Recently I finished reading When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies, a book by Andy Beckett.  It was another book I got through Amazon’s ‘Vine’ programme, in which they send me free stuff and in return I review it for them.   As a child of the seventies I couldn’t resist requesting it, but got a shock when I saw the size of it.  Fortunately it is a good read and the pages just flew by.  Here is what I said about it:

I would normally run a mile from a political history book, especially one that is nearly 600 pages long, but I thoroughly enjoyed this book, which is perhaps not so much a history as the biography of a decade.

Being born in 1962 I was not really aware of the massively important things going on in the early 70s so this book has belatedly explained to me what was behind all those headlnes about three-day weeks, the IMF, and miners’ strikes in a way that is easy to follow.

The book took five years to write and draws upon news reports, diary entries written at the time, books and other reference sources, but also on modern interviews with many of the important figures of the time.  In some cases, they may have been the last interviews given before they died.

All the obvious topics are covered: Grunwick, the elections, Heath, Wilson, Callaghan and Thatcher, and so on, but there were some surprises along the way: things that I was too young to have heard about at the time, and yet not famous enough for me to have come across since, like the government-sponsored free music festival at Watchfield in 1974.  Even now it seems hard to believe that a hippy festival was supported by the government.

Seventies nostalgia is enjoying a bit of a vogue recently, with Life on Mars and Red Riding making a good effort at depicting life back then.  This book makes an ideal companion to such TV shows.

With hindsight, the seventies was when Britain changed from its post-war attitudes to the more modern attitudes in a number of ways – in race relations, gay rights, women’s rights – making it an important time in our history and Andy Beckett does a great job of cramming so much into 600 pages.

I really hope that he is currently busy doing five years’ research into a follow-up about the 1980s.

By coincidence,  the book has already proved its worth to me.  I was chatting to some Labour party colleagues during the election campaign and one of them asked me “what was that really big strike in the seventies that went on for ages?”   I suggested that they may be talking about Grunwick and was then asked what was it bout and what did Grunwick produce…  having just finished the chapter on that I was able to give an almost encyclopedic answer 🙂

It is a fascinating book though.  I can remember hearing about the three-day week as a kid and wondering what all the fuss was about.  I would have loved only going to school for three days and couldn’t see why grown-ups were upset about only going to work for three days.  Since then I have, of course, learned better.

Amongst other things, I was amazed to find out that we nearly had a Falklands war in 1977!  At that time the British heard that Argentina might invade the islands and so Callaghan sent some ships down there to support HMS Endurance and it all fizzled out.  With the benefit of hindsight it is ironic to see how little benefit he personally derived from those actions compared to the the massive boost Thatcher got in 1982 by not taking decisive preventatitve action…

Apart from that, there is very little concerning foreign policy or events elsewhere in the world during the time, except for the events surrounding the Common Market.  US presidents, Vietnam, the cold war and other matters are hardly touched on – but then this book does specifically define itself as about Britain in the 70s, and succeeds because it keeps focused on that.  Perhaps some more about British culture in the decade would have been interesting too, but on relection I think that diversions into punk rock, Bay City Rollers, the rise of ITV and all the rest would only have spoiled the narrative on current affairs, and such matters have been amply covered elsewhere.