Attitudes to sex in the 1980s were more liberal than is sometimes assumed. But the decade was very different from the liberated 1960s and rebellious 1970s. The AIDS pandemic and rise of political conservatism impacted how young people viewed sex. Despite a climate of fear and repression, a survey in 1986 had very surprising results….
The late 1970s saw a wave of attacks on LGBT people and ethnic minorities by young thugs of identifying as skinhead so what was the motive? Tony McMahon investigates.
The Russell T Davies series It’s a Sin shows what it was like to be young and gay in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher and with AIDS
LGBT people faced discrimination, the AIDS virus and homophobic legislation from the Thatcher government in the 1980s as Tony McMahon reports
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
In 1983 Peter Tatchell ran as the Labour candidate in the Bermondsey by-election facing a barrage of homophobia
The Jeremy Thorpe scandal rocked British politics in the late 1970s and nearly destroyed the Liberal Party that he led
The 1980s gay skinhead scene involved both an element of cosplay but also some individuals who were neo-Nazis and LGBT
In the early 1980s, the King’s Road in Chelsea was still a magnet for hipsters and partygoers before it lost its cool
