Amsterdam (Rough Guide) - Martin Dunford [179]
History |
The Provos and the 1960s
The radical, youthful mass movements that swept through the West in the 1960s transformed Amsterdam from a middling, rather conservative city into a turbo-charged hotbed of hippy action. In 1963, one-time window cleaner and magician extraordinaire Jasper Grootveld won celebrity status by painting “K” – for kanker (“cancer”) – on cigarette billboards throughout the city. Two years later, he proclaimed the statue of the Lieverdje (“Loveable Rascal”) on the Spui the symbol of “tomorrow’s addicted consumer” – since it had been donated to the city by a cigarette manufacturer – and organized large-scale gatherings there once a week. His actions enthused others, most notably Roel van Duyn, a philosophy student at Amsterdam University, who assembled a left-wing-cum-anarchist movement known as the Provos – short for provocatie (“provocation”). The Provos participated in Grootveld’s meetings and then proceeded to organize their own street “happenings”, which proved to be fantastically popular among young Amsterdammers. The number of Provos never exceeded about thirty and the group had no coherent structure, but they did have one clear aim – to bring points of political or social conflict to public attention by spectacular means. More than anything, they were masters of publicity, and pursued their “games” with a spirit of fun rather than grim political fanaticism. The reaction of the police, however, was aggressive; the first two issues of the Provos’ magazine were confiscated and, in July 1965, they intervened at a Saturday-night “happening”, setting a pattern for future confrontations. The magazine itself contained the Provos’ manifesto, a set of policies that later appeared under the title “The White Plans”. These included the famously popular white bicycle plan, which proposed that the council ban all cars in the city centre and supply 20,000 bicycles (painted white) for general public use.
History | The Provos and the 1960s |
Princess Beatrix gets married
There were regular police-Provos confrontations throughout 1965, but it was the wedding of Princess Beatrix to Claus von Amsberg on March 10, 1966, that provoked the most serious unrest. Amsberg had served in the German army during World War II and many Netherlanders were deeply offended by the marriage. Consequently, when hundreds took to the streets to protest, pelting the wedding procession with smoke bombs, a huge swathe of Dutch opinion supported them – to some degree or another. Amsberg himself got no more than he deserved when he was jeered with the refrain “Give us back the bikes”, a reference to the commandeering of hundreds of bikes by the retreating German army in 1945. The wedding over, the next crisis came in June when, much to the horror of the authorities, it appeared that students, workers and Provos were about to combine. In panic, the Hague government ordered the dismissal of Amsterdam’s police chief, who was deemed to be losing control, but in the event the Provos had peaked and the workers proved far from revolutionary, settling for arbitration on their various complaints.
History |
The 1970s and 1980s – and the squatters
In 1967, the Provos formally dissolved their movement at a happening in the Vondelpark, but many of their supporters promptly moved on to neighbourhood committees, set up to oppose the more outlandish development plans of the city council. The most hated scheme by a long chalk was the plan to build a metro line through the Nieuwmarkt to the new suburb of Bijlmermeer, as this involved both wholesale demolitions and compulsory relocations. For six months there were regular confrontations between the police and the protestors and, although the council eventually had its way, the scene was set for more trouble. In particular,