Dan Snow's History Hit - The Energy Crisis: 2022 vs 1973

Episode Date: October 2, 2022

A long dark, cold winter looms with soaring energy prices. Some of the advice we've heard recently includes buying a new kettle or taking a flannel bath...echoing previous advice given during the brutal fuel crisis of 1973. The Arab–Israeli War sent oil sky high and Britain saw a wave of crises from rolling strikes to energy shortages but the 1970s saw a fuel shortage and what we're facing now is fuel at inflated prices. Any sense of communal struggle and national unity is absent this time. Making sense of what we're facing today, historian Alwyn Turner joins Dan on the podcast to look at similarities in how people coped, how the government responded and also the big differences.This episode was produced by Mariana Des Forges, the audio editor was Dougal Patmore.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.Complete the survey and you'll be entered into a prize draw to win 5 Historical Non-Fiction Books- including a signed copy of Dan Snow's 'On This Day in History'.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. A long, dark, cold winter lies ahead of us. Britain and the rest of the world is in the midst of a fuel crisis. But fear not, Britain's former Prime Minister Boris Johnson had the solution. Buy a new kettle folks, buy a new kettle and save £10 a year on your electricity bills. You'll be surprised to learn that very helpful interjection by our former Prime Minister echoed previous advice given out during a brutal fuel crisis. Starting in the autumn of 1973, the world was thrust into an oil crisis by the Arab-Israeli October War, known as the Yom Kippur War. A little bit like Putin's invasion of Ukraine this year did with gas prices, it sent the price of oil sky high.

The other day I was listening to Radio 4's flagship current affairs program, first thing in the morning, and there was a suggestion on there that we might want to, instead of having a shower, have a cold flannel bath, whatever that is. It doesn't sound like the kind of bracing preparation I need for a day of podcast records. Anyway, as we're getting all these new energy-saving tips, let's go back and look at the history. We've been here before, folks. The early to mid-1970s was a set of rolling crises,

particularly in the UK, where the state of emergency was imposed on a number of occasions the last time it was done so. In response to the lack of energy. Keeping the lights on, keeping the heat on. It's one of government's primary roles. It's made harder by the fact that often it's driven by events totally outside their control. Here to talk to me about the parallels with the early 70s is Alwyn Turner. He's been on this podcast before. He's a writer of political and cultural history. He's written a book about the 1970s. He came on to talk about it on the podcast before, but now we're specifically going to look at energy

in the 70s. What governments did about its lack of supply, the similarities and the many differences between now and the 1970s. Enjoy. Alwyn, thanks so much for coming back on the podcast. Very pleased to be here. First of all, why was there a fuel crisis from 1973 onwards? What was going on in the world at the time? Well, I think we've got to go back even before that to 1972. There was problems then. To start with, our power came from different sources.

Half of all our energy was from oil. And if you add in coal to that, it takes up about 85% of all our power supply. It's very different from that now. We're down to less than half. Around about 40% is oil and coal, and most of the rest is gas. So we are dependent on these two sources of oil and coal. And it really starts to go wrong at the beginning of 1972 when there's a coal miner strike. I think we have a different perception of miners' strikes because the one in the mid-1980s was so dramatic. But this was the first time there had been a national coal

strike since the war. And so it was a big deal. And the government imposed a series of emergency measures in order to protect power supplies. And it was a huge strike, one of the worst strikes we'd ever had at that stage. And there were cuts to the supply of power to people's homes. Public lighting was cut dramatically. Electric heating was banned in shops and restaurants and pubs. And so there was a sense of crisis already in the beginning of 1972. Recently, there's been reports from Switzerland that if you have your temperature above a certain heat in your house, you might get fined or in some way. And that's been seen as an appalling intrusion of government into our private lives and our own domestic arrangements. You're telling me that

the Conservative government at the early 1970s took similar action? It did. And because it was using state of emergency powers, it was able to do so. And that's something that has changed because during Edward Heath's time as Prime Minister from 70 to 74, I mean, he was Prime Minister for less than four years, and he declared five states of emergency. And that kind of devalued the currency of it. And consequently, we haven't had one since. Margaret Thatcher specifically was so outraged by this continual descent into a state of emergency that she decided never to do so. And that's become normal. But there were really strict controls, and it was legally enforceable. I mean, there were

adverts referring to the papers saying, if you break the regulations, you could get a £100 fine. And that's a lot of money at the time. I mean, the average wage is about a third of that. So you're talking about three weeks wages as a fine or three months in jail. So there was a very serious set of impositions on people. And then there was the encouragement to cut back, which is also where people feel that it's a bit intrusive. The great slogan of the 1972 miners' strike was SOS, switch off something. And that idea that we could choose to restrict our energy consumption was very big, but people didn't necessarily go along with that. Oh, and did it work? Did our energy consumption was very big, but people didn't necessarily go along with that. Oh, and did it work?

Did our energy consumption go down? Oh, the price didn't come down, but then this wasn't an issue of price. This was an issue of supply. There was a shortage of energy. So it's a different situation to where we are now. Of course, because at that point, the energy provider was nationalised.

Indeed, yes. We're talking about the electricity board, which was a government-owned supplier. So the government could fix the price for consumers, but the problem is that there wasn't enough input at the other end. Yeah. And so the idea of the regulations and of the rolling power cuts, you would get three hours a block where you were told there was going to be no power supply. The idea of that was to conserve energy so that we didn't run out completely. If we'd carried on with normal consumption, the whole system would have collapsed. I guess the closest analogy is to, in recent times, is the COVID. Protect the NHS. It was kind of like protect energy supplies because

we may run out. About a million workers were laid off during this strike. It lasted for six weeks and it really impacted on pretty much everybody. Parliament was working by paraffin lights and candles at times. It affected the entire country. And again, maybe that's a difference with now. As you're talking, it's so funny to think that frugality in terms of our use of fossil fuels is now sort of cutting edge, terribly fashionable. In fact, the idea of sort of making parliament meet using candles or something, you know, perhaps that would now be a rather progressive thing to do. Well, it would send out a good signal, wouldn't it? It would look as if we were all in it together, to use the slogan of a few years ago. And I think that's an important part of the time,

is that it does affect everybody. Well, price does not. By definition, if you can afford power, the rise in price is not that big a deal. It is for most people, but not for everyone. But if you're cutting the power, if you're saying we're going to have three hours without any power in your area, that's everybody who's affected by it. And so there's a sense of the entire nation going through the same thing. And of course, this is not that long after the war. The average age is about 34. So these are people who can remember either the war, at least the period of rationing that extended up to 1954. So that idea of the entire country being beleaguered was something that extended up to 1954. So that idea of the entire country being beleaguered was something that you could draw on. You could say, we need to pull

together like we did in the old times. And that, of course, is not there anymore. Something that is here today is the global strategic picture changing quite dramatically in early October 1973. Syria and Egypt launch a very successful surprise attack on Israel and for a few days it looks like they may overwhelm the Israeli defense force and just as we've seen the war in Ukraine send the price of gas through the roof why does that send the price of oil sky high? The issue was that although as you say the first initial drive because it was a surprise attack during the holiday of Yom Kippur it was successful to to start with. It then was not. Israel repelled both Egypt and Syria. And those countries and other Arab nations felt that the dice were unfairly loaded, that the West had been giving

so much support to Israel that they stood no chance. And therefore, they decided effectively to punish the West by putting up the price of oil. And so OPEC, the oil producing, exporting countries, increased the price of oil. It tripled in the space of a couple of months. And that hits the entire world because the whole industrial world is based around oil as its primary fuel. It doesn't actually hit Britain as badly as it hits some other countries because Britain is seen as being something of an honest broker in the Arab-Israeli conflict. But it does hit Britain, as it hits the whole of Europe and everywhere else. And then on top of that, we add that there is another dispute in the coal fields. There's a work to rule by miners, and that then escalates into a full-blown strike at the

beginning of 1974. And at the same time, there is a railway strike and coal is taken around the country largely by rail at this point. And so the supply of coal to power stations is cut. So we now have a perfect storm where we have a problem with the coal supply and a problem with the oil. And it all comes together by the end of 1973. Things are looking very, very bleak indeed. I mean, worse than it had been at the beginning of 72, and that was bad enough. This is Dan Snow's history. We're talking about high energy prices in the 70s. More after this. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries.

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And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. What did the government try and do? Did they focus on cutting down energy use or did they focus, as we appear to be today, on printing money and trying to artificially reduce the price of these essential raw materials? The emphasis was entirely on cutting consumption. By the end of December 1973, it was clear that all of these problems were coming together. There was going to be a massive, huge crisis and the government resolved to cut energy consumption by 20%. And so it announced it

would be a three-day working week, which obviously then has a massive impact on people's income and wages. And so it imposes this idea that we must cut consumption. And there's a whole series of measures, some of which become very part of the folklore almost, the idea that television broadcasts have to stop at 10.30 at night. There is a 50 mile an hour speed limit imposed on motorways. Street lighting is cut. Electric heating is cut in most workplaces. There was a proposal to cut heating in schools, but Margaret Thatcher, who was then the Education Secretary, put her foot down at that point.

There was talk of turning back the clocks in order that we could make better use of daylight hours so we could carry on working without light and heat. It was very definitely the idea was to cut consumption. And again, did it work? I mean, not politically, because of course, it brought down the government of Edward Heath in February 1974, when he called an early election, but it did reduce consumption. It had to. It had a serious impact on people, partly because there was so much else going on as well. I mean, this is also when the IRA started bombing British cities on the mainland. Inflation is rampant, worse than it is now. Food inflation was running at about 19, 20% by the end of 1973. Interest rates were at 13%. Pretty much the only thing that was working was the alcohol industry.

Sales of alcohol was through the roof because there was nothing else to do but to get drunk at home. Why is there not more talk now about turning stuff off? It feels like we're not focusing as much on behaviour as there was in the 70s. Is that because of the 70s and the Conservatives have built this absolute shibboleth? We don't want anything that even hints of the 1970s. Yeah, I think there is quite a strong element of that, yes. And also, I mean, going back to what you said earlier about Switzerland, there is a feeling that people don't really like it. People don't like being told. And that was evident in the 70s to some extent, I mean, because beyond the official requirements, there were also a whole series of pieces of advice that

were issued. The government told us that we should dry clothes outside rather than in a washing machine. And there was a government minister telling us we ought to brush our teeth in the dark. And people just felt that this was firstly trivial and secondly, just intrusive and patronising. There's a kind of fear of that, I think, still, that we don't really want to get involved too much in telling people off and micromanaging their lives. But there is a point to this. There is stuff that can be done, one would have thought, and not necessarily individuals, but council offices that are overlit, street lighting that is overlit. One of the things that happened in the 1974 emergency was that flood lighting was banned at football stadiums. There used to be a lot of football matches played on weekday

evenings. They all had to be suspended. And instead, football was given special license to stage matches on Sundays. And it was the first time. And obviously, that was an emergency measure that has never gone away. Because once you make that concession, football is in it for the money from that stage. So there's unintended consequences. But still, the idea of banning floodlights was a very sensible one. There are, one would have thought, areas that could be affected in this way without it being quite as intrusive as telling us to brush our teeth in the dark. So that's energy. What about industrial disputes? We've got barristers, rail workers, postal workers have all got strikes planned now. There were other strikes famously into the late

1970s. Is what strikes you at the moment similarities or are there key differences to the politics of the late 70s? I think it's the key differences really and the real difference is if the railways go on strike this is inconvenient but it's not actually going to threaten any other industries in the same way that it did in the 1970s. When coal was transported by rail and a whole lot of freight was transported by rail, a railway strike had huge ramifications on other industries. I don't think that's the same. Now we look at it as being inconvenient to travellers rather than to industry. So it is massively inconvenient, and it is annoying and whatever, but it's still not going to have a huge impact.

And also, these are one-day strikes, or when they're in the levelling stage, it's still not going to have a huge impact. And also, these are one-day strikes, or when they were cleverly staged, it's two days with one in between, so it turns into a three-day strike. They were all outstrikes in the 70s. This was not one-offs. You went on strike, and you stayed on strike until the dispute was resolved. So there's a difference there. The barristers, yeah, it's not good, but it's still not the same as power workers coming out on strike, or miners. These are the areas that affect the people who are using the service, but it doesn't go much further than that. The lights are not going to go out because the railway workers are on strike. Did the 70s lead to any strategic changes in how we sourced and how we create our energy mix? Did people look harder at nuclear, hydroelectric?

It affected Thatcher and her opinion of getting coal from Newcastle, clearly. It is the minor strike of the mid-1980s that then provokes the dash for gas. And that's what really changes it. That's when coal ceases to be of any significance. And by that stage, things had changed. In the broader picture, in terms of the supply of power stations, that had been shifted to the roads. And so the nature of the industry changed. But also then in the aftermath of that, that's when we start moving on to gas. And gas is now've already got lots of investment in renewables, but whether we'll see a doubling down on that. And we will end up in 20 years time with a very different energy mix, partly because of what's going on now. I think that seems inevitable, because we've become so reliant clearly on external forces, the idea that we could be not entirely self-sufficient, but largely so,

would seem to be an obvious issue of security for the country. So yeah, one would hope that politicians would respond. Quite apart from the catastrophic damage to our climate and atmosphere and paying lots of money to evil dictators. So it does seem like a no-brainer to me, Alwyn. Tell everyone what your wonderful book is called that covers this period. I have a book called Crisis, What Crisis? Written in the 1970s. Brilliant.

Well, thank you very much for coming back, Alwyn Turner. Thank you. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history

of our country, all work out. you