from the politics, or
because they were too much focussed on their own
music and drug experiences . . . I don't know.

Maybe they simply wanted to avoid another spate of
bad publicity such as that which followed John's
remark about them being more popular than Jesus --
the only time during the Beatlemania period when
their careers were in any serious jeopardy.

The songs Revolution -- which does show they
were paying attention to current political
events but did not approve of a dogmatic
approach to changing the world -- and All You Need
is Love seem to argue for the approach of changing
the world by changing your head and loving people
rather than demonstrating and making violent
revolutions.

It is true that large number of their fans in
the U.S. DID support the war in Vietnam. This
gradually changed from 1967 to 1969, but due
largely to other factors such as the Tet
Offensive in January 1968.

Although it's also true that their pushing of
the peace and love platform probably somewhat
bolstered the movement against the war in
Vietnam.

Hard to say -- many people at the time were
against it, who were NOT hardcore lefty
activists and who did not go to demonstrations
unless they were convenient.

And of course we were all in favor of love,
especially free love -- because we didn't want
to pay for anything.

More Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain