2 - The Winter of Discontent: Causes and Context

Summary

On the eve of January 1, 1970 British journalists waved a ‘haggard goodbye’ to the 1960s. For those steeped in the energy of blossoming social movements, the decade was one of unprecedented shows of solidarity amongst British youth, and the next decade was the one where they had the chance to ‘make the world a better place.’ Yet, by the time the 1970s came to a close, little was left of this enthusiasm and hope. On December 7, 1979 punk band the Clash released a startling epitaph for the decade in their song ‘London Calling’:

All that phoney Beatlemania has bitten the dust.

London calling, see we ain't got no swing

‘Cept for the ring of that truncheon thing.

The ice age is coming, the sun is zooming in

Engines stop running and the wheat is growing thin

A nuclear error, but I have no fear

‘Cause London is drowning and I – I live by the river.

For songwriters Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, the revelry of the 1960s was reduced to ‘the ring of that truncheon thing,’ and all that was certain was an apparently disastrous end.

Within the span of ten years, the vision of making the world a better place had turned into a portent of the nation's demise. In order to understand this mood of profound pessimism, it is necessary to ask: What were the undercurrents present within the British economic and political system that had come to a head during the 1970s? Why were political parties less able and/or willing to deliver on the promises of the post-war settlement? How did political lines, both Left and Right, shift as society changed? In particular, what reconfigurations in class, race, and gender shaped the political terrain in the 1970s? And, finally, how did these shifts set the stage for the strikes of the Winter of Discontent?

The early 1970s represented a ‘watershed in the development of Western capitalist economies’ as the global economy experienced the most dramatic economic downturn in post-war history. The economic shocks of this decade were all the more unsettling because they followed an era of unprecedented economic prosperity, known as the ‘Golden Age.’ Prior to 1973, the industrialized countries of the world experienced the longest period of uninterrupted growth at the highest rates ever seen in history after the Second World War.