Though the phrase “Crisis? What Crisis?” was most famously used as a headline by The Sun during the Winter of Discontent in 1979 and was the title of a Supertramp album before that, I think it was first used on this cover of The Economist dated August 12, 1972. I don’t know what the story was about but knowing the era I imagine it was another economic or industrial disaster of some kind.

The funny thing about this cover is I assume we’re supposed to think the family are enjoying a life of languid pleasure, the idle working classes sunning themselves on the beach while the country goes down the shitter. And they have a radio! Luxury! Grandad in particular looks very happy stretched out in the sun. But looking at it now all I can think is how bloody uncomfortable and miserable they seem (well, apart from Grandad) sitting on that hot, pebbly beach fully-clothed, and with their six grubby kids they look more like a vagrant gypsy family than happy-go-lucky workers living off the fat of the land with their consumer electronics. Was this the best The Economist could do, or was life so bad in 1972 that people looked at that picture and thought “Lucky bastards”?

But at least in the summer of 1972 they would have this trio of (appropriate) hits to listen to on their fancy radio while they fried on the hot pebbles. I bet they’re not wearing any suntan lotion either and poor old mum will have to rub cold Calomine on their raw red skin when they get home.

Download: Automatically Sunshine – The Supremes (mp3)
Download: Sea Side Shuffle – Terry Dactyl & The Dinosaurs (mp3)
Download: School’s Out – Alice Cooper (mp3)

The Alice Cooper would probably have made Grandad wake from his snooze and say “What the bloody hell is this racket? Put on Jimmy Young!”

The first time I remember being aware that there was such a thing as politics and economics was one day in the early 1970s when I went into my local sweet shop to buy a bag of crisps and discovered that they had gone down in price from 3p to 2 and a 1/2p. I asked the bloke in the shop why and he said “it’s because of the budget” which I thought must be a wonderful thing if it lowered the price of crisps. I don’t know if Anthony Barber or Dennis Healey was Chancellor of The Exchequer at the time but I like to think it was the latter and that’s why I became a Labour voter — forget Socialism, give me cheap crisps and I’m yours for life. I know 1/2p doesn’t sound like much but you could buy two Black Jacks for that back then.

Then one Friday night sometime later my mum sent me and my sister down to the chip shop with 10p each to buy a bag of chips, only for us to discover that they had gone up to 12p for a bag so we had to go back home to get the extra 2p. Thus my dreams of a Socialist Utopia of inexpensive greasy food and snacks were dashed and I learnt that in politics and economics there’s no such thing as a free lunch — or a bag of crisps — and what they give with one hand they take with the other.

Download: Money (extended version) – The Flying Lizards (mp3)

Tom Robinson’s song “The Winter of ‘79″ isn’t about The Winter of Discontent of that year because it was written and recorded before that actually happened. In the song Tom is reading his tea leaves and looking into the future, imagining events in England a year down the road (written from the point of view of someone looking back at 1979) and it’s not a pretty picture: civil unrest, violence, fascism, repressive Government and police brutality — but with cheap beer, so it wasn’t all grim.

Let’s see how his predictions worked out.

All you kids that just sit and whine
You should have been there back in ‘79
You say we’re giving you a real hard time
You boys are really breaking my heart
Spurs beat Arsenal, what a game

I hope Tom wasn’t doing the Football Pools because that’s wrong for a start. Arsenal beat Spurs 1-0 in December 1979. It was probably a rubbish game too.

I’d been working on and off
A pint of beer was still ten bob

I can’t remember how much a pint of beer was in 1979. Ten bob (50p to you kids) does sound a bit cheap for even then, but my wages from my Saturday job at WH Smith that year were a whopping £6.60 which was enough for me to get shitfaced in the pub after work (which usually took about 6 pints back then), have a kebab on the way home, and still have enough money left over to buy records and cigarettes. These days £6 would get you a couple of pints at most but you wouldn’t have much change left for a kebab.

They stopped the Social in the spring
And quite a few communists got run in
And National Service come back in
In the winter of ‘79

When Marco’s caff went up in flames
The Vambo boys took the blame
The SAS come and took our names
In the winter of ‘79

These verses might all sound like typical lefty paranoia about the fascist state clamping down on political dissent, but by the mid-70s the country seemed headed for social breakdown and political anarchy and some elements of the British secret services, convinced that the government and the unions (and the BBC) were in the hands of radicals and revolutionaries, actually planned a military coup against the Labour government of Harold Wilson that would have installed Lord Mountbatten as the new Premier. So it’s not paranoia if it’s true, though no one knew about this at the time. And you have to remind yourself that he wrote this when “Sunny” Jim Callaghan was Prime Minister. If he thought England was a violent, politically oppressive place when he wrote the song in 1977 then God knows what he would have written if he’d waited a while and seen Maggie Thatcher in power, a woman who openly referred to striking workers — fellow British citizens — as “the enemy.”

It was us poor bastards took the chop
When the tubes gone up and the buses stopped
The top people still come out on top
The government never resigned
The Carib Club got petrol bombed
The National Front was getting awful strong

Well, some things never change. The top people still come out on top and are far richer and even more on top than they were in 1979 (and mostly got that way under a Labour government), the Government is clinging to power despite being mortally wounded by scandal and an economic crisis, and if you change “The National Front” to “The BNP” these verses could be from a song called “The Winter of ‘09″

So it turned out that Tom was right about the winter of 1979 being an important point in English history, he was just wrong about a lot of the facts — even the football results. But it didn’t take much imagination to look at England in 1977 and imagine the worst.

Download: The Winter of ‘79 – Tom Robinson Band (mp3)
Buy: Power In The Darkness (album)

“On this occasion,” said Jack, “that’s exactly where you’re wrong. You’re all here as my guests, and you can order anything you like. The tab for this is being picked up by the British Leyland Motor Corporation, so expense is no object. Go for it, chaps. Let your imaginations run wild.
Roy ordered fillet steak and chips, Colin ordered fillet steak and chips, Bill ordered fillet steak, chips and peas, and Jack, who went to the South of France for his holidays, ordered fillet steak with chips, peas and mushrooms on the side, a touch of sophistication that was not lost on the others.”
Jonathan Coe
The Rotters Club

This little scene really captures the dismal state of English dining in the 1970s and the nation’s unsophisticated tastebuds in the days before any of us had ever heard of Balsamic Vinegar or Chilean Sea Bass and everyone’s idea of upmarket grub was steak — always with chips. I don’t want to come across like one of the Four Yorkshiremen or anything but I don’t think I even ate a steak until I was in my late teens (I mean a proper one, not some frozen Findus thing made out of unknown cow parts) and I don’t remember my mother ever cooking one at home, I assume because it was too expensive. I don’t think it was something anybody had at home back then, it was a luxury treat you had in a restaurant when you were “pushing the boat out” or if someone else was paying, like above, though back then “steak” usually meant a puny overcooked fillet served up in a Berni Inn or Angus Steak House.

I ate more “real” meat at school (though I dread to think where that Liver came from) than I did at home where my diet was 99% packaged, processed and artificially-flavoured: spam fritters, fish paste sandwiches, instant mash, Pot Noodles, Findus Crispy Pancakes (God knows what they were made from) tinned meat pies, boil-in-the-bag Cod, and “international cuisine” meant Vesta Instant Chow Mein which came in a box. Pudding was usually something powdered and instant (and totally artificial) like Angel Delight. We rarely went out to eat either (unless you count the Wimpy Bar) except for when my Dad took my sister and me out for the day and we’d have lunch at this Italian place in Kensington (which, amazingly, is still there) where he’d eat this weird thing called a Lasagne — he was sophisticated my old man, he’d been to Paris! — while I’d always have double egg and chips, a meal that still gives me a Proustian rush back to my childhood.

With all the tinned, frozen, instant, and boiled-in-the-bag rubbish we were eating in it’s no wonder we all looked so ill and pasty back then, the shit food adding to the general sickly air that seems to hang over the 1970s. Watch a TV show like The Sweeney and everyone looks like they smell of chip fat and ashtrays and has skin like an uncooked pork sausage (all that beige polyester didn’t help the complexion either).

But at least we were thin. I was surprised to find out that we actually ate more calories in the 1970s than we do today but we still looked like rickety runts, while the vast smorgasbord of cheap food and dining options we have now is creating a nation of obese tubbies. I don’t think it was because everyone was working out either, back then a gym was a place you only went when you were at school. Perhaps just getting through the day in 1970s England kept us slim, we didn’t spend all day on our bums in front of a computer and drive everywhere. So maybe the next slimming fad should be “The 1970s Diet”: wake up in a freezing cold flat, walk five miles to work, stand on your feet in a factory all day, carry your shopping home from the supermarket, eat a pile of spam fritters, instant mash and processed peas for tea, have a big bowl of Angel Delight, smoke twenty Rothman’s, and the weight will just fall off.

Download: Barbecue – Orange Juice (mp3)
Download: Bangers and Mash – Peter Sellers & Sophia Loren (mp3)

It’s a Saturday night in the early 70s and I’m lying on our brown shag carpet in front of our fake-wood, black and white television rented from Rediffusion. I’m waiting for The Two Ronnies and Match of The Day to come on, but first I have to suffer through light entertainment shows like The Black & White Minstrels and Seaside Special with dance numbers performed by The Young Generation and musical guests Demis Roussos, Dana, Lena Zavaroni, and Peters & Lee singing their #1 smash hit “Welcome Home.”

Peters & Lee were an odd couple. There were rumours (which my mum mentioned everytime they came on the telly) that blind Lennie Peters had been friends with the Kray brothers in the 60s and with his craggy face he looked more like a tough George Sewell type hard man, put him in a sheepskin car coat and you could imagine him on The Sweeney telling some slag to shut it or he’ll break his kneecaps. Dianne Lee on the other hand looked like the glamourous wife of a young stockbroker, passing around the sausages on sticks at suburban cocktail parties.

Posting this I feel like I’m testing the limits of nostalgia’s power to put a golden glow on things. Lennie did have a rather good, husky and Charlie Rich-esque voice but it’s drowned in a sea of easy listening strings and backing singers and Dianne must have been there purely as eye candy because her voice hardly registers. I can’t help but hear it through a filter of memories which makes me more kindly disposed toward it, but strip all the baggage of the past away and it’s left alone in the cultural Dead Zone of early 70s Light Entertainment television and that’s a dreadful place to be — it’s all brown and Mike and Bernie Winters live there.

Download: Welcome Home – Peters & Lee (mp3)
Buy: “The Best Of Peters & Lee” (album)