Book description
The 1980s was the revolutionary decade of the twentieth century. To
look back in 1990 at the Britain of ten years earlier was to look into
another country. The changes were not superficial, like the revolution
in fashion and music that enlivened the 1960s; nor were they quite as
unsettling and joyless as the troubles of the 1970s. And yet they were
irreversible. By the end of the decade, society as a whole was
wealthier, money was easier to borrow, there was less social upheaval,
less uncertainty about the future. Perhaps the greatest transformation
of the decade was that by 1990, the British lived in a new ideological
universe where the defining conflict of the twentieth century, between
capitalism and socialism, was over. Thatcherism took the politics out
of politics and created vast differences between rich and poor, but no
expectation that the existence of such gross inequalities was a
problem that society or government could solve - because as Mrs
Thatcher said, 'There is no such thing as society ... people must look
to themselves first.' From the Falklands war and the miners' strike to
Bobby Sands and the Guildford Four, from Diana and the New Romantics
to Live Aid and the 'big bang', from the Rubik's cube to the ZX
Spectrum, McSmith's brilliant narrative account uncovers the truth
behind the decade that changed Britain forever.
