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 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.
High among sixties folk heroes were architects like Sir Denys Lasdun and town planners. Their vision of regenerating inner cities led to soul less housing estates marked by huge tower blocks which destroyed any sense of community, and created social distress and crime which none, apparently, had predicted. Examples include the North Peckham estates in South London which, "The council officially refers to as 'no go areas,' and recommends "special safety procedures" for all workers going there.
There are no such procedures for residents. . . According to the residents the architect committed suicide. "He couldn't live with it," one of them said; "he couldn't live with what he'd done. But what about me? I have to!". By the mid seventies these misguided concepts of urban planning had been abandoned.
In technology, too, people questioned many assumptions. There were successes like Clive Sinclair's
innovation in computer technology. Many technological advances did reach more homes. "Nine out of
ten households had their own TV, refrigerator and vacuum cleaner. Three quarters had a telephone.
Many had a deep freeze. Some form of central heating was the norm in any house built within the
last 20 years".
The oil crisis imposed many constraints on Britain, though some could
be turned to advantage. Cars were designed to get more mileage per gallon. Too often there
were expensive failures. The public were fascinated by the first supersonic airliner, Concorde,
designed and produced by Anglo French partnership. Passengers could now travel
faster than a rifle bullet "without spilling their drink". But Concorde was expensive to
operate and the boom when it broke the sound barrier aroused sustained opposition from conservationists.
No more were built after 1979. The truth was that most people preferred to travel more cheaply
rather than more quickly.
In 1978 Louise Brown became the world's first "test-tube" baby. While this miraculous
scientific achievement brought new hope to childless couples, disquiet was aroused because this
kind of medical practice might lead to eventual "cloning" of human beings.
Scientists knew about cloning frogs, and it was tempting to manipulate human tissues in a
similar way. In Ira Levin's fantasy novel The Boys from Brazil, tissues from Hitler's
body were implanted in women around the world, and a generation of Hitlers was created. Most
scientists agreed to turn away from experiments with such macabre implications.
In medical science it was easy to feel that doctors were more concerned with sophisticated
problem solving operations such as "transplants" than with more traditional healing and
comforting. Transplant surgery was only possible by advances in immunology. One of the most eminent
immunologists was Peter Medawar who, in partnership with his wife, emerged "as the science philosopher
of the times". Significantly, Medawar stated, "Most of the problems that beset mankind call for
political, moral and administrative rather than scientific solutions". One outstanding success was
the development of the body scanner by Dr Geoffrey Hounsfield, which won him the
Nobel Prize (1979).
The most politically sensitive of the sciences was nuclear physics. "After the world energy
crisis the possibility of harnessing nuclear energy was more tantalizing than ever", (Anthony Sampson).
But ordinary people as well as conservationists and ecologists were challenging the "bargain" by which
governments could buy energy at the cost of their people's safety. The anti nuclear lobby was greatly
encouraged when the eminent nuclear physicist Sir Brian Flowers reported in 1976 to the
government, "the dangers of building (nuclear) power stations had not been properly disclosed,
and that the problems of dispersing nuclear fuel were still unresolved".
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).
British football performance was disappointing after England's 1966 World Cup success. Football managers seemed unable to cultivate the few players of rare promise. They preferred to suppress the exciting talents of such players as Hudson, Osgood and Trevor Francis for the sake of work rate, robustness and mediocrity. This attitude might have been changed if Gerry Francis (Queen's Park Rangers), the heir to England's captaincy and a player of genius, had not been crippled. Though the total number of serious crimes declined, violence and vandalism committed by young people increased. "Our traditional national values of tolerance and humour deteriorated, while football hooliganism, crime and political extremism increased." (Senior Civil Servant) To some extent these characteristics may have been protests by youth against the ineptitude and remoteness of leadership at all levels. On the other hand, "People may have increasingly searched for fulfilment in ways other than that of a rising standard of living, precisely because that living standard was not on offer . . ." (Senior Civil Servant).
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.
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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