Britain Case

The 1970's are generally remembered as being a dreary period of time in British history: where the government suffered the greatest political and economic problems since the Second World War. The memories of strikes and shortages, terrorism fears and cutbacks are often remembered with huge contrast to the bright and optimistic years of the technicoloured 1960's, but there is lots of evidence to suggest that the 1970's was still a time of development and progressivism despite the difficulties which occurred.

When Heath's Conservative government took power in 1970 the economy began to plunge and Heath made decisions to cut public expenditure, abolish the National Board for Prices and Incomes and reduce tax. However these were unsuccessful; inflation and unemployment accelerated whilst Britain's growth rate slowed. 260,000 miners went on their first strike in nearly 50 years and were eventually accompanied with a huge dock, railway and postal workers strike. 1.5 million Engineering workers staged a one-day strike in 1971 in protest of the Industrial Relations Bill which attempted to curb union power and over this period, over 9 million days were lost due to strikes in total. These strikes not only worsened the economic problems but also signal huge weaknesses in the co-operation between the government and unions: the system was in turmoil.

Consequently, strikes were followed by power cuts and huge cutbacks which effected people across classes: children were sent home from school due to heat loss; TV stopped broadcasting at 10:30 every night; families would light candles and huddle around the gas stove for warmth; and the rubbish bags piled up on the streets. After the oil crisis in 1973, in which prices went up by 70%, the Three-Day Week was announced and put into place at midnight on the 31st December. This put restrictions on electricity, reduced working hours and made way for redundancies. Within 4 years, there had been 5 states of emergency before 1974 and it seemed as though Britain would never make its way out of this recession.

Along with this, the fear of the IRA was escalating and after the hideous event of "Bloody Sunday" in which British troops open fired at Irish civilians, a new campaign began and the terrorist threat became a reality in a series of bombings. There were around 36 bombings in London in 1973 and on October 5th 1974, two IRA bombs exploded in pubs in the London suburb of Guildford: five people were killed and more than 50 were injured. The slogan of the 60's hippy culture, "make love not war" was becoming seemingly distant and the other liberating and liberalizing goals of the 60's weren't becoming reality: According to surveys, at least half of the population thought gay men shouldn't be teachers or doctors and many still believed homosexuality should be illegal. Britain was still extremely divided by class, and where it wasn't it was divided by race. Although by 1975 Britain had become more multicultural, there had been many more anti-immigration laws enforced such as the Immigration Act 1971 of the Conservative party and the hostility towards different ethnicities in the certainty they were stealing white men's jobs was extremely common.

However, there is a lot to suggest that the years of the early 1970's weren't in fact as bleak as people think they were. As Dominic Sandbrook suggest, in the 1960's people merely read about the sexual and youth revolution; it wasn't until the 1970's that the masses actually began to experience it. It was the 70's which really allowed consumerism to be tested: the new creations of the 60's such as high street fashion stores, washing machines, cars and telephones were becoming common place in Britain and supermarkets were replacing the local corner stores. In 1971, 91% of families had a TV and channels were now all broadcast in colour. In 1974, the first Macdonald's was built in London and the first domestic microwave was sold. Everything that had seemed outrageous and new in the 60's was eventually becoming acceptable in the 70's: miniskirts were worn