1979

[upinaballoon]

A Tory government was voted into power in 1979. I remember it. I remember the 70s. This thread has been prompted by the one about free milk being stopped.
Just suppose Labour had been returned to power at the 1979 election. For those of you who lived through it or know about it, how would things have been then, from say 1979 to 1987?

I was alive - born 1971 - but don’t remember much of it. Anything I do remember was from a limited child’s viewpoint. Also standards and expectations imo were much lower in many aspects of life. Even things like hygiene, food availability etc. So it’s hard now to think what changes there may have been under Labour,

things I do remember:
I lived in a city and gradually the main industries (cars) became fewer and therefore much unemployment.A theatre group came to school to do some sort of workshop about this.
Films like Billy Elliot, Brassed Off, The Full Monty etc really resonate with me.
Year 7/8 equivalent being taught basically we might die in a nuclear war - this was a big thing, I doubt 11 year old children would be shown such videos etc now.

Nuclear war and quick sand deaths weighed heavily on my mind.

The former obviously a real threat. And it was only when the Cold War ended did I realise how oppressive it had been.

I remember being hopeful that a woman was PM when I was a child

By the time I was leaving school the miners strike was huge news.
I don't remember anything about politics pre 1979.

Yes, "Thatcher the milk-snatcher!"
Unemployment was high, whole industries were closing down, leaving many towns with very little to offer in terms of work, many people did "get on their bike" and moved away from their communities to look for work. Racism was rife, as was sexism and homophobia. But students didn't have to take out loans - most of my university friends got grants, so when they did start work, it wasn't with a massive debt. There was controlled rent, more council housing available, and it was fairly easy to squat , if that's what you wanted to do. House prices were comparatively cheaper if you were in a position to buy.
Maggie Thatcher's main contribution to society was making women leaders visible and acceptable. My impression then was that Labour were actually not supportive of women's rights at that time - not that the Tories were, but Thatcher was an example of what was possible for women, even though she didn't particularly go out of her way to champion other women. The first woman Prime Minister was such a big deal to me and my peers.

The 80s was an era of unalloyed greed, it was the time of the loadsa money culture. Thatcher killed off manufacturing and traditional industries in this country and many communities have never recovered from the mass disappearance of jobs. It was the era of the individual and “No such thing as society”, privatisation of public services, sell off of council houses. Thatcher knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. The seeds of many of today’s problems were sown then.

I'm no Tory but I think thatcher was protective of child benefit as it was sometimes the only money women had access to.

Labour had been in office up to 1979. My question was actually not about what did happen between 1979 to 1987 under the Tories. My question was - what if Labour had carried on from 1979 to 1987. This is not a ranting statement about my original question, just a gentle one.

but my question was - how would it have been if Labour had continued from where they were in 1979, when they called an election?

The 1979 election was the first one I could vote in. I am from a working class background in a large Northern city and voted Conservative as did most of my family and friends.
The 1970s I remember as a time of scarcity and strikes. Factories and businesses were closing, often as a result of high union demands. My uncle was a shop steward at a large car plant and was on strike every other week!
As a Saturday girl in a supermarket I remember us putting candles out in the shop and working the tills with a crank handle! Suppliers had regular strikes and there were shortages because of them which, as a teenager, I was largely insulated from but I do remember people queueing for bread, sugar and petrol.
Thatcher came in on a promise of what seemed like common sense, that you couldn't have what you couldn't afford and that homespun idea resonated with a lot of the public.

In answer to your question, I don't know what would have happened if Labour had got in. Things couldn't have continued as they were because the hardship people were facing then was much much greater than today, we may even have ended up with civil unrest. From what I recall the early years of Thatcher felt quite positive, it was the excesses of the later years that have been the seeds of so much that is wrong today

@BIossomtoes Absolutely. The council houses weren’t hers to sell. The profits from this never went into replacing the stock as was promised. Whole swathes of the North of England were basically made jobless from industries in which families had worked for generations. These areas have never recovered. We have this shocking stigma that surrounds social housing because people were encouraged to buy their council houses at a massive discount. They did, then they seemed to think this elevated them to some sort of middle class. This attitude still stands today. Thatcher decimated a lot of the country with the I’m all right Jack philosophy and the unforgivable “there no such thing as society”. Shocking

I was too young to vote in the 1979 election by a matter of weeks, which was annoying, although it would have made no difference in my constituency which was solidly Tory (I would have voted Labour). I remember that time fairly vividly.

The first thing to say is I don't think Labour could have won in 1979 in any circumstances. The country was absolutely fed up to the back teeth of rampant inflation and endless strikes. Mrs Thatcher had a mandate to tackle the unions. Unfortunately the pendulum swung far too far and now workers have minimal rights in the UK.

Also, just as the Tories were moving to the right under Thatcher, Labour was moving to the left under Michael Foot, who took over from James Callaghan after the 1979 election. A Trotskyist group called Militant Tendency made a concerted effort to take the party over. Foot was not a member but did nothing to root them out or contain them. That was a large part of the reason Labour became unelectable all through the 1980s. The Labour MP Gerald Kaufman described their 1983 manifesto as 'the longest suicide note in history'. Some of the centrists in the party left and formed the SDP, which eventually merged with the Liberals to form the LibDems.

However, looking at what would have happened if they had won, Wikipedia says The Labour Party manifesto, The Labour way is the better way, was issued on 6 April.[11] Callaghan presented five priorities:

1. "We must keep a curb on inflation and prices";
2. "We will carry forward the task of putting into practice the new framework to improve industrial relations that we have hammered out with the TUC";
3. "We give a high priority to working for a return to full employment";
4. "We are deeply concerned to enlarge people's freedom"; and
5. "We will use Britain's influence to strengthen world peace and defeat world poverty"

Things that wouldn't have happened in the 1980s under a Labour government:
Council house sell off
Building societies turning into banks
Rent controls abolished
Mortgage regulation abolished (you used to be restricted to borrowing 90 or 95% and that had to be no more than 2.5 times joint income or 3 times one income + second income if there was one) - huge factor in subsequent house inflation
BT and British Gas being sold off
British Rail being broken up and private companies bidding to run routes
Very close relationship with the US under Reagan and George Bush Sr, facilitating the rise of the multinationals
Falklands War (probably)
Section 28, banning 'promotion of homosexuality' in schools

However, the great unknown is what else wouldn't have happened. Thatcher deregulated the City, closed underperforming nationalised industries and withdrew support for much manufacturing in the UK because it was uneconomic. She ruthlessly suppressed trade unions and strikes stopped being a big problem. This hit many communities and social groups very hard and led to deep-seated problems we're still grappling with now. It also transformed the UK economy and made a lot of other people very wealthy.

I'm not well enough informed about politics, economics or business to say more about the benefits and drawbacks of Thatcher's approach. What I can say, though, is that I think the UK economy would not have thrived under the Labour Party of the late 1970s/early 1980s. We would have ended up with a very divided society, as we did under Thatcher, but with different fault lines.

If by some miracle they'd won in 1979 I feel absolutely certain they'd have lost in 1983, if they'd even made it that far.

I live in a Commonwealth country. About ten or twenty years ago a lot of of the older cars on the road were Triumphs, Austins, and other British makes. A lot of the older manufactured items were British, the electricity meter on my house for example. That reflects that as of 1970 Britain was a manufacturing nation.

Unfortunately its reputation for quality was heading rapidly downwards and other countries, chiefly Japan, were taking over. Those big British firms were on life support via Government subsidies. I don't think those businesses were ever likely to recover.

Supposing Labour won in 1979. The subsidies would almost certainly have continued. Perhaps they would have been tapered over time. There would have been no Big Bang, ie, the financial reforms the Tories implemented, meaning nowhere near the level of exported services the UK has had over time, even taking the GFC into account. I think the UK now would be a poorer than it is now, but without the wealth discrepancies between regions and social groups. The schools would be crumbling a bit more, the NHS a bit more stretched etc.

The unions would have had a lot more power. I was a child in 1979 but I remember the apparently endless strikes and power cuts, and I imagine those would have continued. Inflation would have been out of control.

Argentina would have kept the Falklands.

Maybe no move from O Levels/CSE to GCSE. Probably no massive expansion of universities.

No SDP, at least not in the form it took and at the time it was created.

No privatisation or deregulation; state would have retained ownership of trains, busses, energy, water, etc, but probably no better managed.

No Channel Tunnel/Eurostar. Labour cancelled an earlier plan.

Much higher taxes for everyone, but especially for high earners.

Their manifesto committed to getting rid of remaining grammar and all private schools.

No nuclear missiles in the UK, so no Greenham Common protests. Maybe less pressure on the USSR and maybe it would not have collapsed.

You can see the manifesto online, with the corollary that it would not necessarily have been able to do everything as proposed: 1979 Labour Party Manifesto - (labour-party.org.uk)

On the high taxes point, it's counter-productive. Individuals and businesses who can move abroad to avoid them, and those who stay put pay a small fortune to accountants and lawyers to find ways of avoiding or minimising tax, so the overall tax take drops. If you keep taxes at a rate that people feel is more or less fair, the tax take is likely to rise. Denis Healey, Chancellor of the Exchequer 1974-9, denied ever saying I want to squeeze the rich until the pips squeak but there's no doubt many in his party thought that way. Rich people were morally offensive and should be punished. Unfortunately rich people who run businesses or do something else that brings large amount of money into the UK are essential to the economy.

Speaking of Denis Healey, there's a great what if. I think if he'd been able to lead the Labour Party the history of the 1980s would have been very, very different. He'd have had far more chance of winning a general election than Michael Foot and given a free hand he'd have rooted out Militant. As it was, the party rejected him and it was left to Neil Kinnock to tackle that in the late 80s.

Different times. Interesting that Rachel Reeves is now representing a Leeds constituency as he did (not the same one) and like him has become Chancellor. He was a dinosaur and did not think a woman could cope with the job of Chancellor of the Exchequer. He had a great turn of phrase, though: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/oct/03/denis-healeys-10-most-celebrated-quotes-former-labour-chancellor

I am glad I started the thread and I haven't time just now to read the links but i will come back in due course.