Provo
In 1965 a group of young people gathered around the student and activist Roel van Duyn, a philosophy student at the University of Amsterdam. They used the name Provo (from provocation) and they met every week in Amsterdam at ” ‘t Spui “, a quite famous square.
‘t Spui, Amsterdam
They organise happenings around Robert Jasper Grootveld :
Grootveld was an extroverted performance artist with a gift for theatrical gesture. During the early ’60s, he attracted massive crowds in Amsterdam with exhibitionistic “Happenings.” At the core of Grootveld’s philosophy was the belief that the masses had been brainwashed into becoming a herd of addicted consumers, the “despicable plastic people.” According to Grootveld, new rituals were needed to awaken these complacent consumers. While the writings of Van Duyn greatly appealed to the educated crowd, Grootveld found his followers among street punks. (source)
Roel van Duyn and Robert Jasper Grootveld met at the above mentioned square :
In 1964, Grootveld moved his black masses, now known as “Happenings,” to nearby Spui Square. At the center of the square was a small statue of a child, “Het Lievertje.” By coincidence, the statue had been commissioned by a major tobacco firm. For Grootveld, this bit of evidence proved the insidious infiltration of the nico-dope syndicates. Every Saturday, at exactly midnight, Grootveld began appearing in the square, wearing a strange outfit and performing for a steadily growing crowd of Nozems, intellectuals, curious bypassers and police.
One night in May 1965, Van Duyn appeared at one of the Happenings and began distributing leaflets announcing the birth of the Provo movement. “Provo’s choice is between desperate resistance or apathetic perishing,” wrote Van Duyn. “Provo realizes eventually it will be the loser, but won’t let that last chance slip away to annoy and provoke this society to its depths . . .”
Grootveld read the first Provo manifesto and decided to cooperate with the publishers. “When I read the word anarchism in that first pamphlet, I realized that this outdated, 19th century ideology would become the hottest thing in the ’60s,” he recalls.
The leaflets were followed by more elaborate pamphlets announcing the creation of the White Plans. Constant Nieuwenhuis, another artist, was instrumental in shaping the White Philosophy, which considered work (especially mundane factory labor) obsolete. Provo’s renunciation of work appealed to the Nozems – and marked an important ideological split with capitalism, communism and socialism, all of which cherished work as a value in itself. Provo, however, sympathized more with Marx’ anarchist son-in-law Paul Lafargue, author of “The Right to Laziness.”
The most famous of all white plans was the White Bike Plan, envisioned as the ultimate solution to the “traffic terrorism of a motorized minority.” The brain-child of Industrial designer Luud. Schimmelpenninck, the White Bike Plan proposed the banning of. environmentally noxious cars from the inner city, to be replaced by bicycles. Of course, the bikes were to be provided free by the city. They would be painted white and permanently unlocked, to secure their public availability. Schimmelpenninck calculated that,. even from a strictly economic point of view, the plan would provide great benefits to Amsterdam. (source)
Although the White Bike plan was not the only White Plan (there was e.g. the White Kids plan for free daycare centres, the White Housing Plan in order to stop real estate speculation or the White Wife plan for free medical aid for women), the White Bike plan was the most successful.
Interlude : how it all started
It all started with the Nozems. Born out of the postwar economic boom, the Nozems were disaffected Dutch teens armed with consumer spending power. Part mods, part ’50s juvenile delinquents, they spent most of their time cruising the streets on mopeds, bored stiff and not knowing what to do. Their favorite past-time? Raising trouble and provoking the police. They were called ‘greasers’ by the Provo movement, the latter called ‘hippies’ by the Nozems. The Nozems mainly hang out at the Leidseplein. Provo was actually first coined by Dutch sociologist Buikhuizen in a condescending description of the Nozems. Roel Van Duyn was the first to recognize the Nozems’ slumbering potential. “It is our task to turn their aggression into revolutionary consciousness,” he wrote in 1965. Nozems are by the way sometimes compared to the teddyboys of Britain.
Some pamphlets
Pamphlet to promote the White Bike plan
Pamphlet to promote the White Car plan
Pamphlet to promote the White Housing plan
Riots
The monarchy became the ultimate establishment symbol for the Provos to attack. Royal ceremonies offered ample opportunities for satire. Provo made up a fake speech, in which Queen Juliana declared she’d become an anarchist and was negotiating a transition of power with Provo. Provo Hans Tuynman invited the Queen to hold an intimate conversation in front of the palace. where he and some other Provos had assembled some comfortable chairs. Although the Queen did not show, the police did, quickly breaking up the Happening.
The climax of this anti-royal activity came in March 1966, when Princess Beatrix married a German, Claus von Amsberg, a former member of Hitlerjugend, the Nazi youth organization.
The Provos spent months preparing for the March wedding. A bank account was opened to collect donations for an anti-wedding present. The White Rumor Plan was put into action. Wild and ridiculous rumors were spread through Amsterdam. It became widely believed that the Provos were preparing to dump LSD in the city water supply, that they were building a giant paint-gun to attack the wedding procession, that they were collecting manure to spread along the parade route, and that the royal horses were going to be drugged. Although Provo was actually planning nothing more than a few smoke bombs, the police expected the worst acts of terrorism imaginable. Foreign magazines offered big money to Provos if they would disclose their secret plans before the wedding, plans that didn’t exist.
A few days before the wedding, all the Provos mysteriously disappeared. They did this simply to avoid being arrested before the big day. Meanwhile, the authorities requested 25,000 troops to help guard the parade route.
On the day of the wedding, Amsterdam – the most anti-German and anti-monarchist city in the country – was not in the mood for grand festivities. Half the City Council snubbed the official wedding reception. A foreign journalist put it this way: “The absence of any decorated window, of any festive ornament, is just another expression of the indifference of the public.”
Miraculously, by dressing up like respectable citizens, the Provos managed to sneak their smoke bombs past the police and army guards. “The night before, the cops made a terrible blooper by violently searching an innocent old man who was carrying a suspicious leather bag. So the fools gave orders not to search leather bags any more, fearing dirty Provo tricks!” says Appie Pruis, a photographer. The first bombs went off just behind the palace as the procession started. Although the bombs were not really dangerous (they were made from sugar and nitrate). they put out tremendous clouds of smoke, which were viewed on television worldwide. “It was a crazy accumulation of insane mistakes. Most of the police had been brought in from the countryside, and so were totally unable to identify the Provos.” A violent police overreaction ensued, witnessed by foreign journalists, many of whom were clubbed and beaten in the confusion. The wedding turned into a public relations disaster. “Demonstrations of Provo are Amsterdam’s bitter answer to monarchist folklorism,” commented a Spanish newspaper.
After these events the situation became even worse. By the middle of 1966, repression was out of control. Hundreds of people were arrested every week at Happenings and anti-Vietnam rallies. A ban on demonstrations caused them to grow even bigger. Hans Tuynman was turned into a martyr after being sentenced to three months in jail for murmuring the word “image” at a Happening. Yet around the time, a Dutch Nazi collaborator, a war criminal responsible for deporting Jews, had been released from prison and a student fraternity member received only a small fine for manslaughter.
End of Provo movement
Finally, in August 1966, a congressional committee was established to investigate the crisis. The committee’s findings resulted in the Police Commissioner’s firing. In May 1967, the mayor of Amsterdam, Van Hall, was “honorably” given the boot, after the committee condemned his policies. Strangely enough, Provo, which had demanded the mayor’s resignation for over a year, liquidated within a week of his dismissal.
After Provo dissolved, the main characters went their own way. Van Duyn continued in politics and founded the anarchistic “Kabouter” party. The Kabouters (or “gnomes” in Dutch) successfully put several members on the Amsterdam city council. Grootveld began building giant rafts out of Styrofoam and fishnets. The Amsterdam sanitation department towed away one of these rafts, mistaking it for a pile of garbage. After Grootveld threatened to sue, the city offered him a stretch of a harbor dock, where he established a workshop.
Further reading
Provos and Kabouters
Amsterdam in the 60s
September 22nd, 2003 | 
Fascinating.