1974 election - skates dangerously close to politics

[davewitley]

Me:
> >In 1974, we were allowed to cut lessons to watch general election
> >results coming in - but then, our teachers may have been under the
> >illusion that that was an educational exercise rather than the
> >sportive one it truly was.

Mary Ann
> 
> Can I be really crass and ask what grade you were in?  I'm curious 
as to whether it was primary or secondary school.

(Leans on stick, puts teeth in) Can you speak up!  You young people 
mumble so much these days!  I was in the lower sixth form: the 
laziest point in the whole school system (though university 2nd year 
was lazier).  I was 15.

  Now, how many of you actually 
> *did* watch the election results...and was there cricket on at the 
same 
> time, by chance? ;)

The one television was in a room just off the main hall - it would 
have been difficult to switch it over to anything else - yes, we 
watched the election.

  Come to think of it, why were the results coming in 
> during school time rather than in the evening?

This was the February election and, yes, many results were in, but 
they were less slick in the collecting and counting then, and much of 
the country, particularly Scotland, was covered in snow, slowing the 
collection of boxes.  I think the Western Isles and suchlike seats 
didn't declare until the Saturday (UK elections always take place on 
a Thursday).  The outcome was in doubt until very late in the 
process, as Harold Wilson got a wafer-thin majority (if that), the 
remote seats tend to be the most unpredictable (eg 4 way 
Lab/Lib/Con/Scot Nat marginal at the time, though the Con vote has 
since imploded), and there were a number of wild card candidates who 
had fallen off the right wing of the Labour party: the forerunners of 
the process that led via the failure of the SDP to New Labour and 
Tony Blair.  So it really did have some of the excitement of a 
sporting occasion for kids with only a dim grasp of how the result 
might affect our lives.

> And did Peter Snow have his 
> blessed Swing-o-metre back then already?

Probably, though I don't remember it.

1974 was an interesting year for news... Portugal's revolution, 
Nixon's resignation, the fall of the colonels in Greece (bad for 
Cyprus though)...

David