Another winter of discontent? Can you remember the last one and will there be one this year?

[johnnychips]

Now is the winter of our discontent…Shakespeare

Apparently, in the winter of 78-79, it was awful. Strikes all over the place, rubbish in the streets, bodies waiting to be buried and so on. The Prime Minister Jim Callaghan went to some (probably justifiable) conference in tropical climes, and on his return, when asked about the problems in the UK, said:

Perhaps you're taking rather a parochial view at the moment, I don't think that other people in the world would share the view that there is mounting chaos.

Next day the Sun’s headline was ‘Crisis? What Crisis?’, which later became the title of a rather good Supertramp album, and the whole thing got called ’The Winter of Discontent’. It led to Mrs Thatcher being elected by a landslide.

I was 18 at the time, just starting at university, and I’m afraid I can’t remember any of it: I was either studying Geography or being drunk.

Have any older forum members memories of ‘The Winter of Discontent’?

And for everyone, are we up for another?

 

[Basil Jet]

Now is the winter of our discontent…Shakespeare

Apparently, in the winter of 78-79, it was awful. Strikes all over the place, rubbish in the streets, bodies waiting to be buried and so on. The Prime Minister Jim Callaghan went to some (probably justifiable) conference in tropical climes, and on his return, when asked about the problems in the UK, said:

Perhaps you're taking rather a parochial view at the moment, I don't think that other people in the world would share the view that there is mounting chaos.

Next day the Sun’s headline was ‘Crisis? What Crisis?’, which later became the title of a rather good Supertramp album, and the whole thing got called ’The Winter of Discontent’. It led to Mrs Thatcher being elected by a landslide.

I was 18 at the time, just starting at university, and I’m afraid I can’t remember any of it: I was either studying Geography or being drunk.

Have any older forum members memories of ‘The Winter of Discontent’?

And for everyone, are we up for another?

I remember candles, but I don't remember cold, so I think we had electricity cuts but no gas cuts. Unfortunately my current boiler needs both gas and electricity to operate at all - how was that a good design?

 

[ChrisC]

Now is the winter of our discontent…Shakespeare

Apparently, in the winter of 78-79, it was awful. Strikes all over the place, rubbish in the streets, bodies waiting to be buried and so on. The Prime Minister Jim Callaghan went to some (probably justifiable) conference in tropical climes, and on his return, when asked about the problems in the UK, said:

Perhaps you're taking rather a parochial view at the moment, I don't think that other people in the world would share the view that there is mounting chaos.

Next day the Sun’s headline was ‘Crisis? What Crisis?’, which later became the title of a rather good Supertramp album, and the whole thing got called ’The Winter of Discontent’. It led to Mrs Thatcher being elected by a landslide.

I was 18 at the time, just starting at university, and I’m afraid I can’t remember any of it: I was either studying Geography or being drunk.

Have any older forum members memories of ‘The Winter of Discontent’?

And for everyone, are we up for another?

That’s interesting, because I also can’t remember anything about the Winter of Discontent. I was 22 at the time and had just left what was then a teacher training college and was in my first year of teaching. I was teaching in a primary school in what was very much a working class coal mining town in Nottinghamshire. I certainly was not drunk at the time!

In complete contrast, even though I was still at school, I remember the 3 day week, miners strikes, oil crisis and the power cuts a few years previous to this. I still have very vivid memories of the power cuts during the winter of 1973-74. I can remember listening to BBC Radio Nottingham as they read out very long lists each day of the areas that were due to have power cuts as there was no online information in those days. I remember sitting whole evenings with the house lit by candles and how dark it was in the village with no lights on at all.

 

[Snow1964]

I was in the middle of secondary school (14 years old then), and only bit I remember was school had to shut for about 2 weeks as it ran out of heating oil. I don’t remember rubbish piling up on the street (but in those days dustmen used to come to side of the house and carried your bin to the truck). We had a coal fired boiler so anything burnable probably got thrown on there to keep rubbish down.

Maybe there was some power cuts as I do remember odd occasions when we had to use candles at home, but could have been storms as don’t remember it for days on end, unlike the 3 day week where definitely had candles at times.

 

[Sprinter107]

I wasn't very old at the time, but I cant remember rubbish piling up on the streets. I can remember the power cuts. We had to use a paraffin heater because we were all electric. I can remember a television channel going on strike, but not which one. I can remember the buses being on strike. But I don't remember it being as bad as everyone says. But then folks just got on with things back then.

 

[Acey]

I don't remember bring bothered much by it ( I was 28 at the time ) I think it was totally exaggerated by the Tory rags ( as usual )

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

In complete contrast, even though I was still at school, I remember the 3 day week, miners strikes, oil crisis and the power cuts a few years previous to this. I still have very vivid memories of the power cuts during the winter of 1973-74. I can remember listening to BBC Radio Nottingham as they read out very long lists each day of the areas that were due to have power cuts as there was no online information in those days. I remember sitting whole evenings with the house lit by candles and how dark it was in the village with no lights on at all.

Correct power cuts on a far more significant scale were in 73/74 from my recollection as an early teen then and as a late teen in 78/79 was largely council workers driven.

 

[birchesgreen]

Winter of Discontent was greatly overblown by the Tory press, indeed the "crisis what crisis" was an invention which many people to this day think Callaghan actually said. Some people i've read claim the 70s was a decade long crisis and blame Labour even though the Tories were in charge for half of the decade and indeed the worst stuff was when Heath was in charge.

I can remember the power cuts, and my mum holding a piece of bread on a fork in front of the gas fire to make toast! Though i can't remember when that was exactly as i was just a kid.

 

[E27007]

I can recall the 3-day week of 73/74. A catastrophic error by the Civil Service and Ted Heath, rejecting the Miners pay claim to call and go on to lose a General Election on the ticket of "who governs". Days after calling the Election, the bombshell, the Civil Service had been supplying incorrect figures for Miners Pay.
Their pay claim did not breech Govt policy after all. Heath was never forgiven by his Party for this mishap.

​

 

[Fyldeboy]

Reading the Beano or Whizzer & Chips by candle-light should feature in every childhood!

 

[GusB]

Maybe I was simply too young to remember the winter of discontent, although I was 4 in 1978 and generally aware of major events (I recall the Silver Jubilee the year before, for example). I don't recall there being much upheaval in the country at the time. I wasn't around for the 3 day week, but I suspect that my existence may well have been a result of it!

 

[swt_passenger]

I remember candles, but I don't remember cold, so I think we had electricity cuts but no gas cuts. Unfortunately my current boiler needs both gas and electricity to operate at all - how was that a good design?

Because of the high probability of gas leaks on restoration it’s not usually been possible to make proactive cuts to the gas supply system, that’ll probably be why you never experienced it being turned off.

 

[Howardh]

My dad disappeared for a week and returned with a generator, so his engineering works could continue 5 days + a week instead of three. He got it from Sweden!

With gas and electricity being so expensive now, maybe someone can do the same thing but return with candles!!

 

[Cloud Strife]

At least in Poland, I expect it to be a very hard winter. There's simply not enough coal for domestic heating purposes, and the coal that is available is simply either very difficult to get or the price is simply unaffordable. Combined with the fact that Poland doesn't have enough gas to get through the winter, I'd be very surprised if we don't see people going cold this year. It's also difficult in schools, with many rural schools still relying on coal that they simply can't obtain.

Inflation is also above 17% now, which is really starting to hurt. It's been good for me on a personal level, because I've increased my hourly rate rather dramatically (by nearly 40%!), but it's clear that retired people are going to find it very difficult.

 

[Lost property]

I was on a Gov't paid holiday in Germany for the 78 /79 "winter of discontent " but experienced it briefly on trips back to the UK...and also noted certain media rags doing their best to exacerbate the situation..in favour of Thatcher..no surprise there.

However, there was still coal available, and the standard of living wasn't quite as high as some roseate depictions like to show. This time, much depends I suspect on how harsh, or, hopefully, mild the Winter is plus, along with the misleading energy "cap" statement, there's the not so little matter of inflation and basic food costs for a few million of us to contend with. These additional factors alone will contribute significantly to how much discontent emerges ....and we await the proposed benefit cuts " with interest " in fact for many I would suggest a great deal of interest given these are their sole source of income.

Thankfully, no bankers or hedge fund managers will be affected as they tirelessly work 24/7/365 to propel the UK economy into a rip roaring success ! (true, you've just yet to read this in the Mail or Express of course...but we will)

 

[Mcr Warrior]

I can remember a television channel going on strike, but not which one.

This may well have been the pay dispute / strike affecting ITV in August / September / October 1979.

"Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. We apologise for the inconvenience."

Normal service did resume, but not for around some 11 weeks.

 

[Busaholic]

I remember it. The 'chaos' reported by two or three right wing papers wasn't evident throughout the country by any means and, in particular, gravediggers' strikes were confined to a couple of places, but as one of them was Liverpool it brought the bogeymen stories out. It was also the coldest winter since 1962, so the 'bags of rubbish' reported rotting on the streets were unlikely to be causing too much revulsion and, in any case, didn't effect too many areas either: certainly not in Lewisham where I lived. I remember no electricity cuts, unlike the early 1970s under Heath's Tory government.

Callaghan, the P.M., was unfortunate to have been attending a conference in the West Indies and so arrived at his return airport tanned, and then poo-poohed any question of 'chaos.' In a way he unwittingly stoked up his unpopularity just by agreeing to attempt to answer press questions. Bear in mind, the electorate had no say in his becoming P.M. any more than it has with Truss, and my reading of the situation was that it was always unlikely that he'd have won an overall majority in the 1979 General Election so long as the Conservatives had made an apparently sane choice for their new leader. Again, imo, Truss has precisely zero chance of not being defeated at the next GE regardless of whatever desperate manoeuvres she performs to try to make amends for her moronic actions: even ditching Kami-Kwarteng won't fix the unfixable now. Trying to blame him for the higher rate tax cut because he didn't discuss it with her just reinforces her utter incompetence and total unsuitability for higher office, let alone the highest.

 

[D365]

Unfortunately my current boiler needs both gas and electricity to operate at all - how was that a good design?

Is that not the case with all gas boilers now.

 

[Dai Corner]

I'm the same age as the OP and was also in my first year at University. I don't remember any disruption to my student life either.

As for this winter, unless gas becomes unobtainable as opposed to expensive or workers in the essential industries decide to strike I think we'll be ok. For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not counting the postal or railway industries as essential.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

In the winter period of 1978/1979, I was 33 years old and was just commencing my first role in a senior managerial position at a small group divisional company. We just had to make the best of things, like other associated group companies in a "war-time spirit".

 

[Springs Branch]

. . . Apparently, in the winter of 78-79, it was awful. Strikes all over the place, rubbish in the streets, bodies waiting to be buried and so on. . .

As many other posters have said, I have much more vivid memories of the 1973/74 3-day week under Heath than the 78/79 'Winter of Discontent' under Callaghan.

During the 3-Day Week, I remember the scheduled power cuts and my dad being at home more, and not working every hour of overtime available, as he normally did.

As a youngster, on our designated power cut nights it was actually very pleasant sitting around a blazing coal fire in the dark with my siblings, having lengthy, in-depth conversations with my parents, hearing funny stories about members of the family (daft Uncle Sammy and the like), which I'd previously never heard, and listening to the BBC Radio on a battery-powered wireless rather than watching TV. It was like an evening around the campfire, but still at home.

The unions seemed canny enough not to block supplies of domestic coal, so we didn't go cold, neither were we ever hungry or suffered any "supply-chain challenges".

During the 78/79 episode I was at sixth-form college. Apart from reading the standard shock-horror stories about piled up garbage and unburied corpses in the newspapers of the time, the only significant disruption I can remember was a couple of days of bus strikes.

I commuted from home to college in Wigan every day by bus. Although bus services in the area were all under GMPTE's management by that time, in classic Kafkaesque 1970s industrial relations style, which bus routes were on strike and which were still running, and how far they went, depended on historical demarcations and geographical boundaries.

Ex-Corporation buses running from GMPTE's Wigan depot were all on strike. Those routes which used to be Lancashire United Transport's, and were operated from different depots, were still running but terminated short at the closest convenient turnaround short of the historic Wigan Borough boundary - which had itself become irrelevant four or more years earlier in the 1974 local government reorganisation.

(For any locals, LUT buses approaching Wigan from Hindley or Platt Bridge turned around at Ince Bar or Spring View respectively).

On strike days, some of my fellow students cadged a lift into college in their parents' car. A few who had the option of a local train used that. I've never minded a bit of a walk, so I caught the bus as far as I could, then walked the last mile-and-a-bit. That left a significant fraction (exactly the characters you could have guessed before a strike was even mentioned) who "couldn't get in" and never showed up for college for the duration.

That was about the limit of the Discontent that Winter for me - all much less disruptive than the cancellation and strike debacles on today's railways.

 

[E27007]

The 1973/74 period of Industrial Unrest.
Rumours of Internment Camps for Trade Unionists.
Army Officers and a Military Coup to replace the Government
Prime Minister Ted Heath, locking down Industry and Commerce to the edge of bankruptcy, the 3-day working week, an aspiration associated with Revolutionary Socialism.

 

[dk1]

That was quite an interesting programme last night. Yes I remember it to an extent but was only around 9 years old so can’t recall it affecting my life at all at the time.

 

[nw1]

Now is the winter of our discontent…Shakespeare

Apparently, in the winter of 78-79, it was awful. Strikes all over the place, rubbish in the streets, bodies waiting to be buried and so on. The Prime Minister Jim Callaghan went to some (probably justifiable) conference in tropical climes, and on his return, when asked about the problems in the UK, said:

Perhaps you're taking rather a parochial view at the moment, I don't think that other people in the world would share the view that there is mounting chaos.

Next day the Sun’s headline was ‘Crisis? What Crisis?’, which later became the title of a rather good Supertramp album, and the whole thing got called ’The Winter of Discontent’. It led to Mrs Thatcher being elected by a landslide.

I was 18 at the time, just starting at university, and I’m afraid I can’t remember any of it: I was either studying Geography or being drunk.

Have any older forum members memories of ‘The Winter of Discontent’?

And for everyone, are we up for another?

I was just a child then, so I don't really remember anything apart from it being cold and snowing rather a lot, and getting chicken pox followed immediately afterwards by German measles. I do seem to remember relatively frequent power cuts (not every day, but perhaps every few weeks) but being a child I just thought it was normal. And I'm not even sure that was the winter. Just seemed to be a feature of late 70s and early 80s life, partly due to the overhead electrical supply being perhaps less robust then. (For example the power cut I remember clearest was when I was outside at around 6 or 7pm and being called indoors, so that clearly wasn't the winter).

"Winter of Discontent" is a term I only heard much, much later - in the late 80s or even the early 90s. By contrast I remember the 1981 riots and 1984 miners' strike much more clearly.

I vaguely remember Thatcher getting in, it was an unseasonably cold and wet day if I recall correctly (funny how it's always wet when a Tory wins an election) and I think we had the day off school because it was being used as the polling station - but didn't know anything about the politics. I didn't know Thatcher was a Tory, just (at that stage) we had a new female prime minister. And Callaghan was just a name, I knew nothing about him.

 

[swt_passenger]

Is that not the case with all gas boilers now.

I reckon it would be a very unusual “boiler” that only needed gas nowadays - IIRC it was only really stand alone gas water heaters that could run on their own with the power off, they’d need a constantly lit pilot light. But anything central heating related would at the very least have an electric circulating pump, and almost certainly a timer and thermostat?

 

[Gloster]

I was 18, working on the railway and living in one of the smaller provincial cities. I do not remember any disruption that affected me, but I would probably only have noticed if there was a beer shortage. I think, in retrospect, that the serious and obvious disruption was very hit and miss, but the news media, especially certain elements of it, is always going to search it out. (I don’t object to the media searching out such stuff: that is their job. I do object to some parts of the media disproportionately highlighting those items that suit their wider agenda.)

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Anyone any ideas as to who it might be that will fan the flames of the coming of the next Winter of Discontent?

 

[nw1]

Anyone any ideas as to who it might be that will fan the flames of the coming of the next Winter of Discontent?

I have the feeling it might be the daughter of a certain left-wing maths professor, known in 1994 for espousing strident anti-royalist views as a young adult. Damn those subversives!

 

[GusB]

I have the feeling it might be the daughter of a certain left-wing maths professor, known in 1994 for espousing strident anti-royalist views as a young adult. Damn those subversives!

That's assuming that there will be fuel to burn in the first place!

 

[Busaholic]

That's assuming that there will be fuel to burn in the first place!

Quite a lot of wood built in to that truss!