I was 16 when the 1970s ended, so my experience is limited. But we'd just come out of a period of industrial unrest that provided an education for class conscious militants who may or may not have identified with the organised left.
Industry was what cities and major towns were still identfied with, and a mass 'blue collar' workforce still existed, providing that significant minority of class conscious militants, both young and older, who could be more or less relied upon when necessary. There was also a living memory of WW2, and, to a lesser extent, the Spanish civil war. It was easier for the far-left to attract people like me,, vaguely angry about what was obviously going to come under Thatcher, and filled with hatred for what the fascists stood for (the Clash and much of the other music of the time helped.) It was easier to simply represent the threat from the far right as a revival of Nazism/ 1930s fascism, and so the likes of the NF met with stiff opposition, including from non-organised working class people The handful of AFA types still posting on here can tell you how the fight continued after the NF imploded and tried to regroup.
The class conscious militants that existed then are now largely absent, due to the deindustrialisation of the country, and the abject/divided of state former industrial towns and cities, with their deliberately de-politicised working class populations. Some unions and their best militants still give it a go, but economic and social conditiosn are not the same. Political consciousness, alongside class consciousness, has plummeted, and the rise of social media, as we're seeing, mainly aids the racist right.
