What was life like in the 1970's England?

Liverpool, London, and York are as different now as they were in the 70s. Not to mention the rural areas. Also a lot of towns prospered or were forgotten due to road building. So a little help here, small town, big city or...Edit Gotya, I suspect a dying town with most of the youth moving off to University. While a lot of the remaining kids trying and failing to keep up with the latest fads from the more edgy Liverpool. Remember the depression of the 70s didn't cause bad unemployment in the rural areas but they were hammered with rising prices and low wages.

Council estates, miner's strikes, a pretty serious drug problem in the cities, (heroin, mostly.) TOp of the Pops was cool back then...we used to rush home to watch it on Thursday nights. Everyone smoked everywhere, all the food in the restaurants was tea and fish and chips, no nice restaurants like we have now. Sort of crappy, really. Petrol was cheap. West Yorkshire was pretty much a symbol of decaying Britain, lots of rust and old dirty buildings.

Schools were stricter than they are now, and children were expected to be more respectful to the teachers than they are now. Secondary schools had uniforms, but primary schools in the state sector mostly didn't.

there was quite high employment, I don't remember anyone worrying about getting a job. it was

quite common for people to leave school at sixteen - I did myself, there were lots of jobs for people with few or no educational qualifications. Lots of jobs for girls as typists for instance, if you could type you could get a job anywhere. trade union bosses were very powerful, they appeared on telly a lot and were paid a lot of attention. there were lots of strikes.

Single parent families were much less common, and most people who had children were married. more mothers stayed at home with their children rather than going out to work, there was a programme for young children at lunchtime called 'Watch with Mother' - nowadays I suppose it would be called 'Watch with the Childminder'.

A lot less Tv than there is now, only three channels, and they closed down at midnight. periods of the day when there was no telly on at all, they had a 'Test Card' which was shown in periods of non broadcasting, so if your Tv broke down (which they did quite a lot), the repair man had something to look at so he'd know it was fixed. With less Tv, we read more, books and comics and magazines, there were masses of comics for children.

most adults smoked, there were lots of cigarette adverts on TV. there were non smoking sections in restaurants and cinemas, and the tops of buses, but non smokers were a minority then. We were less fearful about health in those days. people weren't always worrying about whether something was good for them or not.

talking of buses, they all still had conductors in those days, no pay the driver buses. they were open at the back, and you could jump on or off inbetween stops (people often did).

Glam rock (Glitter rock),Disco,Reggae,Northern Soul and other types of music were important there