The writing on the wall: Britain in the seventies

by Philip Whitehead

438 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1985

Reviews

[Ipswichblade · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent enough book about the 1970s, written by an ex MP so there was a different slant to other books about this period

[Maurice Frank · Rating 2 out of 5]

Written in very dense economics language, mostly from the 2 major parties' points of view, all about banks and city businessmen and industrialists and companies, without other writers' references to the culture going on outside that grey world of high capitalism and its political hangers on. You have to wade through money indicators M0 and M1 and M3, which gobbledygook the news used to be full of around the Callaghan to early Thatcher era but you thankfully never hear of any more. The first of the 70s histories, why was it by far the driest too? And he writes, in 1985, clearly as a defender of 80s Labour and suggesting absurdly that 70s Labour failed to radicalise the people to support it because it wasn't CND: we know from what happened next that's wrong.