Feminists and Flourbombs

The 1970s

Politically, economically and socially, the 1970s were a time of great upheaval. This was the decade of industrial action, of bitter conflict in Northern Ireland, of the oil crisis and of a sea-change in relations with Europe, starting with Britain's membership of the European Economic Community in 1973.

Unemployment and inflation

The economy was in decline and inflation was spiraling out of control. In 1973 a three-day working week was introduced by Edward Heath, Conservative Prime Minister between 1970 and 1974, to try and restrict energy use. Heath lost the 1974 election and a Labour government, led first by Harold Wilson and then by James Callaghan, took power. It failed to rescue the economy and by 1977 unemployment reached 1.6 million.

Labour's defeat was heralded by the Winter of Discontent (1978-79). One after the other, public service unions went on strike. Britain was, at times simultaneously, without postal, fire and rubbish collection services. The government used the armed forces to intervene but failed to resolve the causes of the industrial action. On 4 May, Labour lost the election and Margaret Thatcher entered 10 Downing Street to start her long stint as Prime Minister.

Troubles

Economic turmoil was only part of the 1970s problem. In 1971, the Heath government reintroduced the Special Powers Act, which allowed for the internment without trial of political subversives. The result was an escalation of street battles in Northern Ireland. The troubles came to a head on 30 January 1972, when British paratroops fired into a crowd of civil rights demonstrators in Londonderry killing 13 people.

Britain was not the only country in turmoil. The United States faced the bitter and bloody end of the Vietnam War, and perhaps its greatest political scandal so far: Watergate.

Liberation struggles

A range of political and social protest movements emerged out of the turbulence of the 1970s. In America, much political protest focused on the Vietnam War. The movement claimed its own martyrs in May 1970 when National Guardsmen opened fire at Kent State University in Ohio, killing four students.

In Britain, as the trade unions worked to defend their members from the impact of the worsening economy, left-wing political groups grew in numbers and influence.

Civil rights movements, not just for women, but for gays, lesbians and ethnic minorities, emerged partly out of frustration at the limited perspective of the left which mirrored the power structure of the wider society. Feminist politics was, in part, a response to women's experience in left groups which claimed to be struggling for liberation but where the leaders were white men, with women and ethnic minorities confined to the lower ranks.

The early 1970s was full of firsts. In 1970, the Gay Liberation Front held its first meeting at the London School of Economics. A year later, the first National Women's Liberation Conference was held in Oxford. For the first time, women's groups from across Britain came together to discuss how women's lot could be improved.

Film and music

Seth Maxwell wrote in Dazed & Confused that, 'the '70s put the '60s up for sale. The music of the '70s reared its ugly head back in time, grabbing the whole generation of the '60s, scooping up the goodies, tagging it, labeling it, pricing it and putting it up for sale'.

The music of the 1970s was brash and trashy. Disco seized America, while Britain thrilled to glam rock and punk. From the Bee Gees to David Bowie, Aerosmith to the Eagles, through Bruce Springsteen and on to the Sex Pistols, the 1970s was a musically eclectic period

Cinematically, the 1970s was a hugely important decade. Francis Ford Coppola gave us The Godfather parts 1 and 2, widely acknowledged as the greatest gangster movies ever made. Hollywood produced the first real blockbusters: Star Wars and Jaws. But cinema in the 1970s was not just about packed cinemas and box office records. It also produced enduring images of the horrors of Vietnam, in Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter. And Britain's Stanley Kubrick created the seminal 1970s work, the disturbing and controversial A Clockwork Orange.

Fashion

Once dubbed the decade that taste forgot, that title has now been taken by the 1980s, leaving the 1970s looking quite respectable for all the kaftans and gold medallions. Women wore their hair long and straight, parted down the middle like Ali McGraw in Love Story. Or they could opt for Farrah Fawcett flicks and layers.

Exposure to UV rays was still seen as a good thing. Girls were advised to spend as much time as they could lying in the sun. You had to have a tan if you were to be able to wear tiny mini-skirts which were now mainstream after all the fuss they had created in the 1960s.

Tank tops were trendy but most important of all, so were jeans. 'It may seem superficial,' one fashion journalist wrote, 'but if you don't wear jeans that look right, forget ever going steady with a hunk'. The right look was tight from the waist to the thighs, then flared to the floor. For some men, 1970s fashion meant tight jeans, shirts open to the waist and huge gold medallions. Think Lee Majors in the Six Million Dollar Man, or John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. In general though, the more relaxed view of gender that was emerging meant a new freedom of choice about what it was appropriate for men and women to wear.

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