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Post by andydecker on Sept 24, 2021 8:09:04 GMT
There were some very bleak times back then. I remember doing homework using a torch for illumination. It must have been much worse for those with electric ovens and central heating. I have a vague memory that there were schedules for when power cuts would occur for different areas. There is a wide perception that it was the miners strike which brought down the Heath government. I remember a sense of relief when they resumed work and power cuts ended. A decade later it seemed that history would repeat itself when the miners went on strike in 1984, but things had changed a lot in that ten years, and there were large stocks of coal to run power stations, and, of course, the miners lost after a very bitter and sometimes violent struggle. Can't say that I knew about this. I can't even remember hearing a lot about this back then. It surely was a topic in the German news, but in late '78 and then '79 I was starting my year-and-a-half mandatory community service in a nursing home - back then you had to choose between one year in the army or the longer time in some community service, but only after being cleared by a official hearing board - and didn't had much interest in world affairs. So I missed this. I dimly remember the beginning of the mess in Iran, the Jim Jones atrocity and watching Holocaust on TV. Frankly I can't even imagine having no power in my home. (Except in nightmares of course). Of course we had and have our share of strikes, but never so severe and disrupting.
A lot about the situation in the UK I only later realized when it was used as the background for comics. In hindsight there was a lot of it from writers like Moore or Wagner, when reading interviews or forewords to things like V for Vendetta or Hellblazer.
Edit: My lousy date memory caught up with this. I checked and 78/79 I was still a civilian and working in a bookshop. I made my final exam in the summer of 1979. But seems the Winter of Discontent didn't register very high in our neck of the woods.
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Post by samdawson on Sept 24, 2021 10:27:16 GMT
From memory, as the 1960s receded and the 70s progressed the view in other European countries was simply of 'The British Disease' (eg strikes) and the attendant economic decline making GB 'The sick man of Europe'. Paradoxically the UK remained one of the world's major producers and exporters (though declining in volume and, I'd suggest, quality of goods) and still something of a cultural powerhouse - especially in music. The German trade union movement, as reinvented post 1945, is undoubtedly one of the continent's most successful and a continuing success story. Taking a long view, my sense is that as youngsters in the 70s the various hardships were simply something to get through - much less harrowing than the poverty our grandparents had known, and WW1 and the Great Depression, and far less awful than what our parents had lived through in WW2, and the years of reconstruction and rationing that followed it. In the UK the industrial unrest and the IRA bombings were the downside of what seemed a slowly increasing, if precarious quality of life (as I recall polling showed the British public at their happiest and most optimistic for a better future in that decade). Without that attitude it would be grim everywhere, from a US scarred by the Vietnam War and rioting, to terrorist excesses across Europe (I'm sure you deeply recall the soul searching in Germany at that time and the crisis atmosphere inspired by the Red Army Faction/Bader Meinhoff), unrest and strikes in France, wars in Africa and the Middle East, the coup in Chile, repression across Latin America etc etc. In a funny way I think we were privileged to have witnessed those times
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Post by andydecker on Sept 24, 2021 14:18:32 GMT
I'm sure you deeply recall the soul searching in Germany at that time and the crisis atmosphere inspired by the Red Army Faction/Bader Meinhoff Curiosly yes and no. I was 12 in 1972, and I remember pictures in the daily TV news or the paper my parents bought. But thanks to my age and no political - or historical - education whatsoever this went way over my head. As I developed unfortunatly very late an interest for these things I only understood decades later what that was all about. The terrorist attack on the Olympic Games left more of an impression as back then the Olympics was a kind of mandatory viewing, especially as they were done in Germany, so this hit closer to home. But again I have to confess that I didn't really understood what was that about in the bigger picture. I can't say that there was one instance where those things had an impact of my everyday life. I never even saw a policeman with an automatic gun standing at a corner or somesuch. unrest and strikes in France, wars in Africa and the Middle East, the coup in Chile, repression across Latin America etc etc. In a funny way I think we were privileged to have witnessed those times To be honest I would call this more background music than witnessing. To my everlasting regret I never went to the equivalent of the college or university. Not because I didn't had the opportunity, but because I was lazy, short-sighted and painfully dumb. No ambition at all. So I never was made politically aware - i.e. learning the basics and some much needed history - which at the time was a given when becoming a student. Or you hade at least the opportunity to do so. These historical developments all over the world was just stuff one read about or saw on TV, if at all. For a majority of people Germany was incredibly stable and I guess shielded on the inside, especially for my generation. If you lived right on the border to the GDR and their Russian tanks things were more tangible and terrifying, I gathered, but for most of the rest this was far away and of no concern. After school I worked in a bookshop and after that in nursing. Not a hot-bed of trade-unions. But if you worked in the industry or a factory you came into contact with really different political traditions, which could have an impact on your life.
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Post by ripper on Sept 24, 2021 15:45:50 GMT
If I remember correctly, Labour had been trying to persuade a Northern Ireland MP to vote with them or not vote, can't quite recall which. He didn't do what Labour hoped for and the government lost that vote of no confidence by just one vote. If the guy had played ball they would have won by one vote or there would have been a tie, in which case the Speaker would have used a casting vote to side with the government, which is what happens when there is a tie. There was also the situation with Alfred Broughton, a Labour MP in Yorkshire. This is from wikipedia - "Broughton was in poor health throughout the 1970s, spending much of the time living in hospital in Yorkshire. The fact that the Labour government's majority had been lost meant that his treatment was often disrupted so that he could be taken down to London to be 'nodded through' to win key votes. On 28 March 1979 the government faced a knife-edge vote of no confidence when Broughton was on his death bed. Broughton's doctors were extremely concerned for him and strongly advised him not to travel. Although he was willing to come down to vote knowing that death was imminent, Prime Minister James Callaghan decided it would be unacceptable to ask him to do so, in case he died during the ambulance journey. In the event, the government lost by one vote; had Broughton been present, assuming Speaker George Thomas would have broken the tie in favour of the status quo per Speaker Denison's rule, the Government would have survived. Broughton died five days later, aged 76." Just goes to show how much of a knife-edge the vote was on even contemplating to bring someone so sick to vote. Was this a 'butterfly effect' moment? A seemingly small thing like a single MP being too ill to vote maybe heralding 18 years of Conservative government with all it entailed: union power being curtailed, the Falklands war, the Reagan-Thatcher relationship that was a major factor in weakening the Soviet Union, the liberation of Kuwait when Bush snr was wobbling and Thatcher gave him a pep talk, the decline of coal mining, the UK joining and leaving the currency exchange mechanism etc etc. We'll never know how these events would have panned out or if they would have happened at all if Broughton had been well enough to vote. Of course, Labour surviving the VONC in March '79 may have just put off their defeat until October '79, but it is fascinating to speculate on that alternate history of a Labour victory in that Commons vote.
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Post by ripper on Sept 24, 2021 15:55:23 GMT
From memory, as the 1960s receded and the 70s progressed the view in other European countries was simply of 'The British Disease' (eg strikes) and the attendant economic decline making GB 'The sick man of Europe'. Paradoxically the UK remained one of the world's major producers and exporters (though declining in volume and, I'd suggest, quality of goods) and still something of a cultural powerhouse - especially in music. The German trade union movement, as reinvented post 1945, is undoubtedly one of the continent's most successful and a continuing success story. Taking a long view, my sense is that as youngsters in the 70s the various hardships were simply something to get through - much less harrowing than the poverty our grandparents had known, and WW1 and the Great Depression, and far less awful than what our parents had lived through in WW2, and the years of reconstruction and rationing that followed it. In the UK the industrial unrest and the IRA bombings were the downside of what seemed a slowly increasing, if precarious quality of life (as I recall polling showed the British public at their happiest and most optimistic for a better future in that decade). Without that attitude it would be grim everywhere, from a US scarred by the Vietnam War and rioting, to terrorist excesses across Europe (I'm sure you deeply recall the soul searching in Germany at that time and the crisis atmosphere inspired by the Red Army Faction/Bader Meinhoff), unrest and strikes in France, wars in Africa and the Middle East, the coup in Chile, repression across Latin America etc etc. In a funny way I think we were privileged to have witnessed those times With all those strikes, and they were happening all through the 70s, I suppose it would have been surprising if product quality hadn't been affected. When someone got into their BL, Ford or Vauxhall car and it wouldn't start or kept breaking down, and they saw their neighbour driving a seemingly more reliable Datsun or Toyota, they would think to themselves why keep buying British when those Japanese brands make cars of much better quality. By the time Rover got its act together and actually improved quality, it was too late.
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Nov 26, 2021 16:22:03 GMT
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Post by helrunar on Nov 26, 2021 18:13:24 GMT
Horrendous. I've read that there was very little food available during that winter. Britain had won the war, but the aftermath was extremely harsh.
H.
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peedeel
Crab On The Rampage
Posts: 61
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Post by peedeel on Nov 28, 2021 7:30:54 GMT
Horrendous. I've read that there was very little food available during that winter. Britain had won the war, but the aftermath was extremely harsh. H. Food rationing finally ended at midnight on the 4th July 1954, nine years after the warās end, when controls on meat purchases were lifted. I was five years old. I was eight years old, living in Buckinghamshire, when I had my first tangerine; Iād never seen them before that time, and they were lovely. But very rare in the shops. And yes, during the winters the milk bottles delivered to our front doorstep by the milkman, often became frozen with the cold. Hard times, eh? I remember all too well struggling to get out of bed in the morning, the bedroom cold as a commercial freezer - no central heating then ā and ice on the inside of the windows!
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Post by ripper on Nov 28, 2021 13:53:32 GMT
Oh, yes, I remember ice on the inside of windows, particularly bedroom windows, prior to having central heating fitted in 1992, and having to scrape it off to see what it was like outside. When the milk bottles froze, the cream at the top would push the foil top upwards and you would end up with a cylindrical column of frozen cream sticking out of the top of the bottle. I also remember that in Winter, birds would peck through the foil top and drink the cream at the top, so you had to be on the lookout for the milkman to bring the milk indoors before the birds got to it. My dad left school in 1946 at age 14 and his first full-time job was assisting a milkman. Back then they were still using a horse and cart to deliver milk, and he said that it was horrendous in that Winter of 1947 on that job. They made sure the horse was kept as warm as possible with home-made blankets and covers for the animal's neck. His round was largely rural, so snow-clearing was haphazard at best, and often they would leave the horse and cart to deliver the milk by foot, especially when they had to deliver on a hill or where the snow was just too deep.
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Dec 3, 2021 20:14:24 GMT
In 1984 in Britain there was a violent and divisive miner's strike, and I thought I'd choose it for peoples memories as it is also the year of Orwell's book. Were there any memorable films and events that come out of this year for you all?
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Post by Dr Strange on Dec 3, 2021 21:27:06 GMT
1984 books - The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks, The Ceremonies by T.E.D. Klein, Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock.
1984 films - The Company of Wolves, Razorback, The Terminator, Ghostbusters, Gremlins. Mostly watched on VHS tapes rented from the local video shop - remember those?
And a 21st birthday celebrated with a handful of close friends in an old cottage surrounded by woods (plus prehistoric burial mound) that may have permanently rewired my brain.
"Country Death Song" by Violent Femmes from the 1984 album Hallowed Ground -
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Dec 3, 2021 23:29:05 GMT
1984 films - The Company of Wolves, Razorback, The Terminator, Ghostbusters, Gremlins. Mostly watched on VHS tapes rented from the local video shop - remember those? I wasn't allowed to watch horror films at the time, though I did see Gremlins on VHS and an edited-for-television version of The Terminator at some point in the 80s. Watching Ghostbusters was a life-changing experience for me--I saw it on the big screen in 1984 and many times afterward on a videotaped-from-television copy. By the late 80s, I was spending most weekend evenings renting VHS tapes from the lone video store in town. I didnāt see The Company of Wolves until the 1990s, but when I finally did I was impressed. I was allowed to listen to heavy metal, so Metallica's Ride the Lightning and Iron Maiden's Powerslave loom large here.
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