LGBT people faced discrimination, the AIDS virus and homophobic legislation from the Thatcher government in the 1980s as Tony McMahon reports
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 early 1980s witnessed a very productive output of anti Tory art from the Left and the labour movement. Go as far as to say it was a golden age of political satire in various formats: TV, theatre, film, pop music, paintings and postcards.
Hatred of Thatcher got the creative juices flowing! It seems like there was nothing better than a society deeply polarised and unsettled to produce top drama, plays, movies, songs and images. 1980s anti Tory art hasn’t been fully appreciated in my humble opinion – it’s about time there was an exhibition at the Royal Academy!
Personally, I think it’s no exaggeration to say you could compare 1980s anti Tory art to the explosion of creativity after the 1917 Russian revolution or the output of artists during the Weimar Republic. It had a distinctive look and feel. Plus there was that figure of hatred for it all to be focussed on – Maggie!
DISCOVER: New technology in 1983
When it came to music, bands fell over each other to stick the boot into the Tories. In 1985, several groups and artists took to the road to sing against Maggie. Red Wedge comprised such talents as Paul Weller, Billy Bragg and Jimmy Sommerville. I went to a Red Wedge gig in Liverpool at the Royal Court around the time the miners strike came to a sad end.
Below we have ska popsters The Beat singing their anti-Thatcher song ‘Stand Down Margaret’. I interviewed the late Ranking Roger at his home ten years back when I was working on the biography of Neville Staple.
He told me that they got in some trouble for singing a political song on a mainstream TV show. They might even have been denied airplay as a result. But he still thought it was worth it.
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
When Shoreditch was fascist territory
As mass unemployment returns after Covid, Tony McMahon looks back at unemployment in the 1980s which scaled horrific heights
My collection of political badges from the 1980s shows the causes we cared about from racism to nuclear disarmament and freedom for the people of Chile