In the course of his troubled presidency, Richard Nixon spoke 14 times to the American people about the war in Vietnam. It was in one of those speeches that he coined the phrase “the silent majority”, while others provoked horror …
Will the people blame the strikers?
There is nothing like extreme weather to snap a crisis into focus. During the icy winter of 1978-79, the government’s attempts to tackle inflation, and the ensuing wave of pay strikes, all played out amid snowdrifts, burst pipes and icebound …
The creative power of blackout Britain
Women shiver at their desks, wrapped in quilts. A pub is lit, just about, by candles — not because it’s Valentine’s night, but because the lights don’t work. Actors at London’s Royal Court Theatre, decide that the show must go …
Starmer can’t afford to be Blair
It was one of the hottest summers recorded in British history. Living standards were under intense pressure from an energy crisis and rising inflation. Industrial relations across the country were breaking down. At a factory in north London, working conditions …
Weston-super-Mare made me a writer
On the morning of my 63rd birthday this month, I posted a quote by Kingsley Amis: “No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home at Weston-super-Mare.” Looking back at my long, …
Escaping the Seventies class war
It happened in Teignmouth. Drizzly Devon on a summer’s day in the early Seventies. We’d come back to the coach park early, Mum and me, having explored the town. In a shack at the gate was a man selling Mars …
The nightmare haunting the Tories
In a vast, bleak industrial hangar, endless coffins are laid out, as far as the eye can see. So begins a scene in Dennis Kelly’s conspiracy drama, Utopia, set amid the turmoil of the Winter of Discontent. In February 1979, …
This is not a class war
Headlines scream about a looming “class war“; reports warn of an inevitable “summer of discontent”. Britain’s newspapers are trying their hardest to evoke the chaos of the winter of 1978-79, which, in the neoliberal fairy-tale version of history, marked the …
The boomers destroyed the Tories
Boris Johnson stands over your hospital bed, mask and medical gown on, forceps at hand, shining a lamp brightly down on your face. There had better be a good reason you’re undergoing this surgery. Pain must have a purpose.
Think …
How the elites exploit inflation
I can’t help but feel a sense of déjà vu at the current debate about global inflation. The similarities between today’s spiralling situation and the inflationary crisis of the Seventies are too striking to be ignored.
Nearly 50 years ago, …
