What was happening 40 years ago?
TIME flies and we find ourselves in 2019. Happy New Year! It doesn’t seem THAT long ago since it was 2009. Or 1999. Or even 1989.
We’ll be revisiting those years in due course, but here we step back 40 years to 1979.
It was a year which would prove to be a watershed for life in Britain and the North East.
The election of Margaret Thatcher as Tory Prime Minister on May 3, 1979, would bring about a radical change in political and economic thinking which would have a direct impact on our region.
The last year of the 1970s, and those that followed, saw a quickening in the decline of the region’s traditional heavy industries, coal, shipbuilding and heavy engineering.
Where in previous times there had been support from the state for ailing industries, a change of economic philosophy would mean this was no longer the case.
The Conservatives had swept to power in the wake of widespread public sector strikes which brought chaos to the country in the early part of the year.
“Crisis, what crisis?” declared Labour Prime Minister Jim Callaghan. The country gave its answer in May’s shock election result.
Elsewhere, the IRA were in the headlines. In March, Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary Airey Neave was blown up in his car as he drove out of the Palace of Westminster. And, in August, Lord Louis Mountbatten was killed holidaying in Ireland. Twenty-four hours later, a massive explosion killed eighteen soldiers at the British Army’s Warrenpoint barracks.
In less harrowing news, Trevor Francis became the world’s first £1m footballer, signing for Nottingham Forest and paving the way for an explosion in transfer fees in the following years.
At the cinema, new releases included Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Alien, and Monty Python’s The Life Of Brian.
In the pop charts, The Police featuring Wallsend milkman’s son Sting Blondie and Gloria Gaynor were selling singles by the bucketload, while Last Of The Summer Wine, M*A*S*H and Little House on the Prairie were big on TV.
In world news, the year also saw 69 Americans taken hostage in Iran; the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania; the Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan; and Saddam Hussein becoming president of Iraq. Closer to home, Newcastle United, not for the first time, were in the doldrums. Relegated a year earlier, they found themselves marooned in the oblivion of football’s Second Division, despite the best efforts of the little and large striking partnership, Alan Shoulder and Peter Withe.
Enjoy our selection of photographs taken around our region in 1979. The 1980s were just around the corner...
1979 was a year which would prove to be a watershed for life in Britain and the North East