28. With Bobby Sands’s death in May 1981, riots erupted across the province. British soldiers and the Royal Ulster Constabulary try to restore order.
29. Masked Catholic youngsters on the streets of Belfast.
30. By the summer of 1981, Britain seemed to be tearing itself apart. An anti-racist leaflet denounces the police in Brixton.
31. The Sun, in particular, was horrified by the ‘fury in the ghetto’.
32. The greatest shock came after the riots in Toxteth.
33. Toxteth: the morning after, July 1981.
34. ‘We need heroes’: Ian Botham on the fourth day of the Headingley Test, 20 July 1981.
35. Country casuals. A honeymooning couple model the new nostalgic chic, 1981.
36. The Next catalogue follows their lead.
37. But Spandau Ballet’s look. Is less Brideshead Revisited and more Blake’s 7.
38. While industrial Britain buckled, suburban Britain was booming. For shoppers in the early 1980s, life offered few pleasures to rival a bottle of Perrier, a piece of Lymeswold, the Habitat catalogue and the Sony Walkman.
42. The future, 1982.
43. When Argentina seized the Falklands, Britain’s decline into impotence and chaos seemed to have been confirmed. The Royal Marine garrison surrenders to the invaders, 2 April 1982.
44. Children watch as Argentine troops move into Stanley.
45. The departure of the Task Force was a moment of intense patriotic excitement. Soldiers on the QE2 display their colours;
46. A mother, son and Action Man wave their farewells.
47. The war cemented Mrs Thatcher’s place in the international imagination. For the Argentine press, she was a ‘pirate, witch and assassin’.
49. Raymond Briggs drew her as ‘the Old Iron Woman’.
50. But Battle never doubted that she and her troops were on the side of the angels, above right.
51. The British commanders always knew they would suffer losses. The Sir Galahad burns in Bluff Cove, 8 June 1982.
52. But all the time their troops were tightening their grip, immortalized in this famous image of the Royal Marines yomping towards Stanley.
53. The nation’s heroes return: Portsmouth, 17 September 1982.
Acknowledgements
This is the fifth book in my series about Britain since the 1950s. To my shame, the entire series, which was meant to be just three books, was supposed to have been finished well over a decade ago. So my greatest debt is to my editor, Simon Winder, who, as always, was endlessly encouraging, patient, astute and full of hilarious observations. I am glad that he now recognizes the merits of For Your Eyes Only. I am grateful to everybody at Allen Lane for their hard work, especially Maria Bedford and Ellen Davies. As usual, Jim Stoddart produced a splendid cover, while Cecilia Mackay came up with a vast array of superb illustrations. The copy editor, Kit Shepherd, who knows everything about everything, once again saved me from more hideous blunders than I care to remember. And I am immensely lucky to be represented by James Pullen at the Wylie Agency, the best in the business.
I was fortunate to write this book as a visiting professor at King’s College London, and I am enormously grateful to Professor Richard Vinen for setting this up. My debts to the superlatively rich archives of the Thatcher Foundation, and to their omniscient editor, Christopher Collins, will be obvious to anybody who glances at my endnotes. For the Mass Observation material, I am indebted to the work of the University of Sussex’s ‘Observing the 80s’ project. For a chance to air the arguments in this book, I am grateful to the universities, schools and societies which have hosted me in the last few years. Among many others, I would like to thank Dr Molly O’Brien Castro at the University of Tours for inviting me to speak at her conference on Margaret Thatcher; Professor Keith Gildart at the University of Wolverhampton for asking me to discuss popular culture and social change; Professor Robert Colls at De Montfort University for asking me to talk about sport in the 1980s; and Dr Ben Jackson and the Oxford University History Society for inviting me to debate Thatcherism. In every case, I came away recharged with ideas and enthusiasm.
At an early stage in the research, Kester Aspden offered me some invaluable advice, while Alistair Quarterman was a mine of information about the BBC Computer Project. My debts to other historians will be clear from my endnotes, but I want to pay particular tribute to the work of Charles Moore on Margaret Thatcher; Ben Jackson and Robert Saunders on Thatcherism; Jim Tomlinson and David Smith on economics; Peter King on housing; Jerry White on London; Simon Reynolds on pop music; Kenneth O. Morgan on the Labour Party; Ivor Crewe and Anthony King on the SDP; Gordon Burn and Clive Everton on snooker; Joe Moran on television; Mike and Trevor Phillips on race; Thomas Hennessey and Peter Taylor on Northern Ireland; Pat Butcher on athletics; Simon Wilde on Ian Botham; and Tom Lean, Magnus Anderson and Rebecca Levene on computers. On the Falklands, I am particularly indebted to the work of Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins, Jimmy Burns, Martin Middlebrook, Sir Lawrence Freedman and Helen Parr. And of the existing books covering the entire period, I learned most from Alwyn W. Turner’s Rejoice! Rejoice!, an immensely entertaining read.
While I was writing this book, BBC Two asked me to make a television series about the 1980s, which drew on a lot of this material. Sue Ayton and her superb team at Knight Ayton drove a suitably hard bargain. As always, I was merely the risibly un-telegenic front man for an immensely amiable, clever and industrious team. The incomparable Louis Caulfield and Adam Scourfield, ably supported by Alex Webb, Hassan Ali and Tracey Li, did most of the real work. Jacqui Farnham co-ordinated the playing of video games, Kate Misrahi organized the consumption of meatballs, Chris Granlund kept the show on the road and Fatima Salaria did her best to save me from myself. For their wisdom and comradeship, I am especially indebted to two great men: the series producer, Alex Leith, and the series originator, Steve Condie, who also invited me to be the consultant for his splendid series about the life of Margaret Thatcher. Between them Steve and Alex have spent years listening to me talking about the 1980s. The crimes they must have committed in their former lives to deserve such punishment are too terrible to contemplate.
As a jobbing writer, I am indebted to the editors who, to the horror of the reading public, have kept giving me work. At the Daily Mail, I count myself lucky to work with Leaf Kalfayan, Andrew Morrod, Andrew Yates and Liz Hunt. I will forever be grateful to Paul Dacre for giving me such a wonderful opportunity, and it is a pleasure to write for his successor, Geordie Greig. I am lucky, too, to have worked for so long with the team at BBC History, especially Rob Attar, Charlotte Hodgman and Ellie Cawthorne. And I am, as always, immensely grateful to the Sunday Times’s Andrew Holgate for his friendship and counsel.
My deepest thanks, though, are to my family. It would take another thousand pages to express what I owe to Catherine and Arthur. To them, and to my father, Rhys Sandbrook, this book is dedicated, with love.
Notes
Documents marked TNA are from the National Archives (Public Record Office) in Kew. Those marked PRONI are from the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and can be found at the University of Ulster’s Conflict and Politics in Northern Ireland (CAIN) website at https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/proni/index.html. References to Hansard are from the websites https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/sittings/1970s and https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/sittings/1980s. Documents marked TFW are from the Margaret Thatcher Foundation website at https://www.margaretthatcher.org/. And those marked MO are from the Mass Observation archive and can be found at the University of Sussex’s ‘Observing the 80s’ website at http://blogs.sussex.ac.uk/observingthe80s/home/mass-observation/. Place of publication is London, unless otherwise stated.
Preface: We’re Still a Super Power
1. C. H. O’D. Alexander to Clive Whitmore, ‘Terrorist Incident at Iranian Embassy’, 30 April 1980, TFW; The Times, 1 May 1980, 2 May 1980, 5 May 1980, 6 May 1980; Guardian, 24 July 2002.
2. ‘Writte
n Statement on Mountbatten and Warrenpoint Murders’, 27 August 1979, TFW.
3. ‘No. 10 Record of Conversation (MT-Whitelaw)’, 2 May 1980, TFW.
4. ‘No. 10 Record of Telephone Conversation (MT-Whitelaw)’, 3 May 1980, TFW.
5. Daily Express, 5 May 1980; Guardian, 24 July 2002; Mark Garnett and Ian Aitken, Splendid! Splendid! The Authorized Biography of Willie Whitelaw (2002), pp. 254–5. For a more detailed narrative, see Gregory Fremont-Barnes, Who Dares Wins: The SAS and the Iranian Embassy Siege, 1980 (Oxford, 2009).
6. Nixon to Thatcher, 6 May 1980, TFW; TNA PREM 19/1137, Ramphal to Thatcher, 6 May 1980; TNA PREM 19/1137, William G. Davis to Thatcher, 6 May 1980; New York Times, 7 May 1980.
7. Daily Express, 6 May 1980, 7 May 1980.
8. The Times, 10 May 1980; Guardian, 15 May 1980, 9 May 1980, 12 May 1980.
9. ‘No. 10 Note to Press Office’, 8 May 1980, TFW; Guardian, 24 July 2002; Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (1993), p. 90.
10. Richard Vinen, Thatcher’s Britain: The Politics and Social Upheaval of the Thatcher Era (2009), p. 102; The Times, 13 December 1980.
11. General Sir Robert Ford to Thatcher, 17 November 1982, TFW; David Stirling to Thatcher, 10 February 1983, TFW.
12. The Times, 12 November 1980, 15 October 1982.
13. Los Angeles Times, 9 May 1982; see also Lloyd’s obituaries in the Scotsman, 16 July 2016, and at http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/euan-lloyd-1923-2016. On Lewis Collins, see Daily Mirror, 29 November 2013; Daily Mail, 29 November 2013; and the tribute at the Parachute Regiment website https://www.parachuteregiment-hsf.org/Lewis_Collins.html.
14. Guardian, 1 September 1982, 27 August 1982.
15. The Times, 3 September 1982; Guardian, 26 August 1982
16. The Times, 18 December 1982; Los Angeles Times, 9 September 1983.
17. Richard Ingrams and John Wells, Dear Bill: The Collected Letters of Denis Thatcher (1980), p. 74.
18. Daily Express, 7 May 1980; Sun, 20 April 1982; Daily Mail, 22 May 1982; Barbara Castle, The Castle Diaries, 1974–76 (1980), p. 221.
19. Sunday Times, 3 August 1980; The Times, 25 October 1982.
Chapter 1. Whatever Happened to Britain?
1. All this comes, of course, from the Fawlty Towers episode ‘Waldorf Salad’, first shown on BBC1 on 5 March 1979.
2. The Times, 18 August 1980, 1 September 1980; Observer, 2 September 1984.
3. Let’s Go, 1982: Britain and Ireland (New York, 1982), p. 52; Fodor’s 1982 Guide to Great Britain (New York, 1982), pp. v–vi.
4. Ibid., pp. 52–3; Let’s Go, 1982, pp. 31–2.
5. Paul Theroux, The Kingdom by the Sea: A Journey around the Coast of Great Britain (1983), p. 219.
6. Fodor’s 1982 Guide to Great Britain, pp. v, 50, 102, 151; Let’s Go, 1982, pp. 36, 68, 57, 92; Theroux, Kingdom by the Sea, p. 13. For a similar take from a British perspective, see The Times, 24 September 1980.
7. Fodor’s 1982 Guide to Great Britain, pp. v, 50; Let’s Go, 1982, pp. 36, 68; Jonathan Raban, Coasting (1986), pp. 212–13, 236.
8. Wall Street Journal, 29 April 1975.
9. Guardian, 26 January 1979.
10. Daily Express, 30 April 1979; ‘Speech to Conservative Rally in Bolton’, 1 May 1979, TFW.
11. Memorandum of Conversation, President Ford and Henry Kissinger, 8 January 1975, Box 8, National Security Adviser’s Files, Gerald R. Ford Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan; Guardian, 30 September 1975; Samuel H. Beer, Britain Against Itself: The Political Contradictions of Collectivism (New York, 1982), p. xi. See also Time, 19 May 1975; Robert Moss, ‘Anglocommunism?’, Commentary (February 1977), pp. 27–33; The Times, 8 May 1975; Bernard D. Nossiter, Britain: A Future That Works (1978), pp. 12–13.
12. New York Times, 15 October 1976.
13. Ibid., 3 December 1977, 16 July 1978, 10 December 1978.
14. Martin J. Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850–1980 (1981: Cambridge, 2004), pp. xv, 3, 165–6.
15. Spectator, 3 December 2011; Theroux, Kingdom by the Sea, pp. 13, 15.
16. John Eatwell, Whatever Happened to Britain? The Economics of Decline (1982), p. 12; Sidney Pollard, The Wasting of the British Economy: British Economic Policy, 1945 to the Present (1982), pp. 2–3. For a very critical view of the ‘declinist’ interpretation of modern British history, see Jim Tomlinson, ‘Inventing “Decline”: The Falling Behind of the British Economy in the Postwar Years’, Economic History Review, 49:4 (1996), pp. 731–57; Jim Tomlinson, ‘Mrs Thatcher’s Macroeconomic Adventurism, 1979–1981, and Its Political Consequences’, British Politics, 2:1 (2007), pp. 14–16.
17. Alan Clark, Diaries: Into Politics, 1972–1982 (2000), pp. 163, 177; Tony Benn, The End of an Era: Diaries, 1980–90 (1992), pp. 93–4.
18. Louis Heren, Alas, Alas for England: What Went Wrong with Britain (1981), pp. 2, 4, 8, 42, 168, 80, 166.
19. The Economist, 2 June 1979; Guardian, 2 June 1979; David Owen, Time to Declare (1991), p. 277.
20. Sir Nicholas Henderson, ‘Britain’s Decline: Its Causes and Consequences’, 31 March 1979, TFW; The Economist, 2 June 1979.
21. Guardian, 2 June 1979, 23 May 1979; Richard Vinen, Thatcher’s Britain: The Politics and Social Upheaval of the Thatcher Era (2009), p. 190; Daily Telegraph, 16 March 2009; and see Nicholas Henderson, Mandarin: The Diaries of Nicholas Henderson (1994: 2000).
22. Daily Mirror, 2 June 1979; Guardian, 2 June 1979, 23 May 1979; Daily Express, 23 May 1979; The Economist, 16 June 1979, 30 June 1979.
23. Andrew Gamble, Britain in Decline: Economic Policy, Political Strategy and the British State (Basingstoke, 1994), pp. xv, 15, 17; Catherine R. Schenk, ‘Britain and the Common Market’, in Richard Coopey and Nicholas Woodward (eds.), Britain in the 1970s: The Troubled Economy (1996), p. 193; Richard Coopey and Nicholas Woodward, ‘The British Economy in the 1970s: An Overview’, in ibid., p. 3; Guardian, 26 September 1978, 27 September 1978.
24. See Jim Tomlinson, ‘De-Industrialization Not Decline: A New Meta-Narrative for Post-War British History’, Twentieth Century British History, 27:1 (2016), pp. 76–99.
25. The Economist, 16 June 1979, 30 June 1979; Lincoln Allison, Condition of England: Essays and Impressions (1981), pp. 37, 64.
26. Theroux, Kingdom by the Sea, pp. 34, 42.
27. Allison, Condition of England, pp. 52–3; Heren, Alas, Alas for England, p. 150.
28. Guardian, 6 December 1980, 10 January 1983; John Sutherland, Reading the Decades: Fifty Years of the Nation’s Bestselling Books (2002), pp. 114–15, 122–4, 132, 138.
29. The Times, 16 March 1981, 17 February 1982, 7 March 1983; Guardian, 8 December 1982.
30. MO R470, Summer Directive – Work, 1983; MO A883, Summer Directive – Work, 1983.
31. HMSO, Housing in Britain (1975), pp. 7–8; Arthur M. Edwards, The Design of Suburbia: A Critical Study in Environmental History (1981), pp. 243–4; Lawrence James, The Middle Class: A History (2006), pp. 522–3; Phil Wickham, The Likely Lads (Basingstoke, 2008), pp. 16, 34.
32. MO D156, Autumn Directive – Housework, 1983; MO W633, Autumn Directive – Housework, 1983; MO G226, Autumn Directive – Housework, 1983.
33. Margaret Drabble, The Middle Ground (1980), p. 199.
34. MO W633, Autumn Directive – Housework, 1983; MO G226, Autumn Directive – Housework, 1983; MO G218, Autumn Directive – Housework, 1983.
35. Jeremy Seabrook, Unemployment (1982: 1983), p. 168; MO W633, Autumn Directive – Housework, 1983; MO G226, Autumn Directive – Housework, 1983.
36. The Times, 10 December 1981; Guardian, 11 December 1980. On electricity, see Gavin Weightman, Children of Light: How Electricity Changed Britain Forever (2011).
37. MO R470, Winter Directive – Christmas, 1983; MO W633, Winter Directive – Christmas, 1983; MO S496, Winter Directive – Christmas, 1983.
38. Guardian, 14 September 1982, 1 September 1981, 2 April 1982; MO D156, Summer Directive 1982.
39. Brian Harrison
, Finding a Role? The United Kingdom, 1970–1990 (Oxford, 2010), p. 89; The Times 6 April 1983; Guardian, 18 March 1982.
40. Ian Jack, Before the Oil Ran Out: Britain in the Brutal Years (rev. edn: 1997), p. xvii; Guardian, 3 October 1983. See also Harrison, Finding a Role?, pp. 19, 68, 101.
41. Ibid., p. 403; The Times, 24 June 1981, 30 November 1982, 5 October 1984. On video sales, see also Guardian, 3 February 1984.
42. Raban, Coasting, p. 12; Harrison, Finding a Role?, p. 101; Robert J. Wybrow, Britain Speaks Out, 1937–87: A Social History as Seen through the Gallup Data (Basingstoke, 1989), p. 137.
43. The Times, 8 May 1980, 27 February 1981, 15 September 1981.
44. Ibid., 4 November 1981, 21 January 1982, 1 April 1982, 9 November 1983.
45. Ibid., 2 May 1981, 8 November 1983; Guardian, 12 October 1982.
46. MO S496, Spring Directive 1982; Guardian, 3 December 1984, 23 December 2012; Daily Mail, 21 December 2012.
47. New Statesman, 6 March 1998; Guardian, 10 March 1978, 23 September 1981; Daily Telegraph, 20 December 2012; Guardian, 3 December 1984.
48. Daily Telegraph, 20 December 2012; The Times, 3 June 1981, 7 March 1984; and see Joe Moran, Reading the Everyday (Abingdon, 2005), pp. 145–7.
49. For two nice articles about Barratt’s style and its appeal, see Joe Moran in the New Statesman, 6 March 1998, and Harry Mount in the Daily Mail, 21 December 2012.
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