Birth of the Yuppie

"Back in 1988, the British rock writer Charles Shaar Murray was interviewed for an accomplished oral history of 60s London called Days in the Life, full of claims that the era had been a golden age of personal freedom leading to touchy-feely enlightenment; a time, according to one contributor, 'to be less consumer-oriented, to lead a more communal life, to care'. Murray was not nearly so upbeat. 'The line from hippy to yuppie is not nearly as convoluted as some people like to believe,' he said. 'A lot of the old hippy rhetoric could well be co-opted now by the pseudo-libertarian right, which has in fact happened. Get the government off our backs, let individuals do what they want - that translates very smoothly into laissez-faire yuppie-ism, and that's the legacy of the era.'"

John Harris in The Guardian sifts through the fallout of 1967.