I caught one of my favourite films on TV last night - 24 Hour Party People - which charts the erratic fortunes of Factory Records and its founder Tony Wilson in Manchester from the beginning of punk onwards.
The story alludes to the Winter of Discontent at the end of 1977, the massed union and social reaction to Tory government’s policies in Britain, continuing on from the Coal Miners Strike of 1974, and running on until the second big coal strike in 1984 when Thatcher was in charge.
I mainly know about that period and its politics from the books of David Peace [his Red Riding Quartet] and the work of Ken ‘laugh a minute’ Loach [Days of Hope scarred and scared me as a youngster] and, I guess the more politically focussed section of punk and other music from 1977+.
My question to the Cafe Society hive-mind is what else should I be looking at to get a good overview of the period which the changing social and political environment.
Film, books, music, art but also solid non-fiction suggestions for my Christmas break please.
Oops - was staring at the spine of DP’s * Nineteen Seventy Seven* as I wrote this.
Are Thatcher’s autobiographies a good read? The plan is to explore the period, not become immersed in the spectrum of views. Happy to forage outside my comfort zone, but this is holiday reading, so factual has to meet enjoyable.
West Midlands upper working class child of the same period here. I still find it hard to burn candles for frivilous reasons. There is nothing romantic about candlelit dinner in my mind. Candles are to be kept in a drawer next to a box of matches and only used in emergencies.
Apart from the power cuts, my strongest memory of the strikes was the bakers strike in 78. Bread rationing was introduced and it was one loaf per person. I remember being bored stupid for hours on a saturday while the whole family stood in line so we could get 5 loaves.
I have read only excerpts, and she writes with a strong partisan bias as you might expect, but I found them worthwhile. The British economy was pretty dysfunctional at the time and in some ways Thatcher’s cure was worse than the disease, but things did improve for most people after she came to 10 Downing Street.
I have Tony Benn’s Diaries which can be easily summarized. ‘I was right and everyone else was wrong. Things would have worked out so much better if everyone had listened to me and done what I said’.
The worrying thing is, he’s actually right about that in a lot of cases!
As a 20 something looking for a job in the late 70s I can only echo those saying it was miserable, grey and depressing.
Any time I hear someone moaning about the railways and telling us how they ought to be renationalised I know they missed the joys of British Rail in the 70s
