Turning 60

By his 60th birthday, Morton was an established, even distinguished figure in British Communism at least. His work was translated into different languages and his life’s achievements were celebrated in the Daily Worker and the local press. Morton was also part of an ageing generation of Communists now active in a decade which brought new social and cultural challenges to their authority and credibility. In this chapter, an assessment is given of Morton’s place in the cultural debates of the 1960s and the difficulties he faced in trying to navigate popular youth-led radicalism and cultural conservatism. Morton was part of some projects designed to intervene in and state the CPGBCommunist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) position on culture. He produced a seemingly traditionalist stance and was especially dismissive of popular consumerist culture which he saw as inevitably capitalist. However, he continued to promote the study of historic antinomians in (qualified) language that chimed with 1960s radicalism. Some consideration is also given to the everyday life of the Mortons where these contradictions played out in their letters (including a love-hate relationship with televisionTelevision).