Harry's Place

I remember this time fairly well. I was 15/16. At the time, I was more concerned with the latest release from Devo or The Residents. But some of the news filtered through. In 1979, one of the playing fields around where I lived became a huge rubbish tip, festering slowly, attracting rats, stinking to high heaven. Daring myself to go near it was one of my many pastimes. Happy days

Excellent piece and I feel like a party pooper for pointing out that the Liverpool health officer who got hoodwinked into talking about burial at sea was Dr Duncan Dolton, not Bolton.

The Labour Government of 1974-79 has a great deal to be proud of, particularly in reducing inflation from the Heath/Six-day war induced peak to under 10% without causing inflation, but it’s a pity it didn’t suit the narrative of the Labour Party under Blair to defend it.

By 1979 the Callaghan government was under attack from all sides, especially from a press that was more right-wing orientated than at any time in its previous history.

Saint Jim was betrayed by a dagger in the back, by fifth columnist fascist newspapers whose ethos was foreign to the real values of this inherently Labour-voting country and who drugged the unsuspecting populace to vote for the traitorous Tories …

… or some such whining blame-everybody-else-but-never-us nonsense, anyway.

There were actually more days lost through strikes later in 1979 (under a Tory government) than under Labour

“Later in 1979″ was still a time when the Tories were dealing with the mess inherited from Jim’s (and Dennis’s) amateurish incompetence. Or perhaps the IMF’s rescue package was also a myth invented by the fascist press.

So, Maggie took a good situation, made it even better, and was re-elected as a result.

I’m going for David Lindsay being the first to call this a piece of revisionalist history.

No mention here of the smug arrogance of James Callaghan, who did nothing to declare any empathy for anyone at that time. He did not convince anyone that pay demands could not be met, and his personal aloofness showed how out-of-touch his government had become.

One of the most abiding memories I have at that time is an evening walk I took from Highbury Barn to Highbury and Islington tube. To see a massive black wall of bin bags stretching across Highbury fields, about ten feet high, seemed awesome but ghastly.

I think it was just one of those times when change was going to come, no matter how many good plans may have been put in place to avoid chaos. Strangely, I remember news of the Iranian revolution, Jim Jones People’s Temple Cult massacre in Guyana, the deaths of Mao and Golda Meir and discovery of the bodies in the crawl-space under John Wayne Gacey’s home more clearly than I remember any actual chaos or anxiety from those I knew or witnessed around me.

Most people were fairly upbeat. People who were striking felt that there was the money available and that they would get their demands met.

Only the sight of the countless bin bags on Highbury Fields made me take notice that the consequences of what was happening politically were tangible and real.

No mention here of the smug arrogance of James Callaghan, who did nothing to declare any empathy for anyone at that time.

Smugness? What Smugness? :-)

Thanks for the correction David B – I won’t change the name because of your comment.

Living in liverpool in the 70s I saw the job losses first hand. By the mid 70s getting a job was almost impossible. The Liverpool echo jobs page could not even fill a column, never mind a page. That was on a Friday, the biggest night for jobs. All through the 70s the north was losing jobs. This is a total piece of garbage. Unless you were there you have no idea what you are talking about. So many unemployed they started using local community centers. That was before thatcher.

I was in Germany before thatcher was elected.. Gizza job started before thatcher.

IMF forcing labour to cut the public sector by 25%. No pain caused by that Graham.

Poor attempt at re-writing history.

What a piece of rubbish. total re-writing of history.

BTW, the summer of 1976 was brilliant. A hot sunny day helps you forget about your woes.

Lets re-write history again.

***BREAKING NEWS***

This just in from our senior selective revisionist correspondent Graham: the Winter of Discontent never happened. Mrs Thatcher still awful.

More later.

Now for a word from our sponsors…

Bingo (and I bet nobody chose DaveS in the “revisionist history” sweepstake.)

I too remember Bin Bags (I think I remember being photographed in front of them by the Norwood News – long gone) but it was nothing like being in Leeds recently. Nobody is saying the late seventies were utopia – just that it was not as bad as the media made it out to be.

It was bad Graham. Thats why I, and thousands of others, left.

The 70s was an entire decade of job losses and factory closures. A decade of stagflation.
Why did they need to borrow from the IMF, Graham?
What were interest rates?
What was the inflation rate?
Unemployment rate at the start of decade compared to the day Maggies was elected, Graham?

Graham, the labour government did not have to go to the IMF. They could have kept on printing money. A total collapse in the currency and your new socialist state could have arisen from the ashes. Thats how close Graham. LAbour came close to a full blown currency default.

Sunny Jim bottled it.

All this time later and labour are doing it again, funny how history repeats itself. Funny how socialists never learn from history.

Seems everyone knows your full of BS.. Clue Graham the S does not stand for socialism.

“The 70s was an entire decade of job losses and factory closures. A decade of stagflation.”

This could be said about ANY decade.

“Why did they need to borrow from the IMF, Graham?”

They didn’t. This is another myth. As wikipedia says:

Prior to the “Winter of Discontent”, the Callaghan government believed that the UK economy was in a much worse state than it actually was, and had sought (in 1976) an International Monetary Fund loan of £2.3bn[2].

“and your new socialist state could have arisen from the ashes”

Blimey! I’m not even a Labour party member and now he is trying to characterise me as Lenin! Jameson taught you well!

just that it was not as bad as the media made it out to be

Utter nonsense. I was barely able to afford to travel to work. Because of a militant, confrontational and uncompromising union (which Callaghan was too much of a coward to do anything about), I could not progress at my place of work, and was in danger of losing my tiny house as mortgage interest rates were going through the roof (at one time I think mine was 18%) thanks to the clowns supposedly running the economy.

“A decade of stagflation.”

This could be said about ANY decade.

Well, it could – but it would be a lie.

And now, from the reliable sources of Wikipedia:

the Callaghan government believed that the UK economy was in a much worse state than it actually was

And whose job exactly was it, pray, to KNOW what state it was in? My great-aunt Hilda’s? As I recall, she was not in the government: Callaghan and the rest of the clowns were, they were elected and paid to know what the state of the economy was.

“I was barely able to afford to travel to work. Because of a militant, confrontational and uncompromising union ”

If all you have to counter a fairly widespread acceptance amongst historians of the media is personal experiences I think you will find that was all dealt with above.

And whose job exactly was it, pray, to KNOW what state it was in? My great-aunt Hilda’s?

Once again nobody is saying the Callaghan government was perfect – just that the media misrepresented it and Labour abandoned any defence.

The 70s was an entire decade of job losses and factory closures. A decade of stagflation.”
This could be said about any decade.

No, it cannot be Graham. Prior to this downturn we have had over 15 years of growth. The 70s was ten years of job losses. Your wrong.

What Callaghan said:

“We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step

That wikipedia entry done by you Graham?

Nope.. It was a bad state. The pound was free fall.

The world’s financial markets were losing confidence in Sterling as the British economy stumbled. The Treasury could not balance the books. At the same time, Labour’s strategy emphasised high public spending which it appeared could no longer be paid for.

Simple choice..Carry on spending or cut. They cut.

Labour did all the cutting. Labour slashed the public sector. They were forced to stop printing money. It takes a few years to work its way through the system. So by the time maggie came in she never had to cut. All the hard work was done for her. All she need to do was take on the unions. party.

One thing I will say about that period is that in the summer of 1978 people’s horizons were broadening. The hippy-trail-by-bus services were still going from King’s Cross, it was dirt cheap to cross the channel by ferry or (now defunct) hovercraft, and Freddie Laker’s Skytrain was for the first time making non-booked flights to America from 50 quid, as long as people didn’t mind queing. The bigger airlines like Pan-Am started doing “reserve” seats for similar price, but tacky old BA couldn’t be bothered.

I think that people didn’t really appreciate what they had, as MacMillan observed in an earlier time. When Thatcher got in, the goalposts were dramatically moved around and that did create anxiety. The apparent golden opportunities and optimism that seemed to be around in 1978 soon disappeared altogether for those with low incomes, and Britain became a more anxious and reactionary place.

No, it cannot be Graham. Prior to this downturn we have had over 15 years of growth. The 70s was ten years of job losses.

Go back to the article, read what I said about 1973, come back to the comments, read what D Boothroyd said about Callaghan reducing inflation, and rejoin the actual conversation we are having rather than the one you think we are having.

I’ll put it simply. British politics in the 20th century can be seen to have been characterised by two great myths – one Labour and one Tory. The curious thing is why Labour have never done very much to challenge the second myth.

“The hippy-trail-by-bus services were still going from King’s Cross”

Right that’s done it – I accept it was a terrible time (bloody smelly afghan coats and jossticks everywhere.)

Once again nobody is saying the Callaghan government was perfect – just that the media misrepresented it and Labour abandoned any defence.

Nope, They got it spot on.
Another high spending socialist government that had ran out money.

A great post,it has long been a bee in my bonnet that even people on the left bought the “WINTER OF DISCONTENT”myth.
Of course most of the people on this site either no little of their own history or are obsessed with the middle eastern tribal battles.

Only a couple of weeks ago a BBC breakfast tv presenter made a comment about a return to the WINTER OF DISCONTENT as if it had happened last year.

At the time WORLD IN ACTION sent an American reporter to HULL which was meant to be a city starving to death due to the strikes but guess what the situation was not that bad.

As someone who was 17 and at school at the time I follwed the strikes with great interest,not least because my dad was a NUPE member.

The union leaders and members who want to dump Labour this time around should think what happened when the Tories won in 1979,it was not a return to socialism was it?

If all you have to counter a fairly widespread acceptance amongst historians of the media is personal experiences I think you will find that was all dealt with above.

With distortions and lies, yes, sure.
The IMF bailout was not merely my “personal experience”, and trying to dismiss it as such is scraping the bottom of the barrel (although I can sympathise with your desperate situation in trying to justify the unjustifiable).
The stratospheric mortgage rates were not merely my “personal experience”.
Nor were the confrontational unions (I was hardly the only one in the workplace situation I described); nor Callaghan’s uselessness in doing anything about them.
Nor his government’s failure to assess the economic situation correctly.
That was THEIR JOB. They failed. They were fired in 1979, and rightly so.

Ian, I was not 17 and in school and hearing things second-hand – I experienced them first-hand.

it was not a return to socialism was it?

You wouldn’t be labouring under the delusion that what we have at the moment is socialism, are you?
(Thank goodness for small mercies…).

I’m not “little” (that’s yet another myth.)

Almost unconsciously he traced with his finger in the dust on the table:

2 + 2 = 5

Maybe in thirty years’ time, Graham, you can get your son to appear in Holographic Harry’s Place and tell us all how wonderful it was living in Brown’s Britain in 2009.

Graham..

Ya arrogant little sh it..

Callaghan was forced to cut. He did it because he had to. The same answer to Mr B. Not because he was an economic genius. Because he had ran out of money. As all labour governments do.

Labour borrow and borrow until they are forced to cut. Thats not a myth thats a fact, dumbo.

“Maybe in thirty years’ time, Graham, you can get your son to appear in Holographic Harry’s Place and tell us all how wonderful it was living in Brown’s Britain in 2009.”

Sorry but you will have to tell us what the myths are about how it is so bad in Brown’s Britain. Or have you not written them yet?

The Labour Government of 1974-79 has a great deal to be proud of, particularly in reducing inflation from the Heath/Six-day war induced peak to under 10% without causing inflation, but it’s a pity it didn’t suit the narrative of the Labour Party under Blair to defend it.

I think you mean the Yom Kippur War (1973) rather than the Six-Day War (1967).

Well done Graham. A necessary corrective to the legend of ‘79′. Callaghan would have won had he taken good advice and gone to the polls in October 1978. Mrs Thatcher was subject already to a campaign against her leadership before she won the general election (’Ditch the Bitch’) and was only supreme in her party after the Falklands War (where little of our military equipment worked either). Michael Foot’s inept leadership and the Labour Party’s determination to stay out of power by any means made her look invulnerable afterwards.

Something very similar to 79 is being acted out now. This is no surprise to older hands. The Tories always have to rubbish the country in order to get back into power and they have a British Press ownership to help them do it.

what the myths are about how it is so bad in Brown’s Britain

You couldn’t make it up.

All the hard work was done for her

Hardly. Maybe as regards one specific aspect – cuts – but she dealt with the thuggish unions since Callaghan chickened out of that one.

Anyway, the hard work was only necessary precisely because Callaghan, Healey (and yes, Heath) had buggered up the works and they needed fixing.

The Tories always have to rubbish the country in order to get back into power

Quite apart from the fact that this is the usual visceral hatred-fuelled nonsense, according to your own post Labour would have stayed in power if only Callaghan and Foot weren’t such rubbish. Well, they were – and they were Labour’s chosen leaders.

Of course, IF my aunt had 4 wheels and were painted red, she would have been a London bus.

Basically, all you and Graham are doing is whining: “Not fair! We was robbed!” and “Not fair! Rubbish politicians should not be discriminated against, dissed and de/un-elected!”.

It is crazy to think that conditions are worse in Brown’s Britain than at any time in the past.

The Labour Government of 1974-79 has a great deal to be proud of, particularly in reducing inflation from the Heath/Six-day war induced peak to under 10% without causing inflation

Because it was forced to by the IMF, who imposed the kinds of conditions against the UK that people think are so iniquitous against developing countries. Some of us remember Callaghan and Healey being booed and shouted at by Labour members at party conferences for defending their policies, the IMF load, and trying to reconcile them with socialism.

This could be said about ANY decade.

How could that be said of the 1930s, marked by deflation, or the 1990s, typified by significant growth?

“How could that be said of the 1930s, marked by deflation, or the 1990s, typified by significant growth?”

It could certainly be said about the “job losses and factory closures” which formed the greater part of the statement (for either decade.)

GB

The economic decisions had been taken by Labour. They had devastated the public sector with savage cuts. The hard job was changing the mind set of the unions. That was still a big fight.

Keep up with the thread Graham. Going to fast for ya.

Hasan, Graham does not think so.

Funnily enough but this post ties in rather nicely with my own views of the 1970s. I blogged my memories of 1976 two years ago, and wrote at the time that what we needed was a sort of peoples’ memory page to capture our version of life before the cataclysm.

“They had devastated the public sector with savage cuts. ”

You can’t beat this kind of emotive writing for mythmaking!

It is crazy to think that conditions are worse in Brown’s Britain than at any time in the past.

(a) Nobody has said they are: it’s called “setting up a strawman”, and is regarded as pretty low.

(b) In some respects they are worse than at any time in my lifetime:
Deliberate politicisation and corruption of the civil service.
Deliberate bypassing of the professional civil service with quangos and special advisers, appointed at whim.
Deliberate bypassing of parliamentary and other democratic systems – e.g. by mass-appointments of cronies and other scum to the Lords.
Deliberate uncontrolled mass-immigration for narrow party-political ends.

“The economic decisions had been taken by Labour.”

There you go – they weren’t so bad after all (and it didn’t take much to admit it.)

Right onwards and upwards…

“Nobody has said they are: it’s called “setting up a strawman”, and is regarded as pretty low.”

“In some respects they are worse than at any time in my lifetime (etc)”

Now you couldn’t make THIS up! (Unless you were from Conservative central office maybe!)

Way too fuinny.

… Deliberate erosion of civil liberties …

It could certainly be said about the “job losses and factory closures” which formed the greater part of the statement (for either decade.)

Nice one: cherry-picking which you regard as “the greater part of the statement” … I take it in your other life you are “Gordon’s” speechwriter?

I bet Exile has a poster of Scargill on his wall, next to one of Castro, one of Chavez, one of Guevara and who knows – one of Carlos?

“Nice one: cherry-picking which you regard as “the greater part of the statement”

No I’m afraid it just IS the greater part of the statement. Now stop trolling (I’m asking you nicely.)

I think our personal memories of that time are rather dependant on how old we were at the time. I was in my twenties, and very aware of the tribulations my middle aged parents were going through. My grandparents were getting old, then they passed away, and at the end of their lives the hospital treatment and care they received was at best cursory, and unreliable. Then burial was out of the question, but the crematorium was still operating.

At work, I saw and heard at first hand the misgivings of ordinary union members who didn’t like the ranting and hostile attitude of their shop stewards, and didn’t subscribe to the notion that we could prosper by letting rip with ever increasing pay claims. We got secondary picketted, and the pickets were so aggressive that staff and visitors were afraid to come in to our factory. There was a feeling that we were all heading to hell in a handcart, and we needed to jump off, sober up, and concentrate on keeping our jobs, instead of smashing the bosses, the customers, and the government. It felt just like we were all students who have just been forced to come to terms with the fact that the lavvy does not clean itself.

I’m not altogether surprised that people have different memories of this period (or that, this being a political website that people will argue about the merits/demerits of the government of the time) but it would be interesting to find out why people think Labour have had such problems remembering these times.

The economic decisions had been taken by Labour.”
There you go – they weren’t so bad after all (and it didn’t take much to admit it.)
Right onwards and upwards…

Graham.. This is a stupid blog.. Trying to use a bit of my post out of context. What a total loser.

They cut because they had to. No other reason. Same with brown. He will only cut when he is forced to. If he makes it pass the election date he will go to his grave saying he did not cut. 1.4 trillion to make brown happy.

Socialism is fine until the money runs out.

The money has run out.

Buy lots of gold guys. Sterling is worthless.

“Trying to use a bit of my post out of context. What a total loser. ”

That’s just quite hilarious after what you have been doing all thread!

Monty wrote:
It felt just like we were all students who have just been forced to come to terms with the fact that the lavvy does not clean itself.

How true – a brilliant post. The unions were insane then. Harold Evans of the Times wanted to introduce new technology and the print unions were acting like Luddites. I can understand their protecting jobs, but it went deeper than that – they had closed shops.

In 1978 I designed some record covers for Trojan Records but the printers refused to print them unless I was a union member. I was still a student. I applied to the NGA (National Graphical Association) and SLADE (Society of Lithographic Artists Designers and Engravers). The NGA told me their membership was full up. SLADE sent me a form, but there was nothing for arrogant little prat graphic artists, so I got in a state.

Fortunately a technician at college was an NGA member and put a sticker on the back of the artwork to get it printed. Later, in the Thatcher years, I went through the same problems. I had ben unemployed but was starting to work freelance again. I did some ads for London Yellow Pages. Because I was not an NGA/Slade member, I had to pay blackmail money to get my work printed. £10 for each regional edition, seven in all, so £70 deducted from my design fee.

A couple of months later, when Eddie Shah of the Messenger newspaper group sequestered the NGA’s assets and crushed them, I was -sorry, Socialists – delighted.

However, some printers still operated closed shops, and I had to take my artwork to a print firm where I would slip some money to a technician who would photograph the artwork to scale, and then put a SLADE sticker on the back. Unfortunately, though the guy was pleasant enough to me, and most of my artwork related to anti-racist groups in Hackney, he always had copies of RAC News – am ultra-racist magazine that gave out the addresses of leftists, social workers and black people, so that their homes could be attacked.

That is one aspect of Unions that I am glad Thatcher stamped on.

Gordon Bennett: you would lose, so let that be a lesson not to gamble.

Could we lose the myth that the maggot stamped on the unions as if they are some alien body? They are not: they are us as we operate collectively. Ergo regime actions in the 1980s were directed at us. People realised that which is one of the reasons why almost every house in my old constituency had a Labour poster up in its window.

I don’t think the print unions at the time can be thought of as at all progressive. Trouble is that the Shah/Murdoch business left us with a press that is even more right-wing than that of the seventies.

So, let me get this right, there was no “winter of discontent”, it was all a smear by the right wing press.

So Gordon Brown’s government are fantastic, everyone in Britain is overjoyed with their performance and the world is just one big fluffy marsh mellow.

Anyone who says it isn’t is in the pay of the evil sinister right wing press.

“The problem with socialism is you eventually run out of other peoples
money”

Or in the words of your progressive Lefty, it doesn’t matter, it’s only someone else’s money.

Of course there was no winter of discontent, Anaximander: have you not been paying attention? You’ve been told by the Min. of Truth there was none, and that should be enough for you.

Could we lose the myth that the maggot

That is the level of debate we can expect from spittle-flecked far leftists.

stamped on the unions as if they are some alien body? They are not: they are us as we operate collectively.

Nonsense. Many unions in the 1970s were run as personal fiefdoms of their gen.secs. If they decreed some action was due, they tolerated no dissent, never mind democratic voting. Read Nick’s description.
That is why radical reform was necessary. It could have been avoided by said gen.secs. not behaving like totalitarian stalinist scum.

I meant Adrian, of course.

Future articles by Graham..

Was Pol pot misunderstood.

Socialists make happier dole queues.

Time re-examine Stalins legacy..

Quite the best thing here is how the points made have floated right over the heads of some not very intelligent right-wingers and left them lashing out just because they feel uncomfortable. In a sense, it backs up the idea that modern politics is mainly spin.

I mean. Comparing the Winter of Discontent to Stalin! How stupid is that?

Oh dearie me. Up until now I’d principally considered Graham a dinosaur on account of his physical age.

I don’t need to read Nick or any other bum sucker as I was involved in the movement at the time. We, the stewards and conveners, were radical but the full time officers usually had more in common with the management filth than they did with us.

Claiming the opposite only shows that you don’t know shit about the unions in the 70s.

I was a teenager for most of the seventies. I loved it. I loved the power cuts. I loved the conflict between the government and unions, the clothes and the haircuts. Things are better now, but the whole premise of many of the comments above is that economic growth is a GOOD THING. Am I alone in thinking that recessions are not all bad? If they stop meaningless consumption, meaningless travel and meaningless excess and help people to rediscover values relating to family and community then bring on the next one.

Absolute crap; except that 1976 was great, but what a summer that was (1977 was not bad other than the ladybirds).
I watched the Industrial Midlands being destroyed though out the 70’s. When the Conservatives got in there was bugger all left, even spending a fortune on Longbridge couldn’t get round the Industrial relations problems. No underlying problems with the people, the Nissan car manufacturing plant in Sunderland is now the largest car plant in the UK and is STILL the most productive in Europe.
I have Labour and the Unions with a passion, as I grew up in the late 60’s and 70’s. The bastards ruined everything; now we have had Labour in power for 12 years and the future is what?

Eddie, the winter of discontent was not about families and communities. Pensioners, people on fixed incomes, were left behind in a devil-take-hindmost rush to demanding more and more money, and getting higher and higher prices as a result.

Everybody was putting in pay claims, not because they needed it, but because somebody else got one, and we always got more money than them. It was called “maintaining our differentials”.

And the closed shops were dire too. You didn’t get a union card on the basis of your talent or ability, it depended on who you knew. If your face didn’t fit…

No job was ever done on time, or according to specification. There were things called “demarcation disputes”. These happened whenever some engineer scribbled a design idea on the back of an envelope, because only draughtsmen were allowed to draw designs, and only secretaries were allowed to handle envelopes.

If you were mad keen on your work, liked to do a good job, and get it done on time, it was a very tough time to be in the workplace.

The demarcation carry on was risible. Every day, the wiremen’s union rep would wander about into our lab area, to see if he could catch a design engineer wielding a soldering iron. Every day he did, and there would be an unholy row. Then the offender would be marched down to the workshop, with his components and his wee bit of stripboard, and told to wait until a skilled wireman came free to do it for him. And every day, he would get sent away because no-one was available. That was when I started working late, because at five o’clock, the prowling union guys went home. The real work was getting done between 5 and 10 in the evening, because that was the only time we could work unhindered. My soldering now is no better than it was then. But my temper has improved no end.

Wilson – dealing with the effects of a quarupling of oil prices in 73/74 following the the Yom Kippur War.

Thatcher – enjoying North Sea Oil receipts of £18bn a year at their peak.

Wilson’s government inherited sky-high inflation, accelerating unemployment and a mammouth trade deficit.

By the time the autumn of 78 had rolled around, most pundits expected Callaghan to call an election. If he had, the polls say he would have won. That’s how *bad* late-70s Britain was, with its falling unemployment and record trade surplus (oh yes – look it up!). All achieved with a working majority of 3 at its highest and even a minority government followng defections to the Scottish Nationalists and a couple of by-election defeats (all done from memory – don’t shoot me).

Then we have the WoD, an unofficial conspiracy to unseat Callaghan between some unions and the rancid, right-wing press and the rest is (a miserably Thatcherite) history.

I’ve just reminded myself of the 1979 election result. Even after the WoD, Labour polled just under 37% with their share of the vote down by only 2.3%. Over half the swing to the Tories came from the Liberals.

Feckin’ typical.

“If you were mad keen on your work, liked to do a good job, and get it done on time, it was a very tough time to be in the workplace.”

A gaffer’s man, in other words. Yeah they were treated like the scum that they are. For most of us life was grand. At the beginning of the decade most firms had you grafting 25 years before you got a fourth weeks holiday – by the end the unions had got it down to a year. During the same period my hours dropped from 40 a week to 35, and England got New Years Day off and the Scots got Boxing Day – then every bugger got May Day.

More money for less hours and with more holidays. Anyone who says that life was not great doesn’t remember the decade.

My memories of that time are similar to those of Dave S – probably because I also spent those years in the North of England.
The three-day week which had a devastating effect upon small businesses and the market in our town. Trying to get homework done before the power cuts. Entire classes finishing school and having nowhere to go except the dole queue. Towns emptying of their young because anyone with any get-up-and-go got up and went. My father being made redundant from a job he’d held for 30 years when the business collapsed. Overhearing hushed conversations between my parents regarding difficulties paying the mortgage. Streets of empty houses because people left when factory after factory was closed down when textiles began to be imported.
Subjective? Definitely, but these are things one does not easily forget. At least the music was far superior to anything since, but I don’t think even Graham can credit Labour with that.
The hot summer of ‘76, complete with hosepipe ban and ‘bath with a friend’ was my last – I’d long since realised that the only way out was to ‘go East, young woman’.

The great legacy of those days, is how much we changed. How much we stopped behaving like lemmings with tunnel vision. And how we learned to stop turning out British junk and expecting the British to buy it. They, we, didn’t buy it.

There is an old episode of Hancock’s Half-Hour, in which he tries to join the Metropolitan Police. Upon being issued with his uniform, he complains “I can’t wear these boots, they don’t bend”. The response from the Desk Sergeant is “No, but your feet do…”

These bots who are trotting out the mantra of it being grim oop north in the late seventies are talking utter pish and they know it!

I’ve lived in the North of England all of my life and all that came much later under Maggie Thatcher. There was almost full employment in the north in the seventies. Exile is the only one of you who knows what he’s talking about!

Nursey, I remember that summer too. I was living in Manchester then (Urmston).

I got reports of young lads applying for jobs the young girls used to do. Hanging around outside the confectioner’s shop, or the Jeweller’s, trying to work up the courage to go in and ask if there were any jobs going. At least they had the initiative to try. Some of them got a job, most didn’t.

“The three-day week which had a devastating effect upon small businesses and the market in our town.”

Er…the Three-Day Week was introduced by the Conservative Government 1970-1974 to conserve electricity,

It could certainly be said about the “job losses and factory closures” which formed the greater part of the statement (for either decade.)

So, Graham, how do deflation and “job losses and factory closures” describe stagflation?

“So, Graham, how do deflation and “job losses and factory closures” describe stagflation?”

Eh?

You had better ask daveS hasan it was his comment:

“The 70s was an entire decade of job losses and factory closures. A decade of stagflation.”

Another thing that needs remembering is that the term
‘Winter of Discontent’ was largely imposed after the Conservatives won
powerIt was hardly used in theirelection coverage in 1979 – even the papers preferred ‘our winter of despair’ (3 May) The Sun
didn’t use the term until right at the end of the campaign (30 April).

Also the three day week was the direct result of industrial action in the coalfields. The people who did that were destined to learn, the bloody hard way, that the world does not owe us a living.

And as Keith Newton has pointed out a lot of this spin was used to hide a Conservative social and economic record under Thatcher characterised by two recessions,social division, much higher unemployment and growth rates no better than in the 1970s.

There were no unburied dead. If there were, then where are they? What became of them? Some funerals were dealyed, that’s all. Distressing for those concerned. But not the same as unburied dead. If the Seventies were so awful, then where was the Tory landslide in 1979? They only just scraped in, and would not have done so if the swing had been even across the country.

The makers of this PPB did not know the difference between Bevin and Bevan. Seriously.

Bevin refused to join the European Coal and Steel Community on the grounds that it was “the blueprint for a federal state” which “the Durham miners would never wear”. In that tradition, Gaitskell rejected European federalism as “the end of a thousand years of history” and liable to destroy the Commonwealth.

Most Labour MPs voted against Heath’s Treaty of Rome. The Parliamentary Labour Party unanimously opposed Thatcher’s Single European Act. 66 Labour MPs voted against Maastricht, including, in Bryan Gould, the only resignation from either front bench in order to do so. Every Labour MP, without exception, voted against the Common Agricultural and Fisheries Policies annually between 1979 and 1997.

Half of the French Socialist Party successfully opposed the EU Constitution. Half of the UKIP vote, based on its geographical distribution, must be Old Labour or Old Liberal rather than Old Tory. And the No2EU – Yes To Democracy list at the 2009 European Elections included in London Peter Shore’s erstwhile agent.

Bevan, meanwhile, rejected class war, speaking instead of “a platform broad enough for all to stand upon” which “makes war upon a system, not upon a class”. He ridiculed the first parliamentary Welsh Day on the grounds that “Welsh coal is the same as English coal and Welsh sheep are the same as English sheep”.

In that tradition were those Labour MPs who in the 1970s successfully opposed Scottish and Welsh devolution not least because of its ruinous effects on the North of England. Those Labour activists in the Scottish Highlands, Islands and Borders, and in North, Mid and West Wales, who accurately predicted that their areas would be balefully neglected under devolution. The enormous No vote to the North East Regional Assembly in traditionally Labour areas.

The feeling among English, Scottish and Welsh ethnic minorities and Catholics that they no more want to go down the road of who is or is not “really” English, Scottish or Welsh than Ulster Protestants want to go down the road of who is or is not “really” Irish.

And the historic success of the Welfare State (not least, Bevan’s NHS), workers’ rights, full employment, a strong Parliament, trade unions, co-operatives, credit unions, mutual guarantee societies, mutual building societies, and nationalised industries (often with the word “British” in their names) in creating communities of interest among and across the several parts of the United Kingdom, thus safeguarding and strengthening the Union.

Bevin sold out national sovereignty and the Commonwealth by joining NATO. And Bevan denounced the just war tradition of Christendom by supporting nuclear weapons. But no one’s perfect.

At least the music was far superior to anything since, but I don’t think even Graham can credit Labour with that.

Hmm I certainly would not want to lay claim to what came next – red Wedge! But there was a great compilation album issued in 1977 harking back to 76 called “That Summer” which had all sorts of great stuff on it. Pity they don’t seem to have issued it on CD.

Lies, lies and more lies. Manchester is the north and the three day week was introduced in the Grocer’s time. It was great by the way! The power went off and every projectionist in town made a dash for Tommy Duck’s to get the beer down the neck. Also we got automatic pay rises under government rules that were tied to the rate of inflation.

Those wazzocks who are trying to get you to believe that unemployment was high in those days are just lying. Government did not allow it.

Graham, I was responding not to Dave S’s comment that “an entire decade of job losses and factory closures. A decade of stagflation” but to your reply that that “could be said about ANY [your emphasis] decade.”

Stagflation requires two conditions: zero or negative growth; and positive inflation. The kind of condition that, Keynsians in particular, used to tell us couldn’t happen. Stagflation is characteristic of only one decade in the last century: the 1970s.

Factory closures and job losses have occured in every decade (though much less so during the two world wars), but both in times of appreciable growth, such as the 1990s, or deflation, such as the 1930s. All are signs of economic ills, but to describe any decade as being one of stagflation seems akin to diagnosing a tubercular patient has have lung cancer.

Ah hasan I have already said that I was responding to the job losses rather than the stagflation. I am no economist.

However, had Dave been able to follow my argument he would have seen that I had already mentioned that the first (lets call it the Labour) narrative about gentle economic growth and the “hungry thirties”) had collapsed largely as a result of the events of the early 70s.

The Sun didn’t use the term [Winter of Discontent] until right at the end of the campaign (30 April).

This was shortly after a new intern accidentally left a copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare on his office desk.

” And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.”

And of course I am at a bit of “revisionist history” (although the term is not as loaded as you might think – except when applied to the holocaust).

Every generation re-writes history – only Venichka stays in the 1400s.

The years of kidding ourselves, had to come to an end. The Japanese were all over us like a rash. The semiconductor plants were opening up in the far east, as were the textile businesses. Nobody wanted a British Leyland vehicle. Or a British anything really.

It was sink or swim time. And you can’t swim with a great fat bloated idle parasite on your back.

Nobody wanted a British Leyland vehicle. Or a British anything really.

You’re going to have dificulty squaring that (the second part, at least) with the £250m trade surplus at the end of 1978.

or even “difficulty”

Monty is correct, I was a schoolboy in Singapore in 70’s. At that time I would count the number of Leyland articulated trucks servicing the container port. They were plentiful right up to around 75-76. But the Japanese ate up market share so quickly that there were almost no Leyland trucks by 1980. The strikes were heaven sent, to your competitiors. The decline in market share was very marked, to comprehend its scale, you have to recall that the owners were Chinese who retained no fond wartime memories of the Japanese. The British had a lot of goodwill in their former colonies, notwithstanding loud-mouths like Mahatir but they chose to piss it all away with it all and instead become the sick man of Europe.

I’ll have to get a good grammar book…

Luxury! Why talk about the Japanese and Malaysia, the Finns, presently have a nice healthy standard of living! Why is Italy doing better than us in this recession? They were saying it was a basket case not so long ago!

“Quite apart from the fact that this is the usual visceral hatred-fuelled nonsense, according to your own post Labour would have stayed in power if only Callaghan and Foot weren’t such rubbish. Well, they were – and they were Labour’s chosen leaders.” Gordon Bennett 22nd November 2009 4.25 p.m.

I have just popped back and seen this.

None of my posts – please read them – may be described as ‘hate filled’, usually or otherwise. Please calm down or take advantage of socialism and speak to NHS Direct.

The role in the Press in framing the agenda in 1979 is now well known and some journalists, as Graham has pointed out, have subsequently turned ‘Queen’s Evidence’ and told us by how much. Harold Wilson’s reputation was smeared by the most ludicrous claims when he resigned “suddenly” in 1976 (he was presenting with early stage dementia). All this anti-Labour ‘news’ was orchestrated by a cabal of forces which included far right officials in the security and intelligence field, including agents provocateurs. I suggest also you read Peter Wright’s memoir “Spycatcher” for background.

Mr Heath was the ‘chosen leader’ of the Tories but it did him no good I remember.

All this anti-Labour ‘news’ was orchestrated by a cabal of forces which included far right officials in the security and intelligence field, including agents provocateurs.

O RLY?

“All this anti-Labour ‘news’ was orchestrated by a cabal of forces which included far right officials in the security and intelligence field, including agents provocateurs.
O RLY?” – Mr Danger 1.52 p.m.

No.

What I wrote was this:

All this anti-Labour ‘news’ was orchestrated by a cabal of forces which included far right officials in the security and intelligence field, including agents provocateurs. I suggest also you read Peter Wright’s memoir “Spycatcher” for background.

If you are going to quote me, please do not be selective to the point of misrepresentation. At least, learn to write.

How well I remember the charming “Red Robbo” of Longbridge:

“Between 1978 and 1979, Mr Robinson, convenor at Longbridge, was behind 523 disputes at the then government-owned British Leyland plant, at the time Britain’s largest factory.”

The coal, steel, railways, docks, all had their strike-festivals too. And if I remember rightly, the firemen and the nurses also took strike action. The bakers went on strike too, and we all ended up trying to make our own bread.

“The coal, steel, railways, docks, all had their strike-festivals too. And if I remember rightly, the firemen and the nurses also took strike action. The bakers went on strike too, and we all ended up trying to make our own bread.” – Monty 8.55 p.m.

This bares little or no resemblence to the country in which I lived. It is this very much the ‘false memory’ syndrome which Graham addresses, and so well, one which has entered the popular consciousness via a media either intent on perpetuating a scare story or simply sloppy recall.

Robinson for one pointed out that no one wanted to buy British Leyland cars which were poorly designed and a joke among car afficiandos. No new designs were forth coming and the company was led by appointees who knew nothing about cars, design or it transpires, business.

The 70s weren’t all that bad. They must have been far better than the 80s.

Has anyone mentioned Heaths Chancellor? I believe he was one of the worst chancellors of the last century and could the problems of the UK economy in the 70s be partly contributed to his bad management?