YOUR survey showing that passers by had almost total ignorance of real history made depressing reading.

More surprising was a later summary of the Seventies by your own reporter.

Facts presented appeared to have been found in some obscure website or perhaps from Smash Hits Magazine.

It was not recognisable as the decade in which the rest of us lived. He mentioned Harold Wilson's efforts to modernise industry but forgot these were sunk without trace by the militant trade unions which were then at the height of their power.

The three-day week was not the result of oil prices but caused by gangs of thugs who were massing at the power stations and turning away deliveries of coal. They were called flying pickets and were mainly dockers and miners.

Electricity had to be rationed by a rota of power cuts during a severe winter.

It was the next Labour Government under Callaghan which tried to appease the trade unions and his Winter Of Discontent was what made Labour unelectable until 1997.

If the Seventies are remembered for anything it is for strikes, for forty per cent wage claims, rampant inflation, the destruction of British industry and queues at shops for bread and toilet paper.

I see the lady who hopes to replace Julia Drown promises to return the Labour Party to its roots if elected. I suspect that many Swindon folk who remember the Seventies will reply 'Never again.'

K Ratcliffe

Priory Green, Highworth