Strange Days Indeed, By Francis Wheen

If you can remember the 1970s then you were probably there. Francis Wheen's account of the decade that gave birth to much that is modern is a page-turner. A few weeks ago, Newsweek's front cover heralded the decline of Britain. In 1975, it was the Wall Street Journal which opined "Goodbye, Great Britain. It was nice knowing you", while the American pundit Eric Severaid of CBS intoned that Britain's "military strength is ebbing and her economic strength weakening." Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph was telling its readers that the new Ugandan leader, Idi Amin, was "a welcome contrast to other African leaders and a staunch friend of Britain."

There is endless pleasure in Wheen's judicious almanac of editors' stupidity. If they got the 1970s so wrong, what chance they are getting today right? But "don't blame the hacks" is Wheen's message. Here is Tariq Ali exulting over the murder of a German diplomat by Marxist terrorists in Guatemala. His very 1970s paper, Red Mole, described the killing as "definitely useful... the executing of the German ambassador has given us a whole page of quite interesting material on Guatemalan history and politics from the Sunday Times".

A bit further south an equally unpleasant set of thugs called the Tupamaros were busy killing and kidnapping in Uruguay. The British ambassador Geoffrey Jackson spent eight months as their hostage. For Richard Gott, "The Tupamaros are unquestionably a very special kind of revolutionary. Their staying power seem inexhaustible." This drivel leaps off the pages. It would be good to think it was all history save that Tariq Ali still fills pages of the London Review of Books with misjudgements on almost every global issue, while Richard Gott remains Britain's cheerleader for Hugo Chávez.

It was a very mad ten years, but enormously pleasurable as the 1968 generation indulged in sex, drugs, rock and roll and vacuous left-wing politics - in what surely was the most hedonistic, solipsistic decade in Western history. It was also a credulous, paranoid age. Wheen weaves his story between Britain and America as the Anglosphere went bonkers. Did the Cabinet Secretary really take off all his clothes to lie down naked and start raving in the Cabinet Room? Yes he did, and was quietly led off to become Chairman of the Midland Bank as a suitable reward for going mad. Did Judge Argyle really ask George Melly to explain "cunnilinctus" in the trial of the journalists bringing out the now rather tame-looking Oz magazine?

Did our wonderful police and judges and juries really send utterly innocent men to prison for the IRA terrorist acts which slaughtered in Birmingham and Guildford? Yes, they did. Were there plenty of bien-pensant intellectuals supporting real IRA killers? Yes, there were. And have today's supporters of Islamist terrorism or those who opposed segregation by race in South Africa but excuse segregation by gender at an East London wedding learnt anything? No, though they might if they read Wheen.

Sometime Jonathan Swift, sometimes Lytton Strachey, Wheen reminds us how fatuous, stupid, credulous and idiotic we were in that last decade before the Thatcher-Reagan axis, globalisation, the rise of the EU, the end of communism, and the advent of Islamist ideology changed the world. Here they all are – Tony Benn, Marcia Falkender, Edward Heath, Jeremy Thorpe and his dog, as well as General Sir William Walker, who told everyone that Harold Wilson was a "proven Communist". Walker was invited to dine in the City as business funded his Civil Assistance, which would keep Britain going when a government of national salvation took over.

Uri Geller bent spoons and Stephen Spielberg terrified us. The 1970s gave up religion but believed in sinister forces controlling our lives. Today it is X-Men, and lavishly funded outfits like Open Europe proclaiming an EU conspiracy to destroy Britain, or Migration Watch with its campaigns about foreigners. But as Daniel Hannan gets star ratings as the future of the Conservative Party and a fascist party wins parliamentary elections, is a touch of latter-day paranoia completely unjustified? And does not David Cameron seem more and more like Edward Heath with an Eton instead of an Kentish estuary accent?

Denis MacShane is Labour MP for Rotherham. He was elected the NUJ's youngest-ever president in 1978