The Baby Boomer Generation

by Paul Feeney

  The first major world event we remember from the decade was Nelson Mandela’s release from a South African prison on 11 February 1990 after serving twenty-seven years of a life sentence. The event is high on our list of memories from the early 1990s because it dominated all forms of media coverage and his release was broadcast live on television all over the world. In Britain there were also some vitally important things happening that were changing the structure of our nation. Our minds are easily transported back to the early days of the 1990s if we are reminded of when, in May 1990, the then minister of agriculture, John Gummer, invited newspaper and television camera crews to photograph him trying to feed a beef burger to his 4-year-old daughter in an attempt to reassure the public that British beef was safe for humans to eat, despite concerns about mad cow disease (BSE) in cattle. His daughter refused to eat any of the burger and he was left to sample it for himself. However, the biggest news story that year was the resignation of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party in November 1990. She decided to go after she only narrowly won a leadership contest against Michael Heseltine. This made her realise that she no longer had the overwhelming support of her MPs and so she stood down. Margaret Thatcher had been the leader of the Conservative Party for fifteen years and prime minister for eleven; this made her the longest-serving British prime minister of the twentieth century. Following Thatcher’s resignation, the then chancellor of the exchequer, John Major, was elected leader of the Conservative Party and he became prime minister.

  The Queen celebrated her Ruby Jubilee on 6 February 1992, but aside from that the early 1990s were a difficult and painful time for her and the royal family was never far away from controversy. The failing marriages of three of the Queen’s children – Prince Charles, Prince Andrew and Princess Anne – and the shame of seeing tabloid, front-page scandal pictures of her daughter-in-law, the Duchess of York (Sarah Ferguson), were all a great disappointment to the Queen, but there was even more distress to come. In November 1992, Windsor Castle was badly damaged by a fire that caused more than £50 million worth of damage. At the same time, it was announced that the Queen was to start paying tax the following year. She described 1992 as being Annus Horribilis (a Latin phrase for ‘horrible year’). In 1994, the Duchess of Kent became the first member of the royal family for more than 300 years to convert to Catholicism. In May 1996, the Duke and Duchess of York divorced, and in August that year, after four years of separation, Prince Charles and Princess Diana divorced. It was certainly a difficult period for the royal family and the biggest upset was yet to come. Just one year after the divorce, on 31 August 1997, much of the world went into mourning when news reached us that Princess Diana had been killed in a car crash in Paris. This was the biggest and most shocking news event of the decade, an occasion that will be forever fixed in the minds of everyone who was around at the time. She was greatly admired and loved by people from all over the world.

  In 1994, for the first time in history, Britain had a direct link to France via a tunnel beneath the English Channel: the Eurotunnel. In 1998, we saw a devolved government established in Scotland, an assembly in Wales, and a legislature in Northern Ireland; this was effectively a breakdown of powers and decision making that was previously controlled from London by the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This was the first tangible evidence of a divide in our nation and it prepared the ground for the possible future breaking up of the four countries of the United Kingdom. In particular, there were pressure groups in Scotland and Wales in favour of seeking greater autonomy or even independence from the rest of the UK. The situation in Northern Ireland was somewhat different with the main argument being whether Northern Ireland should become part of a united Ireland or remain in the United Kingdom. Following agreements made during the 1990s Northern Ireland peace process, any change in Northern Ireland’s sovereignty would only be allowed to happen with the agreement of a majority of voters in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Meanwhile, the 50-million population of England who accounted for the majority of the UK’s population watched on quietly from the side lines as nationalist battles went on all around. The reallocation of responsibilities and management of different budgets brought many issues into question, not least the possibility of a break-up of the National Health Service and an end to fair and equal national policies on our healthcare. In 1999, the peace deal for Northern Ireland, known as The Good Friday Agreement, came into force and the new Euro currency was launched in participating European countries, but not in Britain because we chose to keep the pound sterling as our main currency.

  It was increasingly apparent that little mainland Britain was becoming somewhat overcrowded and the growing population was putting a great strain on all of our social welfare and utility services, especially housing, schools and the National Health Service. It was also very noticeable that our country was becoming more cosmopolitan with an even greater ethnic mix of people using a multitude of different languages. Figures from the Office of National Statistics show that in the early 1990s there was little difference between the number of people entering the UK and those leaving, but immigration began to increase significantly in 1994 and the trend continued throughout the remainder of the 1990s with immigrant numbers exceeding emigrants by about 25%. During the decade, the total UK population rose by 1.3 million to a figure of just under 59 million by the end of 1999. It did seem like our country was becoming overpopulated and there was an increasing number of people needing social welfare.

  The nation’s addiction to watching television was getting worse. We were growing increasing fond of trivia programmes, especially soap operas, fly-on-the-wall documentaries and TV reality shows featuring ordinary people. A large section of viewers were finding it difficult to separate fact from fiction when watching these shows. In fact, many Eastenders fans from outside of the London area believed that real East-enders actually behaved as they were portrayed each evening on the fictional TV show. As if any group of neighbours could spend their whole lives bickering and shouting at one another, let alone people from the East End area of London who have a long-standing reputation for their warm and friendly nature.

  The Spice Girls pop group were at the height of their popularity in the mid- to late 1990s. ‘Girl power’ and ‘celebrity’ were the buzzwords. Children and teenagers no longer dreamed of becoming nurses and train drivers as we baby boomers did when we were young. All of a sudden, everyone wanted to be on television so they could be a celebrity. Having no talent whatsoever was no longer an obstacle to stardom. Some wanted to be singers and actors but many just craved the limelight that came with being a celebrity. It seemed that you could now be famous for just having been on television. Many kids thought that ‘celebrity’ was a job title in itself. Appearing in a reality television show qualified you as a television personality and a Z-list celebrity. You would even be asked to make personal appearances, to open shops and switch on the Christmas lights in your local town centre. We were entering a new dream world where naïve youngsters were being misled into believing that it was possible for everyone to make a living in the world of pop music and television, and celebrity status was within everyone’s grasp. What a great world that would be, if we were all able to turn a hobby into a job, but how would the world survive? Who would keep the wheels turning? The attraction of reality television shows and the adoration of anyone who even hinted celebrity status was growing and we would see it escalate a few years down the line with the arrival of TV talent contest shows such as Pop Idol, Fame Academy, and X Factor, as well as the infamous Big Brother reality game show television series.

  Whatever our own personal choice of television viewing might have been, by the early 1990s those of us who could afford the high monthly fees were watching the new multi-channel Sky Television. Unfortunately, we had to wait until the 1998 for the all-digital service to start, and of course we had to pay more for the receiver and for the extra
channels that came with it, but Sky Television came into our living rooms promising us a choice of hundreds of television channels of quality digital viewing. However, we soon discovered there were only about ten channels worth watching and those included the mainstream BBC and ITV channels that were still available to watch free of charge using the old terrestrial analogue aerial. We also had to pay extra one-off fees on top of the huge monthly subscription charges if we wanted to watch recently released movies, some football matches and special sporting events like the big boxing contests. From March 1997, we had another national terrestrial analogue free-to-view channel to watch following the launch of Channel 5. This was the first new TV channel in the UK since the launch of Channel 4 in November 1982. We now had five free-to-view national terrestrial analogue networks and there were to be no more because all future new channels would be digital.

  The top five most-watched, individual television shows of the 1990s (excluding sports, special events and news programmes) were Only Fools and Horses (‘Time on Our Hands’, 1996 Christmas episode with 24.35 million viewers), Eastenders (2 January 1992, with 24.3 million viewers including repeat showing), Panorama, interview of Princess Diana by Martin Bashir on 20 November 1995 following her separation from Prince Charles (22.78 million viewers), Coronation Street (episode screened on 8 January 1992 with 21.60 million viewers), and the Neighbours episode shown on 26 February 1990, which attracted 21.16 million viewers including repeat. These were all BBC programmes apart from Coronation Street, which was on the ITV (Granada) network. The Christmas 1996 episode of Only Fools and Horses, in which Del Boy and Rodney Trotter finally become millionaires is, as at 2010, the most watched non-documentary or event programme of all time in the UK. Topping the list of most-watched special events was of course the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, which had 32.10 million viewers (BBC/ITV) on 6 September 1997. The second most-watched special event of the 1990s was the World Cup 1998 football match when England played Argentina on 30 June 1998. The then 18-year-old Michael Owen scored a stunning goal and David Beckham was sent off for kicking Diego Simeone; 23.78 million British television viewers (ITV) saw England lose 4-3 on penalties after drawing the match 2–2.

  Other popular television shows of the 1990s included Alright on the Night, Auntie’s Bloomers, Birds of a Feather, Inspector Morse and London’s Burning. A great many new television programmes also arrived during the decade. These included an abundance of comedy series, such as 2point4 Children (1991), Dinnerladies (1998), Men Behaving Badly (1992), Have I Got News For You? (1990), One Foot in the Grave (1990), The Royle Family (1998) and The Vicar of Dibley (1994). There was the gentle humour of programmes like As Time Goes By (1992), Ballykissangel (1996), Darling Buds of May (1991) and Goodnight Sweetheart (1993), and lots of drama mysteries and police series such as A Touch of Frost (1992), Dalziel and Pascoe (1996), Hamish Macbeth (1995), Heartbeat (1992), Jonathan Creek (1997), Kavanagh QC (1995), Midsomer Murders (1997), Prime Suspect (1991) and Wycliffe (1993). There were also gentle dramas like The House of Eliott (1991) and Where The Heart Is (1997), and lots of light entertainment shows such as Barrymore (1991), Noel’s House Party (1991) and You’ve Been Framed (1990). There was a plentiful assortment of DIY and gardening programmes in the vein of DIY SOS (1999), Changing Rooms (1996) and Ground Force (1997), and it was also the decade in which we were first introduced to the hugely popular television quiz show Who Wants to be a Millionaire? (1998), the competitive sports-like game show Gladiators (1992) and the children’s favourite of that era, Teletubbies (1997).

  Elsewhere in the home, instead of using our conventional ovens we were saving time by cooking more microwaveable meals, and the time we saved we put into doing trendy DIY projects like garden decking, which was a real craze in the late 1990s and into the 2000s. An increasing number of us were now also computer literate, investing in personal computers to use at home, and by the late 1990s we were connecting to the Internet and communicating with friends and family all over the world by email messaging. By that time, most of us also had a mobile phone and these were getting smaller and smaller with more and more functions, and the good news was that they were also getting more affordable.

  By the late 1990s, we were selling our collections of VHS films at car boot sales and buying remastered versions in the new DVD format – yet another new machine to buy! Video games and home video game consoles were becoming hugely popular with children and adults alike, and these very expensive video game consoles were at the top of the must-have list of Christmas presents, at least for anyone under the age of about 35. These were all a bit too hi-tech for the rest of us but many did at least have a go on one of what the techies called the fifth-generation consoles, these being the likes of the Sega Saturn, Sony’s PlayStation and the Nintendo 64. We had to wait another couple of years for the Xbox to go on sale – as if we cared!

  By now, most of us baby boomers had long since given up listening to what we now regarded as ‘noise’ on BBC Radio 1 and we had switched our allegiance to easier-on-the-ear stations like Radio 2 or Radio 3. Some of us preferred to alternate between a number of news and current affairs radio stations, such as BBC Radio 4 and Radio 5 Live, or perhaps one or two of the independent broadcasters like the national Talk Radio (now Talk Sport) or a local radio station like London’s LBC Radio. Whatever our choice of listening, even if by then we had lost all interest in pop music, we couldn’t help but notice the word Britpop being bandied around by the media. This was a tag given to some of the British guitar bands of the 1990s, including Blur, Oasis, Pulp, Radiohead, Suede, Supergrass and The Verve. Even the most out of touch and closeted among us will at least have heard these names and know that they were among the leading pop music-makers of the 1990s. Some of us even liked the stuff they produced. The main point being that, as ever, British pop music was alive and well in the 1990s and there were an abundance of British music makers flying the flag all around the world, especially in America; these included people like Elton John, George Michael, Phil Collins and Sting. Oh, and remember BRIT Awards winner 1991/92 – Lisa Stansfield?

  The scene on our high streets had been slowly changing since the 1960s. By the beginning of the 1990s the traditional high street was becoming unrecognisable. The huge edge-of-town supermarkets were increasing in numbers, as were the out-of-town retail parks that boasted all the big-name department stores and retail chains. These enormous shed-like stores were enticing more and more customers away from the high street with promises of vast choices of merchandise, competitively priced products and free and easy parking, often promoted through television and newspaper advertising campaigns. New supermarket names were opening large numbers of stores across the country. In 1990, the German-owned Aldi discount supermarket chain opened its first British superstore in Birmingham (as of 2012 they have 421 stores in the UK); that same year, the British variety store Poundland opened its first store in Burton-upon-Trent, selling everything at £1 per item (as of 2009 they have 250 stores in the UK); also in 1990, the Swedish discount food supermarket chain Netto opened their first British store in Leeds (147 UK stores by 2010 when ASDA took over Netto UK and rebranded the stores). In 1991, we saw the first British retail computer superstore, PC World, open in Croydon, Surrey (they had 206 UK stores by 2006). Some long-established high street names were also disappearing during the 1990s. These included Rumbelows, the electrical goods retailer, whose name vanished in 1995 when owners, Thorn EMI, shut the remaining 285 Rumbelows stores. The Midland Bank name also ceased to exist after 163 years on the high street when in 1999 the bank adopted the name of its owner, HSBC.

  Encouraged by offers from large national retailers to pay for new access roads, local councils cheerfully approved and even encouraged the building of new superstores in their local areas. They even put up signs directing motorists to the new superstores and away from the small high-street shops. At the same time as they were steering customers away from the high street and into the free car parks of the edge-of-town
supermarkets, the local councils were busy painting more and more yellow lines on our roads and erecting increasing amounts of road signage. In 1992, the first fixed-site speed cameras were installed. There was no evidence that they reduced road traffic accidents but the fines they generated provided yet another source of revenue; very soon they were everywhere. By now, all government and police departments had come to regard the motorists as easy-target cash cows and this type of action was seen as a very certain, long-term way of generating a steady, dependable flow of cash. New red routes and bus lanes were being created, primarily in and around the London area, and traffic wardens were being given targets to issue certain numbers of tickets each day to help swell the coffers with as many fines as possible. Traffic wardens found they needed to adopt devious methods to achieve their high targets, like hiding in shop doorways to catch any unsuspecting motorist who might leave a car outside a shop for a minute. They would even stand next to parking meters waiting for the allotted times to run out so that they could immediately issue tickets before the owners could get back to their cars. Motorists were being terrorised by increasing numbers of brutish enforcers who were engaged by the local councils to clamp or tow away unauthorised or illegally parked vehicles, even those that were only breaching minor parking regulations. These clamping firms would then menacingly extract huge sums of cash, described as fees, from the vehicle owner before they would undertake to remove a wheel clamp or release an offending vehicle from their council-approved vehicle pound. It was a sort of legalised extortion, all done in the cause of keeping obstructing vehicles off the streets to keep traffic flowing. The fact that drivers were unable to drive away an obstructing vehicle until the fine was paid and the wheel clamp removed didn’t seem to matter to the congestion-conscious officials, even though the process was not a quick one and sometimes not dealt with the same day. These observations were not deemed to be important, just as long as the money kept rolling in. There was even talk of introducing a new tax on vehicles entering and driving around city centres, but of course if that happened it would only be done for the purpose of reducing congestion and pollution, not to raise revenue – No! That would just be a fortunate by-product of any such scheme.