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

mumps

I think I was living in a parallel universe. I left school in the late 60s without an O level to my name. By 1971 I was a teenage mom living with my husband in a rented flat. By 1973 we had bought our first hourse, £5,200 with a £700 deposit we had saved. By 1975 we had our second baby and second house, four bedrooms no central heating. We sold the first house for £7,000 and the new one cost £9,500. Sometimes money was tight but isn't that normal for a young couple with kids? We had central heating installed, we had colour tv in about 1972 or 73. Yes I remember the power cuts, but that only went on for a short time, months not years wasn't it?

If you think the 70s were bad you should have tried the 50s, the world was in black and white then not just the telly.

I know I had trouble finding a part time job in 1975 and the one I got wasn't great money. My kids never wore home made clothes, just as well if you saw my sewing.

Saab

I worked at the local cosmetics factory, we had limited electricity but one of the days that the factory did get electricity was a Saturday, so if you were prepared to work two days in the week and on a Saturday they would pay you a full week's wages...if you only worked the two weekdays, that's all you got paid for....

Tax was about 30p in the pound then, so a third of your wages disappeared before it even got to you.

Inflation had been rife before the recession, wages had doubled for me year on year for about three years...I went from a starting rate of £5 a week, to £28 a week in my third year there....although because of price hikes, it never benefitted me, in fact I was worse off but earning more....strange scenario..

I was a teenager, so never really felt the full force of the recession, it just meant I had to work different hours and that the light didn't always come on when you flicked the switch.

My parents had the local WMC at the time, and that was opened as normal, it filled up on the power cut nights, because no one could watch the tv...we played cards by candlelight, and had lots of sing songs...

There were obvious problem, different foodstuffs either priced so high you didn't bother with them, or they didn't even make it to the shops. I remember queues...for bread I think, and my mum and dad going on about the price of sugar and butter. All in all though I remember a lot of people puling together. There wasn't so many home owners back then, most people rented from the council, so everyone helped each other out if and when they could.

People would get together and use one car to go to work in, instead of four...lots off 'black market' stuff seemed to be floating around...particualarly meat....gawd knows where that was coming from....

FungusFighter

I'vr just read this thread from the beginning and so many people mentioned power-cuts and candles and I thought to myself, finally, some use for all those pointless fewking scented coloured fancy candles that everyone in the fewking country has bought and doesn't know what to do with, fewk me, theres even been shops set up to sell them and every fewker on every fewking property program had fewking candles in the fireplace, thank god for a recession, the fewkers will finally be able to fewking use them! :j

StevieJ

PasturesNew wrote: »

This is fairly true. In the 70s there was a quaint thing called cash.

I do remember the Provident Lady calling at our house every week though.
And poor people bought things from catalogues more towards the end of the 70s.

No mention of Hire-Purchase? I think those catalogues were well present in the 60's
in fact what about the 30's?

http://www.thecatalogshop.co.uk/catalogue-history/littlewoods-introduction.php

PasturesNew

sb44 wrote: »

I was born in 1961.

I remember as a kid how exciting it was looking through the Green Shield Stamps catalogue to see what we could get when we had enough full books to exchange.

I used to love sticking the stamps into the books. Stamps were issued as a single column, 5-columns wide, then later there were some bigger stamps that represented 25 stamps. I used to love tearing up the strips and licking/sticking them in. Especially big long rolls of the 5-wide ones.

We'd always have loads of books of them. But I don't remember what mum exchanged them for out of the catalogues.

There was another type of stamp too, I think it was yellow and black.

Pobby

And pink stamps. I got paid bonuses in green shield stamps. Bought our first black and white telly with it.

MrsE_2

sb44 wrote: »

I was born in 1961.

I remember as a kid how exciting it was looking through the Green Shield Stamps catalogue to see what we could get when we had enough full books to exchange.

As we didn't have a car (not because we couldn't afford one which we couldn't but nobody in the family could drive), we had to catch a bus into town if we went shopping and it seemed to be miles away and take forever to get there.

I was shocked when I started to drive a couple of decades later and found that town was actually only 2½ miles away!

:rolleyes:

I remember green shield stamps:j

My mum exchanged loads & loads of books for an orange (not le cruset) complete saucepan set.

We always had a car & I was born in 67, we often had two after my mum learnt to drive.

But I remember the road we lived on being fairly easy to park (even in London) & 20 years later was a nightmare, so not that many people had cars.

MrsE_2

PasturesNew wrote: »

This is fairly true. In the 70s there was a quaint thing called cash.

I do remember the Provident Lady calling at our house every week though.
And poor people bought things from catalogues more towards the end of the 70s.

Was it just poor people?

Lots of my family & my friends familes used them

We weren't wealthy by a long shot, but we weren't that poor either (we usually had two cars, even then).

Lifeisbutadream

Ahh green sheild stamps...

I remember my mum getting a hairdryer with them - we were all so excited that we all (me and two bros) sat watching her dry her hair!

Lifeisbutadream

MrsE wrote: »

Was it just poor people?

Lots of my family & my friends familes used them

We weren't wealthy by a long shot, but we weren't that poor either (we usually had two cars, even then).

We used catalgues too - and I dont think we were classed as 'poor':o