On 11 January 1979, the front-page of the Sun covered a press conference given by the prime minister, James Callaghan. The headline – ‘Crisis? What crisis?’ – was one of the most memorable and enduring. On the fortieth anniversary, this is an extract from Alwyn Turner’s Crisis? What Crisis? Britain in the 1970s (Aurum, 2008)…
It was, to start with, bitterly cold, the coldest January since 1963. Weeks of frost, freezing fog, hailstorms, sleet and snow were followed in early February by a combination of a sudden thaw and heavy rain that produced widespread flooding. And then came yet more blizzards. In Scotland there were reports of beer freezing in pub cellars and of frozen waves in Oban harbour as the temperature plunged to –25º Celsius, while the whole country’s transport system struggled to cope.
Edward Heath had at least been lucky with the weather in 1973–74; in 1979, James…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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