This kind of optimistic belief is what lay behind the industrial, political and social carnage of 1984.

I had seen out the 1970’s and was to look back on that time in later years amazed by the enduring aura of naivety. The nation was unemployed, sniggering at bigotry, racism, sexism and the antics of the unions that screeched ‘everybody out’ at every minor infraction of a long list of worker’s rights designed to strangle industry into submission. The trade union movement had come about as a result of an honest desire to create better working conditions, ‘to get an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work’, but by the 1970’s they had become all powerful, imposing a closed shop policy on Industry with one eye trained on Whitehall and the Labour movement.