When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies

by Andy Beckett

  Callaghan, James, Prime Ministerial Broadcast, BBC1, 7 September 1978

  Campbell, Duncan, ‘The British Army’s Secret Opinion’, New Statesman, July 1979

  Clarke, A. F. N., Contact, Secker & Warburg, 1983

  Clarke, Alan, Contact, BBC2, 6 January 1985

  Daily Mail, 21 February 1978

  Daily Mirror, 21 February 1978

  Denselow, Robin, When the Music’s Over: The Story of Political Pop, Faber, 1989

  Fallon, Ivan, The Brothers: The Rise and Rise of Saatchi & Saatchi, Hutchinson, 1988

  Hollingsworth, Mark, Tim Bell: The Ultimate Spin Doctor, Hodder & Stoughton, 1997

  Huddle, Roger, author interview, 1 March 2006

  I’m All Right Jack, 1959

  Kettle, Martin, and Lucy Hodges, Uprising! The Police, the People and the Riots in Britain’s Cities, Pan, 1982

  Lawson, Nigel, ‘Thoughts on “Implementing our Strategy”’, internal Conservative Party memo, 15 January 1978

  New Musical Express, 11 September 1976, 6 May 1978

  Robinson, Tom, author interview, 12 September 2005

  Rodgers, Bill, Fourth Among Equals, Politico’s, 2000

  Sivanandan, Ambalavaner, author interview, 5 September 2006

  Sun, 21 February 1978

  Temporary Hoarding, spring 1978, summer 1978, March/April 1979

  Thurlow, Richard C., Fascism in Britain: From Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts to the National Front, Tauris, 1998

  Walker, Martin, The National Front, Fontana, 1977

  Widgery, David, Beating Time, Chatto & Windus, 1986

  World in Action, Granada Television, 27 January 1978

  18 THE PEASANTS’ REVOLT

  Anderson, Lindsay, The Diaries, Methuen, 2004

  Anderson, Lindsay, Never Apologise: The Collected Writings, Plexus, 2004

  Andrews, Barry, author interview, 3 August 2006

  Battle of the Giants, Yorkshire Television, 1 May 1979

  Beach, Fred, author interview, 3 August 2006

  Benn, Tony, Conflicts of Interest: Diaries 1977–1980, Hutchinson, 1990

  Britannia Hospital, EMI Films, 1982

  ‘Callaghan “On the Spot”’, Nationwide, BBC1, 27 April 1979

  Calvert, Hugh, A History of Kingston upon Hull, Phillimore, 1978

  Can the Government Survive?, Thames Television, 20 November 1978

  Daily Mail, 31 January–9 March 1979

  Daily Telegraph, 2–9 March 1979

  Donoughue, Bernard, author interview, 30 August 2008

  Donoughue, Bernard, Downing Street Diary: With James Callaghan in No. 10, Jonathan Cape, 2008

  East London Advertiser, 2 February 1979–4 February 1983

  Gillett, Edward, and Kenneth A. MacMahon, A History of Hull, Hull University Press, 1989

  Guardian, 7–10 March 1979

  Hansard (Commons), 16 January 1979

  Hobsbawm, Eric, The Forward March of Labour Halted?, New Left Books, 1981

  Hull Daily Mail, 3 January 1979–5 February 1979

  Humble, J. G., and Peter Hansell, Westminster Hospital 1716–1974, Pitman Medical, 1974

  Jimmy Young Programme, BBC Radio 2, 31 January 1979

  Jones, Bob, author interview, 2 August 2006

  Lambert, Gavin, Mainly about Lindsay Anderson: A Memoir, Faber, 2000

  Larkin, Philip, Selected Letters of Philip Larkin 1940–1985, Faber, 1992

  London Evening Standard, 2 January–8 March 1979

  Marxism Today, February 1979

  Money Programme, BBC2, 17 January 1979

  Rodgers, Bill, ‘A Winter’s Tale of Discontent’, Guardian, 7 January 1984

  Rose, Clive, author interview 25 July 2006

  Secret History: Winter of Discontent, Mentorn Productions, 1998

  Suddaby, John, ‘The Winter ’79 Strikes in Camden’, New Left Review, July–August 1979

  Sun, 7–9 March 1979

  Sunday Telegraph, 21 January 1979

  Sunday Times, 20 January 1989

  Weekend World, LWT, 7 January 1979, 14 January 1979

  Yes, Minister, ‘The Compassionate Society’, BBC1, 23 February 1981

  19 LAST-DITCH DAYS

  Baker, Kenneth, The Turbulent Years: My Life in Politics, Faber, 1993

  Butler, David, and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1979, Macmillan, 1999 edition

  Conservative Party, ‘Conservative Manifesto 1979’, Conservative Central Office, 1979

  Evans, Gwynfor, The Fight for Welsh Freedom, Y Lolfa, 2000

  Hansard (Commons), 28 March 1979

  Harrison, Walter, author interview, 19 July 2006

  Hattersley, Roy, Who Goes Home? Scenes from a Political Life, Little, Brown, 1995

  Jones, Mervyn, Michael Foot, Gollancz, 1994

  Labour Party, ‘The Labour Way Is the Better Way: The Labour Party Manifesto 1979’, Labour Party, 1979

  McAllister, Laura, Plaid Cymru: The Emergence of a Political Party, Seren, 2001

  Morgan, Kenneth O., Michael Foot: A Life, HarperPress, 2007

  Party Election Broadcast, the Labour Party, 20 April 1979

  Spare Rib, May 1979, June 1979

  CONCLUSION: THE LONG SEVENTIES

  Butler, David, and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1983, Macmillan, 1984

  Decision ’79, BBC1, 3–4 May 1979

  Downing Street Years, The, Fine Art Productions, 1994

  MORI, How Britain Voted since Labour Last Won, MORI, 2005

  Punch, 12 June 1985

  Weekend World, LWT, 22 February 1981

  1 Edward Heath celebrates winning the June 1970 general election. ‘We were returned to office to change the course of history of this nation,’ he told the Conservative Party conference that autumn. (David Cairns/Hulton Archive)

  2 Heath’s dream of the future: an early model of Maplin airport, planned by his government to be built on an artificial island off Southend-on-Sea. (Peter Johns/Guardian)

  3 ‘They just overwhelmed us’: striking miners swamp the police cordon and close the Saltley coke depot in Birmingham in February 1972. (copyright

  unknown)

  4 ‘This isn’t Aden, or Cyprus. It is . . . Britain’s own backyard’: a Belfast street on a bad day in the seventies. The war in Northern Ireland was the most severe test imaginable for natural compromisers like Heath and Wilson and Callaghan. (Don McPhee/Guardian)

  5 When the lights went out: Piccadilly Circus partly blacked-out during the three-day week, 1 February 1974. For two mid-winter months the Heath government drastically restricted the supply of electricity to all ‘non-essential’ shops and other businesses. (PA/PA Archive)

  6 ‘A relationship of forces’: Harold Wilson (centre), a fading prime minister by 1975, in the custody of (left) Jack Jones, General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, and (right) Vic Feather, Secretary of the Trades Union Congress. Jones was widely considered so powerful that during the 1974 general elections graffiti appeared: ‘Vote Jack Jones, cut out the middle man.’ (PA/PA Archive)

  7 Salvation from a cold grey sea: North Sea oil rigs under construction at Nigg in the Scottish Highlands, mid-seventies. The Nigg dry dock was ‘the biggest hole in Europe’ according to The Architectural Review. (Don McPhee/Guardian)

  8 Members of the Gay Liberation Front protest on behalf of arrested members of the Women’s Liberation Front outside Bow Street Magistrates Court, 4 February 1971. (Central Press/Getty Images)

  9 Sid Rawle, hippy anarchist and organiser of the 1975 Watchfield free festival, arrives for a meeting at the Department of the Environment, 20 August 1975. (PA/PA Archive)

  10 Waiting for the next Britain: the newly-built Civic Centre in Milton Keynes, May 1977. Conceived by idealistic socialists, the brand-new city voted Conservative as soon as it became a parliamentary constituency. Edward (Hamilton West/Guardian)

  11 Police shove back pickets so that a bus carrying Grunwick employees who are still working can get through
, 11 July 1977. Like the miners at Saltley in

  1972, the Grunwick strikers were joined on their picket line by thousands of other trade unionists and assorted left-wingers. Unlike at Saltley, the police won. (Peter Johns/Guardian)

  12 Jayaben Desai, one of the leaders of the strike at the Grunwick plants between 1976 and 1978. The mainly Asian and female strikers wanted a union to represent the workforce. Their employer George Ward emphatically did not. (Homer Sykes/Network)

  13 The limits of seventies union power: pickets stuck outside ‘Fort Grunwick’, as George Ward called his premises, summer 1977. Rupert Murdoch and other employers would follow Ward’s example. (Kenneth Saunders/Guardian)

  14 Prime Minister Jim Callaghan speaking in Tamworth during the 1979 general election. During the campaign his personal lead over Margaret Thatcher in the opinion polls, already substantial, more than trebled. Enthusiasm for his party was less infectious. (Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images)

  15 Public Enemy Number One: Jamie Morris, ex-Tory, militant shop steward, and leader of the infamous strike at Westminster Hospital during the Winter of Discontent. After his period of national notoriety between January and March 1979, Morris soon left politics for property renovation and running an offlicence. (PA/PA Archive)

  16 The shape of things to come: Margaret Thatcher speaking two months before becoming prime minister. Saatchi & Saatchi’s famous posters attacking the Callaghan government’s poor record on unemployment back her up. But under Thatcher the jobless figures would get far worse. (PA/PA Archive)

  Index

  Aberdeen, 1, 2

  ACAS see Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service

  Adams, Gerry, 1, 2

  Adams, Richard, 1

  Adams, Tom, 1

  Adley, Robert, 1

  Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS), 1, 2, 3

  air travel, cheap, 1

  airports, 1, 2

  Aitken, Ian, 1

  Albion Free State, 1

  Alden, Malcolm, 1, 2

  Allbeury, Dr Anthony, 1

  Allen, Robert, 1, 2

  Allen, V. L., 1

  Althusser, Louis, 1

  Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers (AUEW), 1 ;

  see also Scanlon, Hugh

  Amis, Kingsley, 1, 2, 3, 4

  Amis, Martin, 1

  Anderson, Lindsay, 1, 2

  Andre, Carl, 1

  Andrews, Barry, 1

  APEX see Association for Professional, Executive, Clerical and Computer Staffs

  Argentina, 1

  Armstrong, Sir William, 1, 2

  Arnold, P., 1

  art, 1, 2

  Art Workers Cooperative, 1

  Article 5 (play), 1

  Ashworth, William, 1

  Aspinall, John, 1, 2, 3

  Association for Professional, Executive, Clerical and Computer Staffs (APEX): description and growth, 1;

  and Grunwick, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

  women members, 1

  Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staff (ASTMS), 1

  Astell, Mary, 1

  Atlee, Clement: death, 1;

  government of, 1, 2, 3;

  Jones on, 1

  AUEW see Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers

  Austrian School, 1, 2

  Baker, Kenneth, 1

  Balcombe Street Gang, 1, 2

  Baldwin, Stanley, 1, 2

  Ballard, J. G., 1

  Balliol College, Oxford, 1

  Balogh, Thomas, 1

  Banner Theatre company, 1

  Barbados, 1, 2

  Barber, Anthony, 1, 2, 3

  Barber, Simon, 1

  Barcelona, 1

  Barnett, Joel, 1, 2

  Barnsley Miners’ Forum, 1

  Basnett, David, 1

  BBC: Northern Ireland coverage, 1

  Beach, Fred, 1, 2

  Beatles, 1, 2 ;

  see also Lennon, John

  Beauvoir, Simone de, 1

  Beckett, Andy: childhood in army family, 1 ;

  education, 2

  Belfast, 1, 2, 3;

  Falls Road, 4, 5;

  Maze Prison (Long Kesh), 1;

  Stormont, 1

  Bell, Tim, 1

  Bellingham, Philip, 1, 2

  Bendixson, Terence, 1

  Benjamin, Walter, 1

  Benn, Tony: and 1970 election, 1, 2;

  and 1974 (Feb) election, 3 ;

  and 1979 election, 1, 2;

  Blair on, 1;

  on Callaghan’s popularity, 1;

  economic ideas watered down by Wilson, 1 ;

  and the EEC, 1;

  and Healey’s public expenditure cuts, 1;

  and IMF cuts, 1 ;

  on Jones’s influence, 1;

  and Labour Party 1976 leadership contest, 1;

  and Lib–Lab pact, 1;

  and North Sea oil, 1;

  and RAR, 1;

  and rise of right-wing conservatism, 1;

  and the social contract, 1 ;

  on weather in 1979, 1;

  in Wilson’s sixties governments, 1;

  and Winter of Discontent, 1, 2

  Bennett Report, 1

  Berganza, Teresa, 1

  Bessbrook Mill, 1

  Bevan, Nye, 1

  Beveridge, Sir William, 1

  Bevin, Ernest, 1, 2

  Bhudia, Devshi, 1, 2

  Bill Brand (TV series), 1

  Birdwood, Lady Jane, 1

  Birmingham: CP in, 1;

  IRA pub bombs, 1, 2, 3;

  Saltley coke depot, 1, 2

  Blair, Tony, 1, 2

  Bleasdale, Alan, 1

  Bloody Sunday, 1

  Blue Peter (TV programme), 1

  Blueprint for Survival, A, 1, 2, 3

  BNOC see British National Oil Corporation

  BNP see British National Party

  Boardman, Tom, 1

  Bober, Graham and Gillian, 1, 2, 3

  Bond, Eric, 1

  Booker, Christopher, 1

  Booth-Clibborn, Edward, 1

  Bowie, David, 1, 2

  Boycott, Rosie, 1

  Boys from the Blackstuff (TV series), 1

  Boyson, Rhodes, 1

  BP see British Petroleum

  Brabourne, Lord, 1

  Bradbury, Malcolm, 1, 2

  Bragg, Billy, 1

  ‘brain drain’, 1

  Brenton, Howard, 1

  Bretton Woods Agreement, 1

  Britannia Hospital (film), 1

  British Army: and Northern Ireland, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ;

  and Winter of Discontent, 6

  British National Oil Corporation (BNOC), 1

  British National Party (BNP), 1

  British Petroleum (BP), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

  Brittan, Samuel, 1, 2

  Broad Left, 1

  Broadstairs, 1

  Broughton, Sir Alfred, 1

  Brown, Gordon, 1

  Buchanan, Colin, 1

  building schemes, 1

  Burns, Arthur, 1, 2

  Bush, George W., 1

  Butler, Adam, 1, 2

  Butler, David, 1, 2

  Cabinet Office Briefing Room (COBRA), 1

  Callaghan, Audrey, 1, 2

  Callaghan, Jim: and 1979 election, 1, 2, 3;

  appearance and dress, 4, 5;

  background, 1, 2 ;

  on being chancellor, 1;

  Blair on, 1;

  character, 1, 2, 3, 4 ;

  civil-service attitude to, 1;

  and council-house sales, 1;

  economic measures, 1, 2, 3, 4 ;

  equality under, 1 ;

  fall of government, 1;

  and Grunwick, 1;

  at Guadeloupe summit, 1 ;

  homes, 1, 2;

  and IMF, 1, 2 ;

  and immigration, 1, 2, 3;

  and industrial relations, 1;

  and Jay (Peter), 1, 2;

  and Labour Party 1976 leadership contest, 1;

  Labou
r plots to replace Wilson with, 1 ;

  and Lib–Lab pact, 1 ;

  nicknames, 1;

  no-confidence vote, 1 ;

  and Northern Ireland, 1, 2;

  postpones election from 1978 to 1979, 1 ;

  public-speaking style, 1;

  Ruskin College speech, 1 ;

  and Scottish devolution, 1, 2;

  speech at 1976 Labour Party conference, 1, 2;

  Thatcher on, 1;

  and trade unions, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

  in Wilson’s sixties governments, 1, 2;

  in Wilson’s 1974 government, 1, 2;

  as Wilson’s chancellor, 1, 2, 3;

  and Winter of Discontent, 1, 2, 3

  Callaghan, Michael, 1

  Cambodia, 1

  Cameron, David, 1, 2, 3

  Campbell, Beatrix, 1, 2, 3, 4

  Campbell, Duncan, 1

  Campbell, Jock, 1, 2, 3

  Campbell, John, 1, 2, 3, 4

  Canada, 1

  Cann, Edward du, 1

  CAP see Common Agricultural Policy

  Capper, Sir Derrick, 1, 2, 3, 4

  car industry, 1

  car ownership, 1

  Carlisle, 1

  Carr, Robert, 1

  Carrington, Peter, 1, 2