and
> That lasted 2 or 3 months,
It's quite possible that people 'pulled together' to get through the crisis, similar to how people managed in the war with the 'Dunkirk Spirit'. Just because we seemingly did well through a three month crisis does not mean that is a long term sustainable plan.
Despite living through it, and revising for A Levels by candle light, I knew nothing of the surprisingly minor effect on productivity until I saw a BBC documentary looking back.
It would be interesting to know more about the effects of that crisis. Presumably many companies kept afloat by methods such as using accumulated stock or putting things on back order and such like. If I was ordered to go down to 3 days rather than 5, I’d be running long days if possible, or doing all the things that took a lot of energy on those days. These things are obviously unsustainable but how much did they come into it?
Broadcast TV shutdown at 1030pm, a 50mph speed limit was introduced as was a low max temperature for offices (63F).
Hospitals, food shops and newspapers were exempt. Power cuts were often - but because of the regulations you knew when they were due. My parents collected a selection of camping lamps, a good supply of candles, and a single gas ring to connect to the mains gas point by hose as we had an electric cooker.
I remember much sitting in candle light wearing coats and blankets in the house.
This from a Conservative govt. The dispute and three day week ended when they lost the election to Labour.
A little more here: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.natio...
I don't want to get too embroiled in historical politics here but reading http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/6/... gives :-
> 1972: Pay and price freeze aims to curb inflation. The Conservative Government has frozen pay and prices in an attempt to halt spiralling inflation.
and
> Wages and prices had started to spiral out of control after the collapse of agreements between the previous Labour Government and the unions.
> The Conservative Government's moratorium on price and wage increases passed into law as the Counter-Inflation bill.
As tends to be the case one change of Government tries to fix an inherited problem and that generates it's own set of problems.
> moratorium on price and wage increases
Economically the seventies were rather a mess. A wage freeze would be challenging with double digit inflation. I remember power cuts at other times throughout the decade, I think up until the Thatcher govt came in to push back the unions.
This was an extreme situation though, as one of the other posters mentioned revising for A levels by candlelight, I'm sure that's not something we'd want to become the norm.