Town v Gown – students versus locals
Local youth and university students often connected badly in the 1980s with acts of violence not being uncommon as students were viewed as privileged
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Dave Wakeling of The Beat draws himself
Dave Wakeling was the front man of the British ska combo The Beat and here is a self-portrait he penned when the band was at the height of its fame
Inflation and unemployment under Thatcher
Both unemployment and inflation soared in the first two years of the Thatcher government though the Tories were open to a rise in the jobless figures
LGBT woes in the early 1980s
LGBT people faced discrimination, the AIDS virus and homophobic legislation from the Thatcher government in the 1980s as Tony McMahon reports
Britain in the era of nationalised industries
Britain once had an economy made up of nationalised industries where the state ran water, transport, energy, telecoms and other services
Household name brands Thatcher destroyed
DeLorean and Laker were among many household name brands destroyed by the early 1980s recession under Margaret Thatcher as Tony McMahon discovers
The economic Recession of 1979 to 1981
Between 1979 and 1981, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher presided over an unprecedented economic recession that devastated manufacturing industry
Labour MPs leaving in 2019 – and 1981
The departure of the Gang of Four from the Labour Party to form the SDP in 1981 was a big event unlike the exodus of MPs in 2019 such as Chuka Umunna
Grim times for LGBT people in the 1980s
Margaret Thatcher is sometimes presented as a gay icon, but in the 1980s she led an onslaught on LGBT rights at the height of the HIV crisis
Remember your first pocket calculator?
Most of us got our first pocket calculator in the 1970s but were then told by maths teachers that we were forbidden to use them in our exams