The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said Kwasi Kwarteng’s announcement on Friday amounts to the biggest tax-cutting budget since Anthony Barber’s on the 21 March 1972, just over 50 years ago. Here is a roundup of some of the prices you would have been paying, and things you might have been watching and listening to at the time.
Cost of living crisis, 1972 style
Barber’s budget was called the “dash for growth”, but the prices of everyday items seem laughably cheap by today’s standards. A pint of milk cost 6p in March 1972, butter was around 13p and a gallon of four-star petrol – leaded, naturally – would have set you back 35p or about 8p per litre. If you’d just bought a brand new Ford Cortina to fill up, the car would have cost you £963. The land registry suggests the average house price was £5,158. If you still couldn’t afford a car or a house, you could always drown your sorrows with a 14p pint of beer while smoking the packet of 20 cigarettes that had set you back around 25p inside the pub. Just 13 months after decimalisation, though, people could still be forgiven for getting confused about prices in “new money”.
Television, when it was actually on
In an era when both BBC channels still had periods of “closedown” scattered through the day and parliament was not televised, on BBC One Brian Widlake presented an afternoon budget special entitled Budget Special 1972: Confidence or Crisis? with contributors including Brian Walden and Robin Day.
That meant children’s programmes were shifted over to BBC Two, where you could catch Tony Hart on Vision On and there was a Jackanory story to enjoy. Later that night on BBC One, Robert Hardy narrated a documentary about the British Empire and Barry Norman was reviewing movies in Film 72. Of course, to have enjoyed all that, you would have had to pay for your television licence, which was £7 for a black-and-white set and £12 if you wanted to watch in colour.
The sounds of the 70s
The No 1 single in the UK that week was Without You by Nilsson, a track that was also a No 1 in Ireland, Australia and the US. Also in the top ten were American Pie by Don McLean and Hold Your Head Up by Argent. Lindisfarne were top of the album charts with Fog on the Tyne, an album that spent over a year in the UK chart including four weeks in the top spot.
The US singer-songwriter Judee Sill was the guest musician on the Old Grey Whistle Test on the day of the budget, while Thursday’s edition of Top of the Pops is one you will not have seen repeated on BBC Four recently, as it was presented by Jimmy Savile. It included the Chiffons, Olivia Newton-John, Labi Siffre and Tom Jones.
The Radio One DJ lineup on the day of the budget was a veritable who’s who of broadcasting, including Tony Blackburn, Jimmy Young, Dave Lee Travis, Johnny Walker, Terry Wogan, Annie Nightingale and John Peel. John Timpson and Robert Robinson were presenting the Today programme on Radio 4, while Radio 2 handled the coverage of the budget in the afternoon.
Clough’s glory days with Derby County
In football, Derby County were on their way to winning their first English Division One title under the genius management of Brian Clough. Ahead of the budget they beat Leicester 3-0, while Liverpool, their rivals for the title, thrashed Newcastle 5-0 . Leeds United were busy dispensing with Tottenham 2-1 in the FA Cup on their way to eventually winning it. In Scotland, Celtic were heading to the seventh of nine consecutive titles, while Glasgow Rangers would eventually lift the now-defunct European Cup-Winners Cup that year.
In rugby union, Scotland had won the Calcutta Cup 23-9 against England at Murrayfield the weekend before the budget, in a Five Nations tournament truncated by the political upheaval following Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland that January, which meant Ireland’s home fixtures against Scotland and Wales were cancelled.
Elsewhere in sport, Eddy Merckx won both the Giro D’Italia and Tour de France, Jack Nicklaus was the highest earner on the golf circuit, Alex Higgins was world snooker champion, and Emerson Fittipaldi took the F1 crown.
Also in the news
Nasa launched Pioneer 10 in March on its way to study Jupiter before becoming the first human-made object to leave the solar system, and Apollo 16 was scheduled to head to the moon in early April. The Godfather had its premiere in New York before going on to be the highest-grossing movie of the year ahead of The Poseidon Adventure.
Closer to home, just a few days after the budget London would impose direct rule on Northern Ireland, and the summer of 1972 was the last time you could legally leave school at 15. The age was raised to 16 from 1 September.
The more things change …
Some things remain surprisingly constant. When Barber stood up to make his budget speech, the third Doctor Who, Jon Pertwee, was part of the way through a six-part adventure pitting him against The Sea Devils – monsters that returned to celebrate their own own 50th anniversary in this year’s Doctor Who Easter Special starring the 13th Doctor, Jodie Whittaker.
And what happened to Anthony Barber?
Within months of his budget the chancellor was forced to float the pound, which led to a sharp decrease in its value and huge inflationary pressure on the economy, which failed to grow in the way his tax-cutting measures had been intended to stimulate. After industrial unrest, Ted Heath called a general election early in 1974 and Barber lost his job as chancellor as Harold Wilson was returned to office with a minority Labour government. Barber did not stand for re-election when Wilson called the second general election of 1974 in October in a bid to secure a majority, which he narrowly achieved. Barber went off to work in the world of banking, where at one point a certain John Major was under his tutelage.
