Seagull over Canaryland
Well-known member
The '70s saw the start of a lot of the social and economic re-engineering that was largely a legacy of WWII which left the country almost bankrupt and most major industries were worn out, lacking investment and were hugely inefficient and producing uncompetitive products. OK we were on the 'winning' side in WWII but the irony is that the Germans and Japanese embraced the economic opportunities they were given and 'won' the peace.
It is one reason why we were unable to resist being drawn into the EEC. The UK received bailouts from the IMF on top of debts we were still paying to the US. It was unsustainable.
A big problem in the '70s was hugely overstaffed industries held back by powerful unions who regularly exercised their rights for disruption and all out strikes. It also coincided with fuel crises and 3 day weeks. The Labour govt under Callaghan was unable to tear itself away from the malaise and gifted the Tories the chance to let Mrs T wield the knife which she did with relish, well into the '80s. Sadly if she didn't do it then someone else would have to or the country would have finished imploding as we were heading for a Greek style meltdown, if not worse. But for North Sea oil and gas we probably would have sunk.
As a union member and official I had a very left wing outlook for a good part of my early working life but as a student of economics before that I could also see the need for change on a huge scale and that some pain was inevitable. I don't share the lefties demonising of Mrs. T. in her early years as PM, which frequently chooses to overlook what a mess Callaghan and the unions had made and were so inexorably linked that any meaningful progression under a Labour govt was impossible. It makes me smile to see Ed Milliband harking back to those days, albeit his vision is a shadow of what existed then.
It is one reason why we were unable to resist being drawn into the EEC. The UK received bailouts from the IMF on top of debts we were still paying to the US. It was unsustainable.
A big problem in the '70s was hugely overstaffed industries held back by powerful unions who regularly exercised their rights for disruption and all out strikes. It also coincided with fuel crises and 3 day weeks. The Labour govt under Callaghan was unable to tear itself away from the malaise and gifted the Tories the chance to let Mrs T wield the knife which she did with relish, well into the '80s. Sadly if she didn't do it then someone else would have to or the country would have finished imploding as we were heading for a Greek style meltdown, if not worse. But for North Sea oil and gas we probably would have sunk.
As a union member and official I had a very left wing outlook for a good part of my early working life but as a student of economics before that I could also see the need for change on a huge scale and that some pain was inevitable. I don't share the lefties demonising of Mrs. T. in her early years as PM, which frequently chooses to overlook what a mess Callaghan and the unions had made and were so inexorably linked that any meaningful progression under a Labour govt was impossible. It makes me smile to see Ed Milliband harking back to those days, albeit his vision is a shadow of what existed then.