REMEMBERING THE WAY WE ONCE WERE

THINGS are not what they used to be - but then, they never were. Many
people who grew up in the 1960s have spent years wondering how they managed
to miss all the fun. How did the "permissive society", sex, drugs and rock
and roll pass them by so completely? Woodstock may have been playing in the
local fleapit but in the average Scottish town flower power seemed to be
confined to neatly-kept herbaceous borders in the local park. It was as
though your invitation to the party had gone astray.

Now, with the release of public records from 1967, the truth can at last be
told: there never was much of a party to miss. Whatever was going on
elsewhere, Scottish teenagers in the Sixties neither turned on, tuned in,
nor dropped out unless they were tuning in to Dr Who. Then, as now, there
was public concern over drug use.

The difference 30 years ago was that public fears were almost entirely
misplaced. Indeed, Scottish Office officials took the sensible view that
going on about "the problem" might make for a self-fulfilling prophecy. In
reality, there was little to worry about.

Times have changed since then, of course, but it is fascinating to consider
the extent to which the myth of the Sixties has taken root. London's King's
Road and Carnaby Street may have been at the cutting edge of fashion, drugs
use and sexual politics. For much of the rest of Britain, in contrast, the
transition from the grey, staid Fifties to the op-art Sixties was much less
dramatic. In some Scottish towns we could mention people are still waiting
patiently for it to happen.

But then, this year's batch of records still provide some fascinating
contrasts with the present.

Given the condition of trade unionism today the chances of any government
contemplating the use of troops to break a strike, as Harold Wilson did
when Liverpool dockers struck, are remote. The condition of sterling today
- - "the pound in your pocket" - in no sense resembles its state when Labour
was forced into devaluation. Theatre censorship is now thankfully an
almost-forgotten thing of the past. In 1967 Britain's problem with Europe
was how we might enter the then EEC, not Euroscepticism.

So it goes. Thirty years from now, no doubt, someone will be looking back
in amusement at all the talk about a New Britain, mocking our fashions or
ridiculing our quaint fears. History, in all things, is the great leveller.