Winter of Discontent - Labour Party - Denis Healey - 1979
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- Опубліковано 14 тра 2017
- For TV EYE, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Denis Healey takes the unusual step of confronting three trade union leaders opposed to the 57, policy which has lead to this winter’s industrial crisis ... Moss Evans, General Secretary of the T. & G.W.U. , David Basnett, General Secretary of the General and Municipal Workers’ Union, and Terry Duffy, president of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers.
The Chairman is Liew Gardner.
First shown: 18/01/1979
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Quote VT: 20673
Ahhh the time before provocative journalism where you could actually have a discussion and learn something from it.
Absolutely!!! The lack of knowledge on this subject of British people is astonishing .
@@muk8804 The UK public are thick as mince these days; Twitter has conditioned them to only seek soundbites and empowers those who can't deal with long conversations.
@@123WelshDan321 Eh?
@@MrGoneTroppo U wot
Fascinating time capsule of the late 70's. Intelligent discussion with no interruptions and dramas. Wish people were as calm and measured today on discussion shows of this nature. Where did it all go wrong?!?!
Healey’s eyebrows were on loan from Leonid Brezhnev.
Lenny was NOT gonna be needing them much longer anyway.
When God was handing out sets of eyebrows, Brezhnev got in line twice.
They shared the same politics as well.
@@dellawrence4323 Well to be fair Healey was on the right of the party and did a lot to stop the Bennites nationalising everything that wasn't nailed down and declaring a Peoples Republic.
@@ian_b well, in fact Brezhnev was also on the right of his party.
This is a fascinating historical document. Like talking to people before a flood.
Wow! What a calmly held debate everyone speaks his point without any spite, speaks with respect and everyone respectful listens and interjects without any malice and answers each point objectively. Maybe Question Time and the other programmes take notice.
Thought the same thing myself when I watched Enoch Powell and Michael Foot debating each other on a UA-cam video. The civility, good humour and eloquence with which two such diametrically opposed personalities engaged each other was startling. Fast forward 50 years and Johnson and Starmer are jabbing fingers, shouting slogans and point scoring, even though they're second hand car salesmen in the same shoddy showroom.
QT is unwatchable now. It’s nothing more than ‘clap for a lie ‘ and ‘clap for expressing a virtue signal on this months current trend .
@@Mizzkan (clap for expressing a virtue signal on this months current trend) Month? Make that a week. And then only mon-fri. Weekend, football is the only topic.
Absolutely
Everything is so basically childish and elementary these days
It's toytown playtime comparatively
2:50 Healey demonstrating how someone was simultaneously told to 'shut the fuck up' and 'know your place' in 1979.
Many people said Denis Healey was the best Prime Minister Britain never had.
He was a Champagne socialist… The party & the people paid for his flash house & swimming pool…. Tony Benn had more intelligence & integrity in this little finger than Dennis had in his entire body…
I don't often look up Dennis Healey on the internet, but when I do eye browse.
I remember Norman Lamont with badger eyebrows!
sc(hairy)... 😲
How did I end up here? I just watched some bits from Are you being served, and then this came up 😂
Although i was a kid at the time i still have vivid memories of the time when going to the shops with my mum and hearing women talking about how much the price of an item had gone up by 5p since the day before. I lived opposite a bakery and remember queues of women along the road when bread was scarce after the Bakers Union went out. I remember the Bin mens strike.The black outs
I remember my dad putting stickers by light switches that reminded us to "Switch it Off" Looking back now it's hard to believe how much we have now.
I remember those days as well. Because my father worked for a large bakery and had to go on strike. He didn't want to, but probably benefited from it after. He would take me with him while out looking for work in smaller shops. Not to mention the black-outs of the mid '70s. AND...the infamous ITV strike which last 3 months! :-0
And these strikes "the winter of discontent '',God send to The Tories.I & 1,000s as a commuters were so fed up with endless strikes.The Unions & strikers drove the workers,middle class working people,teachers,nurses,
firemen,public services etc all voting for Tories & Maggie...Once the Tories in power all unions workers behave differently. Certainly No Strikes. The miners A Scargill without his members even united took on The Tories & lost.Today sad Unions are things of the past. It's zero hours contract & working class by a large majority voted for Boris & Tories. Even my favourite Dennis Skinner lost.
Dennis Healey outstanding personality,giant of an intellect.
Repeat it's the Unions that drove the voters into the arms of Maggie Thatcher. And today Dagenham Luton Midland all gone.Council Houses gone,BT gone Railways gone Water gone .All in the privatised. I as pensioner feel sorry for the youngsters of today.
Today how Jeremy Corbyn treated by BBC & Billionaire Barons Media disgraceful with Stephen Pollard of Jewish Chronicle gloating over the media coverage of 2019 Elections. Unions gone, Labour Party gone, Industries gone,
Council Housing gone.Labour Voters gone...workers of the world voting for Tories.
@@agfagaevart Try again. The winter of discontent was 1978-9. Thatcher was elected in March 79. The ITV dispute was from 10th Aug - 24th Oct 79. I was there at the time, it had nothing to do with the winter of discontent.
Thatcher was already in power, I had briefings from our officials, the ACTT was a union with close contacts within the TUC, Labour and the Tories. All sources, as well as ITV management were telling the same story. This lot (Thatcher's thugs) were different, they were bent on taking the Unions apart no matter what, and the only choice was to go for as much as possible in money (forget conditions), which would increase the payouts in the redundancies to come. We knew that from May. Our own management were telling us about the threats from the Home Secretary if they failed to "take a strong stand". Everybody knew what was coming, Thames TV management wanted to be seen as the tough guys, and provoked a walkout a week early. That did them no good, "Death on the Rock" saw to them.
The Tory plans to destroy the Unions had nothing to do with the 78-9 winter either. They were begun in 1975, after Heath's "humiliation" at the hands of the NUM, and the "who governs Britain" General Election, when Heath narrowly lost to Wilson. I've forgotten the name of the Committee at Tory HQ, but the Chairman of P&O, Lord Sterling was the Chairman, Keith Joseph was a founder member.
@@azadrasheed497 It's an existential threat of self-destruction that's been growing for years and it's almost completely taken over the majority group think in the UK. Yes, Thatcher lit the flame and Major/Blair filled the voids, the problem with the modern day Tories is that they are extreme pragmatists, they will invent referendums to stay in power, they will turn populist to stay in power and they will add elements of green economics and socialist economics, to stay in power and they get away with it all day long.
@@nicktecky55 1922 Committee maybe
there were TV walkouts circa 1970 ish as well - a lot of programs were broadcast in black and white by management who could not operate the colour TV equipment
its funny but the 1979 TV strike often seems to get swept into the binmen and gravediggers and water disputes ... dunno why - propaganda reasons maybe
Healey was a class act. He fought (properly) in WW2, and was the Allied Beach Master at Anzio. In this debate he can see a mile off what's coming, and more specifically how the unions will be the architects of their own demise. By the early eighties, they were among the most unpopular institutions in Britain.
Healey himself in his autobiography, said he was wrong in the agreement with the unions to keep wage increases at 5%.
His colleagues thought him a know it all and a bully
Humbling to hear how articulate and thoughtful the discussion is. Shocking how dumbed down discussion has become across the whole political spectrum. The other great shocker is that trade union leaders speak as movers and shakers of significant power. Who even knows who the union leaders are nowadays.They squandered their power and lost it.
We really are hopelessly dumbed down. I remember the early-mid 90s where even chavs and street criminals swore less and were more articulate and polite than most folk today. People had more common sense, better ability to think critically and retain information, everyone was generally just that bit smarter all round.
People know Len McCluskey and the lady union leader of the TUC.Frances
its the social media that has killed the world
Trade unions, particularly the industrial ones, failed to understand the fundamental role that technology would play in the long run, clinging onto what power they had gained in the post-war years, but sticking to historical or identity-based opposition to bosses and the government alike.
They should have been more forward-looking, and negotiate for the conversion and re-training that would be needed as the competence of cheaper labour in other parts of the world began to catch up with their own.
They dragged their own members to the slaughter, WWI generals style; fighting with Napoleonic or Crimean tactics in a modern war.
Life in itself is a constant learning curve, the labour market and the economy as well; and their demise also meant that working class people lost their only real access to political education, because their own representatives were not learning fast enough.
The way the Fleet Street print unions got "dinosaured" by Eddie Shah and Wapping's computerised printing facilities is about as blatant as it gets, when it comes to highly-skilled typesetters and other craftsmen becoming obsolete overnight.
People should generally stop equating technology with progress, as they fail time and time again to ask themselves WHO are developing said technologies, and to what ultimate ends.
This applies even more today, as technologies keep on evolving and putting sectors of the job market at risk...
Working people have no power today. No one says a dickie bird when the bankers blow up the economy and pass the costs to everyone else. Thatcher didn't need to utterly destroy the trade union movement like she did but she was Finchley woman wasn't she, thought her sort should have total control
By this stage , British voters were "fed up" with the unions after major nationwide disruptions in 1974 & 1979 and were looking forward to tossing Labour out of office ( for 18 years ) in 1979 . Mrs Thatcher's subsequent showdown with Arthur Scargill and the Miners' Union was a watershed in British politics - firmly establishing that trade unions can only act within the law . In 37 years , no government has tried to revisit this .
Yeah and Dennis Healey warned them in between the lines but maybe not strong enough. He did point out that the extremes practices disenfranchised the people in the country. He wasn't wrong, but they would or couldn't push the unions further back. Maybe if they had, the 1979 election would be a stalemate. Conservative majority wasn't that great.
The unions were fighting their corner after the huge injection of inflation from the 1973 oil crisis. It's funny how ordinary people turn on the unions but never say a dickie bird about the money men who hold entire nations to ransom
There were issues with strikes but what Thatcher did was wanton destruction. Now British people are absolutely powerless
Llew Gardner….such a professional journalist. 👏👏👏👏👏👏
"Even greater danger for the trade unions" prophetic Mr. Healy.
Healy was a Thatcherite before Thatcher
The quality of debate and the calibre of politician and trade union leader is so superior to the shithouses of today. In fact this debate would never happen today. Credit to the chancellor and the leaders for having the stature to do it.
Everyone is Soooooo calm and posh. Not the hysterical donkeys we get now.
It changed under Blair
Llew Gardner’s first question and then him having to repeat it to Mr. Evans “Can you control your members?” reminds me of Paxman’s interview with Michael Howard where he repeatedly asked “Did you threaten to overrule him?” In both cases, the political figure quibbled with the wordplay. It’s clear to everyone that Michael Howard did in fact threaten to overrule Derek Lewis and that Evans could not stop his union members from picketing and preventing deliveries heating supplies and food during the Winter of Discontent.
I don’t agree with a lot of his politics but Healey was a class act. Smart and well versed. He was Chancellor at a no win time.
It is chilling to see how the trade unions played right into the hands of the Conservatives. Day by day, they made things increasingly difficult for the Labour government while Thatcher waited in the wings. What were they thinking?
Money - that was all that was on their mind. Remember unions don't just care about their members, they care about their members pay packet, the more their members earn, the more their members contribute to the unions - self serving, and they knew it. They knew the Tories would be elected, and so it was a last stand to get as much as they could before Mrs Thatcher got in.
The unions stitched themselves up, and they stitched up future generations by creating the conditions which enabled Thatcher to swoop in and take power.
The Labour government was implementing a pay cut of 5% the time...what did you want them to do?
@@kailashpatel1706 What they did do which was pi55 off non-union
people and thus get destroyed soon after. Good riddance.
@@dny9394 good riddance?..you like to be treated like an animal at work?..
2022 We Going back there...
I remember the last years of the 1970s very well. It was a truly awful time. Chaos & financial bedlam. People forget this.
I don't and I was 3 when what happened during the winter of 78. Can remember HOW smelly the streets was from the rubbish not being collected
I don't and I was 3 when what happened during the winter of 78. Can remember HOW smelly the streets was from the rubbish not being collected
No change now then......
How can people forget it? The Tories still bring it up every chance they can
@@mcnulty70 I know it just goes to show how badthe country was when the TUC was running the country. We would have a return to that under Corbyn.
Expect a debate like this in 2021
The unions put Thatcher in power
--Mr. Evans, can you control your members?
--Not to dodge the question, but "control" is an emotive term.
--Yes, but can you control your members' actions?
--I think there are many "actions" that members can take, so although I don't want to dodge the question, I'm not sure that everything can be controlled.
--I don't think I understand if you think you can control your members' actions with these strikes.
--You see, Webster's defines "control" as...
Denis was worried about a future backlash and tried to say it twice - it didn't even register with the presenter and union leader.
Two of those in charge couldn't look beyond that week.
Yep, Denis got a double first at Oxford and it shows. Shame we live in an era where to be smart is seen as being privileged.
Yet I was 6 months old so won't remember
And they got Thatcher
7:35 'Well without dodging the question I couldn't give you a specific answer to a hypothetical situation'. You have to have a long apprenticeship to acheive that kind of bollocks.
In those days there seemed to be a great deal of light in discussion as opposed to heat. Yes I know the history of industrial unrest in the sixties and seventies. These days there seems to be all heat and no light.
Moss Evans was a very poor successor to Jack Jones, a very weak leader of a huge union doing a job that was too big for him. Denis Healey was particularly disparaging of him and his role in the WoD in his autobiography.
Jack Jones the traitor, hypocrite and commie stooge
wow you dont see eye browes like that anymore !! 2.07 what was he doing growing it to become a comb over ?
Dennis Healey's eyebrows were a trademark, much like Ken Dodd's teeth. They were part of his persona. Trimming them would have been as shocking as if Donald Trump were to show up with a crew cut. Well, maybe not quite that shocking :-)
(1;00): Looks like the guy ("Chancellor Healey") had a SQUIRREL hanging over his right eye. Evidently it was just the camera angle---when he turned even slightly it smoothed out---but, GEEZ!
Wow this is the Labour party they actualy sound very acceptable and I ve been a tory for very long.
@Alan O Brien
To an extent at least their programs allow survival but not liberty.
@George JobI don t get what you mean and I am not old quite the opposite.
Yes it was different but we didn't see the truth that's a TV chat
Thinking about it, the Winter of Discontent - was just business as usual in France.
That's when British workers had the same balls as French workers, didn't worry what the media and establishment thought, or even public opinion.
And just like in France, things always return to normal, the end of civilization as we know it never happens
but the difference is - the workers are better off for their militancy.
Yeah and that got them Thatcher elected and she crushed them out of existence, so it didn’t really work out.
@@tsunchoo And that's the difference between French workers and British workers. No way could a Margaret Thatcher exist in France.
They just have more balls, are less browbeaten. And that's why British workers are now working really long hours for peanuts.and are retiring at 67.
The unions in Britain are too subservient, too worried about public opinion. And they still have enormous power even after Thatcher, but the unions never stick together. Allow themselves to be picked off one at a time. The unions still have the ability to shut down the country if need be.
But the Tories become victims of their own success, which is why Britain has a shortage of lorry drivers, nurses, and other key workers. Why China makes all our steel, all our textiles etc etc. And ultimately the country loses, Thatcher's victory is a net loss for British productivity, which falls well behind France.. In twenty years Britain will be a colony of China.
This reminds me of the film i'm all right jack.Mr Evans is surely Peter Sellers?
Some similar things happing now in 2022
Note how articulate, and coherent they are in argument. This is the old despised elite, who were well educated, and our lamentable educational system (in my opinion) is the root cause of the poor performance of many (not all) of today's MPs. When interviewed some MPs appear unable to explain themselves or the issues on which they are being questioned.
Does anyone know what happened to Liew Gardner would like to know please
I was asking the same thing in other videos. There is nothing about him on the internet. very strange.
Wow, had never realised it was that bad in the 70s, and that we were that far down the Road To Serfdom pre Maggie Thatcher.
worse in the 80s. unemployment was at it's peak and thatcher ruled like a dictator
@@tomgibson6801, yes, I can imagine it was as the wealth creation benefits of free market liberalism hadn't yet arrived, and at the same time the gravy tap had been turned off.
@@footube3 the benefits of free market liberalism never arrived. keynesian economics and a mixed economy wasn't perfect but a lot better than what we have now.
@@footube3 Things actually got worse under the Tories; Unemployment at over 3 million, more than it was under Labour. Useless YTS for youngsters - Just plain exploitation! High interest rates at 15 - 16% after Maggie & Co. sold off the housing stock. So some of those new homeowners had lost their properties by the mid '80s. Selling off the Crown Jewels of Gas / Water /Electricity wasn't a good idea either. It brought in quick cash for the government, but long term...Not good. Which other country has done this? France, who owns our old lecky supplier the LEB. And look at the riots going on over there under Monsieur Macron, a poor Thatcher clone if ever there was one.
@@tomgibson6801 not much choice under the TUC ruled Labour party of which Callaghan couldn't control. Thatcher had to rule hard to sort the c***s out & that she did!
Well, Denis Healy was right about that.....
F*ck me, now THAT is an Austerity studio set. Things must have been really bleak back then.
Brown Jenkin Lol! It certainly is a bit spartan...more like minimalist tendency than militant tendency!
The "TV Eye" studio at Thames Television was always sparse, as the programme focused on the issues being discussed, rather than presentation. The producers wanted it to be about the discussion and debate, and not be distracted with backdrops, as we have now. In 2019 this interview would have been done in a virtual green screen studio no doubt.
TBH I prefer it to these days. Is there any need for Newsnight to have such a brightly-lit set?
Yes isn't it grim in the 70s?
@@johnking5174 The BBC was grim too
Fascinating insight into the failed British corporatist state....thank goodness they were all swept away.
To be replaced by short term monetarist policies under thatcher. Not a great alternative. A busted flush by 1987.
@@gjsykes7924
I love your sense of humour !
1979 and 2020 I now pronounce you husband and wife
2021
Weren't things wonderful before Mrs T. came along?
Well, that is what they have spoon-feeding a generation that year 0 and the downward slope started with Thatcher. If you can remember before Thatcher you remember how god awful it was- rising unemployment, inflation at 15%, strikes by everybody ..even the doctors went on strike in some hospitals causing wards to be shut. ITV was off the air for 3 months due to a strike.The unions had taken over the country and the USSR was getting ready....Healey was a good man but the loony left wanted him out the way.
@@Witheredgoogie Yes, nearly all Thatcher's reforms were a necessary corrective.
@@Witheredgoogie All that stuff STILL HAPPENED under Thatcher's rule; Remember the TVAM strike, circa 1984? Unemployment over 3 million? Some short memories around here!
The tragedy of the Thatcher years was that she got rid of some problems, created some of her own, and did nothing which made any material difference to the problems Britain has had for well over a century.
Bodies unburied, garbage 20 feet high in the streets, violence
and riots everywhere...Yeah, let the good times roll.! You serious??
0:50 well this is relevant again
Yes it is. That's why I'm looking because Labour left the bins not emptied in Brighton ..
The TU leaders got Thatcher
Healey accepting that the Unions were provoking a backlash.
Back in the days when the unions were really important. I guess it will never be like that again.
Thank God. The Unions, with political intent, almost destroyed the UK in the 70s. They certainly destroyed Labour’s chances in the 1979 General Election with the Winter of Discontent.
@@yorkiephil7744 A complete different attitude in America, where thankfully the country was never held to ransom by unions. I can not imagine how in the seventies, power outages by striking unions affecting US cities and towns would ever be tolerated - there would be mutiny.
Unions these days are absolutely toothless, basically taking whatever management give them and sending out absolute rambles to their members "justifying" the fact that the union have rolled over on some key issue like a cat on a hot afternoon. The older boomer management also spend their time whipping and cajoling younger members into voting for things that solely benefit the old farts.
Unions are causing strikes with bin men in Brighton now with filthy streets. Watching SE Today a sickening sigbt
amazing not one of them said 'bollocks'....what were they thinking of...
Lol
Basnett held the government's feet to the fire after Callaghan made him look a proper mug at the TUC conference the autumn before. His 'waiting at the church' schtick did not go down well at all.
Yes dinosaurs lasted a long time, but they were extinct thanks to Mrs Thatcher
They just don't do stuff like this anymore.
Prophetic from 09:27
9:48 : They should've listened.
Dennis Healey’s delivery was painful.
Thatcher-haters should be forced to watch these videos covering Labour’s miserable excuses at the end of the 70s. For all their hate of what she did they forget that Labour had absolutely no clue what it was doing and that the unions ran the damn country.
Yet look at what 40 years of her economic ways has done look at us now
2019 and Where Back huh.
"the 57, policy" = "the 5% policy"
My Rocking Horse Died in 1978.
I was born
Piers Morgan could learn some lessons in interviewing from watching this presenter.
To be honest, Piers could watch a Blue Peter presenter and learn how to conduct an interview properly. Piers likes the sound of his own voice, and if you are not in line with what he thinks, then he tramples over you - remember is was an editor of The Sun and The Mirror newspapers, so he understands the term "contempt".
I was thinking just that very thing 20 seconds before I read your comment, John Bull.
And Paxman (thankfully now retired) and Maitlis.
@@Denis-tg6jw Newsnight is now really dire, totally unwatchable. Remember the Peter Snow era?
Brothers! I have the beer he's got the sandwiches and he's got the pencil, what have you got Healey?
Brilliant!
AAAhhhh this makes me wish politicians and Journalism were of this caliber.
Then again the winter of Discontent does not sound like a good year.
This format of important people around a table talking with no audience needs to return.
Self-important. The unions got destroyed eventually and good
riddance. Bodies unburied, garbage piled 20 feet in the streets,
riots and violence everywhere. I lived it, seems you didn't.
Always asking if unions and their members will follow rules. They have to follow the law or they get arrested. Totally ignoring the government and security services breaking their own laws and operating outside it. Indeed, changing laws to suit themselves.
If we ever thought Unions should have any influence on government, this programme should remind us otherwise. Unions are not voted into power by the public so should restrict their comments/views on representing their members only. In the 70/80's they almost seemed to have been in government which is crazy! Most seemed self serving with big cars, expense accounts and large conference centres. When have they ever got out onto the streets to be with/walk alongside the membership!
Unions represent their members. Democracy is more than who you vote for (Hitler came for the unions as well).
Jake Nicholls Unions needed to be smashed in & rebuilt. They did that even after the war in Germany & it worked. Militants have no place in German industries & shouldn’t have a place in British industries.
Militants aren't fair neither are bad bosses. A decent company is a T E A M
Oh the terrible 70's again , jobs for life , collective bargaining for workers , pensions , holiday pay , council houses, unions insuring employees didn't take the piss and treated you right , unified country occupied by true British people ,living wage , industries nationalized so British people got the Benefits and not foreign global corporations , and a country all in all to be proud off ,most people would swap the awful situation they got now for those conditions don't you think ??
One word mate. Yes.
Paul Adams unions ensuring employees didn’t take the piss and treated you right? How about Militant, bolshy-Trade Union mouthpieces taking the bloody piss out of their employers, by going on strike for the stupidest of things, like Derek Robinson? Not doing their jobs properly on occasions & trying to cause class warfare, etc. Electing communist bastards like Robinson as their conveyers, etc.So yes whilst you said there were good parts of the 70s, that was the bad parts of the 70s. Even Jim Callaghan, wanted to curb the militants like the Tories did. British Rail running crap services in the Home County lines, etc, worse than today’s-work to rule policy. Neither the left or the right, wanted to work together on things, which is what the Germans did & instead of which, they still blame each other like little kids.
MarineAqua45." British Rail running crap services". Well thank fuck we don't have to put up with that anymore, thanks to the miracle of privatisation.
Manfred Williams Both tenures were crap. In BRs day, it was a combination of laziness, incompetence, etc. Also I never said that privatisation was better than BR, but BR was crap in some areas.
Miracle? You obviously don't commute to London regularly, the price hikes are well above wage rises.
8:20 Get your accent right, boyo!
Denis healey wasn't a bad man. He was more the moderate wing of the labour party. It was the unions and other far left members of the labour party that were responsible for the chaos in the winter of discontent. Rubbish not collected, bodies went unburied and we were called the sick man of europe. Praise the good Lord that Thatcher came along to save us all.
if i was the interviewer my first question would definitely have been - mr. chancellor, what the fuck are your eyebrows?
Govt here was being calm for more than a political stunt. Re the first question to Healey. - A Labour govt supposed to be pro-union through the Social Contract policy, but both sides had blown that, unions by a competition of inflationary militant pay claims + govt by resorting to monetarism. So Callaghan couldn't finally align himself as the unions' adversary by a state of emergency, he had to keep trying to be on their side or this govt's whole defimition of itself had failed, as well as after Heath's fate knowing that it would increase the damagingness of a defeat by the unions. During their rise the unions had clained class oppression against a Labour state of emergency in 1966 over a dock strike.
Thatcher ironically felt the same as Healey during the 1984-5 miners' strike, Heath's fate made govts fear using states of emergency against strikes because it would worsen a defeat, which was a serious possibility. Then after Thatcher had broken the strike power by that victory, the situation ceased to arise. The Civil Contingencies Act used 1920-74 for states of emergency renewable every 30 days, 5 times by Heath, was never been used again after his fall was the outcome of his 4 month long state of emergency for the 3 Day Week in 1973-4. But even long before our present state of emergency for Covid-19, I have been angry at the wrong history and propaganda spin, of the claim still made by some media and Wikipedia, that we have never had a national scale state of emergency again since Heath.
We went 26 years without one. But we are now in our third, only the route of law for it has changed.
Already before Healey here and the 1979 crisis, the political elite had decided on this shift + to spread emergency powers into other laws, so that they could be spun as need-specific actions hence as different to a nationally combative action. The Energy Act 1976 provided for states of emergency concerning fuel + energy supply, to be proclained by the Queen exactly like the Civil Contingencies ones, and we had one in 2000 over the fuel blockades crisis.
Then our last 2 have been by their own Acts of Parlt, passed specific to the situation, and no need for Queen ceremonials as she routinely signs every Act. This is a return to how it was up to the ninettenth century, with only constitutional values the constraint in each case, and loss of the 30-day review term The one of 2001-5 after 911 was open-ended and our longest state of emergency in democratic history besides the 2 world wars, it lasted 3 1/2 years! By a Labour govt, too. Our present one has got review time limit checks built in in exchange for its intensity, with Labour a good effective opposition in getting the limit down to 6 months instead of the 2 years dodgily first proposed.
Basically, the winter of discontent was when Labour's shift to right-wing politics almost ruined a country and costed their own power for almost two decades till the onset of New Labour.
Just get immigrants to do the work
There were basically 2 things, in the world of work, that were stubbornly wrong in the 70's. One: The unions didn't really understand industry and commerce and had too much leaning towards a perceived but unobtainable Marxist Utopia. 2: Management practice was autocratic, Dickension and completely out of touch. Both sides regarded modernisation of thought and practice as an anathema and to be avoided at all costs and compromise was regarded as "surrender" by both sides. Meanwhile, British manufacturing Industries slowly disintegrated and failed to recognise an ever increasing and far more competitive (in those days) Japanese manufactured product which was usually more reliable, better made and cheaper than anything Britain could produce other than really high end products like Rolls Royce and similar. For everyday items, electrical, electronic, family cars and motorcycles, Japan scored heavily against British manufactured goods. Companies tried amalgamating but many more folded. This caused lay offs and redundacies and increasing unemployment figures and STILL the majority of unions and the management didn't get it. Too heavily entrenched in their respective positions British industry, with a couple of exceptions, effectively committed suicide leaving the financial services market to try and pick up the pieces. However, by this time, Britain had more or less lost most of its aviation industry, car industry, motorcycle industry, train building industry. Much of its electronics industries and the list goes on. So much lost because management and unions wouldn't modernise in thought and practice, trying to make efforts in working together. The old adage that says "A country is built on what it manufactures" is now grossly out of date. But its perhaps worth remembering that if there was another financial markets "Great Depression" 1930's style (and its come close on a couple of occasions). There would be no manufacturing base of any size to help pull us out of the mire. It would take longer and be much more expensive to come out the other side.
The 70's were an economic joke and a social train wreck with chronic inflation, mass unemployment, 3 day weeks, fuel rationing, strikes and violent protests. Skinheads, racism, bigotry and hate. An adversarial time and a true "Dark Ages' episode. Even fashion was highly dubious and very questionable. (tank tops, Oxford bags, shirts with collars that you could make another shirt out of and platform shoes. C'mon, please. How to make a complete idiot if yourself at great expense. Not forgetting, of course, the Brut or Tabac aftershave. Not terribly sophisticated was it?).
Possibly, the only "industry" that did well was the music industry. Although there was a lot of rubbish in the singles charts, there was good stuff to be found in the albums charts. The one saving grace of the 70's (perhaps. Or not. Depending on your age at the time).
Compare this to the appalling, self-serving, childish, pointlessly contrarian wastes of space we are electing today. Compare, contrast, weep.
Back to the future, soaring prices 1979. November 2022 we can't afford to heat our homes.
If only we had Denis Healey in 10 Downing Street instead of a plutocrat with three London homes.
Fools.
Wow. Can’t argue with that rhetoric.
OMG how old and grey that looks. Thatcher came in everything changed and modernised
Even his eyebrows were inflated.
Pitiful. The bolsheviks and the Mensheviks.
Thank god for Thatcher…What a Militant , Socialist shit-hole we lived in…the most depressing time in British history.
Remember This....Revoke Article ..50
Communism in waiting. Then the public voted Thatcher.