Recession

In 1980, besides the turmoil my marriage was in, the world quietly moved on and the UK slipped into recession. We were all about to enter the "Winter of Discontent" and it seemed that the whole country was strike happy.

The drawing office at Gullicks was not unique from the rest of the country and TASS went on strike, we did not allow them to lock us out, in fact, they locked us in and we had a few days of occupation in the offices and we held siege to the print room.

Although it appeared that we won the battle, the war was not over and a round of enforced redundancies were just on the horizon and it was definitely a case of "last in, first out" and I was firmly in that category.

I was just a detail draughtsman, the lowest of the low and in addition, a bit of an office joker, so it was no surprise when 30% of the design staff were shown the door that I was one of them.

A small deferred pension, a reasonable severance package and fundamentally my second year of the HNC almost completed, I entered the ranks of the unemployed.

I was the one in ten....