Description

With scorching temperatures soaring to 35 degrees Centigrade, severe water shortages and a sunburned population queuing at the street standpipes, the summer of 1976 will always be remembered as Britain’s hottest on record. But the wave that hit the UK that year was also cultural and political with upheaval on the streets, in parliament, on the cricket pitch and on the radios and tv sets of a nation at a crossroads. Before this blistering summer, Britain seemed stuck in the post-war era, a country where people were all in it together – as long as you were white, male and straight.

Some of that didn’t change. Long-haired likely lads – from the Confessions film star Robin Askwith to motor cycling teen idol Barry Sheene – were having a right old time in the gossip columns, all champagne and dolly birds. But with the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson suddenly quitting, the pound sinking and the economy tanking, a restless immigrant population and increasing dissatisfaction in the old world order, the weather seemed to boil up the country to the point where the lid blew off.