Product Description

The seventies are probably the most important and fascinating period in modern British political history.

They encompass strikes that brought down governments, shock general election results, the rise of Margaret Thatcher and the fall of Edward Heath, the IMF crisis, the Winter of Discontent and the three-day week.

But the seventies have also been frequently misunderstood, oversimplified and misrepresented. 'When the Lights Went Out' goes in search of what really happened, what it felt like at the time, and where it was all leading. It includes vivid interviews with many of the leading participants, many of them now dead, from Heath to Jack Jones to Arthur Scargill, and it travels from the once-famous factories where the great industrial confrontations took place to the suburbs where Thatcherism was created and to remote North Sea oil rigs.

The book also unearths the stories of the forgotten political actors away from Westminster who gave the decade so much of its volatility and excitement, from the Gay Liberation Front to the hippie anarchists of the free festival movement.

Over five years in the making, this book is not an academic history but something for the general reader, written with the vividness of a novel or the best works of American New Journalism, bringing the decade back to life in all its drama and complexity.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8012 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 576 pages

Review
The 1970s was the decade that formed my politics and Andy Beckett captures it perfectly. No-one will ever write a better biography of this decade that saw the twilight of social democracy and the beginning of the Thatcher/Reagan era which now too enters its twilight. I just couldn't put it down. --Ken Livingstone

What makes this book such an evocative and riveting read is the archival record of an approaching thunderstorm, which he describes vividly and honestly. ... (A) compelling narrative. --Francis Wheen, Literary Review

(A) beautifully written and hugely entertaining book. The author has the ability to make the prosaic seem exciting and some of his characters would be at home in a Victorian melodrama. --Roy Hattersley, Daily Telegraph

What makes this book such an evocative and riveting read is the archival record of an approaching thunderstorm, which he describes vividly and honestly. ... (A) compelling narrative. --Francis Wheen, Literary Review

(A) beautifully written and hugely entertaining book. The author has the ability to make the prosaic seem exciting and some of his characters would be at home in a Victorian melodrama. --Roy Hattersley, Daily Telegraph

Review
(A) fabulous book.

Review
(A) thoughtful, balanced and illuminating book,

Customer Reviews

An authentic history of the 1970s
On page 2 the author writes "I was born in 1969". As someone who took a keen interest in current affairs throughout the 1970s, I prepared myself to spot lots of mistakes from a writer who was only a child. However, the nearest I came to spotting one (not that I was particularly looking for them) was the omission from the index of Ian Paisley, who has a single mention (page 96).
This book turned out to be a thoroughly and scrupulously researched history of that derided decade, mostly political but also touching on matters like pop festivals. It is a detailed analysis, with the benefit of hindsight, from the beginning of the Heath era to the beginning of the Thatcher one. Beckett's list of sources, including books, articles, and TV and radio broadcasts from the time, runs to no less than 25 pages, and the book took 5 years to write. He personally interviewed several major players of the era, including Ted Heath, Denis Healey, Jack Jones (recently deceased), and Arthur Scargill. These interviews, with fascinating descriptions of the characters 30 years on, are particularly delightful. So any idea that someone who had just turned 10 by the end of the decade is unsuited to write such a book must be rejected.
The book is in 4 parts, entitled Optimism, Shocks, New Possibilities, and The Reckoning. The chapter titles are sometimes obscure until the reader has read several pages; "The Great White Ghost" refers to Heath, "Margaret and the Austrians" refers to Thatcher's espousal of the so-called Austrian school of monetarism, while "William the Terrible", which completely mystified me until almost the end of the chapter, refers to the US Treasury Secretary in 1976.
Several events of the decade are described and discussed in great detail, such as the Saltley coke depot dispute of 1972, when Scargill came to prominence, and the Grunwick dispute of 1977-78. Beckett's research into the latter revealed a previously unknown fact, namely the location of the HQ of the self-styled National Association for Freedom which did much to break the strike.
At a time (2009) when everyone is obsessed by the economic crisis, it is interesting to recall that there was just as much obsession at times like the 3-day week (1974), the sterling crisis (1976), and the so-called Winter of Discontent (1979). In fact there have probably been few years in the past 50 when it has not been felt that there was a "crisis" of one kind or another; the British take almost a perverse delight in them (it seems to me).
I could not detect any political bias on the author's part, except perhaps right at the end when he opines that Callaghan was very unlucky and Thatcher very lucky during most of her term in office.
For someone such as myself it was great to re-live that decade, and to be reminded of some almost-forgotten events, and for younger readers this is a highly instructive and insightful book into our recent history; I can vouch for its authenticity.

Living History
If The Sixties meant we'd never had it so good (as the Prime Minister told us) then The Seventies were where we paid for our pleasures. But memories of coal strikes, inflation and rotting rubbish in the street on the one hand, and flared trousers and T-Rex on the other don't really count as history - just as memory (and in some case, bad memories). Having had my memory of the period awakened by watching The Red Riding Trilogy I was pleased to read this wide-ranging and thoughtful history of the period. Like all good recent history it resorts the memory of those who lived through it, it adds some perspective to events, and it challenges their inevitability. I had forgotten whole sections of these events and misordered others.

Andy Beckett doesn't just give us the politics: Harold Wilson in his Gannex mac, Grocer Heath's almost tragic mismatch between personality and belief, Sunny Jim Callaghan and a perhaps not yet quite Iron Lady, but certainly galvanised. He also takes us through social change like the rise of Women's Lib and Gay Lib and of environmentalism. Yet at the end of it all one wonders what it was that snapped Britain out of that left-wing consensus into (within a few years) a right-wing semi-consensus. Was it North Sea Oil? Was it just a "changing of the guard"? Or is all politics and economics simply a tidal sea in which trends wash in and wash out.

A very enjoyable and thought-provoking book.

Superb
This is singularly the best volume on modern British history I have read: it outstrips Marr's generic work as the latter is somewhat to casual and 'hip' in his style, endowing the text with a kind of complacency associated with his brand of liberalism.

Without being ponderous nor excessively light, Beckett takes us through the seventies (I am a nineties kid myself), treating the matter in both a humane and academically rigorous way.

Much to be recommended for anyone who wishes to obtain some clarity on the period. A good complement to other works of contemporary history.