What would a Britain that had voted 'NO' in 1975 be like?

[simoncooke]

Helen Dale is a speculative fiction writer I follow on Twitter - she posted this:

"I write speculative fiction, and I’m going to write a novel about a Britain that voted ‘NO’ on June 5, 1975."

What would have happened? Would the government have fallen? Would the Tories have started up a campaign to go back in? Obviously we don't know but it would be great to get a bunch of thoughts.

Simon

[helendale]

Hello everyone, I’m Helen Dale, the author Simon mentions above.

I’m not an amateur - I’m a Miles Franklin Award winner & Booker longlistee. I’m on Twitter @_HelenDale (I’m verified) if you want to see what I’ve written and find out a little more about me. There are links to my publisher, Amazon etc. My last two novels were both speculative fiction, based on the idea of an industrial revolution taking place in the Roman Empire.

I try to avoid writing fiction if I can as it is all-consuming, but I really do think this idea has potential. All suggestions/speculations/stray thoughts welcome.

[gwynthegriff]

Aug 5, 2018 21:29:24 GMT helendale said:

Hello everyone, I’m Helen Dale, the author Simon mentions above.

I’m not an amateur - I’m a Miles Franklin Award winner & Booker longlistee. I’m on Twitter @_HelenDale (I’m verified) if you want to see what I’ve written and find out a little more about me. There are links to my publisher, Amazon etc. My last two novels were both speculative fiction, based on the idea of an industrial revolution taking place in the Roman Empire.

I try to avoid writing fiction if I can as it is all-consuming, but I really do think this idea has potential. All suggestions/speculations/stray thoughts welcome.

Ooh! Will there be trains?



(That will be the key question on this Forum.)

[Izzyeviel]

Auf Wiedersehen, Pet would never have been made.

[neilm]

Aug 5, 2018 21:15:58 GMT simoncooke said:

Helen Dale is a speculative fiction writer I follow on Twitter - she posted this:

"I write speculative fiction, and I’m going to write a novel about a Britain that voted ‘NO’ on June 5, 1975."

What would have happened? Would the government have fallen? Would the Tories have started up a campaign to go back in? Obviously we don't know but it would be great to get a bunch of thoughts.

Simon

Welcome back!

[neilm]

Aug 5, 2018 22:39:18 GMT Izzyeviel said:

Auf Wiedersehen, Pet would never have been made.

Indeed so. There weren't literally thousands of British civilians working in Germany prior to accession or anything.

[slon]

Tricky, we were the sick man economy in the '70s

then recovery was dramatic partly through the adoption of supply side monetarism, but also with access to a much increased market of the EU.

Oil was also a factor but would Thatcherist economics have worked without the increased market?

[mondialito]

If we voted 'NO' in 1975, would we fall back to EFTA, or would we have to rejoin at a later date? Either way we would be members of the Single Market today under Norway-style lines.

[slon]

Aug 7, 2018 12:40:43 GMT mondialito said:

If we voted 'NO' in 1975, would we fall back to EFTA, or would we have to rejoin at a later date? Either way we would be members of the Single Market today under Norway-style lines.

I don't think the detail matters about EFTA/EEA/EU it is whether the industrial decline of the '60s and early '70s would have been reversed by supply side economics without us being part of the increased marketplace by closer ties with Europe.

Monetarism was a very brutal mechanism to increase efficiency (kill the lame ducks).

It would have been devestating in the '60s, by the late '70s we had already shed most of the jobs in textiles, shipbuilding and so on, and we hade North Sea oil, also access for our goods and services to a much bigger market.

Say we did not have the bigger marketplace and monetarism had failed

[J.G.Harston]

Aug 7, 2018 12:35:30 GMT slon said:

Tricky, we were the sick man economy in the '70s

then recovery was dramatic partly through the adoption of supply side monetarism, but also with access to a much increased market of the EU.

Being part of the UK was good for the Irish economy, yet the Irish people still chose to leave. Being part of the British Empire was good for the American economy, yet the American people still chose to leave. It is entirely possible for people to weigh up advantages and disadvantages and decide that the perceived downs on one side are outweighed by the perceives ups on the other side.

[slon]

Aug 7, 2018 13:07:32 GMT J.G.Harston said:

Aug 7, 2018 12:35:30 GMT slon said:

Tricky, we were the sick man economy in the '70s

then recovery was dramatic partly through the adoption of supply side monetarism, but also with access to a much increased market of the EU.

Being part of the UK was good for the Irish economy, yet the Irish people still chose to leave. Being part of the British Empire was good for the American economy, yet the American people still chose to leave. It is entirely possible for people to weigh up advantages and disadvantages and decide that the perceived downs on one side are outweighed by the perceives ups on the other side.

I am not trying to do a pro EU diatribe .... the graph caption is not part of the story.

The question is about possible futures going forward from 1975 with the UK not in the EU .... how this would impact the economy, and how that would affect the UK in general.

One possibility is Thatcher gets power as before but monetarism fails as the markets don't exist for the deregulated goods and services.

Another possibility is that the years from '75 to '79 are dire and the country moves more radically left or right, and party politics fragments

each of those possibilities could be a storyline

[Antiochian]

Aug 7, 2018 13:22:23 GMT slon said:

Aug 7, 2018 13:07:32 GMT J.G.Harston said:

Being part of the UK was good for the Irish economy, yet the Irish people still chose to leave. Being part of the British Empire was good for the American economy, yet the American people still chose to leave. It is entirely possible for people to weigh up advantages and disadvantages and decide that the perceived downs on one side are outweighed by the perceives ups on the other side.

Another possibility is that the years from '75 to '79 are dire and the country moves more radically left or right, and party politics fragments

each of those possibilities could be a storyline

Hello... '75 to '79 were dire!

[carlton43]

My first thoughts as one who did live through the whole of the period is probably not much would have been different on the face of things to the public.

My second thoughts are that quite a lot would have been different as over time there would have been considerable diversion in many areas because we would not have been encumbered by the deluge of regulations and nit-picking paperwork and indeed there might have been less of it in the EU as they tried to remain in alignment with us because of our ever-increasing market for their produce and products.

I think our trade would have been far more attenuated to South America, China, parts of Asia and the old white Commonwealth where the much closer ties would not have been broken by tariffs and overt European orientation.

I feel that we would have have a series of spats with the EU that deepened the distrust and diminished the trade over time. So trade with the EU would be much smaller than it is now and would have declined more broadly and more swiftly as a proportion of the whole. We would be less close in nearly every sense.

We would have grown even more swiftly and supported more manufacturing as many firms felt obliged to manufacture in the UK to avoid the paperwork and tariffs, so our German cars would be built here and possibly so would the Asian cars after a series of hard negotiations.

Food would be much cheaper and our agriculture radically different with no or less support for grain, sugar beet and other EU favouritism; but dairy and stock would take off as Irish products came under tariff. Fishing could have been taken in hand and rigorously protected by force if necessary affording major exports.

[slon]

Aug 7, 2018 17:03:01 GMT carlton43 said:

My first thoughts as one who did live through the whole of the period is probably not much would have been different on the face of things to the public.

My second thoughts are that quite a lot would have been different as over time there would have been considerable diversion in many areas because we would not have been encumbered by the deluge of regulations and nit-picking paperwork and indeed there might have been less of it in the EU as they tried to remain in alignment with us because of our ever-increasing market for their produce and products.

I think our trade would have been far more attenuated to South America, China, parts of Asia and the old white Commonwealth where the much closer ties would not have been broken by tariffs and overt European orientation.

I feel that we would have have a series of spats with the EU that deepened the distrust and diminished the trade over time. So trade with the EU would be much smaller than it is now and would have declined more broadly and more swiftly as a proportion of the whole. We would be less close in nearly every sense.

We would have grown even more swiftly and supported more manufacturing as many firms felt obliged to manufacture in the UK to avoid the paperwork and tariffs, so our German cars would be built here and possibly so would the Asian cars after a series of hard negotiations.

Food would be much cheaper and our agriculture radically different with no or less support for grain, sugar beet and other EU favouritism; but dairy and stock would take off as Irish products came under tariff. Fishing could have been taken in hand and rigorously protected by force if necessary affording major exports.

History of what happened in British factories between late '50s and mid '70s does not support your argument.

[Ghyl Tarvoke]

Aug 7, 2018 13:07:32 GMT J.G.Harston said:

Aug 7, 2018 12:35:30 GMT slon said:

Tricky, we were the sick man economy in the '70s

then recovery was dramatic partly through the adoption of supply side monetarism, but also with access to a much increased market of the EU.

Being part of the UK was good for the Irish economy, yet the Irish people still chose to leave. Being part of the British Empire was good for the American economy, yet the American people still chose to leave. It is entirely possible for people to weigh up advantages and disadvantages and decide that the perceived downs on one side are outweighed by the perceives ups on the other side.

All this is deeply, deeply questionable.

[Ghyl Tarvoke]

I almost literally LOLed realizing this but in all probability what happens in this scenario is Margaret Thatcher campaigns strongly on rejoining in 1979 and a second referendum thereafter.

[neilm]

Aug 7, 2018 12:35:30 GMT slon said:

Tricky, we were the sick man economy in the '70s

then recovery was dramatic partly through the adoption of supply side monetarism, but also with access to a much increased market of the EU.

Oil was also a factor but would Thatcherist economics have worked without the increased market?

There's something not quite right about this graph. The trend line is wrong for starters.

[J.G.Harston]

Aug 7, 2018 20:33:23 GMT Ghyl Tarvoke said:

Aug 7, 2018 13:07:32 GMT J.G.Harston said:

Being part of the UK was good for the Irish economy, yet the Irish people still chose to leave. Being part of the British Empire was good for the American economy, yet the American people still chose to leave. It is entirely possible for people to weigh up advantages and disadvantages and decide that the perceived downs on one side are outweighed by the perceives ups on the other side.

All this is deeply, deeply questionable.

Ok, "An argument can be made that...." and yet still people chose to leave a union in the face of potential disadvantages to their economy - and in both cases actually turned out in fact. Though - also in both cases - mainly due to the break-aways choosing to shoot their own trade feet off themselves. Which, of course, is an option we ourselves have after Brexit.

[slon]

Aug 7, 2018 21:21:45 GMT neilm said:

Aug 7, 2018 12:35:30 GMT slon said:

Tricky, we were the sick man economy in the '70s

then recovery was dramatic partly through the adoption of supply side monetarism, but also with access to a much increased market of the EU.

Oil was also a factor but would Thatcherist economics have worked without the increased market?

There's something not quite right about this graph. The trend line is wrong for starters.

It is probably correct, just part of a broad discussion about the effect of EU membership, see www.ft.com/content/202a60c0-cfd8-11e5-831d-09f7778e7377

the key bit was about growth and competition ..... "By the late 60s the bigger EU countries produced more per person than did the UK and the gap was widening. Between 1958 and Britain’s entry in 1973, gross domestic product per head rose 95 per cent in Germany, France, Italy compared with only 50 per cent in Britain.", after we joined we began to catch up.

[slon]

Aug 7, 2018 20:39:36 GMT Ghyl Tarvoke said:

I almost literally LOLed realizing this but in all probability what happens in this scenario is Margaret Thatcher campaigns strongly on rejoining in 1979 and a second referendum thereafter.

that is a good storyline

Four possible storylines so far:

- 75 to 79 we struggle on, Thatcher campaigns for rejoining in 1979 and wins the election.

- 75 to 79 we struggle on with increasing protectionism, this results in further damage to industry and further social unrest culminating in political fragmentation and rise of popularist left and right wing parties. 79 election brings victory for one of the new ultra-parties.

- 75 to 79 we struggle on with increasing protectionism and diminishing industrial base. Thatcher wins in 79 and tries to stay out of the EU and implement monetarist poilicies but these fail due to the lack of access to markets.

- We reform the comenwealth in 75 and life goes on as if we still lived in the 1950s