The Winter of Discontent

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.7 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 4 October 2021

⏱️ 26 minutes

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Summary

In the bitter winter of 1978-1979 petrol ran short, panic buying was rife, rubbish piled up in the streets and bodies went unburied as a wave of industrial action swept the UK; but what lessons might be learned as we face our own shortages of food and fuel? The disruption was in fact relatively short-lived but the Winter of Discontent has left a deep imprint on British social and political culture which we can still feel today. Historian Alwyn Turner joins the podcast to explain what caused this state of emergency, what lessons it could teach us now, its impact on the political landscape and why the 1970's weren't quite as grim as many remember.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Britain is in the grip of a panic.
0:08.4	People are queuing up in petrol station, gas station, forecords filling up their cars.
0:14.4	The government is saying there is no fuel shortage, but some petrol stations are really
0:19.8	dry.
0:20.8	And whenever there's a shortage or a strike or a power cut, people think of the 1970s.
0:25.2	They don't think about the lean years following the Battle of Waterloo, old 1815 to 20
0:32.4	odd.
0:33.4	Do you know there's lean years of Lord Liverpool's administration?
0:36.8	No, they don't, although maybe they should.
0:38.9	They think about the 1970s, at a time when there were shortages.
0:43.8	On this podcast, I'm going to talk about the 70s and their shortages and see if there's
0:47.7	any lessons for today.
0:49.7	My favourite shortage from 1970s was late 1984, when there was a so-called Housewives
0:54.3	panic.
0:55.3	It was a shortage of sugar because a rumor went round that they were running out of sugar
0:59.1	and tens of thousands of tons of sugar disappeared from supermarket and shop shelves.
1:06.0	The supermarket's limited sugar, the £2 per person until they got that back under control.
1:12.9	And there's a very similar shortage of salt.
1:15.7	A joke was written in a newspaper in Slaal, which is perfect.
1:20.0	A journalist had some ladies having tea, they were discussing salt.
1:23.4	And one of them said she heard salt was running out because miners in Siberia are going on
1:28.0	strike.
	...

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