Memories of Liverpool in 1981 – part four
Liverpool had seen massive riots in 1981 and now Prime Minister Thatcher and the establishment needed to react as Tony McMahon discovers

Liverpool had seen massive riots in 1981 and now Prime Minister Thatcher and the establishment needed to react as Tony McMahon discovers
In these blog posts, I’m casting my mind back to my first year at university in Liverpool. I arrived in the aftermath of the Toxteth riots and a city in ferment. Can’t deny it was very exciting. But it was also a time of massive poverty and sky-high rates of unemployment as well as shocking…
Tony McMahon recalls how he arrived as a student in Liverpool in 1981 after a summer of riots had devastated Toxteth
1982 was a stormy year that saw the Falkands War, mass unemployment and a scandal involving the Queen’s bodyguard
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
The Anti-Nazi League Carnival in 1978 was a unique demonstration led by bands like The Clash and TRB against the rising power of the National Front
During the 1984-85 miners strike, there was an idea that the national grid could be crashed if we all simultaneously used electrical appliances
Miners Strike posters and papers from my 80s archives
My student union election poster from 1982 – Liverpool Guild of Undergraduates