PROLOGUE

We can say this year more than ever before that the future depends on the courage, the resolution and the energy of democratic man.

New York Times, 1 January 1956

As the last moments of 1955 ebbed away, the four hundred thousand revellers gathered in New York's Times Square raised their eyes eagerly to the roof of the Times Tower. There, at twenty seconds to midnight, as the ball of electric lights began its seventy-foot descent from the top of the flagpole, the crowd roared and sounded air horns in anticipation of the New Year. About eight seconds in, as the noise crescendoed, all 180 lights suddenly went out, and the ball completed its journey in darkness. The six-foot-high numerical display also failed. A faulty circuit breaker meant that it was not until a quarter past twelve that the lights welcoming in 1956 from all four sides of the tower were illuminated.1

While the celebrations in New York descended into farce, those in Japan were scarred by tragedy. During a Shinto ceremony at the Yahiko Shrine, some 150 miles north of Tokyo, more than a hundred people were trampled to death, and seventy-five injured. The disaster occurred during a scramble for the traditional rice balls, or mochi, which were being thrown to the crowd of thirty thousand. According to one eyewitness, people near the altar 'swarmed back' down a steep stone staircase, 'crashing into the arriving worshippers'. Some 'stumbled off the staircase or were crushed under the oncoming human wave'. With only eleven police officers on duty, panic spread quickly: 'Amid shrieks, men, women and children fell under the trampling feet.' The pressure from the crowd also collapsed a six-foot wall, causing further casualties. The New York Times reported that the 'draped bodies of the dead were placed at the entrances and the bereaved families came to claim them there'.2

It was an inauspicious start to a year that many predicted would be particularly challenging. In Madrid, for instance, General Francisco Franco - who would soon be entering his eighteenth year as Spain's dictator - used his New Year message to warn that 'the dangers that threaten the world are greater than ever'.3 Meanwhile, in its first editorial of 1956, The Times of London called for 'courage' in the face of the 'crises' that were 'undoubtedly in store for us', while Prime Minister Anthony Eden offered assurances that 'we shall be doing everything we can to reduce tension between the nations, at every time and at every opportunity'.4 He was, he said, looking forward 'very much' to a forthcoming summit with President Eisenhower; a meeting that, he believed, would 'be of help to the peace of the World'.5

The New Year did bring some grounds for optimism. Speaking from the pulpit of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, on 1 January, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr, told his congregation that there was 'no better way' to begin the New Year than with the firm belief in a powerful God - one who was 'able to beat back gigantic mountains of opposition and to bring low prodigious hill tops of evil'. King, the rising young star of the American civil rights movement, recognised that the scale of man's inhumanity to his fellow man, together with the awful realities of modern war, caused 'each of us' to 'question the ableness of our God'. But, King said, the conviction that good would ultimately emerge victorious in its struggle against evil lay at the root of the Christian faith. As the boycott of the city's racially segregated buses entered its second month, King urged his congregation to continue with their own struggle against evil, explaining that there was no need to worry, because 'God is able. Don't worry about segregation. It will die because God is against it.'6

1 January also saw the world welcome a new, independent nation, as more than half a century of Anglo-Egyptian rule came to an end in the Sudan. During a ceremony on the lawn of the palace in Khartoum, attended by two thousand official guests, the new prime minister, Ismail el-Azhari, declared that 'there is no occasion in the history of the Sudan and its people greater than this . If this day marks the end of our struggle for independence, it is also the beginning of our task of . building our future progress.' Then, as the band struck up the Sudanese national anthem and cannon fired the salute, el-Azhari joined with the leader of the official Opposition to raise the blue, yellow and green tricolour of the new state as, simultaneously, the British and Egyptian flags were lowered by officers of the Sudanese armed forces.7

The picture in French North Africa, though, was rather less rosy. At the end of December, following a spate of attacks by Moroccan fighters, French forces had launched a major operation near the Rif Mountains, killing more than fifty rebels; they also responded forcefully to acts of sabotage and terrorism in Algeria, where, according to one newspaper report, Friday 30 December saw more than twenty rebels killed in a single province (just a few weeks later Albert Camus warned that if the European and Muslim populations could not find a way to live together in peace and mutual respect, they would be 'condemned to die together, with rage in their hearts').8 In his annual message, written in Cairo while a guest of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Yugoslav leader Josep Tito argued that the people of Africa were 'striving to consolidate their independence, to govern themselves' and he condemned the 'civilising mission' of the European imperialists as little more than an excuse to 'dominate weak and underdeveloped countries'. But Tito was optimistic that an 'era of peaceful settlement of international problems has set in', and that 'war is being repudiated as a means of solving disputes .'9

There was talk of peace in Moscow too. On 31 December, the Soviet premier, Nikolai Bulganin, declared that, given sufficient goodwill and understanding, 1956 could see major progress towards 'putting an end to the Cold War .'10 Later that evening, Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev, first secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, hosted a lavish state dinner. Foreign diplomats were among the 1,200 or so guests who gathered in the Kremlin's enormous St George Hall, for a party that continued into the small hours. Alongside the food, champagne and music were speeches, numerous toasts and enthusiastic displays of dancing, led by senior Soviet officials: according to a report in the New York Times, Bulganin 'pranced about surrounded by a ring of girls'.11 It was a very different scene in Key West, Florida, where President Eisenhower was recuperating from his September heart attack, spending his time painting, hitting golf balls and going for the occasional stroll. While a 'family dinner and celebration' was planned, it was 'uncertain whether the President would remain awake until midnight to greet the New Year'.12

The world's statesmen may have marked the New Year by warning of the difficulties that lay ahead, expressing their desire for 'peace' or holding out the promise of a better tomorrow. But they would soon find themselves swept up, and some of them even swept aside, by an extraordinary series of events - by turns dramatic, shocking and world-changing - that could scarcely have been anticipated by even the most astute and brilliant of observers.

*

More than a century has now passed since the renowned Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci complained that, by venerating chronology, historians had created the misleading impression that some years were 'like mountains that humanity vaulted over, suddenly finding itself in a new world, coming into a new life'.13 His words, though, appear to have fallen on deaf ears. For historians, the habit of identifying a particular year as especially significant, or worthy of attention, has not only endured but flourished. During the past decade alone, dozens of books have appeared that attempt to capture the essence of an era, make sense of broader political, economic and cultural forces, or explore turning points in world history, through the story of a single year.14 But while writers have produced evocative accounts of various aspects of 1956, the year's collective drama - and contemporaries' own sense of living through momentous times - has been largely forgotten. The contrast with 1968, which is widely (and loudly) acclaimed as an international 'year of revolt', is striking. This historical absent-mindedness actually reflects a wider tendency to view the 1950s as rather drab: an era in which, we are told, the war-weary populations of Western Europe struggled to rebuild their shattered economies and shake off the constraints of economic austerity, while in the United States virtually the entire nation was supposedly enveloped by a stifling culture of conformity. When compared with the excitement of the war against fascism on the one hand, and the colourful counterculture and vibrant protest movements of the 1960s on the other, it is hardly surprising that the 'dreary' 1950s have frequently been consigned to the margins.15

By the mid-1950s, however, large parts of the world were on the cusp of dramatic change, as simmering social, economic and political tensions and deepening frustration with the...