1975: The year of living dangerously
The seventies. Flares, dope and free love? How about strikes, low wages and high prices. Damian Corless investigates
The first strike of the year was at RTÉ where ITGWU members refused to operate new colour TV equipment without extra pay in a dispute of purely academic interest to the 90% of the public with b/w sets.
A strike at Irish Distillers caused a drought of whiskey, gin and vodka, while one at Premier Dairies left most of Dublin without doorstep milk deliveries. There were long queues at grocery stores and customers were restricted to one pint bottle each, leading to a run on powdered milk.
Others to strike included vets, trawler fishermen, binmen, bank staff, and fitters at the Ferenka factory in Limerick.
With the North running red, the NI Tourist Board insisted in January "the outlook for 1975 is optimistic". They planned to persuade NI residents of "the benefits of holidaying at home against the background of foreign travel and package holiday costs".
This optimism resided in a fragile IRA ceasefire intact from Christmas 1974. Besides, in 1975 a fortnight abroad didn't guarantee safety. Spain teetered on the brink of civil war, with the Basques and Catalans in virtual rebellion and trigger-happy police capable of killing five by mistake in a shoot-out.
Rejected as a dangerous racist by Britain's electorate, Enoch Powell found his niche as a Unionist MP. The Irish in Britain were distrusted thanks to a murderous and indiscriminate IRA bombing campaign.
Lord Arran spoke for many when he said: "I hate the Irish. I always have hated the Irish. I always will. They are savage and murderous thugs, all of them."
The Birmingham Six and Guildford Four received life sentences for outrages they didn't commit. The day after the Six trial ended, a prison officer boasted of giving them "a good hiding" in captivity. In Belfast, a Catholic lodged a complaint against a Ministry Of Social Services official. The civil servant had sent the unemployed man for a job interview with a Protestant firm. He'd filled out a card for the man to present.
It read: Nature Of Work: gunman.
Employer's address: IRA, G Company, Ardoyne.
It was International Women's Year, not that you'd know. The average industrial wage for a man was £53 a week and £27 for a woman. Women couldn't take up apprenticeships and had restricted access to jury duty. One in four working women was a clerk/typist. One in 25 was a nun.
In 1975 it was standard practice amongst banks and HP firms to refuse a loan to a married woman unless her husband underwrote it, even if she was working. If a husband and wife shared a passport he could travel alone but she required his permission to do so. A wife was her husband's property in law. A jobless man automatically qualified for dole payments at 18. A woman didn't.
The Federated Union Of Employers set out their stall in January. They were dead against equal pay or access to apprenticeships. They needn't have worried. There were 195 men in the Oireachtas and nine women. Not a single piece of legislation was passed in 1975 to ease sex discrimination.
Beyond the east coast, watching TV meant watching Telefís Éireann's lone channel, which came on at 5pm nightly and shut down well before midnight. Debate raged about the introduction of a second channel. A survey found 62% favoured an RTÉ2 solution, with 35% wanting a rebroadcast of BBC1. RTÉ introduced its first news for the deaf. Eamon De Valera's death was observed with the suspension of programming. Solemn music filled the airwaves.
The tiny border village of Jonesboro was a magnet for Southern shoppers. Inflation was rampant at 24.5%, the Republic's economy was in a shambles, and each weekend tens of thousands flocked to the Jonesboro market in search of butter, confectionery, toys and electrical goods at lower UK prices.
The price differential sometimes worked the other way. It was a time of shortages, real and imagined. This uncertainty sparked rounds of panic buying. Southerners stockpiled sugar amid rumours that the Republic's entire supply was about to be exported to Britain (a 2lb bag costing 161/2p here was fetching 28p there). The doomsday sugar scenario was averted when prices jumped 42% overnight, polaxing would-be profiteers.
Massive price hikes just happened in 1975. With one mighty leap, postal charges jumped 30% and phone charges 35%, despite the fact that neither service was a service in any meaningful sense of the word.
Weird blips in the economy were attributed to EEC intervention policies. Ireland had been a member for just two years and no-one really understood the effect it was having, including Ireland's unelected first batch of MEPs.
One, David Thornly, admitted: "When I attend a session of the European Parliament I don't know what I'm talking about half the time."
The Taoiseach was devout old-school Catholic Liam Cosgrave, a man who once appealed "to the Jews and the Muslims to settle their differences in a Christian fashion". Six thousand Irish pilgrims converged on Rome for the canonisation of Blessed Oliver Plunkett. The Hierarchy pressed the government for some gesture to mark the momentous event. Cosgrave complied by releasing 84 prisoners. It was that sort of year.