Travelling by Thumb: Student Travel and the Dangers of Hitchhiking, 1965-1985

Joseph Price is a third-year history PhD student at the University of Warwick, based in the Centre for the History of Medicine, Science, and Technology. His research interests are in the histories of medicine, sexuality and higher education in Britain. His PhD, titled Sexual Welfare and the Student Body in England 1965-1995, investigates how a specific group of young people navigated their sexual health during a period of significant social change. Through the lens of student health activism and welfare, he explores how students mobilised around issues, including access to contraception, disease prevention, and institutional responses to sexual violence.

According to a 1966 student survey printed in the University of Warwick’s student newspaper, 22 per cent of students drove to campus, 23 per cent used a bus, and a majority 34 per cent hitchhiked. Hitchhiking, hitching, or travelling by thumb was a well-established and a thoroughly accepted form of transport for students and the majority of young people across the postwar period. Its relative convenience and affordability during a time of limited car ownership meant that many young people hitchhiked their way around the country.

In Britain today, it is a seldom seen practice and a lost artform, restricted to popular culture and autobiographical accounts. Whilst hitchhiking used to be a key form of travel, historiographical attention on its significance has underappreciated its value. This presentation aims to connect histories of travel in modern Britain with histories of sexual violence by exploring the gendered dangers of hitchhiking.

The presentation uses the University of Warwick as a case study to explore the gendered dangers of student hitchhiking practices, covering the period between 1965 and 1985. Warwick’s geographical isolation as well as its growing student population and limited accommodation capacity in this period meant that students needed to travel on and off the campus regularly. I make use of student and local newspapers to understand how students tried to protect themselves from an essential but dangerous travelling practice.