Who Are These Marchers?

Abstract

A questionnaire was applied to a representative sample of a British and a Danish Easter march in 1965. Many of the questions were identical with ones asked of national samples in Poland, Norway, and France on another project. The analysis compares the distributions of responses from the five populations, and concludes that Easter marchers are on the whole both more knowledgable about foreign affairs, and more absolutist in their attitude to social change than are the national samples.

Most of the marchers are socially disequilibrated; and the knowledge, attitude, and aggression consequences of this social position are worked out with reference to the data. The marchers are found to consist of absolutists and gradualists whose social cosmolo gies are very different.

It is concluded that co-operation between absolutists across national boundaries will be more fruitful than attempts at co-operation between absolutists and gradualists within their own nations.