'Traffic & Buses Of London 1970' Pathe News footage...

T

Three Thousand Five

Member
I came across this gem on another forum, thought I'd post it here as there are quite a few S1 P6s in it...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwXQA03MJgE

Amongst the City Grey P6s there's a very nice Arden Green 2000 complete with Webasto or Britax sunroof seen in close up at one point, reg' number is UGF 90F and a nice looking blue one appears a bit later on, reg' number looks like KUV 844D'... I wonder if either of them are still with us...?

Watching it, it's surprising how little street furniture there is and how bare the roads look without white lines all over them, and I noticed that the vast majority of vehicles still have black and white or black and silver plates on, there aren't many at all wearing newfangled reflective white / yellow ones. Another thing I noticed is how soberly dressed most of the people are - there's hardly a mini skirt or tie dye t-shirt in sight! Judging from the poppy wreaths still lying at the foot of the Cenotaph it was shot in November of '70.

All good stuff :wink:
 
I think I read somewhere that the white/yellow plates where introduced in 1973 which presumably accounts for their absence.
 
pat180269 said:
I think I read somewhere that the white/yellow plates where introduced in 1973 which presumably accounts for their absence.
Click to expand...


I think they were available before 1973, it's just that 1973 is significant in that nothing 1973 onwards can legally use the black & silver plates.
 
...although loads of cars do. There's a 1998 'S' reg BMW cabrio round here with silver on black plates........
 
Great way to see inner London .
I always imagined from living down under that London streets were full off high end cars like E-types ,Rolls etc ,- surprised to see mostly economic models for the day .
I spotted a juicy Aston and a few Jags and Rovers , but not in the numbers I envisaged would be on the roads .
I know the tax on large capacity cars was a deterrent and most were exported .
The British motor industry was certainly at its peak with hardly a euro car to be seen . I think BMW was on its knees at that time and the life saving 2000 series was only just starting to appear . What a shame Leyland amalgamation came along . Rover was onto a winner there , just look at a rover in amongst that traffic and they really stood out .
That red rover with the fully laden roof rack would have been pulled over on our roads .
Great video though .
 
pat180269 said:
I think I read somewhere that the white/yellow plates where introduced in 1973 which presumably accounts for their absence.
Click to expand...

They were introduced in early 1968, became quite a fashionable addition to an earlier car in the late 1960's - early 1970's.

Any vehicle registered after 1st January 1973 would have had reflective plates from new as they became mandatory at that point.

Even Rover still used black and silver plates until that point.
 
I'm wondering if this footage could actually be summer 1968. The Tyrant King was a kids TV series first broadcast in '68, the book advertised on the back of the bus appears to relate to a tie in.

The footage could even be some of the stock London footage used in the TV programme. Clips are on You Tube.

I've not seen anything obvious with a 'G' plate (August '68) so I'd think this is slightly earlier.

I remember there being a lot of American cars around London in those days, which is borne out here.
 
Lots of filming of buses, which is fair if that's what you are in to. The comical bit is when what looks like an Aston DB5 goes past, the cameraman keeps filming the bus!
 
Hi, most of the filming has been done from the top deck of a bus. So therein lies the clue.

Colin
 
Loads of folk film from tops of buses but it doesn't mean they're all bus nuts. You'd to be pretty soulless to film a bus rather than a DB5 though.
 
NickDunning said:
I'm wondering if this footage could actually be summer 1968. The Tyrant King was a kids TV series first broadcast in '68, the book advertised on the back of the bus appears to relate to a tie in.

The footage could even be some of the stock London footage used in the TV programme. Clips are on You Tube.

I've not seen anything obvious with a 'G' plate (August '68) so I'd think this is slightly earlier.

I remember there being a lot of American cars around London in those days, which is borne out here.
Click to expand...

You could be right Nick - quite a few of the black cabs have E or F plates and the green P6 I mentioned earlier looked brand new on an F plate. One of the cinemas was showing Dr.Zivago though which was released in '65 I think - but then a lot of the 'big' films of the time ran in cinemas for years after their initial release.
 
Whenever I see clips from this era I notice how blackened and dirty the public buildings are.
If one travels through Central London nowadays, the majority of significant buildings are light coloured, as they were when first built.
In 1968/70 the Clean Air Act (1956) had only recently made an impact on the quantity of soot etc in the air and it was still being deposited on new buildings - which at least made them match the older ones.

Another 45 years has produced an air quality that we could not have dreamed about when I was a kid in the 50's, (you could virtually chew the Smog at times) and the cleaned down buildings stay remarkably clean.

Parliament definitely got that one right!
 
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