“Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974-1979”, by Dominic Sandbrook

 

Penguin UK, 840 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1846140327

This is the fourth book in this series by Dominic Sandbrook on the history of Modern Britain and, just like the other three, it never fails to impress and inform without once being irrelevant or imbecilic. Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974-1979 picks up the story at Wilson’s return in 1974 and journeys through the Callaghan years until Thatcher steps through the door of Number 10. It also proves that everything old is new again: idiot teachers teaching pointless subjects, racial strife, economic meltdowns, radical philosophies, over mighty unions, uncontrollable immigration…it’s all back, baby, but the first run-through occurred some five decades ago. If Seasons in the Sun was in need of a spokesman it would be Basil Fawlty: the decline of the UK in the eyes of the world is best reflected in Mr. Hamilton’s rant upon entering the hotel – “couldn’t find the freeway. Had to take a little backstreet called the M5” – while part two of the book (entitled “A damn good thrashing” in reference to an episode where Fawlty’s car breaks down; another symbol of the poor quality of British industrial products), while his tirade against men who carry themselves like “orang-utans” reflects the anxiety that the middle classes felt about changing social circumstances (would it be going too far to say that anyone who wants to understand the British middle-class psyche in the 1970s should take Fawlty Towers as one of their starting points?)

Anyway, as this little episode illustrates, Sandbrook is at his best when using the popular culture of the time as a kind of microcosm for what the hell was going on cross Britannia. The book opens with the trials and tribulations that George Lucas underwent while filming Star Wars in England, what with the film crew beginning “work at 8:30 before a mandatory tea break at 10. At 1:15pm they had an hour for lunch, and another mandatory tea break at 4:30pm. At 5:30pm the day ended. Lucas had assumed this meant they would begin wrapping up, but by the second day of filming he realized that stopping at 5:30 meant stopping at 5:30. Even if he were in the middle of a scene, the crew would stop dead when the clock reached the half hour”. He enquired if they would consider working overtime, and was told it would have to be put to vote each morning; whenever they voted on overtime, they invariably voted no. and this was just a friggin’ movie; when it came down to running the country, the unions were King and nothing happened without their say-so. Along with the strikes, there were shortages, 30% inflation, awful food, British–Leyland cars, suicidal trade unionists, clueless industrial management and the all-pervading sense of the inevitability of national decline (at least the soundtrack was good – mostly). Britain was indeed seen by all and sundry to be the newest “Sick Man of Europe”, not least by the British, themselves.

If you have read all of the author’s prior books in this series, then his modus operandi is by bow familiar: just read and select from a vast supply of secondary literature, covering not only politics, but also popular culture and social reportage, and throw it into the mental blender for a book to pop out. Sandbrook rightly insists that the years between 1974 and 1979 were important: as well as a prelude to Thatcherism, the period was “a decisive moment in our recent history”. Damn right. After the “Winter of Discontent” it was obvious to only the most blinkered that the Trade Unions had to be broken and put in their place, something that only the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher had the incentive to do. But of course it isn’t that easy, for Sandbrook takes what has become the conventional view that the real turning point in British politics came not in 1979 but in 1976, when James Callaghan and Denis Healey refused to reflate their way out of trouble and used the IMF to instill a spirit of economic realism into the Labour Party. Rather, Sandbrook believes that “there was rather more continuity between Margaret Thatcher and her avuncular predecessor, ‘Sunny Jim’, than we often think – even though it would pain both left and right to admit it”. This overstates the case, but it is true that Callaghan wanted to make many of the changes that Thatcher was to make but hoping to do so in a non-divisive way and so maintain a spirit of social solidarity. But the unions, through their militant action, cut him off at the knees and paved the way for the Conservative triumph. Thank bloody God.