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cardsharp
State of Emergency? On a recent holiday, honing his history geekiness, Cardsharp spent a lot of his time on the sun lounger, reading State of Emergency: The Way We Were: Britain 1970-1974 book by Dominic Seabrook. But reading this fabulous account of the UK 50 years ago, Cardsharp was fascinated by the similarities with what is happening today. Talk about history repeating itself! 2022 is starting to read like 1972…Plus ça change, plus la même chose! The early 70s is a period that Cardsharp can remember as the era of Chopper bikes, platform boots, long hair and Jamboree bags. He does also recall cold nights, sitting in the dark in woolly jumpers with just candles for illumination. The headlines then though were similar to those we are reading now. Rampant Inflation, a cost-of-living crisis, an energy crisis and industrial action. For those under 50, it is hard to understand the utter devastation endemic inflation caused back in the 1970s. Strikes and industrial action were everywhere. The railways, the post office, the dock workers, to name just a few. Sound familiar? With the cost-of-living rising on average at 20%, there was constant industrial action by those in the Unions keen for wages to keep up with this. The Conservative government back then, as now, tried to argue that the pay increases they demanded were self-defeating, as all they did was stoke inflation even more. And as now, there was a dramatic increase in energy prices brought about by a war in a distant place that sparked the cost-of-living crisis. While it is Russia who is holding us to ransom now, back then it was the Arab oil producers who were intent on punishing the West for supporting Israel in
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PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
Above left: There are some uncanny similarities between the period covered in Dominic Seabrook’s tome and today. Above: The Chopper was one of the high points of the 1970s.
its war with its Arab neighbours. Then it was oil, now it is gas. The current dock strikes at Felixstowe, Britain’s largest container port, has posed a real threat to our greeting card industry this Christmas in terms of getting greeting cards into the shops in time. As Cardsharp penned this column some 1,900 workers at the Felixstowe port, which transports 48% of the containers coming into the UK, have started eight days of industrial
action. After all the problems of soaring container prices and supply chain problems last year, this is all publishers and their customers need. Back in the 1970s, the dockers’ strike affected all UK ports, leading to food shortages in the shops. Mercifully, and unusual for the time, the strike only lasted two weeks. And because this was before the age of globalisation, greeting cards were not really affected by it, Cardsharp assumed. Let us hope the 2022 version stays at the present eight days. A 7% pay rise, and a one-off payment of £500 has been rejected by Unite, the dock workers union. Another eerie similarity with 50 years ago, are today’s postal strikes. The recent ones have been crippling for our industry. For the last few years we have had to contend with a deteriorating postal service service and much higher stamp prices. If these strikes (and it’s not just the strike days but the build-up of unsent post that lies dormant in the sorting offices) continue, how many people will not bother to buy a card and get out of the habit of sending them. Some 50 years ago, a particularly bitter strike went on without any breaks for seven weeks. God forbid anything like that occurs now, thinks Cardsharp especially with the internet and so many other ways of communicating. The present situation must be hell for the print on demand boys and girls like Moonpig, Thortful and Funky Pigeon. With the present energy crisis, there is talk of energy rationing and some retail and hospitality closing on certain days or permanently. Cardsharp was interested to read a report by BIRA, which represents many retailers of greeting cards, which stated that 88% of all its members intend to raise their prices by an average of 8% in October. Moreover, 65% have been forced to