The economic storm clouds continue to gather over Britain. A reckoning of some sort is on its way, possibly a spectacular one. How will we react?

Perhaps there are clues to be found in ‘I’m Backing Britain’, the short-lived campaign to gee up the nation back in early 1968. I was born a few months after its brief but memorable moment in the sun; I picked up on the slogan as a child, as one of those things adults said with a wry grin that I didn’t quite understand.

But what Britain had in 1968 was a dynamic mass popular culture offering multiple pleasant distractions and more functional institutions. It had a sense of identity

But what Britain had in 1968 was a dynamic mass popular culture offering multiple pleasant distractions and more functional institutions. It had a sense of identity

The decision by Harold Wilson’s Labour government to devalue the pound in November 1967 was an unavoidable sign that something was very wrong with the British economy. A few weeks later, inspired by a letter to the Times by a Tory MP, five female secretaries at the firm Colt Ventilation in Surbiton decided to start work half an hour early once a week and without being paid, hoping that their example would spark a nationwide effort to increase productivity and get Britain out of trouble. ‘What about starting this scheme of a five-and-a-half-day week? Let us be the first company to start the ball rolling,’ one wrote in a memo. After a miserable Christmas, this was seized on as an exemplar of civic pluck. The Duke of Edinburgh sent the women at Colt an enthusiastic telegram. All three party leaders leapt on the idea. The press were widely supportive, the FT........

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