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…
Young Boomers in the 1980s weren’t all rich and privileged – millions were out of work and in poverty, as Tony McMahon discovers
2021 will be the fourtieth anniversary of the 1981 riots and the tenth anniverary of the 2011 riots so what lessons have been learned?
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
The 1979 Thatcher government introduced a form of austerity economics called monetarism that ended up being a complete failure
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
The last years of the Greater London Council and the battle with Thatcher
The 1981 Moss Side riot followed on from similar violence in Toxteth, Brixton and Southall but was largely over in 48 hours
Youth unemployment skyrocketed between 1979 and 1983 and hundreds of youth travelled the country on the Jobs Express to highlight their plight
Unemployment was so bad even an ex-mayor was out of work
