At the least, a very seventies dread has seeped back into how people in Britain and other rich countries see the world. Economic crises, floods, food shortages, terrorism, the destruction of the environment: these spectres, so looming in the seventies, did not go away during the eighties and nineties; yet they faded – they were often quite easy to forget about. Now that they have returned to haunt newspaper front pages almost daily, it is possible to wonder how many of Britain’s seventies problems were ever really solved.

These days Britons no longer mourn their empire. They are more comfortably European. They are more relaxed about race, sexuality and gender. Their government is no longer fighting a war in Ulster. The British population is rising rather than falling. The feel of national life is more feverish than entropic. The look of things is gaudy and skin-deep, rather than heavy, worn-out and grey.

In the conclusion, written in 2008, the author is thinking about the "return of the 70s". It's hard to read the 2nd paragraph, about the ways the end of the 00s was different to 70s, and not notice how all of these issues have been particularly prominent today, in 2022. With strikes a major national issue and the 70s being used again as a symbol of all that could go wrong, I thought it was a good time to educate myself a little more on what actually happened. The parallels were certainly striking in places and even more so the sense that indeed all the problems of the 70s were never solved, only deferred.

Overall the book was pretty enjoyable, with a ton of stuff I'd simply been completely unaware of and something new I highlighted most pages. He takes a very broad sweep view, trying to touch on lots of different strands so at times the obvious political and economic stuff is gone over quite quickly in parts. There's a particularly nice chapter focusing on the Gay Liberation Front and lots of stuff looking at least briefly at things like women's lib movement, the free festival movement, student occupations at unis, etc. In general I did feel I got a lot out of it in terms of getting a view of the "mood" of the 70s.

The broad sweep is obviously also an issue in that some parts get short shrift. For example, of the most notorious strikes of the period, only the Grunwick strike is covered pretty extensively (and it's an excellent section of the book). Both the NUM strike of 1972 - which along with the three day week of 1974 are the main two occasions when the lights did indeed go out - and the winter of discontent get surprisingly short shrift in terms of covering their causes, progression and how they won exactly. The NUM strike has a long section on the Battle of Saltley Gate, which was presumably very important symbolically but strikes me as more of a mythologised moment than something materially important. The winter of discontent gets an incredibly fascinating section focusing on the "occupation" of Hull by a committee of striking workers - something I'd absolutely not heard about before but I was astounded by. But the rest of union activity is blown through.

As the winter of discontent is probably the obvious thing I came in expecting a lot on I was somewhat disappointed by the briefness of the coverage. I was left with a lot of questions - how come so many different workforces - even non unionised ones - went on strike? How did the public actually see this and change their mind over the strikes? What was the government considering and why did they seemingly do nothing? Were their demands really excessive? How chaotic was the situation for most people? How did the TUC see it? What caused a sudden increase in militancy after years of calm? I felt like I didn't really get a better idea of what actually happened, which was frustrating. That doesn't mean the book was bad! Just if you're looking for a longer look on that you'll have to look elsewhere.

On a personal political level, parts of this were infuriating to read. Living in a year of massive oil price shocks and facing the climate crisis, reading the original plans for high density Milton Keynes served by efficient monorails with significant public provision seem an incredible what if. That we instead got a suburban car centric hell because the designers had visited Los Angeles and thought it looked impressive... It's almost unbelievable given they were living through an oil crisis themselves that they focused so much on cars! You read about right wing labour MPs secretly attending the meetings held by the right wing "free market" think tank the IEA and agreeing with them 100%
A 1970s senior economic advisor for labour says in a 2005 interview that the worst mistake the Callaghan government made was not having a firesale on council homes. The government GAVE AWAY rights to North sea oil and gas to companies and then were slow to tax the profits... And then pissed them down the drain anyway.

The most striking thing about the late 70s as talked about here to me was how even though the author seems left sympathetic he still seems to agree that the fact that the TUC was directly negotiating with the government to keep pay rise requests below inflation was bad merely because it was the unions having ideas above their station. Several government figures of the time mention how they felt humiliated, even though the TUC was sacrificing the interests of its workers at least to some extent to prop up the government and wider economy. And they were so mad about it that Callaghan announced that pay rises should be capped to 5% in a 1978 speech! Again far below rate of inflation. The attitude in government was that the TUC had got too big for their boots. And... We see how that worked out. The more militant individual unions broke ranks in the winter of discontent and sought the highest possible wage increases. This is also criticised as them being greedy! It's the typical anti union narrative, that them having any influence at all is too much, and coming from a labour government. When 65% or so of the workforce was unionised. It's an important corrective to some later ideas of labours role at the time. ( )

We all know the story of Britain in the 1970s. A decade of unrelenting doom and gloom, mindless strikes and economic disaster with Mrs Thatcher riding to the rescue in 1979. It’s a caricature of history but one that has been reiterated so many times that many accept it as fact. Andy Beckett’s political history challenges the myths and offers a more nuanced and complex account. Beckett interviewed most of the major political figures of the era who were still alive and travelled the country visiting many of the places where the battles of the seventies took place.

Beckett studied Modern History at Oxford University and Journalism at the University of California in Berkeley and his book is a skilful blend of history and journalism. He records his meetings with the politicos of the period and also the places he visits as he makes his pilgrimage around the Britain of the noughties in search of the foreign country that is the past.

When the Lights Went Out covers the main political events from the election of Edward Heath in 1970 to Margaret Thatcher’s victory in May 1979: the miners strikes, the Three-Day Week, Northern Ireland, Britain’s entry into the EEC, the IMF crisis, the Winter of Discontent. Having read a number of books on the subject, I thought I knew quite a lot about it, but Beckett’s book frequently took me by surprise.

The seventies was a time of conflict in Britain but also one of widespread consensus. Early in his premiership Heath made right wing noises but they were out of character and unconvincing. Both his party and Labour remained supporters of the post-war consensus of a mixed economy and extensive Welfare State. This began to change after Thatcher became leader of the opposition in 1975, but as Beckett’s account makes clear, the process of transforming the Conservatives into the party of the aggressive free market society and moral authoritarianism was a slow and uncertain one.

The chapters dealing with the events leading up to the downfall of the Callaghan Labour government are particularly fascinating and gripping. Beckett points out that monetarism began not with Thatcher but with the Labour Government in 1976 and by the late seventies the economic position of the country was steadily improving. The Conservative Party victory in 1979 was not inevitable but the result of a number of unpredictable factors, chief among them Callaghan’s decision not to call an election in October 1978 as had been widely anticipated and the subsequent and, in hindsight, spectacular own goal by the Trades Unions of The Winter of Discontent.

The Conservative Party manifesto at the 1979 election was untitled, short and vague, by no means a blueprint for the right wing transformation of society that eventually took place, and their victory itself less than overwhelming - the Conservatives won only 43.9 per cent of the vote and the Labour vote actually increased.

The reader is left with the strong impression that when Thatcher came to power she had a very clear idea of the economic and social changes she wanted to make but was not certain that she had sufficient electoral support to do so. Or, indeed, sufficient support within her own party - by the start of the eighties members of her own government were calling for a policy U-turn. Thatcherism as an ideology, and Margaret Thatcher’s longevity as Prime Minister, was only secured following Britain’s victory in the Falklands War in 1982, but this takes us beyond the timeframe set by Beckett’s book.

Beckett also demonstrates that the idealism of the sixties had not completely disappeared by the start of the seventies. In fact, a number of radical and progressive movements such as gay liberation, feminism and environmentalism, first entered mainstream consciousness in the 1970s.

Compulsively readable, When The Lights Went Out provides fresh insight into a period of British history we too readily assume we understand. ( )

Since the so-called boom in popular history books broke out in the late 1990s with titles such as Anthony Beevor's Stalingrad, consumers of quality narrative history have been spoilt with an array of books on modern history. Britain in particular has been treated to a distinguished array of titles by the likes of Peter Hennessy, David Kynaston, Alwyn Turner and Dominic Sandbrook. Andy Beckett's "When the Lights Went Out" is one of the earlier books written on the seventies, and charts dangerous territory for the unwary historian. Few decades inspire more division than the seventies, with their politically loaded legacy. Those on the right construct the currently dominant narrative of a decade of decline, with the final exposure of the economic and political bankruptcy of Keynesian-ism and the postwar consensus. The left pick holes in this narrative in the odd blog and partisan publication but don't enjoy the exposure of being the mainstream view.
Andy Beckett does provide a differing perspective from the mainstream and negotiates the events and interpretations adroitly. He doesn't attempt to nitpick and excuse the problems, but equally he provides understanding and a nuanced investigation of the background. Part of the reason for this success is the blend of historic narrative and long-form journalism. Although he is a trained academic historian, the inclusion of journalistic devices such as visiting the location of events, and especially his interviews with key figures give great depth and immediacy to his writing. Some purists no doubt will sneer at this approach but although the evidence of recollection three decades later must always be treated with caution it also offers valuable perspective. As an example the well written expose of the 'siege of Hull' is all the more powerful for memories such as that of unionist Fred Beach.
Beckett doesn't excuse the excesses of seventies unionism, nor the faults of leaders such as Ted Heath, Harold Wilson, Jack Jones and Arthur Scargill. However he also goes to considerable effort to understand their backgrounds and motivation. His extended quotation of Callaghan's maiden Labour Party conference speech as Prime Minister really cast his premiership in a new light for me and balanced the old clichés of the Winter of Discontent and "Crisis, What Crisis".
This well written book really offers a very insightful look at the seventies. It is mostly politically oriented. Beckett is a bit derogatory towards histories that claim to find insights in popular culture, and doesn't focus to any great extent on social history. I share his reservations about popular culture as a barometer for the state of society and as evidence of wider changes, although it certainly has its place in understanding the milieu of the time. ( )

I remember the 1970's in Britain from vacation trips when the country seemed dingy and dirty and nothing ever worked right. I remember getting lots of shopping bargains in 1976 when I was there when the pound collapsed, dressing for the theater by candlelight because of power cuts in 1977, and the piles of garbage almost everywhere during the "Winter of Discontent" in 1978. I also remember the election of Margaret Thatcher & how most of my husband's relatives, while thinking she was a singularly unlikeable woman, thought that, perhaps, her economic theories made sense because the unions were clearly out of control.

Of course things are never what they seem to be on the surface, or through the haze of memories almost 40 years old, so this book was fascinating to me. Impeccably researched (Andy Beckett seems to have interviewed every key player of the era who is still alive) and fairly unbiased in his reporting, the author tells a compelling story as Britain lurched from boom to bust in that unfortunate decade.

Anyone interested in the rise of Margaret Thatcher, the demise of the old Labor Party or the strange trip Britain has taken from Empire to a modern state should read this fascinating book ( )

I forgot I had won this from Library Thing and bought it anyway. I spend a lot of time in my job wondering when the lights will go out, so I was interested from that point of view as well.

It's an excellent book for history as well. I haven't read anything else from the period (I'm not into biographies) and I was surprised how much I had forgotten and just didn't realise was happening at the time. He brings it all back, not only with interviews with politicians of the time, but also those lesser personalities who were swept to prominence at the time. All are asked to reflect on their activities then and reassess them now.

As he puts it at the end of the book, the landscape now in the 21st century is so different that it really does feel like the history of a byegone age. Yet at the end of book he points out that Thatcherism was not so inevitable as it seems, though the book seems to be leading in that direction.

I was struck now by the similarities with the changes in Eastern Europe as they struggled in the 90s with split governments and market economics, trade unions and growing consumerism.

A brilliant picture sympathetically portrayed. I marked out lots of quotes, that I would like to blog about, but if I don't get this review done, I'll be blacklisted by LibraryThing, so that will have to wait till later. ( )