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It follows naturally, doesn’t it? Stigma is kept alive by people who are far more sensible than sensitive. They’re not easily duped. Nor are service users. “We may be mad,” I heard once, “but we’re not bloody fools.”
1961 was a bitter year in many ways. A lot of bad things came to a head that year: bad things that rumbled on for the next 20, 30, 40 years or more. The Congo – South Africa – Cuba – Vietnam – the Berlin Wall – to name but a few. Some say the phenomenon of the Swinging Sixties was a mass revolt against the attitudes and institutions that had given rise to the anguish of these times. Others point out that, even by 1961, Britain had not fully recovered from WW2.
Wars leave wreckage. People-wreckage – which lives on for years. When peace breaks out, sunny fields and rosy cheeks don’t happen overnight. And wars, like chronic illness, can go into remission. They can simply go off the boil – go cold.
The young people of today might be excused for thinking that the Cold War was somehow a phoney war – like a battle for market dominance between two brands of toilet paper. This is to ignore the immediacy of the nuclear threat. The Home Office department known as Civil Defence mounted eerie public exercises that became something of a national sport.
A sudden...