THE Glasgow Herald's front-page headline on December 14, 1973, was unusual in that it was in capital letters, but it reflected the gravity of the situation. WORSE STILL TO COME, it said.
The Prime Minister, Ted Heath, said that most of industry and commerce was to be put on a three-day week, television was being curtailed, and home heating cut to save electricity, in order to save fuel.
An oil crisis, coupled with an overtime ban by miners and power workers in support of pay claims, forced his hand. The three-day week began on December 31 “and will continue,” we reported, “until the miners go back to full-time working.”
Many people have memories of that time: using candle-light to write university essays or serve customers (left), 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.
Former MP and MSP Dennis Canavan, looking back at the period in his autobiography, said Heath’s move was a “fiasco … the nation was plunged into darkness.”
When the miners called a strike, Heath opted for a February election, but it was Labour’s Harold Wilson who won. He formed a minority government, then called another election in October, achieving a minority of just three.
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