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Maybe you were falling in love with music or just falling in love ... Whatever you got up to in the 1970s it’s passed from rose-tinted memories into our shared national history. Dominic Sandbrook, The 70s I: Get It On 70-72 ***** BBC 2013
Years of tremendous change shattering the cosy post-war consensus. ibid.
This was a blessed generation: we had work, we had welfare and we had wealth. ibid.
These were the Wimpy years, when brand-new estates and neat little houses blossomed on the suburban fringes of the nation's cities. ibid.
Gentrification – and inner city Britain would never be the same again. ibid.
Heath had been committed to the European ideal since his student days in the 1930s. ibid.
And the message was – can we join your gang please ... Passions for and against were running high. ibid.
An adventure abroad was now one of life's pleasures. ibid.
Wine was becoming essential ... The average British wine intake doubled. ibid.
[Marc] Bolan himself seemed to be the ultimate pinup. ibid.
Britain’s most vividly attired man of the early 70s – Peter Wyngarde, better known as TV’s rakish adventurer Jason King. ibid.
A strange creature landed in central London – Ziggy Stardust ... The persona of the rock star David Bowie ... Bowie saw gender-bending as a kind of performance. ibid.
The Gay Rights movement had hit the streets. ibid.
In the late summer of 1972 one group of British citizens were arriving from sunnier climbs ... Frightened Asian families from Uganda were seeking shelter in Britain. ibid.
Anti-immigration feelings were running high ... About 25,000 Asian Ugandans arrived in England. ibid.
They [miners] just wanted their fair share of Ted Heath’s brave new world. ibid.
In early 1972 they woke from their slumber and voted to strike for a better deal. ibid.
Power cuts were becoming a fact of life. ibid.
Ted Heath had fatally underestimated the miners ... Heath hadn’t just been beaten, he’d been annihilated ... The victory of aspiration. ibid.
The British economy was in desperate trouble. ibid.
In 1973 Princess Anne’s big day had it all: crowds, pageantry, a radiant young couple, and a happy family. Dominic Sandbrook, The 70s II: Doomwatch 73-74
The oil crisis was the single decisive moment of the 1970s. It was the tipping point, the catalyst that changed everything. ibid.
The Middle East had erupted as Israel’s Arab neighbours launched a stunning surprise attack ... The Arab oil nations announced an eye-watering price rise of 70%. ibid.
For people on low incomes, inflation was a silent menace. ibid.
By 1973 the great plastic boom is on. ibid.
Britain was falling in love with mass consumerism. ibid.
Miners: it was a showdown that divided the nation ... The miners raised the stakes as their overtime ban became an all-out strike. ibid.
The 70s sex comedy ... The Confessions of a Window Cleaner – the lowest point in British cinema history. ibid.
When Heath failed to do a deal with the Liberals, Labour’s Harold Wilson returned as a minority prime minister. ibid.
Nowhere in Britain was safe from the violence that had engulfed Northern Ireland. ibid.
The generation shaped by the sacrifice of the Second World War were looking on in horror as a new Britain erupted around them. Dominic Sandbrook, The 70s III: Goodbye Great Britain 75-77
The Wheeltappers was prime-time Saturday night TV. 70s Britain was a man's world. ibid.
The [Brentford] Trico women went out on strike ... After twenty-one weeks with production lines at a standstill Trico gave in. ibid.
It was in the mid-70s that the fight for equality really gained momentum. ibid.
Football: many young fans were carried away by a culture of casual violence. ibid.
Man U v Wolves: The Stratford Enders went on the rampage ... Fourteen people were stabbed ... They even ransacked the Wolves club shop. ibid.
Football violence had become a brutal nationwide epidemic. ibid.
British motors weren’t always easy to love ... The Rover SD1 was a national project. ibid.
In Survivors: 95% of the population had been wiped by a future pandemic – The Death. Survivors captured the pessimism and paranoia of mid-70s Britain. ibid.
The £ had fallen below $2 ... The IMF sent six international bankers to look at Britain’s books. ibid.
Punk: in the vanguard The Sex Pistols ... Punks were assaulting Britain’s most cherished icons ... For the originals punk was great fun. ibid.
We’d made a decisive break with the old post-war settlement. Dominic Sandbrook, The 70s IV: The Winner Takes It All 77-79
The top rate of income tax went up to 83%. ibid.
At the age of just twenty-three Richard Branson had made himself a millionaire. ibid.
So why did these new estates deteriorate so badly so quickly? ibid.
The effects of commonwealth immigration seemed uncomfortable even alarming. ibid.
Margaret Thatcher was walking into Downing Street as Britain’s first woman prime minister. ibid.
The Day of Action was extended into weeks of action – dustmen, ambulance drivers, caretakers, bus drivers, road-gritters and many more began a series of rolling strikes that caused total chaos. ibid.
The ’70s marked a watershed in the battle for sexual equality. Dominic Sandbrook: Let Us Entertain You IV: Me, Myself & I
The tragic-comedy of Britain in the 1970s: it was a bad hair decade. Students were revolting. Militant unions were striking. Force was met with force. Asset-strippers were flourishing. As inflation and unemployment rocketed. The Lost World of the Seventies: A Report by Michael Cockerell, BBC 2012
A senior general – Sir Walter Walker – who was setting up his own private army to save the country from the catastrophe of a takeover by the Marxists. ibid.
Long Longford: self-appointed guardian of the country’s morals. ibid.
Sir Robert Mark who as London’s top policeman was on a mission to clean up Scotland Yard. ibid.
Sir Jimmy Goldsmith – the tycoon with a complex business and love life who believed the media were plotting to destroy capitalism. ibid.
General Walker had allowed the cameras to film how NATO prepared for war. ibid.
Lord Longford – the great moral crusader of the decade. He was a contradictory character. An hereditary earl who identified with the outcasts of society. He made headlines in the seventies by visiting notorious criminals in prison and for his campaign against pornography. ibid.
When the Longford Report was published it recommended much stricter laws on pornography. The government ignored it. ibid.
Goldsmith was fiercely protective of his business reputation ... Private Eye targeted Goldsmith; it depicted him as an asset-stripper. ibid.
Faced with evidence of widespread corruption, [rozzer Robert] Mark pledged to purge all bent detectives from the Force. ibid.
He found Scotland Yard a secretive Masonic place with its own in-bred culture. ibid.
Mark’s prime target for reform was the Flying Squad. ibid.
The CID alone would no longer investigate corruption charges against its own officers. A-10 was run by the uniformed branch. ibid.
The Commissioner took dramatic action: in a dawn raid Bill Moody was arrested – he’d been head of the dirty squad and worked for A10. Also arrested was Ken Drury, the Flying Squad chief who had been on the sunshine holiday with [James] Humphreys. The biggest fish of all was Commander Wally Virgo, who was in overall charge of both the Porn and Flying Squads. Humphreys claims he paid Virgo £2,000 in cash every month. ibid.
600 police officers who left Scotland Yard prematurely during Robert Marks’ five years at the top. ibid.