Just Finished Reading: Crisis? What Crisis? – Britain in the 1970’s by Alwyn W Turner

You may remember that I recently read a book on 1968 and was surprised that, although I was alive at the time (if only 8 years old), I remembered very little of what was going on around the world. This may have been, as alluded to in another post, that I simply wasn’t paying attention. How different it was in the 70’s.

This was one of my Christmas reading books and I was delighted that I remembered many of the events and incidents – as well as the personalities involved – during that turbulent decade. Maybe it was because I’d reached puberty by that time and all of those hormones coursing through my body finally woke my brain up. Either way the constant refrain heard in my mother’s house was – Oh, I remember that! Anything I didn’t remember – for example the Government plan to introduce petrol rationing (complete with ration books) – my older brother remembered clearly. Of course those of us who lived through what was, and reading this book clearly reminded me of, a truly frightening time will remember the different aspects that directly affected us – whether it was the strikes, the layoffs, the rolling power-cuts (I particularly remember doing homework by candlelight), the multiple governments in a single year, the piles of rotting rubbish in the streets – and much else besides. It was also a Golden Age of TV despite the existence of only three Channels. Who could possible forget ‘The Good Life’ (I had such a crush on Felicity Kendal) and – featured on the books cover – ‘The Sweeny’.

I guess that the 70’s are a special decade for me because I entered them as a child, went through my teenage years and exited them as an adult – with the backdrop of a country in crisis, the demise of the Labour Party as a force for Socialism, the rise of Thatcherism, Glam Rock, New Wave and, of course, Punk Rock. What an amazing decade and what a time to be a teenager. Despite everything I think that I honestly loved the 70’s. Sometimes I think it’s what it must have felt like to live during wartime. It really was that bad. I was probably protected from a lot of it by my parents but the general anxiety level could’ve been cut with a knife. This book brought a lot of those feelings back and really showed me how touch-and-go things were for a while there. It was a dangerous time in many ways and I think I loved just about every minute of it!