It’s hotting up in the UK with experts predicting we could see the hottest ever day on record this week. And it was a similar story 50 years ago as temperatures soared during the summer of ’76
A rare red warning for extreme heat has been issued by the Met Office, as record breaking June temperatures reach 35C. The current June all-time record, set during the sweltering summer of 1976, was 35.6C in Southampton on 28 June. But severe weather alerts have now been issued for England and Wales, with temperatures forecast to reach 38C or even 39C today and tomorrow.
Back on May 1, 1976, the Daily Mirror warned, ‘Don’t cast a clout till May is out’ – reporting a warning from meteorologists that the month would be rainy and colder than average. Just days later, an unpredicted rise in temperature took everyone by surprise – the precursor to a summer like no other.
The following week, temperatures reached an unheard of 82F – or 28 degrees in the newfangled Celsius – and newspapers mooted the prospect of water rationing. “This is not a national drought,” said Labour’s local government minister John Silkin. “Nor is there any danger of that at all.”
But the mercury kept rising until June 22, when it passed 30 degrees and refused to come down for nearly three weeks – leaving Brits sleepless and sweltering. Ten weeks of blazing heat not only saw drought and water rationing, but mass standpipe use, as the UK recorded its hottest temperature for more than 350 years, and its driest summer since records began.
Some parts of the country went for 45 days without rain. Each hot summer thereafter has been compared to the heatwave of 1976. This week the Met Office warned of a long and hotter-than-average summer, despite a May that similarly began wet and chilly.
But that’s not the only similarity between 1976 and 2025. In his new book, Heatwave: The Summer of 1976, Britain at Boiling Point, John Williams writes of events 49 years ago: “The Israelis are biting back after a Palestinian terrorist attack, the Labour government says we’ve run out of money, the trade unions aren’t happy. There’s an ultra-right British politician getting far too much coverage for ranting on about immigration, the West Indies are playing England at cricket.”
At first, most people welcomed the idea of a scorching summer, uninterrupted by typically British rain showers. But the novelty wore off – and tempers became heated, too. As the drought worsened, a strict hosepipe ban was imposed in most places and residents were encouraged to alert the authorities if their neighbours used water unnecessarily.
Indoors, the unrelenting heat led to spikes in domestic violence. Police in London dealt with 600 more daily calls to domestic disturbances than normal. Outdoors, there was an increase in violence and vandalism, workplace unrest and racial tensions were exacerbated – boiling over into the Notting Hill riots, in which carnival goers, police and white supremacist groups clashed, landing more than 100 police officers in hospital.
Meanwhile, after a week of constant high temperatures, West Yorkshire police warned that scantily-clad girls could be a “major distraction” for motorists. In Dover, a refrigerated lorry carrying a cargo of kippers broke down. Police said it was repaired just in time by the AA and the town was saved from a “fate worse than death”.
Another Daily Mirror story reported how students having sex in the hayfields near Exeter University was causing damage, quoting farmer Edward Baxter complaining: “When I tell them to go, they give me a lot of cheek. I don’t think students like that are worthy of their grants.”
Beyond the weather, other news that summer was equally extraordinary. The publication of bombshell love letters written by Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe to his former gay lover Norman Scott triggered one of the biggest scandals of the decade.
Then in Leeds, a 20-year-old woman called Marcella Claxton survived after being offered a lift home by a man who attacked her with a hammer and left her for dead. The accurate photofit she produced would later be instrumental in helping to identify Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe.
Meanwhile, the relentless heat caused in part by very hot air originating in the Mediterranean, led to the highest temperature recorded on July 3, when the mercury hit 96.6F (35.6C) in Cheltenham. The UK reportedly experienced a 20 per cent year-on-year increase of “excess deaths” that summer, with a huge spike in hospitalisations from sunstroke and heat-related heart attacks.
The balmy temperatures even paused the murder trial at Oxford Crown Court of notorious murderer Donald Neilson, dubbed the Black Panther, after a woman in the public gallery collapsed from heat exhaustion. During a First Division football match between Manchester City and Aston Villa, City’s players collectively lost four stone in weight, prompting the team’s captain to call for an end to ‘summer soccer’.
At Wimbledon, Bjorn Borg won the first of his five titles and a young Sue Barker made it to the quarter-finals – but 400 people were treated for the effects of heat in a single day. Umpires were also allowed to remove their jackets for the first time in living memory.
But House of Commons bar staff went on strike, after officials refused a similar relaxation of the rules, which would have allowed them to remove their traditional green jackets. And workers sweltered in factories and pre-air conditioned offices ,while school children taking their exams were fainting en masse.
The heat on stricken trains on the London Underground became so severe that people smashed train windows. A plague of 24 billion ladybirds then swarmed over the country, like a biblical plague – forced to search for food after their customary aphid diet was killed off by the drought.
“You couldn’t walk along the pavement without crushing them,” writes John Silkin. “Ruislip Lido, on the edge of London, was smothered too, making for a deeply unpleasant swim. There were even reports of starving ladybirds biting people, perhaps in a desperate attempt to drink their sweat. On the other hand, things could have been worse. Adders were reported to be swarming in South Hams, Devon.”
The heatwave’s romantic implications troubled the Daily Mirror. Psychologist Maurice Yaffe told how the heat was affecting men’s ability to perform. “They still feel sexually aroused, but don’t feel inclined to initiate any activity because using energy in this weather is uncomfortable,” he wrote, noting that it was particularly unfortunate for women who “feel more sexy in a heatwave”.
As the summer dragged on and temperatures continued upwards, trains started catching fire, motorways melted and streets were littered with overheated cars. Reservoirs and rivers dried up, fish died in their thousands, and forest fires raged across the country, including in Epping Forest in Essex and Bellerby Moor in North Yorkshire.
Then, on August 5, Big Ben broke down for the first time in its history, owing to metal fatigue caused by the heat. The famous clock was silenced for three weeks and was only fully repaired nine months later. The next day, the Drought Act came into force, with Birmingham MP Denis Howell, appointed by Labour PM James Callaghan, as the government’s new minister for drought.
The future Lord Howell revealed that he and his wife Brenda had taken to having baths together at their home in Moseley to conserve water. “Save water – bath with a friend,” became a popular tongue-in-cheek slogan on T-shirts and bumper stickers – even though government rules meant baths were only allowed if there was no more than five inches of water in the tub.
Soon, though, there was hardly any water left. In Wales, the mains water supply was switched off for up to 17 hours a day. Around the country, standpipes – an outdoor tap installed on streets – were installed, each shared between 20 homes.
Newspapers were now giving war-style tips for keeping clean. The Bristol Evening Post suggested that readers shake down the dew from trees to wash their faces and “rub oneself with a damp cloth moistened with any skin lotion or eau-de-cologne.”
But while some people were pondering how to wash without water, others were discovering a whole new musical movement rooted in rebellion. Many credit the long steamy summer with the birth of punk rock, led by the Sex Pistols, The Ramones and The Clash, whose energy and anti-establishment spirit would change the world.
Eventually, the heatwave ended. Heavy thunderstorms in late August carried on into a wet September and October, with so much water that Lord Howell had to be redesignated minister for floods.
Since then, there have been other heatwaves, including ones which have hit higher temperatures – including in 2022 when an all-time record of 40.3C was set and which led to the first-ever Red Extreme Heat Warning in the UK. But for those who lived through it, the famous summer of 1976 continues to evoke the most enduring memories.
*Heatwave: The Summer of 1976, Britain at Boiling Point by John L Williams, published by Monoray, £22
