[QUOTE=mickd1961;40064326]Very well said 923.

Last year 123 told us he was still in his 30’s and this actually tells us a lot.

I couldn’t possibly offer an opinion of 30’s, 40’s, 50’s and most of 60’s Britain because I either wasn’t here or I was too young to know.

A lot of us wax lyrical about the 60’s and 70’s but only from a childhood and cultural perspective........my parents view of the 60’s and 70’s was different to mine I guess.

That 70’s period under Labour was hideous and as a young lad and then school leaver in 78 it was very bleak.

I’m sure you’ll remember your school being closed due to not enough coal or oil for heating?

Those weeks where we had power cuts on two or three days to conserve energy and living by candle light from 4pm through the winter with no electricity?

If you didn’t have gas you got no heating or hot food!

We used to “camp” in our bedrooms and use torches and we’d be in bed by 8.00pm as there was nothing else to do!

No rubbish collections for a couple of months due to bin men being on strike, rats running a mock amongst streets piled high of household and business refuse.

A shortage of basic foodstuffs and standing in queues for bread for hours on end each week!

The country was bankrupt under Wilson/Callaghan and Chancellor Healey and being run by the likes of “Red Robbo” the Union leader along with ASLEF and the NUM with Scargill and all his cronies and the like.

The reason this present version of Labour still struggle to gain traction is because of a weak and insipid leader, the spectre of Momentum and the union loonies hiding in plain site AND the collective memories of all of those still alive who were born within the last 100 years who lived through that period under Labour!

There’s a reason that Labour absolutely walked three General Elections and that’s because Blair, despite all his faults in latter years and Kinnock prior to him both tackled the militants and the loonies head on and put them in a locked box for a generation.

It impossible to have any clue what the 70’s was like unless you were 10+ and lived through it, it was very tough and very scary for our parents and grandparents.

Things are very awkward at the moment but on a scale of 10 compared to the 70’s we haven’t yet reach 2 in my opinion.[/QUOTE
As someone of the same/similar age I can't but echo your sentiments Mick!

I would, however, point out that much of the situation was due to an over reliance at the time on traditional heavy industries that were mismanaged, outmoded, unproductive and in decline. The over powerful big unions with their closed shop mentality certainly did not help but successive governments (both Tory and Labour ) also failed to address the issue and invest in new technology and businesses/industries to create new, alternative, employment. Whole communities in Wales, the Midlands and the North relied almost entirely on textiles, mining, steel production, ship building and the car industry. The NUM were wrong to demand that blatantly unproductive puts were kept open but then if they closed what other jobs were there for their members?