Now we're hobbling down Memory Lane: I didn't go to Paris in May, that
completely passed me by for some reason (drink, drugs, General Torpor?).
In August I was in Hamburg, demonstrating in front of the Russian
Consulate against the invasion of Prague &, as I remember, at some time
during the summer months, demonstrating against the British Biafra
policy in front of the British Consulate, where I was shown agents
provocateurs in the crowd. I saw Danny le rouge for the 1st time
haranguing the students in the Audi-Max at Hamburg university; it wasn't
until a few years later in the 70s that I became vaguely associated with
the post-68 Sponti movement & lived on the floor beneath him in a squat
near the Opernplatz in Frankfurt. Early one morning the house was
surrounded by police wagons & some sort of commandos with machine guns
went through the house on some ridiculous legalistic basis cooked up by
various reactionary forces to empty the house of unhealthy free
radicals; they didn't succeed, though they did cart off a young Italian
mother living there whom they dragged naked out of bed on Cohn-Bendit's
Etage. She came back to live with us downstairs after that. Funny, in
those days one of the slogans of the movement, in its
Kommunen/Wohngemeinschaften aspect, was "Wer zweimal mit derselben
pennt/Gehört schon zum Establishment" & I have often wondered how &
whether this might be translated, only to find now that it was - by
Thomas Shadwell in *The Libertine* (1675): "Since liberty, Nature for
all has designed,/A pox on the fool who to one is confined." In fact,
though, I hasten to add, in 70s Frankfurt nearly everyone was locked in
mutually recriminating relationships (Zweierbeziehungen). The only true
libertines were the gays I knew.
I wouldn't call Cohn "deeply respectable", though. He is too provocative
(in the best sense) for that.
mj

Robin Hamilton wrote:

>Where were you in 68?
>
>
>
>>As to his vain preening about the Aldermaston March - I was there
>>in, like, 1961, when Russell was still around.
>>
>>
>
>On the anniversary of 68 -- exactly thirty years on -- for some weird reason
>I decided to buttonhole everyone I knew (at least the ones who were old
>enough to have been alive at the time) and scream, "Where were you in 68?"
>
>Easily the most disconcerting answer I got was from the Real Lady, Professor
>Marion Shaw, my then boss.
>
>"In the morning I was teaching, in the afternoon I was running student
>strikes, and in the evening I was helping-out at a refuge for battered
>wives."
>
>Made my own experience of 68 pale into triviality in comparison.
>
>However, I did have the opportunity to vote for Danny the Red, which other
>than Martin and Douglas Clark, I doubt anyone else in this list did.
>
>But how the whirlgig of times brings in its revenges -- now Cohn-Bendit is a
>Green Euro MP, and Deeply Respectable.
>
>Sad to think on.
>
>Brodie
>
>LOOKING BACKWARDS: 30 YEARS
>
>(For Diana, who was 4)
>
>The workers demand their voice - give us
>Words, they exclaim - cry utter speak say.
>
>Instead we created a slogan - "You are not
>Living your lives, we are": This is a sit-
>uationist statement. Please hand in your
>
>Party cards at the exits. Door Zero: this is
>Ideology - the children play manifestation,
>Startle the gendarmes. Broken heads and blood
>On the cobbles - epicentre of the phenomenon.
>
>The circles spread and spread and it was usually
>Posture. Nothing much happened, after all -
>Cambridge was fun, but trivial.
>
>Then the wave crossed the Atlantic, and
>There were four dead children at Kent State U.
>
>
>