When the Lights Went Out

The seventies are probably the most important and fascinating period in modern British political history. They encompass strikes that brought down governments, shock general election results, the rise of Margaret Thatcher and the fall of Edward Heath, the IMF crisis, the Winter of Discontent and the three-day week. But the seventies have also been frequently misunderstood, oversimplified and misrepresented. "When the Lights Went Out" goes in search of what really happened, what it felt like at the time, and where it was all leading. It includes vivid interviews with many of the leading participants, many of them now dead, from Heath to Jack Jones to Arthur Scargill, and it travels from the once-famous factories where the great industrial confrontations took place to the suburbs where Thatcherism was created and to remote North Sea oil rigs. The book also unearths the stories of the forgotten political actors away from Westminster who gave the decade so much of its volatility and excitement, from the Gay Liberation Front to the hippie anarchists of the free festival movement. Over five years in the making, this book is not an academic history but something for the general reader, written with the vividness of a novel or the best works of American New Journalism, bringing the decade back to life in all its drama and complexity.

ISBN 057122136X   Pages 592 ISBN13 9780571221363 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 899 Publisher Faber and Faber   Published in London Imprint Faber and Faber   Height (mm) 241 Format Hardback   Width (mm) 160 Publication date 07 May 2009   Spine width (mm) 47 DEWEY 941.0857   Academic level General DEWEY edition DC22

		List of Illustrations
Introduction		Our Weimar?		1
Pt. 1		Optimism
1		Champagne and Rust		9
2		The Great White Ghost		19
3		Heathograd		33
Pt. 2		Shocks
4		Close the Gates!		53
5		Questions of Sovereignty		88
6		Lights Out		125
7		Waiting for the Collapse		157
Pt. 3		New Possibilities
8		The Great Black Hope		185
9		The Real Sixties		209
10		Get Out of the City		234
11		Margaret and the Austrians		260
12		A Relationship of Forces		289
13		Marxism at Lunchtime		307
Pt. 4		The Reckoning
14		William the Terrible		317
15		Brent vs the Cotswolds		358
16		Getting Away with It?		404
17		Pressures Building		434
18		The Peasants' Revolt		464
19		Last-Ditch Days		498
		Conclusion: The Long Seventies		516
		Acknowledgments		525
		Chronology		526
		Sources		529
		Index		555

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