Innocent days. Or maybe a fundamental change

 Didn't someone mention hippies the other day?  Well Hebden Bridge is still talked of as a hippy town but the hippies are much older, but still wear their hair in a ponytail....

Here is a link to a pdf with many of those hippies testimonials of their descent in the 1970s into Hebden Bridge.  There are echoes of how we think of hippies - free love, feral children and drugs but there is also a honest sincerity of trying to make a different life, with values of a different nature.

They were the grandmothers and fathers of the children today in Extinction Rebellion, and peaceful none violent protests.  Wanting a better world, a kinder world, definitely one without war in it.  Unfortunately our world is getting worse from a number of factors, perhaps we need more hippies to come forward.

Firstly they moved into the empty properties around, also (can you imagine) houses were going for the princely sum of anything from a £1000 to £2000 upwards.  Some people bought these houses and did them up over time, the hippies in squats were booted out in the end, but the council gave grants to do up the houses, to bring new life to the town.  The factories making stuff had by then closed down.  In fact HB was called 'trouser town'.

As these homes became established and whole food shops were established, the town became a mecca for 'would be' hippies from Manchester and the surrounding towns to come and stay.  Sleep on the floor and help with the refurbishing of houses and establishment of gardens and the growing of food for the culture of the vegetarian, self sufficiency that had grown up.

So they did indeed bring life to the town, unorthodox maybe, but it was a time of great change.  The 1960s had bought a sense of freedom to the young.  Music had contributed to this.  But now everything was being explored, the very values of the life 'straight' people led.  It held freedom as the prize but it definitely beat its energy against the old ways.  But that is the way of change.