DaveC:
And the 1955 and 1959 election results?

"Both of my parents were working-class kids who left school during their A-levels, and both are now wealthy, property-owning professionals, as are many of their friends who spent the 1970s doing drugs, playing music and rearranging the world to suit their ideals."

The same thing can be said of rich, top-drawer Gen Y kids today, whose mummies and daddies bail them out with their money and clout, while less well-connected kids of the same generation have the proverbial book thrown at them for doing the same.

And the same thing was happening during the Roaring 20s, and the Gay 90s, and at pretty much any period in human history.

Sarah D:
You do the working class a disservice.
I am working class,I marched in my first May Day rally in 1959 at the age of 17 and my first Aldermaston march in 1960 along with many of my working class friends and fellow Trades Unionists.We found the time.

Considering the last time that the public seemed to stand up for its self, was the poll tax riot I have to agree.
The elite of this decade seem to have done far more to the working- middle and lower classes than the poll tax ever could have. We're in wars we dont wantor can afford to be and made to bear financial feduciary burdens not of our own making. Whats more it will get worse and I think people will still take it. Everybody else wants somebody else to do something about it and no one will be the first to pick up that stone and hurl it at the windows of parliament beacause they just can't be botheredand dont think they will have the support. Quite frankly you could hear people relishing at the idea of hanging politicians who had taken the pee out of expenses but Labour nearly got back in. We still allow our goverment to follow the tail of the Americans despite the fact they are so unpopular.I think were all too fat, old, lazy or just dont care. A Damn good riot is what we need

'Why does my generation seem so spineless?'

Debt. Lots and lots of debt.

Another breathtakingly original idea from ms Penny but doesnt this contradict her earlier assertion that all chidren are Faschists ? With intellectuals of this calibre Labour need never fear Government again.

Have Labour been anything other than a party for a modernist lower-middle-class since the 80s? I haven't really noticed if they have. Miliband indeed... I only have to look at that guy to want to rupture and throw up my own spleen.

I've never really recognised the working-class and poor in the social rebellions of the 60s either - at least, not in the way these myths are packaged and handed down to us.

In any case, much of what was really important in that revolution is what we are still living in - identifying ourselves through products, music, lifestyle and discourse. Essentially, the deployment of consumerism.

I scarcely even believe generation Y could recognise a real politics even if we saw it. The 60s is itself a strange mythological horizon on which we base our own artificial postures regarding idealistic futures. It's as over-produced as the Beatles.

And perhaps that's to some extent where this so-called spinelessness comes from - that our political disillusionment is no longer real even when it is valid. You won't die, or kill or risk jail for what is essentially a posture. Or at least not in the first stages of posture you won't. Maybe the next stage of posture is to rupture this unreal by proving yourself willing to kill, die and be jailed for your politics? This won't make anything any realer though.

Being of gen-x but the cusp of boomers there are a number of things I note:
1 Social welfare (eg National Health in UK, Medicare in Australia even Medicaid for retirees and children in the USA) has been achieved. What more do you need?
2 The failure of full socialist economies to work efficiently and provide for has taken much of the quixotic 'dream' from those of the left plus the disillusionment with welfare dependancy. Go on strike now and your company shuts down and the work goes overseas. Progressives have had power and have done a mundane job, fizzle, nothing to get passionate about. Activists sometimes look like nutters with nothing to crusade against except evermore taxanomically obscure definitions of racism. The great qandry of our time "Global Warming" isn't anything that can specifically be blamed on anyone; it is essentially a scientiffic and technical problem and all the political will in the world can not prempt this. There is no solution yet and politicising it look ugly. It's even questionable there is a problem as urgent as stated. While attempts to create fear an angst around the issue (and it is angstworthy) have ultimatly been met with cynicism by a populace whose adrenal glands have been drained by coffee, work, distant wars and hype. Prudent but cautious action is the mood.
3 Its incredibly tough to build a carear and save enough money to find the time of work to have even one child. A society in which women have been put to work has also enslaved them to the workforce. The question of building familes in which both members can participate in the workforce while nurturning family is the primary question of our time but a rather mature one.

Demographic changes, an 'aging' of the population, should not be underestimated. There is simply less youth. Concurrently population growth has happened through immigration and housing costs seem up. Everyone is being carefull.

The baby boomers have pretty much ruined everything. They have bankrupted the country, damaged the pensions system and will live much longer than any other Generation.

The boomers are a demographic disaster area. My Generation (X) will be very lucky if we get to retire at all, even if we do we will be in penury in old age.

Boomers will throw at you "we changed everything". Yeah you did, for the worse!

All the major legal and economic changes that benefited the boomers were enacted by their parents and grandparents.

Thanks to Attlee, FDR, LBJ, JFK, Harold Wilson and Lord Beveridge.

No thanks whatsoever to Tariq Ali, Cohn-Bendit or the rest of those '60s poseur-tossers.

Perhaps you are not really very angry? From the 1980's I remember mass unemployment, living in buildings without heating, furnishing a home from skips, working very hard, collecting food for the miners on strike, the threat of the cold war turning into nuclear war. And no phone.

I don't think your generation is spineless at all. Try taking away an iPhone or iPod from one of them and you'll be in for a fight.

Ethch Tee-You are my hero. I think you could quite possible save the world with your enlightened youtube diplomacy..

Des, have you any idea of what you are saying? I lived 200 yards from "King Arthur" - the man was a bully and braggard, who failed in his attempt to shaft the country.

And what of the salt of the earth miners? My parents were on benefits, and we were quite poor. The miners (and their children) would boast of their Capri's, foreign holidays and trainers. in contrast, the first time I went abroad (at 19) meant carrying a rifle- Elvis Costello would have definately disapproved!

My point is that the miners were kind of the 'upper class' in these communities - and did they lord it over everyone! the strike changed that, and they were brought down to earth! seeing the violence against 'scabs' and their homes being attacked turned me against socialism. Perhaps you have seen far different things to me...

Dear Laurie
You use the word 'submission' in every article you write!

Love from a lover of submission

MrsLittlejohn: I think you are forgetting that the same electorate that voted Atlee in voted him out again in 1951 and subsequently voted twice more for the tories which kept them in power for 13 years.It was only when those born during the war and the boomers born after the war came of age that the Wilson governments of 1964 and 1968 were elected.So if we are going to play this silly blame game let's spread it about a bit more evenly.
I note by the way that it was the young who were particularly taken in by Clegg and thus have helped to bring about an even bigger disaster on their heads.

@Praha7- Hey, you clearly underestimate the spineless nature of my comment. Is it not clear I am one of apathetic 80's babies Laurie was dissin?.. There is no hint of blame in my tone, I dont think its helpful. There is simply cause and effect. Different social models create different results and everything has its shadow. If I could be bothered enough to turn off the Jeremy Kyle and join a political party it would be one that was
1)committed to reducing the gap between rich and poor
2)providing universal health, welfare and education
3)committed to promoting civil liberties.
New Labour didnt really manage it but the decentralisation programme coming from the new co-alition is moving swiftly towards destablising our poorest and most vulnerable. Do they have to do it to save us from economic meltdown? Maybe. There was a cause (consumerism, personal debt, national debt, a lack of regulation of the global markets) and there will be an effect(cue the cuts to fundamental social infrastructure)
Happy Days!

It's not age war. It's class war.

Hmmm - up to a point. Firstly, only middle-class baby boomers had the leisure to protest and rebel. And, secondly, despite dolling itself up for the summer of love, this was the same generation which voted in Thatcher and Reagan. IS Generation Y - mine too, actually - spineless? I don't know. (As an historian of childhood, it seems to me that these arguments about the 'youth of today' - from both left and right - haven't changed terribly much over the past century or so.) If there is a difference between us and our parents' activism, it seems to me that we're more pragmatic - that we go about 'making a difference' by living and working differently.

Melissa, of course some people in every generation suffered but it was that generation as a collective. It was their generation that left us in this mess that if we tried to speak out and rebel - would have been punished for when they weren't.