One of the amazing innovations with modern technology is being able to watch half forgotten programmes and films from bygone ages. Gainsborough Pictures conjure up an England of sunny summers, tea on the lawn and Saturday sing-alongs at the local theatre.
It is a charming, national picture of how things used to be – for a few. The power of cinema, however, gives the impression of life being like that for everyone. It most certainly wasn’t.
Along with many , I remember what it was really like in the 1960s and early 1970s. The three day week, when electricity was rationed. Or the strikes, dole queues, poverty wages, unsafe working conditions, slums and crumbling schools which were more the norm for most. Women had little status in society and many worked in poor, part time jobs, to keep the family fed.
For some, it was worse. Rented accommodation was the norm. The infamous ‘No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs’ sign on a London property was recorded for one television programme and not considered unusual.
Change began in the 1970s. That was when we finally joined the European Economic Community. It marked a change in our realisation of who we were as a nation and the creation of new opportunities – economic, social and civic.
For workers, it brought better, safer working conditions and fairer treatment; for our businesses, a bigger market with better opportunities; for our universities greater potential for international research; for our young people exploration and education.
For women, it has been the bedrock of equality legislation, just about all of which has come through European regulation. Women, and other sectors of society, stand to lose a lot through the Brexit process. Paternity leave and employment rights, the 48 hour limit on the working week and workers’ protections, are just a few of the areas at risk.
The problem is that as people, we have little influence on the process. Far too many of those making decisions on our behalf, whether in the Labour or Conservative Party, look forward either to the next election, or back to the days of Gainsborough films. With judgements based in either horizon, there will be little left for the rest of us.
* Flo Clucas OBE is the President of the ALDE Gender Equality Network and former President of the ALDE Group on the EU Committee of the Regions. She was a councillor in Liverpool City Council for 26 years.
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50 Comments
A lot of what you are saying is very true, but also, we must remember that during the period since the 70s, almost all our manufacturing has gone, through excessive wage demands and strikes to get them. This along with poor quality production and bad management has totally destroyed any hope we have of standing alone outside the EU!
We have lost the most important thing, our self esteem, when I look at, and listen to, the majority of the population of this once proud Nation, I wonder where our pride in ourselves has gone!
We have to regain our pride in ourselves, and then in our Country and fight to get us back as a Nation who can stand on our own, with goods in our shops made in the UK, by British workers, and ships taking exports from the UK instead of bringing in imports. Then we may be in a condition to stand alone out of the EU.
We must fight to stop Brexit taking our children into a very uncertain future!!
Potentially women will be able to benefit from lower car insurance after Brexit.
Although women currently have fewer accident claims than men, under EU rules insurance companies can not differentiate between men and women on insurance premiums.
Keep up the Project Fear. It will all have an effect.
Boris Johnson let the cat out the bag when he said there would be a “meltdown” next March, and he is evidently quite right.
The entire country is going to grind to a halt, aviation will effectively cease, the shops will run out of food, medicine and the fuel pumps will run dry.
Hundreds of thousands will be laid off as the supply and distribution chains clog up and multinational companies will begin a brexit panic exit.
The people will want their jobs, their food, their mobility and their lives back. There will be a rising crescendo as the brexiteers get the blame
The conservatives are going to be holding this brexit time bomb when it goes off – and they will be blown away by it. Their credibility will be destroyed for generations and they will be out of power indefinitely.
Britain will rejoin either the EEA or the full EU within months. But huge damage will have been done and the centre of gravity of British politics will have been moved dramatically to the centre left.
Bless if this is the best the Brexiteers can do possibly cheaper insurance for women, the coloquery is higher prices for men, or a rebirth of self esteem when it is obvious Brexit is actually driven by British excemptionalism, you really have lost the plot. As to Jason, bless with such insight your future under Brexit is dark indeed; Brexit is for the clever, the red in tooth and claw not those that can barely use a cliche.
“The entire country is going to grind to a halt, aviation will effectively cease, the shops will run out of food, medicine and the fuel pumps will run dry. Hundreds of thousands will be laid off as the supply and distribution chains clog up and multinational companies will begin a brexit panic exit.”
And yet there are still camps of migrants on the French coast, risking their lives daily, to get across the Channel to the UK?
I’m curious to know why they wish to flee a bountiful Europe for a third world UK, post Brexit?
The Three day week was instigated when arch Europhile Edward Heath refused to pay miners higher wages after an independent inquiry. It occurred after we joined the Common Market in 1974. Unemployment and dole queues were higher during the late 70s and into the 1990s. We now have stagnant wages, grossly inflated property prices. We have been stuck in a neoliberal mess ever since. The new opportunities are zero our contracts in the service industry on minimum wage. The EU might not have cause these problems, but it hasn’t helped. Whilst. looking at the distant past through rose tinted glasses is a mistake, looking at the present and recent past through them when the evidence is in front of you is possibly a bigger one.
Sorry to drift off the gender issue, which was central to this article, but there’s going to be an election in the spring anyway.
Odds are now on no deal according to today’s news. That means we go to the back up deal on the Irish border, which means NI aligned with the EU and a border in the Irish Sea. At that point DUP go apesh** and pull their support leading to a general election. QED.
Or, May backs down and prevents Irish Sea border by aligning mainland UK with NI, which means we are still in customs union (to all intents) at which point Johnson/Rees-Mogg go ape. No other options.
I voted to remain, but frankly this article is in so many ways a distortion of history and the worst sort of gender politics. I remember it very well as a then Liberal Party Councillor and I’m sorry but it does not serve the cause of remain well.
To make huge generalisations and imply that electricity was permanently rationed because we were not in the then Common Market is completely incorrect. The three day week last a very few weeks early in 1974 – a year after we joined. It was ended after eight weeks when Labour formed a government under Harold Wilson.
I would add that when Heath tried to form a Coalition with Thorpe in February 1974 the Liberal Party rebelled and said a loud no . Thorpe – not for me of blessed memory – rapidly backed down.
Change for women did not begin in the 1970’s. There was a slow but continuous series of change beginning in 1918…… the 1960’s saw rapid changes…… and this party was much more radical and not a one trick pony policy party in those days.
Sorry, as an historical essay I give it a D.
Can anyone confirm that it was the EU which insisted on state pension equalisation for men and women?
Looks to me as if WASPI women can thank(?) the EU for their loss of six years of state pension rights?
Well JoeB tis simple they know if they get here our system of immigration enforcement makes it much easier to disappear into the black economy. They also if they think of Brexit at all( unlikely as they have more pressing problems) probably think not much will change (I mean you still have Brexiteers who think that so why would it be strange for them to think differently). Now of cause if Brexit goes badly I wouldn’t expect them to stick around, after all they are trying to reach the city of Gold and if the streets are not actually golden well they will be back off across the channel to the streets of silver. Their fate to be blunt is not one I’d wish, desperately looking for a better place, how sad indeed it is that this is the fate you may very well have wished on our children.
JoeB
Love the use of the blame the EU card. Of cause the pension age equalisation is their fault, after all our politicians would never have changed the criteria. Now when we reach the sunlit uplands of Brexit are they going to revert to the old rules, retirement for men at 65, women at 60 or are they going to push it ever upwards to SAVE money. What we can’t be having that can we JoeB our politicians would never do that it must be an EU ploy. Tis sad what are you going to do when you can no longer blame the EU, O yes I’ve got it “Blame the EU”; after all if tis the only tool you have, every problem looks like the EU.
“The three day week last a very few weeks early in 1974”
Whoa! Wait a minute. There were many blackouts all through the 70’s. I studied for my engineering finals in 1972 by the light of a device I made from a block of plumber’s tallow and a piece of string (proper candles being unobtainable).
I then went to work in heavy engineering on “Red Tyneside” and am still (for the moment) a living eye witness to real shop floor industrial relations in that era (that is pre-Thatcher). Employers were closing one after another, all around us, their managements’ having given up an impossible struggle.
The site where our old factory was is now an Audi garage.
“the pension age equalisation” etc. etc. etc…………. Didn’t a certain Sir Danny have something to do with that ?????
JoeB,
refugees waiting for years in Calais, nightly trying to jump the channel are the quintessential subsistence survivors. They take any job for any money, expect no protection and no rights. They are frugal, enduring, and strong. They don’t expect tools or machinery to help them do their work, and they are not used to healthcare or any form of social service or -insurance. A bed for their 8-hour off-shift is all the housing they need. In sum: they are the perfect post-Brexit UK workforce, much better than all those demanding Europeans who flood in uncontrolled until now. If the Government successfully concludes its current negotiating strategy, France will become free to let them move to where they will be most needed.
Flo Clucas, …..I don’t know where you spent the 1960/70s but you make it sound as if the 1960s and 70s were nothing else but three day weeks, dole queues, poor housing, poverty wages, etc.
They were anything but…. I remember that era as one of great opportunity, of great social reform and momentous shifts towards sexual/racial/class equality. The 1960/70s were the time when just about everyone could afford a new fridge, colour TV, run a car, have a telephone and go on foreign holidays.
The three day week was a government policy aimed at turning initial national sympathy against the miners and, anyway only lasted a month or so and, as such, was hardly ‘symptomatic’ of those two decades.
Dole queues were not a factor of either decade and during the 1960s unemployment was around 2% and at the end of the 1970s it was around 5% ( about the same as today’s, so called, ‘era of full employment’).
Poor housing???? The slum clearances of the 40/50s had created a time of affordable good housing never seen before; affordable council homes and private housing.
Poverty wages??? Wages were high in almost every sector of business and industry (salaries/wages have never risen faster; look it up).
As for your contention that “The infamous ‘No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs’ sign” on a London property was recorded for one television programme and (was) not considered unusual; that is untrue. In fact there is only one photograph of such a sign and that is held by the Irish Studies Centre of London Metropolitan University. There may have been others but it was certainly not the norm.
All, in all, that era was the best two decades of my life…
Arthur Bailey 5th Aug ’18 – 11:00am:
…we must remember that during the period since the 70s, almost all our manufacturing has gone,…
‘British manufacturing now eighth largest in the world’ [September 2017]:
http://www.cityam.com/272260/british-manufacturing-now-eighth-largest-world
Maybe there were more strikes in the 1970s because more people had jobs worth fighting for and were in unions that were recognised by employers. Maybe there are less strikes now because so many people are in zero-hour-contract jobs with no union that is recognised and they would get sacked or discriminated against if they dare to ask for better wages or better working conditions. Working conditions were better in the 1970s: final-salary pensions, recognised unions, permanent contracts.
Just to point out if there is no deal there is no need to do the backstop as nothing is signed yet (if I could sing, almost sounds like a line from a song). The big difference in the seventies was the population density, could whizz around with a much greater degree of freedon, job opportunities were terrible unless you moved to London when you were clobbered by high rents and house prices (although there was always the option of a grotty bedsit if you wanted to save money). All the engineering companies I worked for were later to go bust (hopefully not my fault) and there was brain drain to the US if you were very lucky and just coming in, opportunities to work in Europe which I managed to grab with both hands. I know the Left have spent a huge effort rewriting history but Mrs Thatcher shaking things up actually energized the UK for a while until Major/Blair?Brown toned it all down and eventually wrecked the whole gravy train. We have some first class engineering and tech companies here now, the only way to keep them post no deal Brexit will be with massive tax incentives which in turns means massive spending cuts, which I am sure Boris is up for and the Labour leadership will spontaneously explode in rage if it goes down like that.
Arnold,
I thought JoeB was wondering why they don’t want to stay in France if the EU is so great. Personally I suspect its because conditions in the French migrant camps are grim and they’ve built up England to be something it isn’t. Sort of like the idea of America still attracts people. It’s an escape dream for people caught in a desperate trap.
Glenn
or that they know the English language.
Jeff,
I can’t trace the source on the EEF site. Do you have the link please? That one is just CityAM.
@ William fowler “just to point out that if there is no deal there is no need to do the back stop as nothing is signed yet”.
Can I refer you to the Joint Report of December 8th, section 49, where it is made absolutely clear that in the absence of an agreement the uk will remain in alignment with the eu. Of course we could just break our word……..
Ian
French is widely spoken in Africa. Also a lot of people forced into these situations are multi-lingual to start with or pick other languages very quickly through necessity.
@ Flo,
“Change began in the 1970s. That was when we finally joined the European Economic Community.”
Change began much earlier than that. We managed to introduce the Beveridge program and introduce the NHS all by ourselves. The Ford workers strike in 1968 took led to the creation of the equal pay act. We had higher rates of economic growth and lower rates of unemployment joining the EEC. Although, having said that, the EEC was a much more sensible organisation than the EU. There is a difference. It’s not all just ‘Europe’.
Growth has been quite bumpy in recent years.
https://www.economicvoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/ercchart0415.gif
but it is not signed yet… the Tory right want to walk away, not pay 40 billion, not do anything about the border in Ireland, etc
On the common market, in retrospect we could have had our own free trade area with Commonwealth countries and then the USA – getting the ability to travel and work in the USA without a green card or visa would have been much more popular than having the same in Europe because of the common language (more or less) with the USA. Mind, you would have had a massive brain drain from the UK to the USA so it was probably very clever of Heath to avoid that. I mention this as someone who wants to stay in the EU, BTW.
Innocent Bystander 5th Aug ’18 – 2:56pm:
I can’t trace the source on the EEF site. Do you have the link please?
Their most recent Fact Card can be downloaded from here…
‘UK Manufacuring 2017/18, The Facts’ [September 2017]:
https://www.eef.org.uk/campaigning/campaigns-and-issues/manufacturing-facts-and-figures
There appears to be some kind of glitch ascribing posts to JoeB at 11.35am and 12.09pm today. If the original poster(s) advise name(s) these posts can be corrected.
Personally, I was out campaigning for a referendum on the Brexit deal between 11am and 1pm today.
JoeB,
I suspect someone has your email address. Given the site doesn’t have a login and password requirement I can think of no other explination. Unpleasent when views are ascribed to you that you do not have. I cannot unfortunately think of a way round it unless the IP address has been logged and can be blocked. It may also be worth seeing if the same address is used by other posters (although IP’s can be spoofed).
john Littler 5th Aug ’18 – 11:22am:
Boris Johnson let the cat out the bag when he said there would be a “meltdown” next March, and he is evidently quite right.
Even by the standards of the continuity Remain campaign that’s a particularly egregious misrepresentation. When Johnson used the word “meltdown” he was referring to the prospect of the current talks breaking down. Here’’s the source (which includes recordings of him speaking)…
‘Let Trump Handle Brexit: An Explosive Leaked Recording Reveals Boris Johnson’s Private Views About Britain’s Foreign Policy’ [June 2018]:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexspence/boris-johnson-trump-brexit-leaked-recording
Here’s what he actually said about next March…
@JoeB I was wondering because those posts just don’t sound like you. You are not hte only person recently who has said that comments have been ascribed to them that they didn’t make. I will ask Ryan (our technical guru) to investigate.
john Littler 5th Aug ’18 – 11:22am:
Boris Johnson let the cat out the bag when he said there would be a “meltdown” next March, and he is evidently quite right.
Even by the standards of the continuity Remain campaign that’s a particularly misleading misrepresentation. When Johnson used the word “meltdown” he was referring to the prospect of the current talks breaking down. Here’’s the source (which includes recordings of him speaking)…
‘Let Trump Handle Brexit: An Explosive Leaked Recording Reveals Boris Johnson’s Private Views About Britain’s Foreign Policy’ [June 2018]:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexspence/boris-johnson-trump-brexit-leaked-recording
Here’s what he said about the “prophecies of doom” for next March…
‘Let Trump Handle Brexit: An Explosive Leaked Recording Reveals Boris Johnson’s Private Views About Britain’s Foreign Policy’ [June 2018]:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexspence/boris-johnson-trump-brexit-leaked-recording
Britain has improved its position among the world’s top manufacturing nations, moving up the league table to its strongest position since 2008
The UK was the world’s eighth-biggest nation by manufacturing output in 2015 – the most recent year for which internationally comparable data are available – with just over 2 per cent of total output, according to calculations by Made Here Now based on the latest figures from the United Nations’ statistical database.
http://www.madeherenow.com/news/post/2017/01/27/britain-moves-up-the-world-manufacturing-league-table
Glenn,
What a great line
” It’s an escape dream for people caught in a desperate trap.” a bit like the people voting for Brexit only they are fleeing towards the 1950’s, too paraphrase you “they’ve built up the 1950’s to be something it wasn’t”.
I’m hazarding a guess, Frankie, but I suspect you weren’t around in the Fifties….. and neither was Tinkerbell.
I was, and it wasn’t half as bad as some people who don’t know anything about it paint it. Thoroughly enjoyed most of the sixties too….. though like any age there were some tragedies as well.
Jeff, you made an attempt to suggest that the meltdown that is likely next March was nothing to do with no deal Brexit and the Just In Time delivery problems that would cause empty shelves in supermarkets, vehicle plants sending workers home and with a future in doubt.
The Tory right such as Raab are accepting much of this likely picture in talking about the government storing food.
Jeff, you are from Russia and you should concentrate instead on that very nasty dictatorship instead of trying to mislead people here.
Frankie.
I wouldn’t know about the 1950s, I’m not that old. I don’t think people are really trying to escape to a mythical past whether its the 1950s or the brief period between 1992 and the early 2000s. I think it’s basically a political argument. Some like the EU and support it’s institutions., others don’t. I object to it as a political project. But if you want to reduce it to nostalgia, I will counter with the argument that some portions of pro-EU camp tend towards a Dr Pangloss vision of the world.
The article has to be seen as exactly what David Raw says here. I was a small boy in that era, but the issues that were problematic were not caused by not being in the EU or EC, nor solved by being in it, or why was the so called Winter of discontent, post EC membership and some years after the reconformation?!
As film history, an area I know as much as political history, my greatest interest and university degree specialised in this, the article is not much better. Gainsborough, were active in the forties , fifties and were a non starter by the early sixties, Rank and EMI dominant then as well as the UK studio system on its way out, to coincide, perhaps by accident, with the EC era from which onwards our film success was minimal and due to innovative individuals, not helped by government or the economic failures of the latter seventies.
As for gender, there is much to thank the EU for but the article needs to explain why in this area, women are better for it.
Maybe on film history I mistake or Flo does, the point she makes, as the films she alludes to would have been older ones, Gainsborough started in the twenties to early fifties, does she mean by the early sixties through seventies this was her era rather than the fantasy of her and others taste in tv? I ask for I love old films and old England, and no the difference and similarities …
I remember the 60/70s as an era of massive change in social/sexual/racial/class change; all changes for the better.
I remember it as a time when unemployment was low, wages were high and, for the the first time, there was almost universal access to fridges, TVs, cars, telephones and affordable housing; almost the exact opposite of your assessment.
In 1962 the average salary for a manual worker was over £800. The average house price was £2,630 while a pint of beer cost 10p, a loaf of bread 6p and a packet of 20 cigarettes was just less than 20p. An average home cost around 3 times the average salary. whilst today it is around 10 times that.
All, in all, the best two decades I can recall.
As an aside…On saturday my wife an I attended a ‘festival’ organised by a local walking group. On a table of around 20 we were the only ‘remainers’; so much for a second vote settling things.
William Fowler – “in retrospect we could have had our own free trade area with Commonwealth countries and then the USA ”
Sorry but there is no evidence to back that up. Were the Commonwealth countries interested in a Commonwealth FTA, they could have set one up in the last few decades without us – they have not but instead have typically opted for local regional FTAs with their immediate neighbours. As for the USA, the reality is that it roughly half the amount of FTAs that the EU has, so there is little reason to expect that it would have rushed to have one with us were we outside the EU.
William Fowler,
to support an add to Paul R’s comment: there is no intercontinental substitute for EU-supply-chain integration. Today, the UK adds a lot of value by contributing blueprints, components, or assembly to a pan-European production system. This is possible only within a close and highly synchronised free-movement-regime. With the rest of the world, trade centers around finished products and services. But there is no need to choose: the UK can have both today. While being an EU-member, the UK excels as global financial center, just as Germany sells its cars (as does JLR, but naturally not Vauxall) all over the world.
It is fascinating to see the responses, primarily from male colleagues, to the article. Incidentally, I have been a trade union member almost all my working life and understand industrial action and the need for it.
Some points were raised by respondents, so let me go through them.
Gainsborough Films
This was an example of how popular culture builds a historic belief. The history of Gainsborough is well known. Films of the genre, including Gainsborough, were broadcast on television in the 1960s – and are still on channels such as Vintage TV;
Signs
‘No blacks, no Irish, no dogs’ Velma Davis in 2008 on the BBC website, confirms such signs in windows. They featured in the BBC documentary on the Notting Hill Riots and were also in later documentaries;
Strikes and social unrest
Poverty and poor working and living conditions led to strikes and demands for change. Heath lost his election, following his fight with the miners, because people knew how bad things actually were;
Women and our place in society
National organisations representing women met recently, following the referendum result, and were concerned that gains made through the EU, for women, might well be lost. Research by Oxford University demonstrated just how big an influence the EU had been as a force for change.
Flo
The racial discrimination act was introduced in 1965. Nothing to do with either the common market or an EU that has only existed since 1/11/93. The equal pay act was introduced in 1970. The point being that the post war period marked by rapid social changes before Britain joined the Common market and certainly before it became the EU in 1993. Not only that, it was pretty much happening throughout the western world.. The cause of universal suffrage that lead to women getting in the vote takes root in the 1800s. The first country to franchise votes for women was New Zealand in 1893, thousands of miles away from Europe. The distortion is to claim that theses changes only occurred after joining the common market in 1973 or that the common market was in anyway responsible for them. You can look this stuff up.
Flo Clucas 7th Aug ’18 – 5:31am……It is fascinating to see the responses, primarily from male colleagues, to the article….
In what way is it fascinating when ‘members’ argue with your interpretation of facts?
Flo Lucas ” It is fascinating to see the responses, primarily from male colleagues, to the article”.
I suppose it would be highly prejudiced of me to say I just knew it would be the fault of my gender. Sorry, Flo. Can’t help it and no plans to be anything else.Oh, by the way, I really must be a very prejudiced male to be organising a blue plaque to a leading female suffragist (Catherine Marshall) in October.
Flo’
I do worry that the comments section might sometimes get a little blokey. So, I’m sorry if I came across as a bit patronising.
Thank you Glenn. That is most kind.
My note about male colleagues was simply a note to the effect that most respondents were men. That’s all!
Thank you all for your comments.
If currently the system is not even showing people’s names correctly all the time then that should be a reminder to everyone that the truth or otherwise of a statement is not dependent on the identity of the person expressing it at a particular moment. Either the ideas hold water or they don’t.
I’d urge everyone on here to read the “Book of Bad Arguments” by Ali Almossawi; it’s open source so you can read it for free on the internet though the illustrations make it worth buying in hardcopy to leave around for kids to pick up.
Among the over 65’s there was quite a gender difference with most men voting to Leave, but even more women did. So they obviously didn’t agree they were going to be losers.