1970s
In his penetrating book, The Seventies, Christopher Booker claims that this was,
"arguably the most important decade in the twentieth century". There is some truth in
Booker's statement, though few may have perceived it at the time. Gradually, it dawned
on people that much of the
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wild optimism for mankind's future was misplaced, and the heady
promises made by scientists, professionals, planners and technocrats of the sixties were illusory.
Politically, neither the Conservatives under Edward Heath nor Labour could grapple with the economic difficulties which were complicated by the energy crisis (1973 on) and relations with the trade unions. As government after government faltered, people seriously doubted Britain's will to be governed. "The ungovernability of Britain" was a cry that echoed down the seventies.
The emergence of Mrs Thatcher as Conservative Prime Minister
(1979) provided to some a necessary order, “the return to the old values, the home coming for
traditional virtues, or (to others) reaction, the imposition of the barbarities of a system which the victors of 1945 had vowed would never again be tolerated".
Minimum not maximum material expectations became the order of the day, be these expectations wage
settlements, public expenditure or level of government borrowing. Mrs Thatcher's emphasis on
self denial and the primacy of the individual, her contempt for huge bureaucracies and trade union power,
which stifled initiative and drained profits, impressed some people. Moreover, her puritanical manner may
have reflected people's distaste for incidences of corruption in public life. Reginald Maudling, a
Conservative minister, was involved with the corrupt building transactions of John Poulson;
then there was the affair of the Liberal leader, Jeremy Thorpe, who was accused of conspiring to
murder a homosexual friend. One of Harold Wilson's personal recommendations for the Honours List,
Lord Kagan, was later imprisoned for fraud. Above all, perhaps, voting for Mrs Thatchcr was Britain's
reaffirmation in the law of Parliament after a decade of political instability when, at times,
parliamentary democracy did seem vulnerable. Sub consciously, this factor may have been more important
to voters than their whole hearted belief in Mrs Thatcher's radical right philosophy.
Flowers' report scandalized his scientific colleagues. However, his words were given an eerie ring of truth when the nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in America developed a serious radiation leak causing, "the most alarming accident in the history of civil and nuclear power". By 1979 some incoming
Conservative politicians, who were torn between the self interested claims of the nuclear, coal, oil and electrical power lobbies, wondered, "Perhaps Tony Bern was right after all, perhaps only the people can decide" (A. Sampson).
Racial disaffection had been smouldering in Britain throughout the seventies and
presented a formidable social challenge. National Front provocation on the streets and disturbances at
the Notting Hill carnival in London (1976) alerted people to potential trouble. That year Mark Bonham
Carter, Chairman of the Community Relations Commission, warned, "The Black population are
British, and they take the phrase equality of opportunity for what it means. I have no doubt we have not
kept pace with the expectations of British born Blacks." The 1976 Race Relations Act declared all forms
of discrimination illegal. A commission for Racial Equality with powers of enforcing the Act was
set up. Some people argued that no law on earth could change attitudes. There was talk of a backlash from
disaffected and deprived whites who themselves might feel discriminated against.
In his play Class Enemy (1978), Nigel Williams provides insight into inadequate whites who feel threatened by blacks. One of the characters, Nipper, rants against immigrants: They rail against blacks because they feel alienated from all society. Blacks happen to be a convenient and accessible target.
Feminism received a powerful impetus in 1970 when Germaine Greer published her book The Female Eunuch. Her view of suppressed woman existing in slavish submission to man was by no means novel. However, her book, "of high literary quality and deep scholarship which made some disturbing points" (Arthur Marwick in British Society since 1945), made an impact on many women and men. Magazines, such as the British Cosmopolitan and Spare Rib, both founded in 1972 were among the leaders in raising the controversial issues of abortion, rape, contraception and nuclear power. The Sex Discrimination Act (1975) was positive recognition of women's equal rights on pay, employment, education and provision of housing and services.
There was a strong resurgence of women's literature. Arthur Marwick suggests "If, when it is possible, to identify social and creative trends in writing, one such trend stressed the women's viewpoint." These reflections are seen in Beryl Bainbridge's Sweet William (1975) and Fay Weidon's Praxa (1978) though Fay Weldon took the conventional line that the nature of woman was incompatible with feminist extremism.
A symptom of a quieter mood was the upsurge of interest in the arts. "The concert halls were still full, the theatres busy. The queues outside the art galleries longer than ever not so much in honour of the masterpieces of our own time, as because the appetite
for the music, the plays and art works of the past had never been greater" (The Seventies).
Perhaps the extraordinary success of Richard Adams' allegorical novel, Watership Down
(enjoyed by adult and child alike),
provides an enduring reflection of the 1970 people acknowledging the consequences of their own
wanton actions; and their quest to return to simpler values. Moreover, the story is a longing
for a society which provides security without repression, and a world fit for children to grow
up in joy and for the old to die in dignity.
Extract from “Living Through History: Britain In The 1970s”, written by Michael Hodges. B.T. Batsford Ltd London, 1989.
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Cartoon 1970s
Western industrial nations resented the large oil price rises of 1973, but oil producers
were reflecting the market value of their commodity.
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