The three-day week of 1974 changed Britain

A global rise in commodity prices had already meant bad news for Britain’s balance of payments. And now Arab oil producers in OPEC had just boycotted the US and set out to punish the West for support given to Israel in the Yom Kippur war. The price of crude oil quadrupled, with grim consequences almost overnight for the western economy. 

Ted Heath, campaigning for Teddy Taylor in Cathcart, February 1974 (Image: Newsquest)As the Prime Minister, Ted Heath, would reflect in his memoirs: “The oil crisis was a highly unwelcome disruption to our foreign policy, but for domestic affairs too it could not have come at a worse time. In July the NUM [National Union of Mineworkers] had decided to put in a pay claim which would have meant increases of up to 50 per cent for some workers”. 

Heath had laboured since taking power in 1970 to stimulate productivity by various means, including tripartite talks with the CBI and the TUC. Long concerned by the inflationary impact of what he saw as excessive pay demands by militant union leaders, he had also introduced a statutory pay and prices freeze.

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Heath had earlier brought about the Industrial Relations Act and, with it, the National Industrial Relations Court. Predictably, both measures antagonised the trade union movement, though he insisted that it had only been introduced to "correct the balance of power in the workforce, which had swung too far in favour of union militants on the shop floor". 

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The miners, however, were determined to press the case for substantial pay rises. Heath, equally determined, believed that they could not be allowed to break through Stage Three of his statutory wages policy. Militants within the union, he felt, wanted to seize upon the oil crisis as a way of winning a massive wage settlement and damaging the Conservative government. 

In response to overtime bans by miners and power-station engineers, the government declared a state of emergency. On November 14, beneath the headline ‘Cabinet act on fuel and power crisis’, the Glasgow Herald reported, , that a ban on the use of electricity for advertising and display lighting would come into force at midnight (that evening’s Scotland-West Germany clash at Hampden was however able to go ahead). All public authorities were ordered to cut their fuel consumption by 10%. 

It quickly became clear that the new rules were actually much tougher: they meant a total ban on the use of electricity for heating in offices, shops, schools and public places. 

On November 20, oil and petrol consumption in Britain was ordered to be cut by 10%. 

As November edged into December, Heath met miners’ leaders at Number Ten, to no avail. The train drivers’ union, Aslef, announced a widespread plan of action, which would impact the delivery of coal to power stations. As the energy crisis mounted there were warnings that countless jobs might be at risk. The public mood was grim. Labour’s leader, Harold Wilson, demanded a general election, describing the country as “drifting and rudderless”. 

Then, on Thursday, December 13, Heath, addressing the nation via television, delivered a bombshell: most of industry and commerce, he said, would be put on a three-day week, starting on January 1, in order to conserve fuel. Heating of homes would be cut drastically to save electricity and thus help avoid the energy crises of 1970 and 1972. 

Those were the days: Serving customers by candle-light as three-day week bites, 1974

In the meantime, industry would receive only five days’ electricity each week and TV stations would close at 10.30pm, except for over Christmas and New Year’s Eve. 

“In terms of comfort”, Heath told his TV audience, “we shall have a harder Christmas than we have known since the war. But we have had to act. The Government are determined to ensure the survival of this nation at as reasonable a level of life and industrial production as they can for the months ahead”. 

That wasn’t quite all: an economic squeeze would be unveiled on the Monday by his Chancellor, Anthony Barber. No wonder that the Glasgow Herald’s report of Heath’s speech - headline ‘WORSE STILL TO COME’ – said that Heath had put Britain on an austerity footing because of the “combined action of British miners and Arab sheiks”. 

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On the Monday, Barber disclosed that public spending would have to be cut by £1,200 million. 

The three-day week began at midnight on January 1, 1974.  

The impact of shortages and other measures were felt across the country. Even the fact that TV had to shut down at 10.30 each night had a considerable psychological impact, notes Mike Phipps, writing recently on the Labour Hub website (though it was good news for the newly-launched Radio Clyde, which attracted many people who might otherwise have been watching television). 

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Every night, adds Phipps, “if power outages occurred, people worked by candlelight or torchlight, wrapped in blankets to keep warm and boiled water to wash in. Heating was limited to one room. Most pubs closed. Evening football matches could not be floodlit and were postponed. Such conditions were reminiscent of wartime, as perhaps the Government intended then to be. 

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“The economy was under massive strain”, he continues. “Small businesses went under and workers were laid off in some sectors. Panic buying set in”. 

The Labour MP for East Fife, Willie Hamilton, would recall “a piece of gratuitous advice” from energy minister Patrick Jenkin for people to save electricity by brushing their teeth in the dark. Jenkin’s words were a “priceless gem” for Labour. It later emerged that not only did Jenkin favour an electric toothbrush but that his London property was pictured with lights ablaze in every room. 

Joe Gormley, leader of the NUM, 1974 (Image: P. Floyd/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)Many people have distinct memories of that time: using candle-light to write university essays or serve customers, or going to bed early. One Perth woman, a hairdresser at the time, told the BBC in 2007 that she remembered clients sitting in semi-darkness with wet hair in rollers waiting for the power to be restored.

Some companies benefited from the dramatic change in national circumstances. One Glasgow candle-maker, for instance, reportedly made more money in three weeks than it had in the previous three years as people flocked to buy candles.

In mid-January the Evening Times took a snap poll of residents’ opinions. One seaman who was questioned said that he was in favour of a permanent three-day week with full pay. Other people felt that there were workers who were more deserving of big pay rises than the miners. Some felt that a general election was the only way out of the impasse. 

Harold Wilson addresses the May Day rally in Queen's Park, Glasgow, in 1974 (Image: Newsquest)The NUM increased the stakes on Tuesday, February 5, when it was announced that miners would launch a national strike from midnight on the Saturday - and that other unions would be asked to join them in blocking energy supplies to all the country’s industries. The aim, said NUM President Joe Gormley, was for “a short battle rather than a long drawn-out one which creates nothing but bitterness and can only be bad for Britain”. 

But Heath came out fighting. On Thursday, February 7, he announced that he had decided to call a general election for February 28. 

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The Herald’s political correspondent, John Warden, wrote: “He guillotined Parliament and spoke to the nation on television in terms which reduced the election to almost a referendum on the question: Do you give in to the miners and inflation or do you not?” 

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The election ended in a hung Parliament, with Labour wining 301 seats to the Tories’ 297. Heath held talks with the Liberals’ leader, Jeremy Thorpe, over a possible coalition, but Thorpe declined. Wilson entered Number Ten, ended the three-day week and swiftly settled with the miners with a generous pay rise. Gormley said: "We have proved that when the spirit and willingness is there, a settlement can be achieved in one day rather than the long drawn out exercise we have been involved in unnecessarily."

Needing a larger majority in the Commons Wilson called, and subsequently won, a second election for October 1974. As for Ted Heath, he stood as Conservative leader again in February 1975 but lost to Margaret Thatcher in the first ballot.