Notwithstanding Greer’s bestseller, it is generally accepted that the initial impetus behind the feminism of the second wave came from the USA. With hindsight an impressive list of causal factors may be assembled. The image of modernity and emancipation of the American woman was part of an American myth which turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. By accelerating the dissolution of traditional values, modernity itself created the conditions for the liberation of women from their conventional roles. The USA, as the pioneer of mass higher education, produced a proportionately higher number of educated women than other countries. The struggle for racial equality, which prefigured the student movement of the late 1960s, had laid some of the foundations for a feminism dominated by the values of equal rights. No strong class-based party existed to monopolise these new struggles and anchor them to socialism. The non-structured, fragmentary and non-party based nature of American politics was better suited to the development of feminism than the system of parties which dominated Europe.

What baffled and still baffles scholars is that, under the cover of a great similarity in behaviour, style, fashion and action, the trend displayed a complex array of contradictory values. Hard-core young Stalinists or Trotskyists went around with long hair and in tight jeans. Maoists enjoyed listening to the Rolling Stones’ ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’. Defence of individualism and distaste for bureaucracy went hand in hand with staunch advocacy of state or collective action against racism and poverty. Avowed libertarians urged withdrawing free speech from supporters of far-right groups. In the name of liberalism, student radicals defended the autonomy of the universities against the encroachment of capitalism, and condemned any funding from private enterprise or government departments connected to the police and the armed forces. At the same time, they criticised the liberal, elitist and allegedly ‘irrelevant’ nature of much academic research, demanded that the universities should no longer be ivory towers and a preserve for the few, and should instead serve society and the people.

It is in the interplay of this twin-faceted phenomenon - an anti-establishment culture with an elitist and avant-garde profile, resting on popular foundations - that the student movement developed. It should not be thought, however, that student activism ever ‘dominated’ the universities, or that student activists were ever in the majority, or that Marxism become the uncontested ideology of the student movement. The single most important strand of the activists’ ideology was a strong anti-authoritarianism. This was accompanied by a dislike of rules and bureaucracy, a suspicion of representative and delegated authority, and a strong sympathy for the oppressed, especially those oppressed by racial discrimination. Apart from such description enunciations, it is difficult to provide an adequate analysis of the phenomenon of student and youth protest.