Looking back at 1986, it was a year when two halves of Britain went in different directions. With the year-long miners’ strike defeated in 1985, industrial areas saw a further surge in unemployment and a sense of despondency. But in London, it was a different world. Financial deregulation in the City of London powered the…
It’s sad to have to post this on my blog about the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s – but I’ve noticed a sharp increase in nostalgia and history posts on social media clearly designed to fuel racism through a kind of toxic nostalgia. For example, show old film footage of London in 1985 and this is…
The Guardian Angels were set up in New York in the late 1970s to patrol the subway but when they came to London – the idea flopped badly
The 1981 riots presented the news media of the time with a huge challenge covering live events around the country that sprang up at a moment’s notice
In 1983 Peter Tatchell ran as the Labour candidate in the Bermondsey by-election facing a barrage of homophobia
Video of Thatcher’s hearse going past on the Strand in London – at the funeral of Margaret Thatcher
London and the south east had a swing to the Tories in 1979 that was 50% higher than the rest of the country. The GLC was already in Tory hands under the leadership of Horace Cutler. He was looking forward to a close working relationship with Thatcher around issues that would eventually move in his…
The Greater London Council in the late 1970s and early 1980s saw Tory leader Sir Horace Cutler fighting Labour’s Ken Livingstone
The last years of the Greater London Council and the battle with Thatcher
