It’s a Sin – LGBT in the Thatcher era
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

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
2021 will be the fourtieth anniversary of the 1981 riots and the tenth anniverary of the 2011 riots so what lessons have been learned?
LGBT people faced discrimination, the AIDS virus and homophobic legislation from the Thatcher government in the 1980s as Tony McMahon reports
Between 1979 and 1981, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher presided over an unprecedented economic recession that devastated manufacturing industry
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 the late 1970s, every year at the Notting Hill Carnival ended in a riot reflecting poor relations between the Metropolitan Police and black youth
The 1979 Thatcher government introduced a form of austerity economics called monetarism that ended up being a complete failure
The 1980s saw an avalanche of anti Tory art encompassing songs, images, movies and plays in a creative expression of Thatcher hatred
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