Can you tell me what it was like in the 1970's recession?

Kez100

......... I was just born and am interested to know more.

mardatha

It was miserable and bl00dy horrible..and I still can't watch "the boys from the black stuff" because it brings back memories of that time. My OH was out of work and I was working 2 jobs and starting at 5am. And we still lived on soup and porridge.

Pobby

As I recall the 70s recession hit the North of England far more than the South. Didn`t really notice much myself. Both in work and getting pay rises. The Midlands was also hit badly. The 80`s recession hit everywhere.

bristol_pilot

Strikes, riots, power cuts, petrol shortages, ration cards were printed but never issued.

[Deleted User]

It was bloody miserable,but i suspect the current fiasco will be even worse
I was born in 59 and this is now the 4th recession i`ve lived thru !

Generali

There was a boom in 1973, blamed on the 1972 budget. This caused inflation to rise and a series of strikes to break out in late 1973. Then in 1974 the Arabs refused to sell oil to the US and to supporters of Israel. This lead to a severe shortage of fuel and a spike in the fuel price.

The 3 day week was a result of that as there wasn't enough oil to generate the fuel needed to keep the lights on. Petrol ration cards were issued but never had to be used.

Interest rates went up to 13% to control inflation and rents were frozen by Government diktat. Not a good time to be a landlord!

There were a lot of strikes culminating in the miners, power workers and railwaymen striking with the aim of bringing down the Conservative Government, an aim that succeeded. That brought in possibly the most calamitous democratically elected Government the UK has had.

dottylotty

woodbine wrote: »

It was bloody miserable,but i suspect the current fiasco will be even worse
I was born in 59 and this is now the 4th recession i`ve lived thru !

we obviously never learn by our mistakes do we?? So apart from the 90's theres been a recession every decade?

I can only vaguely remember the 80's recession but it didnt make much difference to us...things were never great anyway! And I spose I was too young to really take any notice/interest.

However I am noticing it this time....has been gradually getting harder, tho thankfully we both have jobs and a roof over our heads!

Generali

dottylotty wrote: »

we obviously never learn by our mistakes do we?? So apart from the 90's theres been a recession every decade?

I can only vaguely remember the 80's recession but it didnt make much difference to us...things were never great anyway! And I spose I was too young to really take any notice/interest.

However I am noticing it this time....has been gradually getting harder, tho thankfully we both have jobs and a roof over our heads!

There was a recession in the early 90s.

dottylotty

:embarasse Ooops!

And is this one any different then? As I cant remember that one.....or maybe it was the 80's one I cant remember??? I was born in '75 so either way would have been young and carefree!

All I remember is loads of houses being repossessed, and Thatcher being PM...and this lead to a life long loathing of all things tory! (in our household), or perhaps that was always there anyway lol

Anyway I digress, and my politics is really rather pathetic to enter into any sort of discussion/debate

Is it worse this time round....theres certainly been a heck of a lot of business closures

PasturesNew

My dad bought his first house in 70/71. Some time in 71/72 his work site was closed down and he had to travel further to get to work. His calculations had assumed he could cycle, but he had to take his car. This was the electronics in Cambridge and the firm never really recovered as it was taken over again about 10 years later and he lost his job entirely.

From the 70s I remember:
- potato shortage, price of chips rocketed so we could no longer afford them. Mum started making us parsnip chips at home.
- 3-day week
- petrol shortages/ration books were about to be issued
- sugar shortage/price shot up, we gave that up
- butter shortage/price shot up, we had marg instead and never went back to butter
- regular power cuts, the newspaper published a chart so you could look up which 6-hour slot you'd get each day. It varied each day so you might have no electricity on Monday morning, Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday evening, Thursday night, Friday morning, Saturday afternoon ... etc
- with no electricity, it was soup and toast made on an open fire for tea.
- long queus for petrol
- long food queues
- rows of empty shelves in food shops

- lots of fights/strikes on the news and in the papers. But we didn't have much TV back then. Just three channels, some of which closed down during the day and most closed down at 11pm, so it wasn't like now with programme after programme of it. For newspapers we just had the local Evening News and the Sunday People, so limited exposure to the media/news. Remember, there was no Internet so nobody sharing views/opinions/experiences and certainly no way to look up stats/figures etc.

- some houses on one estate in Corby were just £1,000. A price that even at the time seemed unbelievably low.

We had no money really. Times were hard. There were no benefits like today. A family just got Child Benefit for the first 2 kids. There was a married man's tax allowance (gave them 1.5x the single person's tax free allowance I think). But that was your lot. What you made, you lived on.

Many people still had coal fires and no bathroom. Outside loos were common. No central heating, no fitted carpets, no double glazing. The winters were cold (ice on the inside of the windows). But that was just the way people lived.

Bomb scares at school, I remember those.
Also, living with the threat of nuclear war.

amcluesent

Tellys were mostly black & white, the paddys were bombing us, glam-rock was all the rage, British "workers" were on strike most of the time, the chinless-wonders in the Civil Service thought their job was to manage the 'orderly decline' of Britain, Ted Heath lied and lied about the true nature of the E.E.C, everyone had NHS specs in the one "style".