Britain and Greece: 40 years ago

During the UK general election campaign, especially in the first week of May 2010, the fortunes of Greece figured prominently in British new bulletins. The huge street demonstrations against austerity measures in Athens seemed to figure as possible portents of things to come post-election when British austerity measures would need to kick in, and may have helped trigger a late swing back of 2-3 per cent of voters back to supporting Labour on election day itself. Here Alexandros Nafpliotis considers some parallels with the 1970 general election in Britain and Greece’s then predicament of being governed by a military junta.