To wonder if it was as bad as people say in the 70s?

[juicee2]

I am quite curious about it.

What caused the poverty? I thought the 80s were a poor decade - am I wrong?

Concentric hexagonal wallpaper in olive, blue, pink and brown. Tongue and groove. Pizza and McDonalds were coming in and Friday night treat was M&S Lasagna, rather than a take away.

Bouquet of Barbed Wire, The Onedin Line and Angels on TV. Social life was an eclectic mix of Rotaract, Young Farmers and YCs. My family voted for the EEC due to fear of the Soviet Union.

I remember tons of colour - clothes, Willy Wonka nd Beatrix Potter (when BP came out some Russian people were allowed go visit the UK and I remember them in the Leicester Square Queue. Early Lloyd Webber - Evita. Saturday Night Fever, Olivia Newton John, The Pink Panther, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers.

The negatives were parochial attitudes. My parents divorced in '74 v publicly. I wasn't allowed to have my German Exchange stay with me due to their unseemly conduct - explained by my head mistress. However having taken my father to the cleaners mother bought a state of the art seafront home for £17,000 with 4 beds, an avocado bathroom with a bidet and vanity units in the main bedrooms - one pink, one mustard. I had the mustard one and it was the bees knees.

Conversely my grandparents were being hit hard with punitive inheritance tax which ultimately meant the loss of their London flat in SW1. They had cared for their parents, no social care support and gm's bro who returned very unwell from the war having been a pow in Japan. They looked after him from 1947 until he shot himself.

We weren't in poverty my df was the Director of a very successful international company. We lived in a mining village and there was real poverty as in most households the main breadwinner was on strike. I remember the soup kitchens and food collections. I remember miners going out in the dead of night to steal coal to warm their homes.
Df employed striking miners who lived in our village on a rota of one or two days a week to do what he could reasoning that even part time wages was better than nothing. Not all of his employees agreed though with df employing the miners and it caused a lot of bad feeling tbh and remember df having to issue warnings to the more vocal protesters.

Power cuts. Candles.
Strikes. Piles of rubbish.
Awful food...meat and 3 veg was pretty much it. I didn't eat curry/anything remotely "foreign" until I was late teens/early 20s.
Wc family. No car. No phone (this was normal for our neighbours too)
Tv on coin meter
Twin tub washer
No holidays. At all. A day at the seaside once a year - if lucky
No clubs/extra curricular stuff...couldn't afford it
Tv was rubbish (and pretty damn sexist and racist)
Music was pretty good....

Ignore my post misread OP

I was born in 1973, so am pretty vague on details, but we had a car, my parents owned the house, and we went on holiday - we lived in Scotland and I can remember being herded into the car at 4am and my dad driving us to Cornwall, Wales or similar. My mum didn’t work, but from the age of about eight we walked home from school, and we played in the back lane which was all garages. We didn’t have a shower until I was about 12, so most weeks it was bath and hair wash on a Sunday, then a flannel wash the rest of the time. My brother was born in ‘78, and while my mum was in hospital I can remember my dad giving me whiskey in hot milk because I had the most terrible cold and just wouldn’t sleep - he wasn’t used to being in sole charge and was at the end of his tether. Imagine the Mumsnet jury on that now!

Oh and no central heating or indoor loo til I was 12/13
It was pretty grim tbh

Poor children were better nourished in the 70s. School dinners were proper food and we had school milk.

Today's poor children are significantly less well nourished. Shameful.

my Mum used to make a lot of my clothes, with variable results.
Oh yes, I remember clearly the hideousness of wearing a ‘homemade version’ of a school summer dress once I got a little older

I grew up in the 70s. Never felt I was from a poor family and this felt the norm. No central heating, house single glazed, you would wake up to ice on the inside of the Windows in the winter. No home phone until late 70s. Mum cooked everything from scratch and you were expected to eat it without complaint. Kids tv was lunchtime and then from about 3.30pm until 6pm and that was it. You were bought clothes a few times a year when you needed them. You could go out to play and your parents were not worried if you disappeared for a few hours. Teachers could hit you and your parents would be angry at you if they found out ! Most shop keepers would sell you cigarettes if you said they were for your mum.

I was young in the 1970s but my memories are mostly happy. We played outside a lot and had more freedom. My family’s meals were very traditional- everything always came with potatoes or chips. Fewer treats and snacks. We owned far fewer clothes, which were only bought when we needed them. No shopping as a leisure activity. Summer holidays were a week away in someone else’s caravan or a few days at Scarborough or Blackpool. We had a good life though. We ate well as my parents loved their meat. We always had a roast on Sundays. Coke and chocolate biscuits were a treat for Saturdays only. Some school teachers were horribly strict though. Getting the belt and being humiliated definitely took place at school for some.

how many variation were there of 'bouncing a ball on the wall and catching it' - involving turning around, touching the ground and singing (ours was Queenie I Queenie I who's got the ball)

and skipping games

Shops did do a sugar ration at one point and bread. But it was temporary. There was a lot of striking going on locally. It was usually justified according to my Mum and I thought nothing of it.

I was a child throughout the 70s and remember them fondly. It always seemed to be sunny and we played out all the time. I remember lots of parties and street parties. I loved the fashion and still do.

Our family had a washing machine, phone, black and white TV and a car (which broke down a lot). Quite a few neighbours came to borrow our phone. We went camping every year and I remember feeling very envious when a friend went abroad.

I do remember the strikes and watching the news on TV a lot. I remember the day Channel 4 started, it was a big thing. I loved watching Bod and Mr Ben.

I don't remember any shortages. We always had puddings and enough to eat. I don't remember blackouts or rubbish everywhere either. Maybe I have a selective memory.

Life is better now though, much better. Maybe not the weather.

The thing is I know the TV was racist snd sexist but as s kid they didn’t occur to me so I loved all the shows. Except the really scary ‘tales of the unexpected’ that was terrifying.

Don’t remember piles of rubbish and we had a 2 week sea side holiday every August as that was factory closure weeks.

I don’t remember there being any extra curricular clubs or activities except brownies and guides anyway .

'bouncing a ball on the wall and catching it'

I used to spend hours doing this! Very sad that we don't have a suitable wall for my children to play it.

if you couldn't afford it , you didn't get it....no credit cards or ATMs

This is partially true - credit cards did exist, but credit in general was much more tightly regulated, and because inflation was high, credit was expensive.

Building societies were the primary source of mortgages and due to tight controls they often had a waiting list so even if you were approved for a mortgage you had to wait.

Thatcherism removed almost all of these controls and restrictions and made us "free" to -be exploited- obtain all the stuff we wanted on credit.

I don’t recall it being terrible. We were a middle class family and had central heating, dishwasher, washing machine and a bath every night without fail. We went abroad every couple of years to Spain Greece or France and had 2 cars and what my mum called “a daily” who has someone who came in every day to do some cleaning and looking after me and my sister so I think we were lucky.

I bought cigarettes from the age of four. For the grown ups!

I left school after A levels in 1974 and went to work in a London University as a technician. I had the best of both worlds - the student experience but with a monthly salary. Ten pence to use the uni swimming pool in the mornings and a subsidised canteen. I shared a flat in Shepherds Bush with 5 other girls (only 2 had their own room and paid a bit extra for the privilege). The kitchen floor was always sticky from the weekend parties. No washing machine so weekly launderette trips.
I remember a couple of long hot summers and the smell of cheese cloth, desert boots and afghan coats with a touch of patchouli and aqua manda. I also remember the streets being piled high with rubbish that wasn't being collected due to strikes.
I was on the pill and had a fair amount a lot of of sex with no strings.
After paying rent (£32/month) I had £100 for all other expenses. Not a fortune and not enough to save anything but enough for a 19 year old to buy (cheap) clothes and live an independent life.

Mid seventies I lived in a grotty flat but in a really trendy place, oh my, it was such fun. Endless parties, streams of friends, boyfriends coming in and out, such a laugh. I had the best of times.

I went out for a meal about once every 3 months (huge treat to afford that) and it was to an italian 'trattoria'' in a basement. Raffia wine bottles hanging from the ceiling and italian writing on the wall, so sophisticated. I ate a toasted mozzarrella sandwich and followed it with lasagne, it was a complete revelation as I'd never eaten like that before.

It's interesting that people keep saying they didn't feel poor because everyone was the same.

The happiest countries are the ones with the least wealth differences. People feel poor now because of the massive difference between rich and poor.

Pebble Mill at One - I'd forgotten about that.

ghosty

Omg!! That brought back a very sharp memory of that ball game. I played that too.

Oh and skipping and complicated elastic routines

I had a great childhood growing up in the 70's. My dad worked and my mum didn't. My parents were reasonably well off so every year we went to Spain for 2 weeks at half term and a week in the summer in North Wales. We stayed at the same hotel every year - I swear it was Faulty Towers.

We lived in a cul-de-sac of new build houses and because we all moved in at the same time, everyone knew everyone. We weren't religious but there was a church on the end of the road and there was always something going on. I remember going to Sunday School and Brownies there. And there were lots of jumble sales, whist drives, dances, and fetes for every season. It was a real community hub for everyone. Every single house had a young family living in it - so the road outside was like a huge kids playground. All the mums and dads became good friends - it was like one massive family. We played out all the time - on our bikes or building dens. The rule was never, ever leave the cul-de-sac and come home when it gets dark.

We were the first to get a colour telly and I remember half the road squashing into our living room to watch Princess Annes' wedding. Apart from the colour tv there were no other distractions to keep us inside. No social media or playstations so outside was the place to be. Not even homework kept us indoors as we didn't get any.

I do remember the power cuts and having to heat the house with the gas oven. And playing cards and monopoly by candlelight.

Homes and cars with no seatbelts were filled with obligitory thick fog of cigarette smoke. I wouldn't want my kids to breath in the kind of gunk we all had too but times were different, it was the norm and I don't remember being bothered by it.

Above all I remember the freedom. I have nothing but fond memories of my childhood in the 70's.

my Mum used to make a lot of my clothes, with variable results.

My mum used to make mine and hers from Clothkits.

yvest you was posh love