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Recently, a youngster asked me if I remembered anything like the current crisis in the past.
I had trouble remembering anything like it. The 1967 Foot and Mouth outbreak? The 1963 big freeze?
I can only just remember 1963 and the image of a car in 12 feet of snow by our local golf club.
Of course, my mother lived through the war and is still going strong.
But then a fellow sexagenarian reminded me of the Three Day Week of 1974.
That perhaps does provide some paralell, when, due to the Oil crisis, the government had to impose a three day week on all but essential industries and activities.
I was at school at the time and we had power cuts most days. It was all quite exciting.
What I remember very clearly is that television stopped at 10.30pm everyday. Indeed, I can still see the image of Radio 2 Deejay Ray Moore (a hero and favourite of mine – now sadly no longer with us) popping up on BBC1 to say that, although the TV was switching off, he was still spinning tunes on Radio 2. Bless him.
Time will tell whether there is a significant difference in magnitude between the 1974 Three Day Week and the Covid-19 crisis. In 1974 we had two general elections,including the departure of the government that was in power at the start of the year. So the ramifications were large.
* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.
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18 Comments
My recollection is that power cuts often started at 8:00pm so the prospect of watching TV after Coronation Street was limited. I lived in Granada-land, so maybe Paul lived in an area with better electricity sources. One of the lessons of that time was that the National Grid was really a looser network of local grids which were unable to provide even power distribution when local production was significantly cut, and it was improved. (On a visit to Calder Hall in the 1980s, one of the engineers explained that the power station had been designed to cut itself off from the grid when mains frequency dropped in order to keep motors running properly, with a consequential loss of output to Cumbria.)
There are probably further lessons, which we are now learning, about weak links and long chains.
Much respect to your Mum, Paul. I can just about remember the air raid sirens in WW2
Memories of 1974 are of the Liberal surge under Thorpe in February, hoping we could win Westmorland (that had to wait for Tim thirty years later), the birth of my twins on 6 June on the anniversary of their Granddad arriving in Normandy (he was chuffed with the former)…. and the Liberal vote receding in October under the dreadful slogan of, ‘One more Heave’..
I remember a very skilful Prime Minister from my home town settling the miners dispute…… and of going to Church one evening because the lights and heating were on in that part of Kendal… but not in our house.
Life goes fast. Enjoy it and keep you pecker up.
I’m really not that old enough to remember the so called ‘Spanish flu’ (unfair really, as, apparently, it may have originated in the USA and was transported over to Europe by the ‘dough boys’). However, I do just remember the terrible winter of 1947, I caught the Asian flu while on an exchange visit to West Germany in 1957 and, of course, remember all the subsequent pandemics, to none of which, so far at least, I have succumbed. I vividly remember the winter of 1963. I was in my first year at Cambridge University and most outdoor sporting activities were abandoned in the Lent Term – you can see what my priorities were back then! I seem to remember that some of us swopped a rugby ball for a Lacrosse stick, as the game could be played on deeply frozen surfaces. Living on the Fens was no fun at the best of times; but that year was pretty harsh. Thank goodness I had packed my rubber hot water bottle and bought a duffle coat – very much ‘en trend’ back then- and bought a college scarf, plus the fact that I could walk to all of my lectures and tutorials instead of having to cycle, as some of my fellow undergraduates did, from one end of the town to the other.
My wife and I were living in West Germany when the Yom Kippur war erupted and, following OPEC’s quadrupling of oil prices, the rampant inflation of Heath’s ‘dash for growth’ post 1970 and, of course, a certain Mr A Scargill and his ‘flying pickets’, we returned for the Christmas break to a UK, which, with power cuts and emergency lighting in the stores, must have been something like the war time UK.
And yet, when we had stopped off in the UK the previous Summer on our way from Canada, where we had spent a very comfortable three years on the prairies, to West Germany, where I had secured a teaching post, things were going swimmingly. Indeed, the economy was booming, but so were house prices among others. What could possibly mess things up? Indeed, most of us subscribed to the view back then of West German economics minister, Karl Schiller, that “the future belongs to oil”.
Yes, I’ve lived through some interesting times in my 76 years; but this time looks like beating them all.
I had just started work as a trainee accountant in a factory when the 3 day week came in. It was a very hot summer (no air conditioning in factories then). The lads in the factory switched to 12-hour shifts for three days instead of 8-hour shifts for five days to keep production up. Days off were taken up with football training in a nearby park so there was no real respite for most of us. You don’t need any when you are young.
Using candles at night prepared me for an experience I had when I first arrived in the Hawaiin Islands in the early eighties. A Hurricane took out the power across the Islands for a couple of weeks, but I was used to coping without electricity and still young, so you take these things in your stride.
The post-war generation has been lucky in many respects. We have not had to fight another world war, so let us be thankful for the blessings we have. As David Raw says above “Life goes fast. Enjoy it and keep you pecker up.”
The 3 day week was in February 1974. Fortunately it was a mild winter. Nearly every morning we had a power cut. In school there would be a cheer when the power came on during the day. On the farm, cows had to be milked morning and evening. When I came home from school, I helped with the milking. I had to learn to milk by hand as a power cut could happen at any time.
The Foot and Mouth epidemic in 2001 affected the rural area. Emergency legislation to close footpaths. Closure of farmers marts.The local elections were deferred by a month. Agriculture and tourism took years to recover but they did recover.
Gwynn,
In the factories it came in two phases in 1974. The power cuts and shutdowns of of the winter and then the heatwave in the summer of that year when lots of factories went on to extended 12-hour shifts for three days, so work could be done into the cooler evening hours. The summer of 1976 was even hotter https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/london-has-transformed-from-the-long-scorching-summer-of-1976-a3895941.html Few people new anything of climate change back then.
Then there was the Winter of Discontent (1978/79) with public sector workers striking and also the lorry drivers striking that meant shutdowns because factories couldn’t get supplies.
I remember walking across Derwent Water as the ice was so thick, 1963 others say but it was Christmas so memory of year uncertain. Yes 3 day week but university turned the computers off to avoid power cuts. Foot and mouth, oh yes, living on a farm and working at Jodrell Bank, never had such clean shoes or bike tyres!
Realised foot and mouth was an earlier outbreak not the major one with cattle burned in the field.
I was a candidate in the October General Election of 1974. As the first Liberal to stand since 1918. I did save a deposit (£150 and 12.5 percent in those days) in the old and huge Rother Valley seat – electorate 93,000) and One More Heave never crossed my lips. Inflation was also huge. As for the crisis earlier in the year a government minister invited us to share a bath and clean our teeth in the dark….
I’ve been thinking about how there has never, in the history of the World, been a pandemic quite like this one. In the past, isolation – whether self or whole villages such as Eyam during the 1665 plague – has meant cutting yourself off from the World.
While some have been able to work and email from home for years – I helped develop ISDN back in 1978 and had a terminal at home soon after – it’s only in the past decade that most people have high speed internet access and the tools to use it. This is the first pandemic where a LOT of people can work from home, and where most can keep in touch with friends and family without being there physically.
We had a pub night on Friday as we usually do – but this one was over Facebook Messenger video, each supplying our own drinks, not in the village pub. And I know people who now see their (adult) children, albeit on video, more often than they ever did before CORVID-19!
“….a government minister invited us to share a bath and clean our teeth in the dark….”.
I suspect, Geoff, that you’re conflating the Great Drought of Summer 1976 and the Three Day Week of 1973, both of which I remember vividly.
I was particularly resentful at being expected to complete my homework by candlelight in 1973 when the power went off in the East Midlands promptly at 7:00 pm – our teachers didn’t seem to sympathise with our predicament, excuses were not accepted, and writing out neatly 500 -1000 times “I must submit my homework on time in future” during detention was a typical punishment (unfortunately the electricity was still available for detention).
Does anybody else remember Denis Howell, the Minister for Drought?
In the 1973-74 winter I was working in a civil service office. During the 3-day week, on the days we did not have power clerical staff were allowed to go home when it became to dark to work. We “professional” staff had to sit at our desks in the dark, doing nothing, until normal closing time. It was deemed unprofessional to leave early.
Joseph Bourke
This is the three day week that I am referring to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week
I recall the very very hot summer of 1976. I was doing my O Levels. The temperature in the uninsulated examination hall reached over 30C every day. The drought was severe and water rationing widespread. Completely separately a recession and Labour Government incompetence saw them calling in the IMF to provide emergency aid.
We haven’t quite got there yet.
I have just checked and the three day week came into force on 31st December 1973. One thing I do remember was that the BBC showed ‘adverts’ (public service announcements, I imagine) for contraception for the first time at the early shutdown time of 10.30pm. There was a mini baby boom later that year, and my first son was born in October 1974.
Cannot forget the winter of 47. I was 3 and left the water running in the sink, it spilled out, through the floor of the bathroom, onto the lounge ceiling below and two weeks later the central part of the ceiling came crashing down. I have been accident prone all my life!!
I am surely in the right party!
Phil Beesley, your comment about the Grid in 1974 “ One of the lessons of that time was that the National Grid was really a looser network of local grids” is not quite right.
The National Grid was developed at 132kV before the war, although only used as you say as a regional grids, then used as a national system when the war demanded it.
After the war electricity demand surged, the then British Electricity Authority developed the Supergrid, at 275kV later 400kV, the system was essentially completed by the early seventies.
The Grid has been run as a national network since the 1950’s.
Calder Hall was and is not on the Supergrid network, the nearest connections being near Carlisle and Lancaster. Calder Hall (now closed) is on the 132kV network that feeds down the Cumbrian coast and therefore more likely to suffer disconnection from the Grid, effectively being islanded. This is why they needed the emergency generation if the Grid supply fails to keep the gas circulating pumps running to avoid the reactors there overheating (although all nuclear generators have this).
Desperately trying to keep this non technical, despite a career working for the Grid!
I remember working as a trainee reporter in a rather affluent Yorkshire town. One day, following government guidelines on cutting power usage they removed one of two fluorescent tubes in the reporters’ room. We could barely see what we were typing and looked up the restriction which did suggest removing half the tubes, but indicated a minimum level of lighting.
After calculating the minimum we requested that our tube be restored and a third added to bring us up to the minimum standard.
The tube was restored, but we never got the third.
Skinflints.