State of Emergency: the Way We Were

by Dominic Sandbrook

  Enoch Powell was comfortably Britain’s most popular and controversial politician in the early 1970s. His critics insisted that he inflamed racial tensions. But to the Smithfield meat porters protesting against the admission of Ugandan Asian refugees in August 1972, he was the voice of the people and a national hero.

  Despite the porters’ fury, Britain was already a multi-racial society, as this image of Croydon schoolboys in 1971 suggests. Even sitcoms now found room for black characters such as Don Warrington’s Philip in Rising Damp – although Rigsby worries that he might turn nasty ‘when he hears the drums’.

  Although the early 1970s was the heyday of women’s liberation, old attitudes died hard. Above, the Miss World contenders at the Royal Albert Hall, 1973; below, battered wives and children at the pioneering Chiswick Women’s Aid refuge, 1974.

  Even Germaine Greer, photographed here in 1971, might have found Peter Wyngarde’s Jason King something of a challenge, although it is hard to say whether she would have been annoyed most by his sexist views, his enormous tie or his outrageous moustache.

  David Bowie crosses the gender line as Ziggy Stardust, May 1973.

  ‘No sex please, we’re British!’ Above, a group of ‘pregnant men’ campaign for better birth control provision, February 1972. Below, Lord Longford launches the paperback edition of his report on pornography, six months later.

  Budget Day, March 1972, and Anthony Barber is about to launch one of the most ill-judged spending sprees in modern history. Below, Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan unveil Labour’s startlingly radical new programme, June 1973.

  The bloodshed in Northern Ireland, wrote the reporter Kevin Myers, was ‘a seventeenth-century religious conflict bottled in a late twentieth-century industrial decline’. Above, children in east Belfast, March 1972. Below, a British soldier on patrol, two months earlier.

  By the summer of 1972 Northern Ireland seemed on the brink of chaos. While the UDA marched openly through Belfast, the IRA turned their attention to the British mainland, including a car-bomb attack on the Old Bailey in March 1973.

  Football as national decline. Above, the shattered Peter Shilton and Roy McFarland leave the field after England’s elimination from the World Cup by Poland in October 1973. Below, St John’s Ambulance men usher away a terrified woman after fighting at Chelsea’s game against Arsenal, 1970.

  Working-class Middlesbrough boys, national icons and deadly rivals: Brian Clough prepares for an appearance on ITV’s The Big Match, while Don Revie enjoys Leeds United’s victory in the FA Cup semi-final, April 1972.

  Miners show off their completed strike ballots.

  At a moment of supreme economic crisis, the miners’ strike of February 1974 ripped the heart out of Heath’s government.

  Below, the National Union of Students rallies in support of the NUM.

  With Heath declaring a three-day week, Britain seemed on the verge of economic anarchy. Above, clerical workers at the Slumberdown firm wrap themselves in ‘continental quilts’ to keep warm. Below, commuters at Benfleet station in Essex find that their trains have been cancelled.

  Forced into calling a general election, Heath asked the electorate to decide ‘who governs’. Above, he addresses the nation for the final time in a party political broadcast. But the verdict was not what he expected: by 2 March 1974, a world-weary Harold Wilson was back as Prime Minister.

  Acknowledgements

  Glancing through a selection of history books written in the 1970s, I could not help noticing that their acknowledgements were a lot shorter and less effusive than their twenty-first-century equivalents. So I will keep this brief and to the point. My thanks go first to my splendid editor Simon Winder, who combines the stoicism of Ted Heath, the cunning of Harold Wilson, the enthusiasm of Tony Benn and the charisma of Jason King. Working with Simon and his colleagues at Penguin has been an absolute pleasure: among others, I would like to thank Stefan McGrath, Nicola Hill, Natalie Ramm, Jenny Fry, Mari Yamazaki and Caroline Elliker. My copy-editor, the brilliant Elizabeth Stratford, saved me from more mistakes than I could have imagined. At the Wylie Agency, I am grateful to Andrew Wylie, Scott Moyers and James Pullen. I am grateful, too, to the various literary and features editors who kept me supplied with distracting but hugely enjoyable commissions, especially Andy Neather, Sam Leith, Brian MacArthur, Andrew Holgate, Matt Warren and Dave Musgrove, and particularly Jason Cowley, who allowed me to float some initial thoughts about Thatcherism, Don Revie and the politics of the 1970s in the New Statesman. For the initial inspiration, my thanks go to Roy Allen, Joe Gauci and above all Tim Whiting. For ideas and encouragement, my thanks to Simon Hooper, Martin O’Neill, Ted Vallance, Andrew Preston, Simon Hall and Tom Holland. I am especially grateful to Professor Iwan Morgan of the University of London for a preview of his paper on the life and death of the post-war Keynesian consensus, to Professor Sue Harper of the University of Portsmouth for inviting me to talk through my early thoughts on the 1970s, and to Rachel Morley for her strange but oddly contagious enthusiasm for all things 1973. My greatest and most heartfelt thanks, though, are to my brother Alex Sandbrook, my parents Rhys and Hilary Sandbrook, and above all my beloved wife Catherine Morley. She deserved a lot better than to spend the first years of her married life listening to me talking about Ted Heath, and in a just world she would now get a break. Even as you read this, however, I am probably talking to her about Jim Callaghan – and she is almost certainly listening with the kindness, patience and good humour I scarcely deserve.

  Notes

  Documents designated PRO can be found in the National Archives (formerly the Public Record Office); those marked CAB can also be found online at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/.

  PREFACE: A STATE OF EMERGENCY

  1. The Times, 12 November 1973, 13 November 1973, 15 November 1973; James Lees-Milne, Diaries, 1971–1983 (London, 2008), p. 118.

  2. The Times, 15 November 1973.

  3. The Times, 14 November 1973, 15 November 1973; New York Times, 15 November 1973.

  4. The Times, 12 November 1973; Radio Times, 10–16 November 1973.

  5. Lees-Milne, Diaries, p. 118; Time, 26 November 1973.

  6. The Times, 12 November 1973, 13 November 1973; Hansard, 13 November 1973.

  7. The Times, 14 November 1973.

  8. Hansard, 21 January 1997, 23 January 1997; Daily Telegraph, 6 July 2008; Daily Mail, 15 September 2009.

  9. Richard Clutterbuck, Britain in Agony: The Growth of Political Violence (London, 1978), p. 255; ‘The Diaries of Smurfette’, 28 February 1974, 4 March 1974, http://www.escape-to-the-seventies.com/diaries/february_1974.php.

  10. Clutterbuck, Britain in Agony, p. 20; New Statesman, 2 April 2009.

  CHAPTER 1. A BETTER TOMORROW

  1. The Times, 19 June 1970.

  2. The Times, 17 June 1970, 19 June 1970; John Campbell, Edward Heath: A Biography (London, 1993), p. 273; D. R. Thorpe, Alec Douglas-Home (London, 1996), pp. 402–3; Mark Garnett and Ian Aitken, Splendid! Splendid! The Authorized Biography of Willie Whitelaw (London, 2003), p. 85; Edward Heath, The Course of My Life (London, 1998), p. 307.

  3. Time, 29 June 1970; Marcia Williams, Inside Number 10 (London, 1975), p. 10.

  4. Heath, The Course of My Life, pp. 307–8; Campbell, Edward Heath, p. 284; The Times, 20 June 1970.

  5. Campbell, Edward Heath, p. 18; Anthony Sampson, The New Anatomy of Britain (London, 1971), p. 660.

  6. Daily Mirror, 28 July 1965; Sunday Times, 1 August 1965; Campbell, Edward Heath, pp. 3–6, 18–19, 183.

  7. See ibid., p. 60.

  8. Michael Young and Peter Willmott, The Symmetrical Family: A Study of Work and Leisure in the London Region (London, 1973), pp. 29–30, 48; Arthur Marwick, British Society Since 1945 (Harmondsworth, 1982), p. 121; Ken Coates and Richard Silburn, Poverty: The Forgotten Englishmen (Harmondsworth, 1970), p. 60; Piers Paul Read, A Married Man (London, 1979), p. 42.

  9. Dominic Sandbrook, Never Had It So Good: A History of Britai
n from Suez to the Beatles (London, 2005), p. 101; Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy (Harmondsworth, 1958), p. 240; Margaret Drabble, The Ice Age (London, 1977), p. 55.

  10. David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of February 1974 (London, 1974), p. 17.

  11. Denis Healey, The Time of My Life (London, 1989), pp. 136–40.

  12. Ibid., p. 136; Kester Aspden, The Hounding of David Oluwale (London, 2008), pp. 84–5; Michael Bilton, Wicked Beyond Belief: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper (London, 2003), p. 145; Guardian, 18 February 2009; Rob Bagchi and Paul Rogerson, The Unforgiven: The Story of Don Revie’s Leeds United (London, 2003), pp. 11–12.

  13. On tea and coffee, see John Burnett, Liquid Pleasures: A Social History of Drinks in Modern Britain (London, 1999), pp. 47, 67; on Bingley, see Gordon Burn, Somebody’s Husband, Somebody’s Son: The Story of Peter Sutcliffe (London, 1984), pp. 4–5.

  14. Jeremy Seabrook, City Close-Up (Harmondsworth, 1973), pp. 11–12, 43.

  15. Jeremy Seabrook, What Went Wrong? Working People and the Ideals of the Labour Movement (London, 1978), pp. 38 ff. See also Andy Beckett, When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies (London, 2009), pp. 418–19.

  16. Adrian Hastings, A History of English Christianity 1920–1985 (London, 1985), pp. 602–3.

  17. Campbell, Edward Heath, p. 380; Stuart Ball, ‘The Conservative Party and the Heath Government’, in Stuart Ball and Anthony Seldon (eds.), The Heath Government, 1970–1974: A Reappraisal (Harlow, 1996), p. 325; The Times, 15 February 1971, 16 February 1971; Daily Mail, 15 February 1971; Richard Weight, Patriots: National Identity in Britain 1940–2000 (London, 2002), p. 487.

  18. ‘D-Day delivers new UK currency,’ BBC News, 15 February 1971, http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday; Robert J. Wybrow, Britain Speaks Out, 1937–87: A Social History as Seen Through the Gallup Data (London, 1989), p. 96; The Times, 16 February 1971.

  19. Daily Mail, 15 February 1971; Ball, ‘The Conservative Party and the Heath Government’, p. 325; Brian Miller, ‘Peter Nichols’, in George W. Brandt (ed.), British Television Drama (Cambridge, 1981), p. 133.

  20. Seabrook, City Close-Up, pp. 35–7.

  21. Steve Chibnall, Get Carter (London, 2003), pp. 10, 39–41, 90–92; Michael Caine, What’s It All About? The Autobiography (London, 1992), p. 159.

  22. Alwyn W. Turner, Crisis? What Crisis? Britain in the 1970s (London, 2008), p. 60; Miriam Akhtar and Steve Humphries, The Fifties and Sixties: A Lifestyle Revolution (London, 2001), pp. 110–11; Roger Protz, Pulling a Fast One: What Your Brewers Have Done to Your Beer (London, 1978), p. 14.

  23. Coates and Silburn, Poverty, p. 142; Seabrook, City Close-Up, p. 154; Colin Dexter, Last Seen Wearing (London, 1977), p. 125.

  24. Coates and Silburn, Poverty, pp. 67–8, 73, 80–81; Burn, Somebody’s Husband, Somebody’s Son, p. 54; Peter Calvocoressi, The British Experience 1945–75 (Harmondsworth, 1978), p. 140; Clive Irving, Pox Britannica: The Unmaking of the British (New York, 1974), p. 168.

  25. Young and Willmott, The Symmetrical Family, pp. 212, 216; Marwick, British Society Since 1945, pp. 250–51.

  26. Brian Harrison and Josephine Webb, ‘Volunteers and Voluntarism’, in A. H. Halsey and Josephine Webb (eds.), Twentieth-Century Social Trends (Basingstoke, 2000), pp. 589–90, 600–602; George L. Bernstein, The Myth of Decline: The Rise of Britain Since 1945 (London, 2004), pp. 453–5.

  27. Jeffrey Hill, Sport, Leisure and Culture in Twentieth-Century Britain (Basingstoke, 2002), pp. 134–5; Brian Jackson, Working-Class Community (Harmondsworth, 1968), pp. 41, 48, 64, 70, 106.

  28. See James Lees-Milne, Diaries, 1971–1983 (London, 2008), pp. 17, 26; Wybrow, Britain Speaks Out, pp. 102, 104.

  29. Ibid., p. 96; Ben Pimlott, The Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth II (London, 1996), p. 412; Marwick, British Society Since 1945, p. 254; Nick Tiratsoo, ‘The Seventies’, in Folio Society, England 1945–2000 (London, 2001), p. 296.

  30. The Times, 2 January 1973.

  31. Tiratsoo, ‘The Seventies’, pp. 298–9; New Society, 29 May 1975, 20 July 1978.

  32. Bernard D. Nossiter, Britain: A Future That Works (London, 1978), pp. 90–91, 93.

  33. Shawn Levy, Ready, Steady, Go! Swinging London and the Invention of Cool (London, 2002), p. 66; Jonathan Aitken, The Young Meteors (London, 1967), pp. 272–3; David Frost and Antony Jay, To England with Love (London, 1967), p. 85.

  34. Campbell, Edward Heath, p. 199.

  35. Jilly Cooper, Class: A View from Middle England (London, 1979), p. 13; Sandbrook, Never Had It So Good, pp. 38–40; John Benson, The Rise of Consumer Society in Britain, 1880–1980 (Harlow, 1994), p. 100; David Cannadine, Class in Britain (London, 2000), p. 147; Patrick Hutber, The Decline and Fall of the Middle Class – and How It Can Fight Back (Harmondsworth, 1977), p. 20.

  36. Hunter Davies, The Glory Game (London, 1972), p. 230; Mary Abbott, Family Affairs: A History of the Family in Twentieth-Century England (London, 2003), p. 134; Lees-Milne, Diaries, p. 38.

  37. A. H. Halsey, Change in British Society (Oxford, 1981); Sampson, The New Anatomy of Britain, pp. 134–5, 158–60.

  38. Jackson, Working-Class Community, p. 159; Young and Willmott, The Symmetrical Family, p. 217; Joe Rogaly, Grunwick (Harmondsworth, 1977), pp. 111–12; Abbott, Family Affairs, p. 130.

  39. Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy, p. 62: David Marquand, The Progressive Dilemma: From Lloyd George to Blair (London, 1999), pp. 221–2.

  40. The Times, 15 December 1976.

  41. Time, 15 September 1975.

  42. David Butler and Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, The British General Election of 1970 (London, 1971), pp. 232–3; Roy Greenslade, Press Gang: How Newspapers Make Profits from Propaganda (London, 2004), pp. 207–8, 271–3.

  43. Larry Lamb, Sunrise: The Remarkable Rise and Rise of the Bestselling Soaraway Sun (London, 1989), pp. 26–7, 158; Greenslade, Press Gang, pp. 213–16, 250–51; Stuart Laing, ‘The Politics of Culture: Institutional Change in the 1970s’, in Bart Moore-Gilbert (ed.), The Arts in the 1970s: Cultural Closure? (London, 1994), pp. 36, 54.

  44. Bookseller, 4 February 1978, 25 February 1978; Bart Moore-Gilbert, ‘Cultural Closure or Post-Avantgardism?’, in Moore-Gilbert (ed.), The Arts in the 1970s, pp. 12–14.

  45. Randall Stevenson, The Oxford English Literary History, volume 12: 1960–2000: The Last of England? (Oxford, 2004), pp. 127–8, 132, 137; John Sutherland, Bestsellers: Popular Fiction of the 1970s (London, 1981), p. 28.

  46. New Review, 5:1 (Summer 1978), pp. 16, 37; Patricia Waugh, Harvest of the Sixties: English Literature and its Background, 1960 to 1990 (Oxford, 1995), p. 70; Bernard Bergonzi, The Situation of the Novel (London, 1970), p. 57; Bart Moore-Gilbert, ‘Apocalypse Now? The Novel in the 1970s’, in Moore-Gilbert (ed.), The Arts in the 1970s, pp. 152–3.

  47. David Lodge, ‘The Novelist at the Crossroads,’ in Malcolm Bradbury (ed.), The Novel Today: Contemporary Writers on Modern Fiction (London, 1977), p. 100; Robert Sheppard, ‘Artifice and the Everyday World: Poetry in the 1970s,’ in Moore-Gilbert (ed.), The Arts in the 1970s, pp. 130–31; Gilbert Phelps, ‘Literature and Drama’, in Boris Ford (ed.), The Cambridge Cultural History of Britain, vol. 9: Modern Britain (Cambridge, 1992), p. 209.

  48. Sutherland, Bestsellers, pp. 85, 96–7; and see the same author’s Reading the Decades: Fifty Years of British History Through the Nation’s Bestsellers (London, 2002), pp. 83–112.

  49. Christopher Booker, The Seventies: Portrait of a Decade (London, 1980), pp. 259–61; Campbell, Edward Heath, pp. 390–91; Stuart Sillars, ‘Visual Art in the 1970s’, in Moore-Gilbert (ed.), The Arts in the 1970s, p. 273; The Times, 1 April 1972, 15 April 1972, 4 April 1972.

  50. Observer, 2 September 1975; Moore-Gilbert, ‘Cultural Closure or Post-Avantgardism?’, pp. 14–19; Laing, ‘The Politics of Culture’, p. 43; Robert Hewison, Too Much: Art and Society in the Sixties, 1960–75 (London, 1986), pp. 269–71.

  51. Edward Heath, Music: A Joy for Life (London, 1976), pp. 176–9; Campbell, Edward
Heath, pp. 496–7; Daily Telegraph, 7 June 2008, 8 April 2008.

  52. Dominic Shellard, British Theatre Since the War (New Haven, 2000), pp. 180, 183–5; Michael Billington, State of the Nation: British Theatre Since 1945 (London, 2007), pp. 208, 234–5, 242, 246, 266; Hewison, Too Much, p. 189; The Times, 19 February 1973, 20 September 1978; John Goodwin (ed.), Peter Hall’s Diaries: The Story of a Dramatic Battle (London, 1983), pp. 378–9.

  53. Alexander Walker, Hollywood England: The British Film Industry in the Sixties (London, 1974), pp. 441–3; Justin Smith, ‘Glam, Spam and Uncle Sam: Funding Diversity in 1970s British Film Production’, in Robert Shail (ed.), Seventies British Cinema (London, 2008), p. 70.

  54. Alexander Walker, National Heroes: British Cinema in the Seventies and Eighties (London, 1985), pp. 15, 113; Wheeler Winston Dixon, ‘The End of Hammer’, in Shail (ed.), Seventies British Cinema, pp. 14–23; Ian Conrich, ‘The Divergence and Mutation of British Horror Cinema’, in Shail (ed.), Seventies British Cinema, pp. 25–34.

  55. I. Q. Hunter, ‘Take an Easy Ride: Sexploitation in the 1970s’, in Shail (ed.), Seventies British Cinema, pp. 3–11; Leon Hunt, British Low Culture: From Safari Suits to Sexploitation (London, 1998), pp. 112–41; Richard Webber, Fifty Years of Carry On (London, 2008), pp. 143, 152–3; Daily Mirror, 29 October 1976.

  56. Laing, ‘The Politics of Culture’, p. 34; Andrew Higson, ‘Renewing British Cinema in the 1970s’, in Moore-Gilbert (ed.), The Arts in the 1970s, pp. 218–20; Smith, ‘Glam, Spam and Uncle Sam’, pp. 67–9.