One interesting aspect of the 1979 election - which Thatcher won by 40-odd seats - is that Labour’s vote actually went up as well - it was the Liberal vote that collapsed and let the Tories in. Gullible centre?
Geoff Cox I was there in London in real time and saw the things I mention in real time. Yes miners dropping concrete blocks onto motorways was in the news. The office I was temping in thought they might have to go to a three-day week like the factories.
It was all the same thing that Thatcher inherited and got in on the back of promising to sort. It was all around the same time. Forgive me if over 40 years later things that were basically the same issues around the same time blend together as they were pretty much all part of the same problem.
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Well, not only do we then have very different memories, Karen - we must also have read very different histories.
First, for me, events separated by over a decade can’t be said to have occurred ‘around the same time’ - unless they are so far in the past we have to think in such broad brush terms.
Second, as I and @hairbear have already pointed out, the conflation of these very different times and events is not accidental or unique to you - it is an exact reflection of what the UK media has been telling people to think for the last 40 years - and what many, perhaps most Brits think.
What’s amazing is how strong these false memories are - please do look up what actually happened Karen, and I’m sure you’ll agree. There were no ‘miners dropping concrete blocks onto motorways’ - there was one bizarre incident late 1984, that horrified all the other miners - much more so than the general public - I was living among them at the time; and there were no factories on a 3-day-week at this time - the 3-day week was over a decade before (early 1974).
Third, although there is a sense in which all these events stem from an underlying ‘problem’ (the divergent interests of social classes built in to capitalism) there is nothing unique to 70s-80s UK in this respect. There has been far more industrial action at other times in UK history, and in other countries.
Bizarre is an odd turn of phrase Geof given that two miners were found guilty of manslaughter for dropping a concrete block off a bridge that killed a taxi driver during the strike.
…and that was the one that hit. Definitely more than one dropped.
Doubting that such action was union sanctioned the miners had a very tough time and could this not have been a mental illness brought on by the action of devastating a community?
Mass hysteria amongst crowds with high feelings. Communities were laid waste, this does happen in economic cycles and always has. The sad thing is that I understand many of the mines were actually economically viable but the stupid way the accounts were done and the distribution of bloated head office costs onto the mines actually distorted the figures.
It was the foriegn coal that foreign governments subsidised that made UK coal look unviable but a few years on and they are. The rough treatment suffered was the embarrassing part. Now we have call centres a triumph of modern ways
Interesting direction to the discussion.
The power cuts of 1972 were what first made me aware of politics. The junior school I attended held a mock election that year, and the ‘Liberal’ party won for not being either Labour or Conservative.
T’was ever thus.
I’m sorry @Geof_Cox , but that is putting words into my mouth. Although I may agree with some of what you say, that’s not what I said.
Sorry Hairbear - wouldn’t want to put words in your mouth - you did simply say that people’s conflation of these events over the 70s and 80s is very common. But also, in an edit, you said I had put it better - and in the post you referred to I had also said that the UK media had managed to get millions to believe in this conflation.
Personally I have to say I have come across this media misrepresentation pretty often - not just in political discussions, etc - but in programmes on say popular culture or music where they want to give some quick background context - they might for example flash some pictures of newspaper front pages on the 3-day week and the public service strikes one after the other - creating the impression, sometimes explicitly, that these events - which actually occupied a few weeks at the start of 1974 and about 3 weeks in 1979 - were not only the same but also representative of the time.
In fact, the 70s were the happiest decade of any in the UK in modern times - that’s not my opinion, but a genuine academic research conclusion - characterised by less civil conflict than either the 60s or the 80s (for very different reasons in each of those decades - in the 60s anxiety over war and youth rebellion against social conservatism and in the 80s mass unemployment and social inequality).
This says the complete opposite -
I remember the 70’s with great fondness of good times. For the kids of today though I could well understand their feelings.
Yes I’m aware of that study Tim - it is rubbish - look up the methodology and you’ll see for yourself - it was based on counting ‘positive’ words in publications!
I’ll look up the proper robust research reference I mentioned and post it.
EDIT - Here is the reference:
A review of ‘adjusted’ measures of economic welfare in Europe, by Tim Jackson and Nat McBride, Centre for Environmental Strategy, University of Surrey
ISSN: 1464-8083 - especially p.30 onwards for ‘happiness’ measuring.
The research was done by highly respected professors at two universities alongside the Alan Turing Institute yet it’s c**p, who to believe? 
Just read the actual study Tim and you’ll see for yourself - the researchers indeed caveat against using it to draw any comparisons between different periods.
The fact that despite this it was very widely reported in the tabloids rather proves my point about the media agenda, doesn’t it?
The study simply counts positive words in publications, and finds more in, for example, wartime, or in Victorian times, than in stable, peaceful, more prosperous times. One obvious problem with it is that - especially in earlier periods - those writing in newspapers, etc, would be precisely those in stable, prosperous, peaceful positions The millions living in poverty or precarity tended to write few books or articles.
Another problem is that counting negative words actually published in, for example, the few weeks of ‘the winter of discontent’ will be distorted precisely by the newspapers’ attempts to represent it negatively. Books about it published later would be more mixed - but then they would be counted as revealing about a later period!
It was also on the Sky website and in the Independent which I don’t see as being ‘tabloids’.
The fact that the 70’s brought punk music from the disaffected youth of the day suggests that they may not have been very happy with their lot and the number of days lost to strikes was also close to record levels which obviously had an affect on general daily life.
I was a teenager for much of that decade and my memories were of power cuts, petrol shortages, strikes, the Troubles, football hooliganism and freezing winters. My school was even locked down in 73 after a bomb threat before a visit from the Education Secretary (no guesses who that was).
Quite why anyone thinks the 70’s were ‘idyllic’ is beyond me.
Lazy journalism is everywhere. Copy someone elses crap report and even if you do it many times it still doesnt become evidence.
Well that’s sad Tim. I always try to inform my experience with robust evidence - but for what it’s worth my personal experience was just the opposite of yours.
I was also a teenager for half the 70s - it was the decade I left school, went to university, had my first ‘professional’ job, gave that up and went traveling around Europe. I remember it as a tremendously optimistic time - one in which even a working-class kid like me could go to uni debt-free - indeed on a full grant that was the most money I’d ever had - easily get good, well-paid jobs in the summers, easily save up and not worry about just going off traveling - secure in the knowledge that if things didn’t work out there was a genuine welfare state to fall back on.
Also shocked that you saw punk in a negative light - I saw it more as - as I think Malcolm McLaren said - ‘Britain’s one throw at rock’n’roll’ - a great upswell of genuine community creativity against the bland muzak to which commercial pop had deteriorated after the 60s.
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