The 70s

[talking about the changes to 10 Downing Street that new Prime Minister Ted Heath made when he moved in]

Dominic Sandbrook:
Keen to banish every last taint of his hated rival, Labour's Harold Wilson, Heath ripped out the dark red carpets and put in brand-new gold ones. In the Cabinet Room, out went the battered leather armchairs and the tatty green felt table and in came a symphony of beiges and browns. Heath's friends told him that it looked stylish and modern, like a cool bachelor pad. Most people thought it looked more like a boudoir.

[Prime Minister Ted Heath's plans to join the Common Market met with opposition]

Dominic Sandbrook:
Even in Heath's own party there were plenty of people who recoiled from his European enthusiasm. "I'd rather live in a socialist Britain," said the Tory MP Alan Clark, "than one ruled by a lot of effing foreigners."

[Dominic has been describing the strikes and poor labour relations at British Leyland]

Dominic Sandbrook:
When the Rover SD1 was launched in the summer of 1976, production ran at just 50% of capacity. Buyers had to wait up to nine months for their new cars to be delivered. Leyland's much-lauded "Car of Tomorrow, Today" was fast becoming "The Car of Today, Tomorrow - or maybe the day after". The Sun's cartoonist captured the common view of life at British Leyland.

[various close-ups of the cartoon]

Dominic Sandbrook:
Mugs of cocoa. Games of Ludo. Copies of Playboy. And the workers all tucked up in bed. "'Ere," one of them says, "How did that car get on the assembly line."

[Dominic is reading from a letter to the BBC which is complaining about Grange Hill, the children's series set ina comprehensive school]

Dominic Sandbrook:
"Dear Sirs, I have previously written to you on the vexed subject of Grange Hill. I can now say I find the new series equally as obnoxious as before, but because of my dislike I watch extra carefully. I do not see why I should have to listen to ill-mannered boys shouting their desire for a pee all over my living room."

[Dominic collapses in a fit of the giggles]

[talking about the 1979 General Election]

Dominic Sandbrook:
On the morning of the election, The Sun ran an enormous front-page editorial urging its readers, for the first time in the paper's history, to vote Conservative. "This is D-Day - D for Decision. The first day of the rest of our lives. The Sun is not a Tory paper - we are proud of our working-class readership - but the choice you have to make today is quite simply the choice between freedom and shackles. Freedom to work, with or without a union card. Freedom to rent your home, or buy it. Freedom to live life *your* way." As the results came in, it quickly became clear that Margaret Thatcher would indeed be Britain's first woman prime minister. Her victory wasn't a landslide, but with 339 seats, she'd secured a solid majority of 43. And the rule-book of British politics had been re-written: in future, anyone wanting to win an election would need to appeal, not to the trade-union barons, but to the readers of The Sun.

[final words of series]

Dominic Sandbrook:
The 70s had made Britain a far more tolerant and open-minded country, but also one that had fallen in love with money. Margaret Thatcher was astute enough to understand this, and that meant she reaped the political rewards. Of course nobody in 1979 thought that Margaret Thatcher would still be there eleven years later. And today we remember her as the prime minister who changed everything, for good or ill. But the reason she got there in the first place was that, more than any other politician of the day, she realised just how much Britain had changed already. She was taking over a country that was more ambitious, more affluent and more outgoing than it had been at the beginning of the 70s. And yet one that was also more anxious, more insecure and more individualistic. Now she didn't create all this - she inherited it. From sex and shopping to Europe and education - this was the great watershed in our modern history. And four decades on, we *still* live in the world the 70s made.