Memory Lane: interviewing people looking for work in 1975

Those nice people from MACE, the Media Archive of Central England, have just posted a television report I did for 'ATV Today' (the news programme that covered the English Midlands) on 25 July 1975. Interviewing people in Birmingham looking for work https://www.macearchive.org/films/atv-today-25071975-unemployment-crisis

Further down Memory Lane

Another couple of items from my days with 'ATV Today' in the Midlands in the 1970s. First a report on the court appearance in August 1974 by 7 men charged in connection with IRA bombings. IRA bombs were nothing unusual in the West Midlands around that time. Let's hope Brexit doesn't lead to a revival

https://www.macearchive.org/films/atv-today-05081974-birmingham-bomb-explosions-arrests

Then from July 1977, a report on villages in Leicestershire persecuted by very heavy traffic, who were very keen to see the M69 motorway (pictured) built to siphon the juggernauts away from their streets.

https://www.macearchive.org/films/atv-today-08071977-m69-villages

Memory lane - The days I interviewed Margaret Thatcher

During my time as a television reporter at ATV Today in the Midlands (1973-77) I interviewed Margaret Thatcher a few times. Of course, in those days, she was leader of the opposition before she became prime minister.

She was also quite a nervous and often reluctant interviewee. This is perhaps the most interesting of our encounters. As I doorstepped her during campaigning for the Walsall North by-election in 1976, Mrs Thatcher attacked the Labour government for allowing unemployment to reach 1.4 million. Fun fact: during her Conservative government, unemployment went over 3 million.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzqaguv27o8

The previous year I caught up with her as she toured the Royal Crown Derby factory in Derby, to get her reaction to the Labour government's plan to rescue troubled car manufacturer British Leyland.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6qGYJ5MOAw

Summer of 76 and the most successful government minister in UK history

This year's glorious summer got me thinking about the best I remember in the UK - 1976, which brought the highest average temperatures since records began. On the hottest day, 3 July, the thermometer climbed to 96.6 deg F (35.9 C), while for the previous 15 days, temperatures reached 90F (32.2C) somewhere in England. 

It was not the driest summer on record - apparently 1955 has that distinction, but there was a drought, so in August, the government appointed a former football referee, Denis Howell, Minister for Drought. (Mr Howell, the Labour MP for Small Heath in Birmingham, also had a day job as Minister for Sport.)

He quickly became dubbed the most successful minister in British history, because everywhere he went, it seemed to rain. I was working as a television reporter for ATV in the Midlands at the time, and I remember covering one of his visits to a drought-stricken area, where, sure enough, he was greeted by a downpour.

Rivers and reservoirs ran dry, there was water rationing and standpipes in some areas, and more people died than usual, but being in a garden or a park or by the sea was glorious.

Tales from the European Referendum - of 1975. No 2. The voters speak.

Here I am ‘vox popping’ people in Birmingham in the run-up to the 1975 vote on Europe asking them how they think it will go. Interesting how many people did not seem to know we were already in Europe, and to hear the same complaints you get today that they do not know enough to make their minds up. Perhaps that just confirms that this is a very complex issue, and more suited to being decided by a general election than a referendum.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBsycaKZGMU&feature=youtu.be

Here is my interview with former Prime Minister Ted Heath featured in my post of May 20.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjWLZpCKK6o&feature=youtu.be

Memory Lane

Back in the 1970s, I used to be industrial correspondent at ATV in the English Midlands, appearing mainly on ATV Today. Two of my film reports from that era have just appeared online:-

The effects of the British Leyland toolmakers' strike on supplies of the Mini in 1975 - 
http://www.macearchive.org/Archive/Title/atv-today-11031975-british-leyland-toolmakers-strike/MediaEntry/22814.html

The British hot rod team practising in 1974 - 
http://www.macearchive.org/Archive/Title/atv-today-21111974-british-hot-rod-team-practising-at-hednesford/MediaEntry/22279.html