Strikes, power cuts, rampant inflation: A look back on Shropshire in the 1970s

Strikes, power cuts, rampant inflation... And, oh yes, politically incorrect jokes and beauty contests, although back then people weren’t as troubled about such matters as they are now.

Welcome to the 1970s, a decade not to be remembered with much fondness, although to be fair there was that one cracking summer.There was a lot of grim news for the newspaper new boy on the block to report on as the decade unfolded.

Having been launched in 1964, as the Shropshire Star approached its 10th birthday it had cemented itself as a local newspaper which had truly found its feet and had been taken to heart by a loyal and ever-growing readership.

While modern offices tend to be quiet places with workers stuck behind computer screens which cut them off from colleagues, the 1970s newsroom at the Star was a place of clatter and chatter, with journalists hammering away at their typewriters amid a background of regular Tannoy announcements and phones ringing.

Industrial strife was a theme of the decade and one of the biggest local news stories was a strike at GKN Sankey at Hadley which underlined just how important the Sankey’s plant was to the national motor industry in those days.In August 1970 over 5,000 workers at Hadley went on unofficial strike. 

As Sankey’s was one of Shropshire’s biggest employers, it must have been one of the biggest, if not the biggest, industrial dispute at a company in Shropshire history.The effects were far reaching, as it led to over 25,000 workers being made idle throughout the motor industry. 

By the time the strike ended on September 18 it had cost Sankey’s £6 million in lost production. Losses in the rest of the industry were reckoned to be in the order of £50 million.

But if you ask an old ‘un about the 1970s what they are perhaps more likely to talk about is shaving by candlelight, cleaning their teeth in the dark, or boiling the kettle on a camping stove.

For this was an era of power cuts and the imposition of a three day working week to save precious energy.

Coal was king. It was the fossil fuel – nobody used such terms then – which powered the power stations, including the new power station at Ironbridge, which had begun generating in 1969.

So when the coal miners went on strike it precipitated an energy crisis together with a political crisis, pitting the National Union of Mineworkers into a direct confrontation with the Conservative government of Ted Heath.As 1972 dawned many schools remained shut due to a coal strike.