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An Enlightening Decade? New Histories of 1970s’ Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2013

Lawrence Black
Lawrence Black*
Affiliation:
University of York
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Extract

The 1970s have made something of a comeback recently–in terms of interest, if not always reputation. This is partly because it was an unfashionable, “lost” decade, possessed of a depressing image in the shadows of its immediate neighbors and because the present economic crisis has made its difficulties relevant and brought them closer. The decade is ripe for revisionism, as well as for seeking lessons. And what ultimately emerges is not just an arc towards neoliberalism but a more fragmented picture, liberating in many respects–and which demands historians come to terms with the grim decline long associated with the decade.

Type
Review Essays
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 82 , Fall 2012 , pp. 174 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2013

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References

Notes

1. For parallels, see Gamble, Andrew, The Spectre at the Feast: Capitalist Crisis and the Politics of Recession (Basingstoke, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Black, Lawrence and Pemberton, Hugh, “The 'Winter of Discontent' in British Politics,” Political Quarterly 80 (2009): 553–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hay, Colin, “Chronicles of a Death Foretold: The Winter of Discontent and Construction of the Crisis of British Keynesianism,” Parliamentary Affairs 63 (2010): 446–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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3. See also Wheen, Francis, Strange Days Indeed: The Golden Age of Paranoia (London, 2009)Google Scholar; Haslam, Dave, Young Hearts Run Free: The Real Story of the 1970s (London, 2010)Google Scholar; Sounes, Howard, Seventies: Sights, Sounds and Ideas of a Brilliant Decade (London, 2006)Google Scholar; Garnett, Mark, From Anger to Apathy: The Story of Politics, Society and Popular Culture in Britain Since 1975 (London, 2008)Google Scholar; Sandbrook, Dominic, State of Emergency: The way We Were, Britain 1970–74 (London, 2010)Google Scholar; and, although not only about Britain, Lutyens, Dominic and Hislop, Kirsty, 70s Style and Design (London, 2009)Google Scholar; de Groot, Gerard, The Seventies Unplugged (London, 2010)Google Scholar.

4. See Tiratsoo, Nick, “You've Never Had it so Bad?” Britain in the 1970s” in From Blitz to Blair, ed. Tiratsoo, Nick (London, 1997)Google Scholar; Lowe, Rodney, “Life Begins in the Seventies?” Journal of Contemporary History 42 (2008): 161–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Black, Lawrence, Pemberton, Hugh and Thane, Pat, eds., Reassessing Seventies Britain (Manchester, 2013)Google Scholar.

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9. Moran, “Stand Up and be Counted”, 175, 194–95.

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15. Depicted in Samuel, Raphael, The Lost World of British Communism (London, 2006), 210–12Google Scholar; Marquand, David, “Inquest on a Movement: Labour's Defeat and its Consequences,” Encounter (July 1979): 13–17 Google Scholar.

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18. Akin to the sixties idiom “if you remember the '60s, you weren't there.”

19. See Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy 17 (2009), issue 4 (ed. Jackson, Ben) on the New RightGoogle Scholar.

20. See Dworkin, Denis, Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain: History, the New Left and the origins of Cultural Studies (Durham, NC, 1997)Google Scholar.

21. Or analogies between Brown's and Callaghan's fudged election calls in 2007 and 1978 respectively.

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24. Curran, James, Gaber, Ivor, Petley, James, Culture Wars (Edinburgh, 2005)Google Scholar.

25. Marcus, Greil, Lipstick Traces (Cambridge, MA, 1989)Google Scholar; Savage, Jon, England's Dreaming (London, 1991)Google Scholar.

26. Harrison, Brian, Seeking a Role: The United Kingdom, 1951–70 (Oxford, 2009), 546Google Scholar.

27. Cohen, Stanley, Folk Devils and Moral Panics (London, 1972)Google Scholar; Eric Hobsbawm, “The Forward March of Labour Halted?” Marxism Today (September 1978).

28. Hitchens, Hitch 22, 177–78, 203 all but confesses.

29. Beckett, Andy, “Aunt Twackie's Bazaar,” London Review of Books (August 19, 2010), 30–31 Google Scholar; Fletcher, Winston, Powers of Persuasion (Oxford, 2008), 96–98, 298Google Scholar.

30. Rodgers, Daniel T., Age of Fracture (Cambridge, MA, 2011)Google Scholar.