LOSE YOURSELF IN 1959
FRASER ON A ROLL
The House of Fraser department store chain may have suffered some well-publicised problems recently, but it was all going so swimmingly back in 1959 that it could afford to buy Harrods. The landmark London store, on Knightsbridge’s Brompton Road since 1853 (albeit destroyed and rebuilt in present form after an 1883 fire), was doing okay itself, but became the target of takeovers at the end of the 1950s with Debenhams and United Drapery Stores all vying for it.
House of Fraser’s £37 million bid eventually triumphed, and Harrods was part of the deal when the Al Fayed family bought it in 1985 for £615 million. However, the Al Fayeds retained it when House of Fraser was sold on in 2006.
Ironically, current owner, Mike Ashley, of Sports Direct fame, has now vowed to make the stores ‘the Harrods of the High Street’.
ELECTION ALERT
Politics in Tavistock was just part of the wider scene being repeated across the UK in the 1959 general election.
The Conservatives had been in power since 1951, with Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan as prime ministers. The booming British economy had made Macmillan popular, but Labour and the Liberals had new leaders – Hugh Gaitskell and Jo Grimond.
However, the Tories had an increased majority when the national vote was held on 8 October, winning 365 seats to Labour’s 258, the Liberal Party’s six and one for Independent Unionist David Robertson.
One of those in parliament for the first time was one Margaret Hilda Thatcher. What became of her, we wonder?