Readers’ views on the 1970s and Thatcher, plus England’s 1966 heroes

The Seventies were a ball

They go on about the seventies

As being years of austerity

But how can that be right

When the pubs were full every night?

Whatever pub you went to

You could always find someone that you knew

Every night was party night

Monday to Sunday places packed tight

And on the streets, people passing each other

Going from one pub to another

And dressed in all kinds of styles and trends

Long hair, short hair leather and denim

Smoothy style, soul boys, hippies and skins

And that new punk look with the safety pins

And not a hoodie or a baseball cap in sight

And we all worked hard to pay for our nights!

- Thank you very much!

And spirits were high and the music exciting

With new sounds constantly delighting

Our youthful ears as we supped our beer

So what’s all this about the times being drear!?

It wasn’t like that when I was there!

And the high streets were abuzz every Saturday

As we walked up and down with our purchases —

Loaded up with new clothes and LPs

Now that doesn’t sound too austere to me!

Yes we had power cuts and the rest of it

But still these days couldn’t hold a candle to it!

When youth was all

And we had a ball! – as I recall.

Alan Jones, Midlands

Learn lessons from Thatcher

In 1979, Margaret Thatcher came to power, pledging to reduce government spending. Thatcher accompanied this with a different analysis of Britain's woes that contradicted the post-war Keynesian consensus. Thatcher believed that the key to prosperity lay in business, not in the gift of government. Thatcher saw the state as being responsible for providing the conditions necessary for business to succeed. She had little concern for wealth distribution, preferring instead to grow per capita wealth, which benefited all. Her policy of selling council homes was a further plank of her vision.

These are the policies that Burnham now blames for our present malaise; he calls this a "wrong turn." Thatcher was so successful that she won three straight elections and forced the Labour Party to face a chilling electoral reality. The result was New Labour under Blair, which, in its initial years, stuck firmly to Thatcher's spending-restraint policies.

The New Labour approach was to avoid accountability by giving power to the Bank of England and creating a massive number of quangos to run public services without the parliamentary accountability that ministers once had. The EU also imposed extensive regulations on businesses as a precondition for membership in the single market. The consequence of this has been a decline in both the quality of politicians and democratic control. If lawyers or the Bank of England can veto government actions, then what is the point of elections and the idea of a mandate?

Martin Bristow, Midlands

The scandal of forced adoption

The article, "Shame of forced adoption in town", only goes partway toward capturing the horror of what young, single mothers went through in the fairly recent past.

If a young woman who had only just given birth refused to give up her baby, she would be sectioned under the Mental Health Act and imprisoned for life in a Dickensian asylum, forced to do laundry work and filled with Largactil and other anti-psychotic drugs to keep her quiet.

Her baby would be sold by some so-called "charity" – often sent abroad to the Colonies, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, or Canada – becoming a virtual slave in many cases, never to return.

I have met many such now-elderly women who told me the exact same story: they were punished for having a child out of wedlock, while the father, often a family member, got away with it because everyone kept quiet to avoid a scandal and jail for him.

W F Kerswell, Picklescott

Well done on the Bridgnorth 10K

I would like to say congratulations to the organisers of the Bridgnorth 10k. It was a very tough course but the spirit and atmosphere in the town really helped. I will be back again next year.

​Simon Smith, West Midlands

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