From one northerner to another, Andy lad. You were nine when Maggie became PM, so what the heck do you know about the basket-case Britain she rescued us from? asks NEIL DARBYSHIRE

Published: 01:14, 9 August 2026 | Updated: 01:15, 9 August 2026 It's 50 years ago to the day since I started work and, apart from a compulsory week’s break between jobs in 2006, I’ve been in continuous employment ever since. Some might question whether journalism counts as real work, compared with, say, healing the sick or hewing coal from a 12-inch seam. But I firmly believe a free Press is a crucial plank of any liberal democracy, and since arriving on that first day at the Redhill offices of the Surrey Mirror, I have given it my best. The changes to the industry over five decades have been immense. I wonder how many younger journalists can imagine doing their job without a mobile phone, social media or indeed a computer of any kind. No 24-hour news, satellite TV, email or electronic databases. Reporters in those far-off days often found themselves in foreign climes with the flimsiest of briefs armed only with a notebook, pen and a sheaf of cuttings, most of them out of date. In remoter parts, phone networks were temperamental and it was sometimes necessary to find a Cable and Wireless office to transmit copy back to London. Mastering the communications could be almost as important as the story. And when laptops did arrive, they were rudimentary to say the least.  I remember once in the late 1980s trying to transmit a story from the New Stanley hotel, in Nairobi on an early Tandy 200 ‘portable computer’. There’s no doubt Andy Burnham is more relatable than his predecessor, who had all the oratorical skills of an I-speak-your-weight-machine. But I’m afraid I find his winking, folksy style rather cloying, writes Neil Darbyshire  Rubbish piled high in East London during the Winter of Discontent. Nearly 30million working days were lost to strike action in 1979. By 1992, thanks largely to the Thatcher reforms, the total was 528,000 In theory, after typing out a story, the machine would convert the words to digital data, which could be sent via modem down a standard telephone line as an audio signal and retrieved at the other end as the original words. Anyone who ever heard that piercing whine, like the strains of a demented giant mosquito, will not forget it. Unfortunately, the hotel charged its phone calls in discrete 90-second units, so every 90 seconds the signal stopped and restarted, and the transmission of the story was interrupted. After much out-pulling of hair and exasperatedly trying to explain to a supremely indifferent switchboard operator that I needed a continuous signal for at least three minutes, I gave up and phoned in the story in the old-fashioned way. But we live in different times. Technology has not so much moved on as galloped. We are more informed, some might say over-informed, given the flood of information that surges every day through the internet. Whether we are better informed is a subject worthy of a bulky PhD thesis. Britain, too, has changed significantly since 1976 and the differences have been exercising my mind since the ascent of Andy Burnham to the office of prime minister. For a man elected by no-one outside Greater Manchester, he seems to have a remarkably high opinion of himself and clearly enjoys the personality cult building around him. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1990. Mr Burnham was nine years old when the Iron Lady came to power, so too young to know what life was like before The Miner's Strike in 1984. The big trade unions had the weak Labour government of the day in their thrall, and with secondary picketing and the closed shop still legal, they could and did enforce their will by violence and intimidation  But what’s he done to merit this adulation? What are his achievements? Where are his battle scars? He was the moderately successful mayor of a provincial city for goodness’ sake, not Nelson Mandela marching the long road to freedom. There’s no doubt Mr Burnham is more relatable than his predecessor, who had all the oratorical skills of an I-speak-your-weight-machine. But I’m afraid I find his winking, folksy style rather cloying. And he talks almost exclusively in platitudinous soundbites. ‘Growth in every postcode’, ‘hope in every heart’, ‘I’m for us’ (no idea!), ‘national circuit-breaker’ and the spectacularly meaningless pledge to end ‘40 years of neo-liberalism’. He constantly seems to hark back to an imagined golden era before the Thatcher revolution and seems to want to take Britain back to the 1970s. All I can say is he should be careful what he wishes for. Mr Burnham was nine years old when the Iron Lady came to power, so too young to know what life was like before. Otherwise, he might be a bit more circumspect. True, there were many good things, especially for the young. Free higher education, generally good employment prospects for those prepared to work and travel, and no great housing problem. It was still perfectly possible for those on the average wage to buy a home. Society also felt somehow more cohesive than today, and certainly prouder of our shared history. My home was Middlesbrough, a town created to serve the iron and steel industry. Bridges and railways across the empire from Sydney harbour to Khartoum were constructed from Teesside steel. It was an almost classless society, in which the children of doctors, bankers and solicitors went to the same schools as steel and chemical workers. Waste piled high in the streets during strike action in 1979. The upshot was the 1978-79 Winter of Discontent, which was as close to a rolling general strike as anything seen since the 1920s Until I reached university, I don’t recall ever meeting anyone who had been to public school – or who admitted voting Tory. But life was already changing in the heavy industrial North East by 1976. The Durham coalfields were almost played out, steel production was falling rapidly, and the great Tyne and Wear shipyards were struggling in the face of foreign competition. Middlesbrough, once known as ‘Ironopolis’, was saved temporarily by the giant ICI plants at Wilton and Billingham, the latter producing Dulux paint, and the former the biggest complex in Europe for petroleum cracking (the process by which fuels, oils and gases are separated). But with ever more petroleum being refined in situ by the oil producing countries themselves, Teesside, too, would soon feel the pain of full-on recession. It always struck me as symbolic that my Uncle Harry helped build the first of the six Olefins cracking plants at Wilton in the 1950s producing vast quantities of nylon, terylene and other synthetic materials. Around the year I started work he helped demolish it. Sic transit gloria... On a national level, Midlands car factories were making substandard vehicles and trying to sell them at premium prices. The workforce was recalcitrant and seemed to be on permanent strike and British cars became synonymous with shoddy workmanship. Motor manufacturing, along with the power, rail, coal, telecoms, gas and electricity industries were all nationalised and characterised by union domination, restrictive practices, and poor performance. Nothing seemed to work. Urban trains and tubes were filthy and unreliable, power workers’ and miners’ strikes in pursuit of insane pay demands led to households being left in the dark, and it took months to get a phone connection. The Conservatives iconic 'Labour isn't working' 1979 election poster. Unemployment topped 1.4million in 1979 and would eventually peak at more than 3million There’s no intrinsic reason why nationalised industries should be less efficient and more strikebound, but they were. Perhaps the lack of competition and profit motive led to complacency and a disregard for customer service. (For a modern-day comparator, look no further than the civil service, with its shockingly low productivity and work-from-home culture.) The big trade unions, led by a cabal of hard-Left demagogues, had the weak Labour government of the day in their thrall, and with secondary picketing and the closed shop still legal, they could and did enforce their will by violence and intimidation.  My father had been a local rep in the Amalgamated Engineering Union and a sound union man. But he was always guided by fairness rather than politics and was as appalled as anyone by the behaviour of the Marxist wreckers. Newspapers had similar problems. The closed shop print unions acted like gangsters, holding proprietors to ransom, demanding money with menaces and halting production at a stroke if they didn’t get it. The Times and Sunday Times were off the streets for a full year owing to an industrial dispute. When that stranglehold was broken, largely by Times owner Rupert Murdoch, it was as though a huge weight had been lifted. Newspapers made money again and could breathe. So are we heading back to the future with Mr Burnham? Thatcher at Tory party conference in 1989. The country was dying on its feet. If Mrs Thatcher hadn’t administered life-saving surgery, someone else would have had to He says he wants a ‘new economic model’, to tear up the Thatcher reforms, renationalise, reindustrialise and reunionise, as if that could be some kind of solution to our current difficulties. He should consider very carefully how that model ended last time. The mid-70s saw Britain grind to a halt. Most of our industries made products that no one wanted to buy, productivity was through the floor, and the economy was in freefall. It was also a far drearier Britain than today. City buildings wore a black cloak of soot from coal-burning power stations, domestic coal fires and dirtier petrol exhausts. The air carried vastly more toxins, especially in the industrial North, and rivers were far more polluted than today. In my youth, the old river Tees outside ICI Billingham ran in an eerie melange of pastel shades where Dulux paint had been dumped in it. It was pronounced ecologically dead in the 1970s, yet today sustains healthy populations of salmon and trout. By 1976, the country was in a wage/price doom spiral caused by outlandish union pay demands, craven management and weak government. The lingering economic fallout from the 1973 international oil crisis made the situation unsustainable. That September, a month after I started work, the government finally ran out of money. The markets saw us as a busted flush, so we had to go cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund for a loan. In exchange, they demanded some fiscal discipline, but prime minister James Callaghan wasn’t strong enough to impose the cuts and pay restraint needed. The upshot was the 1978-79 Winter of Discontent, which was as close to a rolling general strike as anything seen since the 1920s. The transport system was paralysed, there were power cuts, rubbish piled up in the streets, and food and fuel deliveries faced serious disruption. Even gravediggers went on strike, leaving the dead unburied. The hard-Left revelled in the chaos, but they were about to meet their nemesis in the shape of the grocer’s daughter from Grantham. Her remedies were painful and many thought her cruel and unfeeling. The early 1980s became a trial of strength between the elected government and a militant union movement determined to bring it down. The picket lines at Orgreave, Ollerton and elsewhere were turned into battlegrounds and there is bitterness to this day about the outcome. But the country was dying on its feet. If Mrs Thatcher hadn’t administered life-saving surgery, someone else would have had to. Most trade unionists are decent hardworking people, and unions themselves have a proud history of fighting for workplace fairness. But Mr Burnham should realise that their politically driven leaders will not be constant friends. They will support him only as long as he does what they want. When he doesn’t, they’ll turn on him. If he is still dewy-eyed about the 1970s, let me offer some statistics from those times. Inflation peaked in 1975 at 27 per cent, and the top income tax rate was 83p in the pound, rising to 98 per cent on ‘unearned’ income. Nearly 30million working days were lost to strike action in 1979. By 1992, thanks largely to the Thatcher reforms, the total was 528,000.  Unemployment topped 1.4million in 1979 and would eventually peak at more than 3million. Interest rates were up to double figures and rising. When I bought my first flat in 1982, the mortgage rate was 16 per cent, plus an extra one per cent for the privilege of having an endowment. If you hanker for those beer and sandwich days Andy lad, then dream on. Just please don’t try to take the rest of us there with you. The past, they say, is a foreign country. Let’s keep it that way.