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E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
256 Seiten
Englisch
Oldcastle Bookserschienen am07.11.2023
1974 WAS A YEAR OF MAJOR CHANGE AROUND THE WORLD. Presidents resigned, emperors were deposed, and new governments came to power. On both sides of the Atlantic, major political figures left the scene, either through resignation or electoral defeat. Leaders of nations died. Regimes crumbled. In society, the second wave of feminism grew in strength and the rights of historically underrepresented groups were more powerfully asserted. The BBC aired the first lesbian kiss on British TV. In Italy, the right to divorce was protected in a landmark referendum. However, terrorism and the pursuit of political ends through violence became ever more commonplace. The arts and entertainment industries were in the midst of a period of great creativity and innovation. In America, Scorsese, Spielberg and Coppola were making their mark. Popular music was arguably at a low point but the first stirrings of the punk revolution to come could be heard in New York clubs. And a Swedish band that were to become a phenomenon won the Eurovision Song Contest. The roots of many aspects of today's society which we take for granted lie in the 1970s and particularly in this, the decade's pivotal year.

NICK RENNISON is a writer, editor and bookseller with a particular interest in modern history and in crime fiction. He is the author of 1922: Scenes from a Turbulent Year, A Short History of Polar Exploration, Peter Mark Roget: A Biography, Freud and Psychoanalysis, Robin Hood: Myth, History & Culture and Bohemian London, published by Oldcastle Books, and the editor of six anthologies of short stories for No Exit Press. He is also the author of The Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide to Crime Fiction, 100 Must-Read Crime Novels and Sherlock Holmes: An Unauthorised Biography. His crime novels, Carver's Quest and Carver's Truth, both set in nineteenth-century London, are published by Corvus. He is a regular reviewer for both The Sunday Times and Daily Mail.mehr
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Klappentext1974 WAS A YEAR OF MAJOR CHANGE AROUND THE WORLD. Presidents resigned, emperors were deposed, and new governments came to power. On both sides of the Atlantic, major political figures left the scene, either through resignation or electoral defeat. Leaders of nations died. Regimes crumbled. In society, the second wave of feminism grew in strength and the rights of historically underrepresented groups were more powerfully asserted. The BBC aired the first lesbian kiss on British TV. In Italy, the right to divorce was protected in a landmark referendum. However, terrorism and the pursuit of political ends through violence became ever more commonplace. The arts and entertainment industries were in the midst of a period of great creativity and innovation. In America, Scorsese, Spielberg and Coppola were making their mark. Popular music was arguably at a low point but the first stirrings of the punk revolution to come could be heard in New York clubs. And a Swedish band that were to become a phenomenon won the Eurovision Song Contest. The roots of many aspects of today's society which we take for granted lie in the 1970s and particularly in this, the decade's pivotal year.

NICK RENNISON is a writer, editor and bookseller with a particular interest in modern history and in crime fiction. He is the author of 1922: Scenes from a Turbulent Year, A Short History of Polar Exploration, Peter Mark Roget: A Biography, Freud and Psychoanalysis, Robin Hood: Myth, History & Culture and Bohemian London, published by Oldcastle Books, and the editor of six anthologies of short stories for No Exit Press. He is also the author of The Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide to Crime Fiction, 100 Must-Read Crime Novels and Sherlock Holmes: An Unauthorised Biography. His crime novels, Carver's Quest and Carver's Truth, both set in nineteenth-century London, are published by Corvus. He is a regular reviewer for both The Sunday Times and Daily Mail.
Details
Weitere ISBN/GTIN9780857305831
ProduktartE-Book
EinbandartE-Book
FormatEPUB
Format HinweisePub Wasserzeichen
FormatE101
Erscheinungsjahr2023
Erscheinungsdatum07.11.2023
Seiten256 Seiten
SpracheEnglisch
Dateigrösse1297 Kbytes
Artikel-Nr.12748458
Rubriken
Genre9201

Inhalt/Kritik

Leseprobe



New Year´s Day

In 1974, the New Year in the UK began with an extra holiday. Most people probably assume that New Year´s Day had been a British public holiday ever since bank holidays were first introduced in the nineteenth century. In fact, it was only in Scotland that 1 January officially became a holiday in 1871. The rest of the country had to wait more than a century. (Many people, recovering from over-exuberant celebrations the night before, had unofficially decided it was a day of rest for many years.) The prime minister, Ted Heath, included plans for the extra holiday amidst a whole host of other measures in a televised press conference to announce the third phase of the government´s prices and incomes policy on 8 October 1973. Amidst all the less than cheering news about the state of the economy, he may have felt the need to throw in something to please his listeners. The announcement of a New Year´s Day bank holiday, which had been proposed in a private member´s bill two years earlier and rejected, must have seemed just the ticket. Later that same month a Royal Proclamation ( We... do hereby appoint New Year´s Day in the year 1974 to be, in England and Wales and Northern Ireland a bank holiday...´) confirmed his statement. Scotland, where the day after Hogmanay had long been a holiday, received a further day for rest and recuperation. As if to prove that it is impossible to please all the people all the time, even when providing them with an extra day´s holiday, the Tory MP Richard Hornby wrote a letter to the Times, published a week into the New Year, bemoaning the fact that all cultural venues had chosen to shut on 1 January. It´s safe to assume that he was in a small minority in not welcoming the new bank holiday.

Ali v. Frazier

Muhammad Ali always referred to himself as The Greatest´ and plenty of boxing aficionados would agree with him. In proof of their claim that he was the greatest of all heavyweight champions, his fans can point to the years of his prime when he defeated Sonny Liston to take the world title for the first time and then defended it against a succession of fighters. They can also cite his achievements in 1974 when he fought bouts against, arguably, the two best boxers he ever faced and beat them both.

The first fight took place at Madison Square Garden in New York on 28 January and was against Smokin´ Joe´ Frazier. It was the second time that the two boxers had faced one another in the ring. The previous bout, which had been in the same venue nearly three years before, had been nicknamed The Fight of the Century´. Frazier had won a unanimous decision on points, inflicting on Ali the first defeat of his professional career and retaining the world titles Smokin´ Joe had won earlier that same year. Neither man was now champion, Frazier having lost his titles the previous year when George Foreman despatched him in two rounds in a contest in Kingston, Jamaica. In many ways it was a grudge match. Ali wanted revenge for his defeat; Frazier wanted to prove that his victory in March 1971 had been no fluke.

Tension between the two fighters was already high before they even stepped into the ring. Five days earlier, during a joint appearance in a TV studio, Ali had called Frazier ignorant´. Justifiably indignant, Frazier stood menacingly over his seated opponent, shouting, Why you call me ignorant? How am I ignorant?´ The confrontation had developed into fisticuffs in front of the TV cameras. Both men were later fined for deplorable conduct demeaning to boxing´.

After they entered the ring in Madison Square Garden, Ali started the fight as if he meant to bring it to an end as quickly as possible. He nearly did. In the second round, Frazier took a right punch which left him wobbling and in difficulty. The contest might have finished at that point. Frazier retreated to the ropes and Ali moved in for the kill but the referee, Tony Perez, thinking he had heard the bell to end the round, stepped between them. In fact, the bell had malfunctioned and the round went on but Frazier had been granted a precious few extra seconds in which to recover.

As the fight went on, it clearly demonstrated the contrasting styles of the two boxers. Ali, tall and elegant, circled the ring, throwing combinations of punches in quick succession and then holding on to his opponent when he grew tired. (In fact, Ali held on so often that Frazier´s trainer, Eddie Futch, complained to the referee, saying You gotta stop this!´. The referee told Futch, quite rightly, that clinging to your opponent was allowed. It was holding on and punching at the same time that was illegal and Ali was not doing that.) Frazier, four inches shorter and barrel-chested, moved relentlessly forward, struggling to get under Ali´s longer reach and land the kind of knockout left hook that had won him their first fight. At the end of the 12 rounds, all three judges gave the fight to Ali, although one of them - Tony Perez, the referee - saw it as a very close contest, marking six rounds for Ali against five for Frazier with one drawn. In the end, it was a unanimous decision for Ali,´ one boxing journalist, Mark Kram, wrote, ring generalship over a one-man army fighting a war of attrition.´ The third and final meeting between the two fighters, the famous Thrilla in Manila´, took place the following year. Ali was declared the winner again when Frazier´s team conceded the bout in the 14th round.

Three-Day Week

Britain began 1974 with severe restrictions on the use of electricity. Ted Heath´s Tory government had been growing ever more concerned about the state of the country´s economy for many months. One of the chief worries was the power supply. The oil crisis in the Middle East and the threat of another miners´ strike to follow that of 1972 were concentrating minds. When the National Union of Miners, the NUM, decided upon a ban on overtime in support of their wage claims and other unions made clear their support for the miners, fears began to grow that coal supplies might run out. In the 1970s, most of the nation´s electricity was supplied by coal-burning power stations. The government felt they had no option but to take drastic action.

Some restrictions had come into force nearly two months earlier. A fifth state of emergency in three years had been announced in the House of Commons in the middle of November 1973. Electric floodlighting and advertising had been banned; public offices were told to cut energy consumption by a tenth; TV companies were obliged to cease broadcasting at half past ten. Government adverts began to appear in the newspapers exhorting people to leave their cars at home at weekends and, if they must drive, to keep below 50mph in order to conserve fuel. Those charged with providing the country´s energy requirements were growing desperate. The choice is stark,´ the deputy chairman of the Electricity Council told an American journalist. Either the public cooperates or complete cities could lose their supply of electricity at a stroke. It could even happen before Christmas.´

The public did respond to all the calls for more careful consumption but it was not enough. The government decided that more needed to be done. In December 1973, Heath, looking visibly exhausted - he had barely slept in four days - appeared on the nation´s TV screens to deliver the bad news. He pulled few punches. We shall have a harder Christmas than we have known since the war´, he said. We shall have to postpone some of the hopes and aims we have set ourselves for expansion and for our standard of living.´ He appealed for people to put aside their differences. We must close our ranks so that we can deal together with the difficulties which come to us.´ And he announced that, beginning at midnight on New Year´s Eve 1973, electricity was, in effect, rationed. Commercial consumption was restricted to three consecutive days in the week and shops, unless they were deemed essential, had to choose either mornings or afternoons to switch on the lights. According to one newspaper report, government ministers were secretly even concerned that a two-day week might have to be introduced.

As the lights went out across the country, some people were sympathetic to the government´s dilemmas and difficult choices. Others most definitely were not. Dictator Heath and his £10,000-plus a year henchmen have imposed a three-day working week,´ one correspondent to the Times wrote. Why? Because this yacht owner claims the miners/electricians are causing such severe damage to the nation that it is essential.´ He ended his letter with the contemptuous words, Unite us, Heath? Not me.´ Patrick Jenkin, a government minister, put his foot in it with what he must have thought was a helpful suggestion. His recommendation that people should clean their teeth in the dark´ did not meet with approval. He was ridiculed at the time, not least when it was reported that his own house in north London was a blaze of electric light early in the morning, and his gaffe was long remembered, featuring prominently in most newspaper obituaries when he died in 2016.

The effects of the three-day week were immediate. For some, the consequences seemed almost enjoyable, almost a bit of a lark. The spirit of the Blitz was regularly evoked as oil lamps replaced electric lights...

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