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When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

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    #26
    When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

    Threatened, indeed. So much so that there was an attempt to muster a Very British Coup near the end of the Wilson years - 1974, I think - with Mountbatten to be placed provisionally at the helm.

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      #27
      When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

      I was going to ask where Robin Carmody is, but I suspect he's been writing his contribution to this thread non-stop for the last three days.

      It's all Brotherhood of Man's fault.

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        #28
        When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

        If we hadn't gone cap in hand to the IMF in 1976 we'd never have had Coldplay you know.

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          #29
          When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

          wingco wrote:
          Threatened, indeed. So much so that there was an attempt to muster a Very British Coup near the end of the Wilson years - 1974, I think - with Mountbatten to be placed provisionally at the helm.
          Which forms the basis for this (pretty good) novel.

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            #30
            When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

            There is the observation in the chapter I'm reading now that what was new about the 70s was that it was people at the top who got disproportionately hit by events in the 70s - by inflation in particular (which apparently hit something like 26% in one year - which is astounding). I mean, in the end inflation screws everyone, but the immediate effects are most keenly felt by the rich because they are likeliest to have savings. Presumably this contributed to capital flight.

            I *think* this is probably also true of the current crisis, too. I haven't seen much in terms of stats, but I suspect that the loss of paper fortunes in the stock market have probably been larger than the losses from unemployment, meaning that society is becoming more "equal" as a result of this crash.

            The difference, as I think E10 notes, is that this loss of wealth by the rich is not accompanied by a sense of loss of power. Therefore there is no crisis.

            Mind you, I guess the question the left has to sort out for itself is whether or not the unions used their brief position of power for good or ill. I'm still plowing through the book, obviously, but it seems to me that their primary objectives were simply the converse of management's - a bigger share of the pie for us, please - when the real problem was lack of investment funds and stagnating productivity. It seems to me that a stable Labour government with weaker unions might have delivered this - but a weak Labour government with strong unions saw intense pressure to use any spare money to increase consumption immediately, at the expense of longer term investments.

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              #31
              When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

              Antonio Gramsci wrote:
              I *think* this is probably also true of the current crisis, too. I haven't seen much in terms of stats, but I suspect that the loss of paper fortunes in the stock market have probably been larger than the losses from unemployment, meaning that society is becoming more "equal" as a result of this crash.
              Wishful thinking. The Stock market in London is just 5 good days away from where it was in July 2008.

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                #32
                When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

                An interesting "what if", I think, is what if the Heath government had simply tried to introduce "In Place of Strife"? The parliamentary opposition leaders would have had a had job opposing their own document. This would have put them under massive pressure from their broader membership but the PLP were very powerful internally then. Not sure how far the unions could have opposed it.

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                  #33
                  When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

                  You don't think Wilson would have found a way to oppose it? I thought that was the kind of stuff he was famous for. It's certainly the way this book paints him.

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                    #34
                    When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

                    What's interesting, reading the Wilson 74-76 chapter, is that just as you can see how Heath gave the Thatcherite right their oppositional opening, it's easy to see how the Labour Left (and revolutionary left) got the wind in their sails in the 80s. That Labour government seemed utterly lacklustre, and yer average socialist in the street can hardly have been blamed for thinking that a rather more radical shaking-up of things was required, for thinking that this staid form of social democracy was a bit of a busted flush.

                    I'm slightly irritated, at this stage of the book, that, as usual, that we're still not hearing much from actual trade unionists on the ground, that they're regarded as this 'other' that was an 'issue' to be resolved. Millions of people were in unions and went on strike in the Seventies, and had their own individual worries and concerns. They had their reasons. Let's hear from them.

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                      #35
                      When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

                      I'm slightly irritated by the constant lapsing into first person. It sort of works for the meeting with Heath, but I could do without the North Sea helicopter travelogue, the Colchester travelogue, etc.

                      I think that's dead right about Wilson and the left. What's also surprising is that even though they were totally lacklustre and didn't even seem to know what they wanted to accomplish while in power, they actually won *two* elections in that period (the second one barely even rates a mention in the book). How on earth did this happen?

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                        #36
                        When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

                        Because the Heath government that preceded them weren't significantly different from the MacMillan/Douglas-Home Tories a decade earlier, or that was the perception. Wilson won in 74 largely by default I think.

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                          #37
                          When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

                          AG, Wilson was indeed famous for that. It would have been no more dishonest than the Tories attacking devolution to bring down the 74-9 government, having supported it in the previous manifesto. There would have been some split though, I think, not so much on principle as because the wind was blowing against unions.

                          Was the 74-79 government lack lustre? The Tory opposition certainly rated Callaghan. As well as the economic problems, it had to face a backlash against "the sixties". The deals done with unions until 1978 were pretty skilful, and had Callaghan not blurted out a figure of 5% for the next settlement, he might have got through another year.

                          It's problem was being right wing.

                          btw, it's been said that Labour's revolution was achieved by the left winning positions of influence, whereas the Tories' was based on many of the same people having conversions. is this true?

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                            #38
                            When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

                            E10 - I'm reading "The Deluge", The OU's reader about the Home Front in WW1 and was going to throw in a similar remark to you about decline from the end of the war.

                            The sense of confidence in organised labour, which doesn't really exist, when you scratch the surface, even in the most militant sections of the TU movement now. Looking at it in very broad-brush terms, you could say that the Seventies was perhaps the only decade of the 20th century when the British establishment and what you might want to call ruling/owning classes felt seriously threatened.
                            I'd throw in the 1910s too - mainly from the outside obviously, although "Red Clydeside" and similar industrial action gave them more of a rattling than a serious threatening, and there was also a sense of the owning, or at least owning of the making, class coming of age and starting to displace the previous ruling class, not least by running government ministries. Business got respectable and respected. Labour too to a lesser extent, but I guess there was more of a breakthrough in WW2 with Labour types running ministries.

                            And isn't there some kind of canard about the banning of the carrying of guns coming shortly after the foundation of the TUC in 1920?

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                              #39
                              When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

                              OK, I'm done. My first full book read on a kindle. Not bad.

                              E10 - do you want me to hold off more discussions until you finish? I don't want to spoil the surprise ending if you haven't got to May 1979 yet.

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                                #40
                                When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

                                Antonio Gramsci wrote:
                                (Also, punks scared the shit out of me. But that's a different issue altogether).
                                BOO

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                                  #41
                                  When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

                                  Ah, c'mon. I was 8 years old, fer chrissakes. And incapable of telling the differences between skinheads and punks.

                                  I remember being on the swings in a park near my great gran's in Leicester and seeing a group of them approach my grandad. They were only asking the time, but I was absolutely terrified that they were going to beat him up.

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                                    #42
                                    When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

                                    AG, I'll hold off the general discussions till I finish if you want (though I'm balancing reading this with two other books at the moment so I may be some time), but one tangential point emerged from reading the North Sea oil chapter that isn't really within the book's remit: the rise of Aberdeen Football Club.

                                    The conventional narrative about Aberdeen's early-mid 80s success is that it was All Down To Fergie, using his unique steely charisma to bring together some talented and industrious footballers and forge a trophy-winning team. But the prosperity associated with the area from the Seventies must have been a factor, no. Do any of our Scotch contributors have any thoughts or insights here?

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                                      #43
                                      When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

                                      Antonio Gramsci wrote:
                                      Ah, c'mon. I was 8 years old, fer chrissakes. And incapable of telling the differences between skinheads and punks.

                                      I remember being on the swings in a park near my great gran's in Leicester and seeing a group of them approach my grandad. They were only asking the time, but I was absolutely terrified that they were going to beat him up.
                                      I remember being approached at Cambridge railway station in about 1981 by a couple of wide-eyed North Americans, obviously from somewhere not all that happening, who glanced over at a group of punks and asked me in a whisper whether we were all going to be OK. By then, of course, these would have been Johnny-come-lately punks, or else diehards. What I told them was that they'd be fine with punks, but to watch out for skinheads, some of whom were OK but some of whom really really weren't.

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                                        #44
                                        When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

                                        (I was ttying to look like Ian McCulloch at the time, in dry-look gel from Boots and a long coat. Obviously not a threatening look.)

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                                          #45
                                          When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

                                          Photos!

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                                            #46
                                            When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

                                            Purves Grundy wrote:
                                            Photos!
                                            There must be some; my ex-gf's a good bet. But are you not worried that they'll fill you with a Wildean despair at the transience of beauty? They do me, a bit.

                                            Comment


                                              #47
                                              When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

                                              Ah god, Aberdeen. Thatcher always used to talk about that whenever she got a question about the north-south divide, as though it were a typical northern town.

                                              It says something about how bad the Poll Tax was that it lost the Tories their Aberdeen constituency at the 1987 Election. Defeated MP, Gerry Malone, turned up undaunted at the Tory Conference and made a vigorous speech in favour of it coming in England, in one go.

                                              What a loss to public life he was.

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                                                #48
                                                When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

                                                Thing is, Johnny-come-lately punks were the worst ones. '77 punks were just malnourished Roxy Music fans at heart, but a lot of your mohican brigade were right cunts, where I'm from anyway.

                                                I say this mainly because I've still got a scarred chin from where six of them kicked my head in one night in the early 90s (my mate got pretty bad concussion and spent a couple of nights in hospital). Ironically, I was wearing a Sex Pistols T-shirt at the time. And every six months or so they'd have a pitched battle with the taxi drivers who worked next to their favourite cider-drinking spot, and stab them up.

                                                Even at the time, this all seemed rather quaint in its incongruity, as the hard kids at school were proto-chavs who wouldn't even have heard of punk.

                                                The moral of the story is, AG: FEAR THE PUNK!

                                                Comment


                                                  #49
                                                  When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

                                                  Well, I'll forget it all if I wait too long, so I'll just put down a couple of things quickly.

                                                  1) Keith Joseph is a cunt. I'd never really come across him before, but fuck me, what a piece of work.

                                                  2) The trade unionist side does get put a little better as time goes on. There's a nice chapter on Jack Jones and another one on the Grunwick strike. But what's missing is anything much about the unofficial strikes. I mean, to me, that's what symbolizes the British labour movement at that time - all the wildcat walkouts, people downing tools with no ballots - all the stuff that really symbolized the anarchy and fin de regime of the period. I think I would have like to have heard from some of the militant shop stewards. He tells the story of one of these, at a hospital in London, but then never interviews him because he can't find him. A bit weak, really.

                                                  3) Interestingly, what doesn't get much of a mention are two of the big bugaboos about the 70s from the left and right. There's nothing really in here about the alleged right-wing plots to mount a coup against Wilson and the Winter of Discontent chapter doesn't lay on special stress on the gravediggers' strike. Which I thought was nice, actually.

                                                  4) I hadn't realized that '77 and '78 were actually relatively peaceful years. I guess in my mind the whole Callaghan period was one long period of unrest culminating in the WoD. Instead, the winter of '79 seems to have been a sudden pull-back to an earlier period (say, 73-74), and the reaction of voters was basically "oh shit, here we go again". It does rather suggest that if Callaghan had gone to the electorate in the fall of 1978 instead of delaying, that he might have kept the Tories out. Although whether that would have changed anything in the long run is open to question.

                                                  Anyways, thanks E10 for turning me on to this book. I learned quite a bit.

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                                                    #50
                                                    When the lights went out: Britain in the Seventies

                                                    Only just returned to this after a month off reading other stuff, but some other thoughts.

                                                    Perhaps one of the striking things about the period is how so much of its underlying political developments took place away from the Westminster village. Whether it was yer new rightwing think-tanks and shadowy 'Freedom Associations' or on the picket lines, in Gay Liberation Front meetings or at trade union conferences. Politics' reach seemed to be much greater than now. If you were to write a history of the 2000-09 decade, what would the non-parliamentary forces be that could in any sense be said to have had comparable influence? (Apart, of course, from corporate finance, which dominated the whole decade and to which all mainstream politics was in hock).

                                                    Oh, and that John Gourriet of the National Association For Freedom is the nearest the book has come to a proper pantomime villain. I felt like booing and hissing every time his name was mentioned. What a 24-carat cunt.

                                                    And reading about the 1976 IMF loan and the disputed figures about Britain's actual debt has much to teach and remind us about how economics always has a deeply ideological component.

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