What If the UK had Handled the 'Oil Shock' of the 1970s Differently?

This is not really a counter-factual more a discussion about energy policy.  As had been foreseen on the drama series 'Spooks' at the end of 2009, the UK has been facing a shortage in its supply of fuel, primarily because the country is so dependent on imported gas.  Half of the gas the UK uses is imported and gas burning provides 40% of the UK's electricity.  The concerns that have been rising in Britain, at least since 1956, if not since the 1910s when the Navy became interested in oil supplies from what was then Persia (now Iran), regarding 'fuel security', seem to have been neglected in recent years and so have left Britain very vulnerable to increased demand or any disruption in supply.  In the past the concern was whether the oil could be obtained safe from Great Power rivals, Cold War rivals or local nationalists or religious fundamentalists.  Some of these issues remain and to some degree warming relations with Colonel Gadaffi are about securing short haul oil for western Europe just as US intervention in Iraq, reassurance of Saudi Arabia and dismay over the Chavez government in Venezuela has been concerned with oil supplies to the USA. 

Back in the 1970s it appeared the UK would be exempt from worrying about securing oil from uncertain regimes in Africa (not just Libya but also Nigeria), the Middle East and South America because oil and gas was found in large quantities in the North Sea.  Whilst it was difficult to access, the rise in oil prices from 1973 onwards certainly made it economically viable.  The peak production was in 1999 at 6 million barrels per day but now has fallen to 1.9 million barrels per day and in 2007 the UK became a net importer of oil for the first time since the 1960s.  Oil-burning power stations only contribute 1% of UK electricity but oil is vital for powering vehicles.  Gas production remains high at 280 billion cubic metres in 2001 and is increasing, but the amount extracted by the UK compared to the Netherlands is falling and instead imported gas (making up 50% of UK supply, up from 27% in 2007) is being used.  It is estimated that since large scale North Sea oil extraction began from the mid-1960s onwards half of all the reserves in the North Sea and neighbouring sea regions has been removed. Of course, unlike Norway which has a population of only 4.7 million (and where, despite its oil 99.3% of its electricity is generated by hydro-electric plants), the UK with about twelve times as many people has not seen a rise in the standard of living and in fact the boom years in oil production in the 1980s coincided with periods of sharp industrial decline and mass unemployment.  In addition, the privatisation of BP the previously state-owned oil company in parts between 1979-87 meant that the profits went to shareholders rather than the British state just at the first peak of production which came in 1985.

Of course, in terms of generating electricity rather than powering vehicles, the UK should not need to worry for centuries to come.  When the bulk of British coal mines closed in the mid-1980s the UK still had reserves of coal that could have lasted 300 years.  However, it was comparatively expensive to extract compared to cheap Polish and Australian coal and prime minister Margaret Thatcher anyway wanted to smash the coal mining workforce as an element in British society.  In addition, there is a newish factor which is the concern regarding carbon dioxide pollution connected to the warming of the climate which predicates against power stations burning fossil fuels.  Coal burning still provides 33% of UK's electricity and there has been discussion of new coal-fired power stations to fill the UK's gap in power.

Britain has long flirted with nuclear power, with its first commercial power station being built in 1956.  Currently 20% of UK electricity is generated by nuclear power stations (3% of it by French nuclear power stations and imported via cables under the English Channel) all of which will be decommissioned by 2035, all but one by 2023.  By 1988 nuclear power was increasingly seen as too expensive and dangerous to be viable and with electricity generation privatised in 1989 there seemed no point in the government investing in nuclear power any longer, the last nuclear power station was Sizewell B started up in 1995.  Up until 2003 the British government was reluctant to build more nuclear power stations due to the dangers of leakages and the waste they produce.  However, from 2006 onwards, looking for ways to have power generated in ways that did not increase carbon dioxide, they came back in favour in policy and 10 nuclear power stations have been planned for 2019-25 were announced in November 2009 providing 25% of UK electricity, but not starting for almost another decade.  France has always been a greater enthusiast for nuclear power despite generally easy oil resources coming the short distance from Algeria even after that state cease being a French colony in 1962 and now 78% of France's electricity comes from nuclear power (11% from hydro-electric) and some of this is exported.

Hydro-electric power is interesting.  Some states who have fossil resources, such as Norway, Canada (where 61% of power is hydro-electric, i.e. HEP), Venezuela (67% HEP) get a lot of electricity from hydro-electric, other big users are Sweden (44%) and Brazil (86%).  Britain has been building hydro-electric plants since the 1930s but they only contribute to 1% of UK electricity less than biomass and wind methods which provide 3.5% at present.  Globally HEP provides 20% of the world's electricity and it is estimated that a third of potential sites have been used.  It seems ironic that even heavily nuclear France has more power from HEP than the UK.  HEP does not necessarily need mountain valleys, many French rivers have HEP installations on them.

Given that fuel, power and energy are all up for discussion now, why do I hark back to the 1970s?  This is because I feel that this was the time when the UK had its first real shock around its energy supply and could have taken steps to secure it, not only in political terms but in moving towards more sustainable, less polluting sources.  The so-called 'oil shock' hit the Western world in 1973 when Organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC - Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia and United Arab Emirates; 'radical' Algeria, Egypt, Iraq and Syria had just joined in 1972) announced in October 1973 an oil embargo on states seen as backing Israel in the Yom Kippur War of that year.  This was an extension of the policy of oil embargo imposed for a short period in summer 1967 in response to supposed US and British involvement in the Six Day War of that year.  In 1973 this affected the USA but also impacted on the Netherlands, Portugal, Rhodesia and South Africa depending on individual states' policies.  The broader impact even for countries not embargoed was a 70% increase in the price of oil anyway, seen as effectively ending the post-1948 economic boom, though this had begun to slow from 1971 onwards and the US stock market suffered a crash for almost all of 1973 and 1974.  By the end of 1974 oil was four times its pre-October 1973 price.  For the second time in six years, Britain had had its oil supplies from the Middle East threatened.  Whilst this encouraged the British to look at new supplies such as from Nigeria which had been a British colony until 1960 though it was just recovering from the 1967-70 civil war, from Canadian oil shales, from the North Sea and through alternative power sources.

The second 'oil shock' caused by the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the subsequent Iran-Iraq war had an immediate impact but this was comparatively short lived as during the mid to late 1970s oil supplies had been diversified, many Arab states increased production and Venezuela, Mexico and Nigeria were able to expand their production to fill the gap left by the loss of much of the Iranian and Iraqi supplies and by 1980 the oil price went into a slump lasting until 1986.  The 1979 crisis raised oil prices sharply in the USA and threatened rationing.  The UK was less affected because North Sea oil had increased in quantity of supply over 1973/4.

The UK had had additional 'shocks' from its domestic politics.  The rise in the price of coal as an effect of the oil price rise, rising inflation in the UK in 1972-3 in part provoked by an era of prosperity and consumption (1974/5 was to see the highest level of sales of cars in the UK that had been yet seen) and by the knock-on effects of oil price rises (which, for example made plastics more expensive) led to work-to-rule and then strikes by coal miners leading to fall in coal supplies which at the time was the main source of fule for generating electricity.  From December 1973 to March 1974 a three-day week was run meaning electricity was only available for industry for three days of the working wait and there were power cuts at other times; television stopped broadcasting at 10.30pm, which given that it usually went off air sometime before midnight most days (and sometimes in the middle of the afternoon too) when there was normal electricity supply was less of a change than it would be nowadays with 24-hour television broadcasting.

In the 1970s, especially from 1973, there was naturally interest in moving away from the consumption of coal and oil to more sustainable supplies that were not dependent on foreign governments.  For a small country, the UK was at the leading edge of wave power development with Stephen Salter and Michael French ranking alongside US, Norwegian and Chinese scientists in developments.  At a popular level I remember programme after programme about developments of wave power devices of different sorts, notably 'Salter's duck' formally known as the Edinburgh Duck after his university, those that bobbed on the waves.  Other designs aimed to use the force of waves coming into shore.  Of course, the UK had a history of tide mills; there were 6000 across England as early as the 12th century.  One from the 8th century has been found in Northern Ireland and a Roman one may have been found on the River Fleet in London.  One found recently at Greenwich in East London had a wheel of 5.2 metres in diameter and was constructed of wood felled in 1194; tide mills were still in use in the 19th century.  Given the extensive coastline the UK would seem a suitable place for wave power now as it was eight centuries ago.  It has come to light that the UK Wave Energy Programme was closed by the UK government in March 1982, not surprising given that Margaret Thatcher has never appeared a fan of sustainable energy perferring to favour profiting her friends in the oil multi-nationals.  Salter's model was very energy efficient, but needed large scale investment to be put into practice.  However, other designs around at the time were similarly shelved.  The fall in oil prices in the 1980s seemed to make them unnecessary.

The first windmill to generate electricity in the UK was built in 1887, yes, 1887, not 1987.  As I have noted before in the 18th century the UK had hundreds of windmills in every county.  Developments in wind power especially in Denmark and the USA continued through the 20th century.  Again it was the oil shocks of the 1970s which stimulated even the huge fossil fuel consumer the USA to begin taking the approach seriously.  However, it was not until 1991 that the UK got its first onshore wind farm and 2003 its first offshore one.  The lateness of this was because it was only in the face of pressure of carbon dioxide emissions (commonly called 'carbon footprint', in fact though carbon particulates pollute the atmosphere this cools the global temperature, it is the emission of carbon dioxide following the burning of hydro-carbons, what make up fossibl fuels, which is what is contributing to global warming) that government funding went into such initiatives.  There are now £75 billion of contracts to build windpower facilities around the UK, but the bulk of the tendering companies are dominated by German firms.  This is unsurprising as after the USA, Germany has the second largest number of wind farms of any country in the world as anyone driving down as German motorway in recent years will know.  There seems to be less issue there with locals refusing to have them and it seems sensible to put them alongside motorways which would already be considered an eyesore.  Again, back in the 1970s the British were looking at wind farms.  Along with Denmark, a leading advocate, we had joined the EEC from EFTA in 1973.  Designs such as the vertical wind turbine from the UK company Alvesta were certainly being publicised in the 1970s but again it needed another 30-35 years before any steps were taken.

Of course, sustainable energy does not mean ending use of hydro-carbons and biofuels are a form of hydro-carbon that is sustainable but is still troublesome in terms of carbon dioxide production.  Again in the 1970s biofuels were seen as a solution, though back then we did not know that recycling fat from chipshops would do the trick if properly processed.  Given how much more fried food the UK consumed in the 1970s it would have been a rich source.  Biofuels such as the use of ethanol, hemp and peanut oil have been around since the late 19th century and biodiesel mixes were in common use until the1920s.  Biofuels are seen as balancing the carbon dioxide situation because plants absorb carbon dioxide, though I and many argues that burning any hydro-carbons worsens the situation unnecessarily, but yes, biofuels have less overall impact than fossil fuels.  The other key problem with biofuels is that they now tend to be grown in regions where growing enough food is a problem.  The world can produce more than enough food to feed the entire population, as the mountains and lakes of food stored by the EEC in the 1970s and 1980s showed.  However, economically big business makes more money growing such fuels in places with cheap labour.  In the 1980s, with the EEC countries being dependent on imports of food oils they promoted the cultivation of rape seed which can be crushed to produce oil.  This policy was incredibly successful changing the UK arable landscape entirely and you now see field upon field of this bright yellow crop.  The UK along with many other EU states was producing 'too much' food and so adopted policies like 'set aside' paying farmers to leave fields fallow.  Instead it could have developed a biofuel industry on the back of the rape seed and sugar beet that grow in so much of the UK.  This could have started in the 1970s and made the UK have 'fuel security' at least for powering cars and lorrie.  Part of the problem is the reluctance of the British public to engage with non-standard vehicles, which is ironic given our steering wheels are on the opposite side of the car to most in the world.  Hybrid vehicles are in place for those reluctant to move entirely to move away from petrol or diesel.  Hybrids with electric propulsion have been around more than twenty years.

The UK, like many Western countries, had the opportunity to respond positively to the oil shocks of the 1970s in developing better fuel and energy policies.  However, once the immediate threat was over they simply let these developments slide.  Partly, I imagine, this was because multi-national oil companies are immensely wealthy and incredibly influential.  As we saw in the USA in response to the Kyoto Agreement, lobbying from the fossil fuel sector is far more powerful than that from environmentalists or even specialists favouring fuel alternatives.  Oil companies like the wealth they have and like a drugs dealer will push hard to make sure that we remain addicted to their product and keep paying them for it.

The UK, in particular, allowed its leading position in such developments to go to the USA and to Germany.  In many ways I wish that the OAPEC action had gone on longer to the extent that the oil companies actually began to feel the pinch.  They shifted sources and traded internally and among themselves.  Though oil companies always whine when supply prices rise, in fact they always come out of these things very successfully.  However, if the prices to the consumer had persisted at a high level for longer, then governments may have persisted with pursuing the alternatives to oil and coal which seemed to be the future in 1973.  The advent of New Right governments, wedded to big business did not help this.  As a result, rather than steadily moving into sustainable energy in the 1970s to an extent that by the 2000s the UK's carbon dioxide levels would already be lower, we kept on giving away our advantages and ignoring the methods our scientists and technologists had developed.  We even ignored easy gains such as biofuels. The UK probably got North Sea oil at the wrong time.  If we had not found it until the 1990s then we would have used it more sensibly and not allowed it to blind us to the other developments we could have pursued.  The UK is now incredibly vulnerable in terms of fuel security, highly dependent on imported gas and is also weak in meeting carbon dioxide emission targets and so is rushing with little thought into any feasible route, such as new nuclear and even new coal-fired power stations.  The public resistance to wind farms is insane, but the people who resist their construction will have to put up with the nuclear powered stations built instead.  I know which of the two I would prefer in my back garden.  I fear that faced with challenges in terms of fuel and energy the UK will continue to simply stick to 'business as usual' for as long as it can rather than properly engage with better, safer approaches.

The US Empire Expands - 19th Century Imperialism Lives On

Just when I thought we were beginning to witness a bit of maturity in US politics with the primaries for the Democratic candidate which seemed to suggest parts of the American public were putting aside some of the bigotry and narrow-minded attitudes that they have become renowned for, suddenly we find that with the last gasp of his regime George Bush is busily expanding the American empire. Of course the Americans have never liked to be categorised as imperialists because they feel they were the first nation to throw off imperial rule when they defeated the British in the American War of Independence. However, they were really no different from Japan which came from at least a degree of imperial control in the mid-19th century to begin carving out their own empire in China and elsewhere in East Asia. Of course a lot of people assume that imperialism is all about colonies with the country being totally controlled by the imperial power and settlement by that power. The old empires like the British, French, Belgian, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese did this across the world, but what people forget is that there are many forms of imperialism and it is some of these other forms that the USA carried out and is still, it seems carrying out today. Of course the USA still has clear imperial control over Guam in the Pacific and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean as those countries have their laws made in Washington, but the empire is expanding elsewhere in less controlling forms.

Before looking at different forms of imperialism, it is important to note one issue that I will come back to later that tends to be common to anywhere which is coming under any form of imperial control, that is 'extraterritoriality' which means that if you are from the imperial power or one of its friends, then you are immune to local laws no matter what you do in the country. This applies to all diplomats, but when there is imperialism going on it is extended to soldiers, business people and so on. This is always controversial as it means that people from the imperial state can commit what would be seen as crimes and get away with it or only be punished by the rules of their home country. Having extraterritoriality removed was a goal of Chinese nationalists and Communists right through the first half of the 20th century.

Imperialism breaks first of all into 'informal' and 'formal' imperialism. Informal imperialism is effectively economic dominance of a country and this was what tended to happen to developed societies in the 19th century for example in China, the Ottoman Empire and South America where states had shaken formal imperialism of Spain and Portugal by the 1820s only to come under informal imperialism from Britain and the USA. Informal imperialism is very common nowadays. Developing countries have their economies distorted so that they provide the resources that the Western world needs at cheap prices. Once it was things like fruit, sugar and coffee, increasingly it is becoming bio-fuels. Until they asserted their autonomy in the 1950s-70s even the rich oil countries of the Middle East were under such control. Interestingly like the Japanese 150 years ago, the Chinese are now turning from exploited to exploiters and carrying out informal imperialism not only in Africa but also Australia and Canada. The advantage of informal imperialism is that it is pretty cheap and does not look like imperialism, but this was the form that the British and the Dutch East India Companies began with in the 18th century in India and Indonesia, only later did it become more formal, state-run imperialism. The USA was carrying out informal imperialism in Central and South America from the 1820s onwards and moved into East Asia during the Cold War. Alongside states it ran informally there were ones like Cuba, Panama and the Philippines which it controlled more formally. In China whilst none of the colonial powers conquered the whole country in the 19th century they did rule directly over small areas or particular cities, especially the treaty ports, where their law rather than that of China prevailed.

Formal imperialism is when a country takes over the other country and runs its economy and foreign policy, though as I discuss below this may leave a lot of autonomy in the hands of local elites. There are various grades of formal imperialism.

Spheres of influence: with these you are not far away from informal imperialism. An example was Persia (now Iraq) in the 19th century and up to the end of the Second World War. Neither Russia/USSR or the UK actually took control of Persia but it was accepted that the Russians would be dominant in the North and the British in the South; Russian and British companies would be the ones getting all the contracts and in the case of trouble it would be the Russian or British who would intervene in their respective areas. To some extent the French still have this kind of relationship with much of West Africa and the French military intervenes if there is unrest. The British do this on a smaller scale, as with former colony, Sierra Leone. It is argued that during the Cold War Western Europe was effectively the US sphere of influence and Eastern Europe much more clearly the Soviet sphere of influence.

Dominions: this is a very British mode of imperialism and is often a legacy of tighter control. It is for countries like New Zealand, Australia and Canada, that were heavily settled by Europeans so that the indigenous cultures almost disappeared and they are now considered 'White' countries. These states though independent in domestic and foreign policy retain the British monarch as their head of state rather than having their own president and they refer

Dependent Territories: these can be defined differently and have a particular technical meaning when talking about the UK. These are countries, often small ones, which effectively cannot subsist without the economic input of the imperial power. They run their own affairs but are heavily dependent on trade with the imperial power and may be compelled to be guided on things like defence and foreign policy. They may also provide military bases for the imperial power. Ironically this is what Cuba had become for the USA before Fidel Castro pulled off the revolution in 1958 and even then the US base at Guantanamo Bay remains a legacy of that imperial relationship that even Castro could not remove.

Protectorates: this was a common form of imperial rule over much of the British and other European empires in the 19th century, notably the Netherlands over Indonesia. It is not as expensive as a full blown colonisation and in theory the protectorate enters into an agreement for protection though in reality it was generally forced. Some people use the supposed voluntary entry into being a protectorate to compare that form of imperialism positively compared to the formation of 'Mandates' by the League of Nations at the end of the First World War which was imposed on these countries when they were removed from control of Germany and allocated to other colonial powers. However, the treatment was much the same in both cases. What distinguishes protectorates and mandates from colonies is that local rulers stay in control, though they have to deal economically with the imperial power like dependent territories and have their defence and foreign policy and often many other policies determined by the imperial state. Large areas of India such as Mysore, Hyderabad, the Rajput States and Baluchistan (now inPakistan) were such protectorates, under local princes rather than direct British control like the rest of India.

Colonies: in the British Empire these became 'Crown Colonies' to designate that control moved from the hands of companies, notably the East India Company which lost control of its parts of India in 1858 and they were run by the British government. The Belgian and German governments were also obliged to take over colonies started by companies in Africa in the late 19th century as it proved impossible for anything less than a state to run colonies. As the name suggests, the aim was generally for settlers from the home country to colonise the imperial territory. This generally happened far less than was expected as people preferred to emigrate to the Americas. However, there were notable exceptions such as South Africa, Kenya, French Indochina and especially Algeria, where by the time of independence 1 out of 9 of the population was European. In colonies the imperial power ran everything replacing government of the country by governors and the military and large chunks of the economy came under direct control of the imperial state. In extreme cases, as with Algeria for France, the colony effectively became part of the metropolitan country; in 1945, 12% of the members of parliament sitting in Paris were elected from the colonies. Other countries did not engage so closely with their colonies, though there were discussions in the 1950s about Malta returning MPs to parliament in London.

Right, so with terms established, why do I think the American Empire is expanding. Well, we all know, as I was predicting last year, that it is in Iraq. This is a country which was under the Ottoman Empire until 1918 but the Germans were attempting informal imperialism there in the 1900s. After 1918 it became a mandate of the British until gaining seemingly gaining independence in 1945 when it became a full member of the United Nations. The British had re-invaded the country in 1941 to suppress uprisings and presumably fearful of the country's oil falling into German hands. As we know the USA invaded Iraq in 1991 following its recapture of Kuwait (a state Iraq had claimed sovereignty over as early as 1961) and then again in 2003 to overthrow Saddam Hussein. It appeared that there were steps to Iraq again becoming independent, but it seems that it is not the level of independence it had up until 2003. Bush is negotiating for the USA not to just have a single military base in Iraq but 50 bases across the country. In addition US troops would have extraterritoriality but not simply to go about their business but to carry out arrests and military activities without referring to any Iraqi government. This is the kind of power Austria-Hungary asked Serbia to give in July 1914 and the Japanese demanded of China in 1937 which in both cases led to war. It is like the power foreigners had in Japan in the late 19th century which led to unrest in the country and a coup in 1867, the so-called Meiji Restoration. A new twist for the 21st century is that the USA wants control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000 feet (about 9700 metres). In addition to all this, US companies since the war have been the key economic players in the country and will continue to be so even if this so-called 'Strategic Alliance' is not signed and you can guarantee that the US will have an effective monopoly on sale of Iraqi oil.

Iraq is already a dependent territory of the USA and the agreement would solidify that. The ongoing military presence and the extraterritoriality plus the supposed 'agreement' smacks very much of a protectorate being formed. One could envisage this being 1888 rather than 2008 with the USA having overthrown some local despot, restoring some local elites but effectively running the country as their own. Certainly the influence of any other power, notably Iran, is being excluded. The USA has seen the Middle East as to some extent in its sphere of influence since the Eisenhower Doctrine of the 1950s, but what we are now witnessing is not a kind of 'new imperialism' talked about during the Cold War, this is simply reheated 19th century imperialism. People argued that the Cold War was a natural development in history and when it ended a certain phase was concluded, but to me, it appears that the Cold War was an aberration and in fact there are more continuities between the world in 1908 and 2008 than there ever were between 1948/58/68 even 1978 and today. Predictions of American, Russian (notice their colonial moves on the seabed of the Arctic and the UK doing the same in the mid-Atlantic) and China as dividing up the world seem more accurate now than ever. Imperialism is not dead, we are witnessing it occurring this very moment.

I Don't Love the 1970s

I have to apologise to non-UK readers as this posting views the 1970s from very much a British perspective. In many other countries I am sure the decade was quite a bit better. As I have noted in previous postings the British public lives in the past and having moved on from the 'good old days' of the 1950s, the 1970s seems to be the focus of nostalgia, in my mind, very wrongly. There were things going on across the world that made the 1970s less than rosy for many people. The Vietnam War did not finish until 1975. The Vietnamese had been fighting the Japanese from 1941-5 then the French until 1954, then the Americans 1965-73 before the Chinese then got a look in by invading in 1979. The Vietnamese in turn invaded Cambodia which had been under the control of Pol Pot since 1975. He carried out the murders of about 2 million Cambodians and an attempt to return the country to 'Year Zero'.

Afghanistan was invaded in 1979 by the USSR and Iran went from a royal dictatorship to a fundamentalist one in the same year. The Middle East which had been plagued by fighting from 1914 onwards saw another round of the Arab-Israeli conflict in 1973; the Arab response to this was an oil embargo stronger than that imposed in 1967, then the more effective tool of simply quadrupling oil prices, which led to inflation across the World and the end of what is seen as the post-1945 economic boom. Chile's elected government was overthrown by American backed rebels and the President Allende was assassinated. Peru, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia, Ecuador all faced guerilla wars and dictatorhips, something which alsco came to Brazil and Argentina. South Africa remained under apartheid; a war which ran for more than a decade started in 1975 in Angola and similarly in Mozambique, in Uganda Idi Amin came to power in 1971 and lasted until 1979 instituting a horrific regime and leading to the ejection of Ugandan Asians; in the Central African Republic a similarly insane and brutal dictatorship under 'Emperor' Bokassa I ran 1972-9. In total 20 African states were under military dictatorship in the 1970s.

Once the USA had finally left Vietnam, maybe the 1970s appear reasonable for Americans, in the narrow window of detente in the Cold War and before AIDS began to bite. Even with inflation and even in the UK, in the 1970s there seemed to be some prosperity. Despite the petrol price increase 1975 saw the peak in car sales. Clothes were loose and jeans flared, partly stimulated by a glut in cotton production. Yet, even in the prosperity of which some of the world's citizens were benefiting from, there were concerns. There was the worry that we were going to run out of oil and yet no-one really commited to any other fuel. The French went ahead with nuclear power as did the British and Americans to a lesser extent. The accident at the USA's Three Mile Island nuclear station in 1979 was a foretaste of what would come from Chernobyl in the USSR in 1986.

So globally the World was in a mess. However, everyone these days seems to look through all of this to disco and glam rock. These were brash hedonistic cultures mixing fashion and music and a sexual freedom, if you were lucky. As with the 1960s when only a fraction of the population of any country, even in the West, let alone elsewhere, actually experienced the hippy movement, so in the 1970s. I suppose fashions such as flares, tanktops and platform shoes did penetrate to the high street, but you were hardly going to experience glam rock or disco culture to any meaningful level at a dingy local disco or nightclub. The UK in the 1970s and it had been since the 1830s onwards was dreary, drab and only functioning once in a while.

The closest reflection of this rather bitter side of the 1970s seems not to come in documentaries, but in the series. 'Life on Mars' which is about a 'time-travelling' policeman from 2006 who ends up stuck in 1973. The ugly bedsit where he lives and the threat from IRA bombs sums up the experience of the bulk of the UK population far more than renditions of 'Dancing Queen' or 'Ride a White Swan'. Not only were the 1970s drab, something that the brash acid colours of interior design could not conceal, but they were boring. As an aside, you can see two clear segments of the 1970s, probably pivoting around 1975 when the glam of the first half of the decade slowed down, worn out by its excesses and shaded into the lower key second half, for which the faeces-brown shade of Austin Allegro (I kid you not, see if you can find an image online of this appalling car) seemed to sum up the last five years of the decade and began to prepare us for the comfiness of 1980s domestic styles.

The 1970s were boring as the UK only had 3 television channels. These went off during the middle of the day and rarely stayed on as late as midnight. The viewing figures for popular shows topped 20 millon (i.e. about a third of the entire population) indicating how little there was to do. On Sundays no shops were open bar newsagents that closed at 12.30 and pubs which closed 15.00-19.00 and then again at 22.30. The prime entertainment on Sunday afternoon was to walk around towns of closed shops looking in estate agents' windows before coming home for a dreary serial, religious programmes and if you were lucky a nature programme. People turned up their colour televisions (not a universal luxury, many still watched in black & white) so red that blood looked like strawberry jam when it came out of a seal on one of these nature programmes. There were no home computers, music was on records or cassettes, both prone to damage. Music is a matter of choice, so if you like disco or funk or '70s soul or ska or punk or progressive rock or folk, all popular in the 1970s, fine, but in fact much of the music that the bulk of the population in the UK heard was very naff child stars like The Osmonds or Our Kid or singers like Dana and Gilbert O'Sullivan singing sickly sentimental stuff. Though children were given a freer rein to go to the park and run around and vandalise, they were no safer than they were today. The television schedule was filled with warnings to children about how they could be run over (graphically illustrated by a hammer smashing a peach), electrocuted on electricity pylons, drown in canals, drown in manure even, get run over by tractors, be abducted by strangers and so on.

Life in the 1970s was unhealthy. Now smoking is banned even in pubs in the UK. In the 1970s it happened everywhere: in cinemas, shops, on public transport (including underground trains until the Kings Cross station fire of 1987 which killed 31 people) even in the workplace. Everywhere you went in the 1970s stunk of tobacco smoke; cigarette advertising was everywhere. Dog faeces were not picked up in the way owners have to these days and walking down a suburban street was a real hazard; you were lucky if the dog had had a typical canine diet of the time and had white faeces, these were hard and did not squidge when trodden on - these days they eat better. In the shops nothing was sugar-free or contained bran, there was minimal indication of what it actually contained. Bread was snow white and chewy as rubber; cereals were jam packed with sugar and advertising to children was unregulated, no wonder tooth decay in children was so high. The quality of food and drink was appalling from disgusting UK made sherry to whipped up desserts full or artificial colours you had to put up with food that these days would turn your stomach. Driving was equally a danger. Wearing seatbelts was not compulsory and you could drive at 90mph (144kph) on motorways until 1974 in an era when no car had a crumple zone, ABS or airbags.

I have not mentioned the industrial action in the UK. The attempts by the Conservative government (1970-74) and the Labour government (1974-79) to reduce inflation by limiting pay claims led to rising industrial action. The most notable outcomes were in 1974 with the three-day week and in the so-called 'Winter of Discontent' of 1978/9. 1973 had already seen the reduction of motorway speed limits to 50mph (80kph) to conserve fuel and electricity was only made available for 3 days during the 5-day working week. This bumped up unemployment and left household subsisting on cold food and candles for many nights from January to March of that year and limits on industrial use of electricity for even longer. In December 1978 similar issues over pay arose leading to strikes by lorry drivers and local authority staff meaning that refuse was not collected and people were not buried. The cessation of many deliveries meant panic buying of things like sugar and flour, hiking inflation even more; also many petrol stations closed as they ran out of stocks. Railway workers, nurses also went on strike and the Army had to step in to provide emergency cover. The government did not use the powers under Acts passed in 1964, 1973 and 1976 which would have allowed it counter the strike. Though in 1948-9 the Labour government under Clement Attlee had been happy to declare states of emergency and Conservative Edward Heath did on a number of occasions 1972-4, the Labour prime minister in 1978-9, James Callaghan felt inhibited from doing so. The unrest ended in February 1979 but had wrecked Labour's chances of winning the forthcoming election, a 5% lead in the polls had turned into a 20% lag by February and the election in May 1979 brought the Conservatives to power until 1997. [For more on why I consequently don't love the 1980s, see a future posting].

Unrest was not limited to the industrial scene, though it was not until the early 1980s that the UK saw race riots on a scale not witnessed since the 1950s, the 1970s set out the groundwork with the rise of the National Front (NF) and thousands of incidents of racism (seemingly condoned by television comedies which often raised 'humour' from racial differences, especially the series 'Curry and Chips' [shown in 1969 and cancelled fortunately after only 6 episodes] and 'Love Thy Neighbour' [which shockingly ran 1972-6; 8 series]) affected people across the UK, not least the refugees escaping Idi Amin's horrific regime.

So next time suggests you attend a '70s party and dress up in glam or disco fashions, remember that that style was as much a fantasy for the people of the time as it is for you. Whilst the 2000s are not that wonderful, I am certainly totally unwilling to trade them to experience the 1970s.

Oil, what's it good for? War!

There are a lot of people blogging about current events in the Gulf region of the Middle East so I thought I would add my view. Thinking over it, my perspective now seems pretty old fashioned, probably back to the late 1910s, though surfing around it seems that in the age of globalisation, such ideas are coming back in fashion.

So, here is my take on why the USA invaded Iraq in 2003 was not for defeating terrorism (more on how and how not to respond to terrorism in later postings) nor to overthrow a dictator (the USA has put in place and sustained so many dictators it seems perverse to pick one to remove, or maybe like Noriega in the 1980s he just came up in this decade's 'who shall we depose' lucky dip at the White House), but to get control of the 5th largest oil reserves in the world. US interest in the Gulf region goes back to before the First World War, when battleships moved from being coal to oil powered, but US policy only really began to be directed that way (a few decades after the British) with the Eisenhower Doctrine of 1957. That was in the context of the Cold War and it was supposedly about defending the Middle East from Communist intervention, this was not simply about ideology, it was about a time when the USA's own oil was becoming expensive to extract and drying up and yet US fuel consumption was rocketing in the prosperous 1950s. Whilst the doctrine's aggressive approach was shelved in 1959 recently it seems to have been dusted off. To some extent the increase in Venezuelan oil which is short haul to the USA made it unnecessary. Venezuela under dictator Juan Vincente Gomez and later the pact between the AD and COPEI parties from 1958 onwards which meant a safe supply of oil for the USA.

The big shock to the western world over oil came in 1973 when Middle Eastern oil producers quadrupled prices as a way to put pressure on the USA and certain European countries not to back Israel, which despite expectations was proving hard to rub out. The price rise ended the post-war economic boom and led to the inflation and unemployment of the 1970s. The fear was that most of the oil came from 'unstable' states in the Middle East and Africa (notably Nigeria which had suffered a bitter civil war). Fortunately for the Americans they got on well with the owners of the largest reserves, Saudi Arabia and stability was soon returned to the region. They supported what was basically a monarchical state medieval in outlook, as they and the British do today. Though the vast oil company profits were reduced a little and more money went to the Saudis and other Middle Eastern leaders, the oil companies remained richer than many countries in the world.

Why then in the 2000s was all of this insufficient? Well, instability from the US perspective is spreading. In 1979 they lost the pro-western Shah's government in Iran. Iraq remained an ally during the Cold War, but when that ended it was no longer necessary; in addition it has three as yet untapped oil fields. Saudi Arabia What has changed in particular in the last decade is the increased demand, especially from China which has a population four times larger than the USA and its demand for fuel is rising. China has been making investments in raw materials across the world from Australia, Indonesia (also a big oil producer), Canada (also has certain oil reserves) and into Africa, buying influence and the fuel it needs.

Another US policy doctrine was the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 which said that Central and South America was out of bounds for any other Power, bar the USA and over the years the Americans have contested intervention there, especially from the USSR. Since the start of the Cold War the policy has been focused on keeping out 'outside' ideologies as well as other countries, notably Socialism and Communism or even local nationalist flavoured populism which seems to offer the people a little something and can be tarred with the Communist brush. Now, Hugo Chavez came to power in Venezuela in 1998 he began moving the country down a left-wing path. In the past as in Guatemala 1953-4 and in Chile 1973 the US government and US corporations such as United Fruit and ITT has intervened in Latin American countries to head off nationalisation of their assets through staging coups. Chavez has faced general strikes an approach tried in Chile to oust Allende in 1973, in that case they were successful and led to Allende's death and a period of dicatorship under General Pinochet. Experts behind US interventions in Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1980s had been advising those who tried to pull off a failed coup in Venezuela in 2002. Anyway, with a left-wing government in Venezuela which is unsurprisingly unsympathetic to the USA, the Americans are concerned that another prime oil supply is going to be limited or cut off for them.

President George W. Bush effectively admitted this need for oil in April 2005. The USA still has domestic fuel prices lower than much of the world (half what we pay in the UK) and yet huge vehicles are increasing and demanding more. A rise in fuel would shoot inflation up very rapidly and there is the spectre of a depression hanging over Bush's shoulder, especially given its budget deficit, so as in the 1920s a depression or fuel price rise affecting the rest of the world will also come to haunt the USA even if it avoids a local depression.

At the top I said these ideas date to the 1910s and this is because of Vladimir Lenin's book of 1916 'Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism' though the man who lay down the foundations was J.A. Hobson in 'Imperialism, a Study' (1902) though he tends to get forgotten. Anyway, the argument was at the start of the 20th century there were very few countries outside Europe which were not ruled either formally or informally by one of the European powers, the USA or Japan. Even supposedly independent states like Argentina, had their economies run by other states, in this case, the UK. So the portrayal of the world was that there would be completing blocs of power across the world with developed nations taking raw materials from their imperial territories and selling manufactured items back to them. Of course the blocs would shift over time and in the 1900s it was the USA, Germany and Japan who were rising in power to challenge the more established British, French and Russians. The argument is 100 years on little has changed. The Cold War provided an interlude when military power over-ruled economic power, but things are now back to the early 20th century system with economic penetration the key weapon. Germany, Britain and France are all part of the EU itself a bloc, the USA, Japan and to a lesser extent Russia are still there. China is shaking off its status as a territory for colonial penetration and becoming an economic power to match the military power it built up during the Cold War. So, the war in Iraq is rather like a move on a game of 'Risk' done simply to secure resources (and markets too, as many US companies are making millions rebuilding Iraq too). The tragedy is that it is not plastic pieces or a computer graphic eliminated in the 'play' rather people's lives and futures as they are used like atoms on the pawns that are their countries.