The contribution of young people to politics is, even within the labour movement, more than likely to be characterised as immature or unrealistic, and marginalised as mere generational conflict. But as this issue of Socialist History demonstrates, in addition to an instinctive anti-authoritarianism and the spontaneity of many youth movements, the commitment of the young people involved to an alternative political future is serious indeed.
In his perceptive analysis of the recent history of the Woodcraft Folk, Rich Palser reflects upon the consequences for the movement not only of the emergence of youth culture in the 1950s, but also of more recent interventions by the 1968 generation, this time as parents and adult activists. The difficult intersection between youth culture and youth politics is the focus of Richard Cross's article on the marginalised, but highly influential, anarcho-punk movement of the late 1970s, as represented by the band Crass. Unlike many contemporary punk bands, they drew explicitly on the politics of the 1960s counter-culture and hippy movement.
Nevertheless, youth politics was in evidence before the 1960s, and the relationship between a political party and its youth organisation can also be revealing. Michelle Webb has used interviews and autobiographical accounts of former members of the Labour League of Youth, an organisation formed in the 1920s and finally dissolved in 1959, to highlight the different conceptions and aspirations of what a youth organisation actually entailed. In the final main article in this issue, Jonathan Grossman brings an international dimension to the discussion, with his description of the stark realities of violent political struggle engaged in under the apartheid regime by young people in South Africa.
The still-controversial topic of the political significance of George Orwell also features in this issue, in the shape of a Forum debate between regular contributors John Newsinger and Andy Croft.