FEBRUARY 15 1971 was United Kingdom Decimalisation Day: no longer were there 12 pennies to a shilling, half-crowns or 240 pennies to the pound.
That day, 50 years ago, was also just over halfway through the greatest strike this country had seen since the General Strike of 1926: the 44-day national strike of 200,000 Post Office workers.
Telegraphists, telephonists, Post Office counter clerks, cleaners, postmen (170,000 of them!) and PHGs (postmen higher grade), members of the Union of Post Office Workers (UPW), struck for their claim of 15 per cent, or £3 a week for lower-paid grades such as cleaners.
They picketed, they lobbied, they marched, but after six-and-a-half weeks they went back to work defeated: why was that?