Observing the 1980s

George Orwell's 1949 novel 1984 describes a totalitarian government bent on total manipulation. For many on the left, Margaret Thatcher's government represented elements of an 'Orwellian state', in which the social democratic consensus established after the end of World War Two was replaced by a free enterprise economy and a centralised state. For those on the political right, the 1980s Thatcher governments championed the re-assertion of individualism, British nationalism and a retreat from the so-called 'nanny state' in which the fight against the 'enemy within' was as important as the fight against the enemy without. In cultural terms, most writers point to the 1980s as being marked by creative pessimism, with 'anti-Thatcherism' the dominant cultural theme. This course will examine key events of the 1980s and reflect upon whether Margaret Thatcher's most famous quote, 'There is no such thing as society', is a suitable epitaph for the 1980s. Topic studied include: 1982 Falklands War; the 1984 miners' strike; the re-emergence of mass unemployment, peaking in 1986 at over 3.5 million; privatisation of industry and challenge to trade union power and the violent mass protest against the Community Charge (1990). Rather than producing a top down political history of the period, this course is interested in exploring the wide variety of evidence available to the contemporary historian. It is built around the Observing the Eighties project which includes oral histories from the British Library and holdings of the Mass Observation Project and ephemera from the University of Sussex

Course Index

Introduction
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Introduction

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Tutor Contact Details

Lucy


Dr Lucy Robinson (Convener) A171, University of Sussex, Falmer, East Sussex, BN1 9RH, 01273 606755 ext 7675, l.robinson@sussex.ac.uk

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What Thatcher's Britain is about

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George Orwell's 1949 novel 1984 describes a totalitarian government bent on total manipulation. For many on the left, Margaret Thatcher's government represented elements of an 'Orwellian state', in which the social democratic consensus established after the end of World War Two was replaced by a free enterprise economy and a centralised state. For those on the political right, the 1980s Thatcher governments championed the re-assertion of individualism, British nationalism and a retreat from the so-called 'nanny state' in which the fight against the 'enemy within' was as important as the fight against the enemy without. In cultural terms, most writers point to the 1980s as being marked by creative pessimism, with 'anti-Thatcherism' the dominant cultural theme.

This course will examine key events of the 1980s and reflect upon whether Margaret Thatcher's most famous quote, 'There is no such thing as society', is a suitable epitaph for the 1980s. Topic studied include: 1982 Falklands War; the 1984 miners' strike; the re-emergence of mass unemployment, peaking in 1986 at over 3.5 million; privatisation of industry and challenge to trade union power and the violent mass protest against the Community Charge (1990). Rather than producing a top down political history of the period, this course is interested in exploring the wide variety of evidence available to the contemporary historian. It is built around the Observing the Eighties project which includes oral histories from the British Library and holdings of the Mass Observation Project and ephemera from the University of Sussex.

What Observing the 1980s is about

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observing the 80s

Observing the 1980s brings together, for the first time, ‘voices’ from both the Mass Observation Collections and the British Library Oral History Collections.  This material offers a unique and inspiring insight into the lives and opinions of British people from all social classes and regions during the 1980s.

The value of digitising these collections and disseminating them as open educational resources is that currently no established historiography of the 1980s exists.  The decade is largely represented as polarised and the work that does exist is similarly divided into oppositional camps.  By bringing together these resources, students and academics will be able to make and illustrate connections across and between these polarised approaches.  Additionally, a key benefit for educators at all levels is in the raw nature of the information and its potential use across subject areas such as politics, sociology, oral history, cultural and media studies, linguistics, gender studies, narrative and memory studies, migration studies, folklore studies, anthropology and contemporary history.

We have selected 23 men and women of different ages, from different social backgrounds who write for Mass Observation, and have chosen extracts from their writing over the whole decade.  Similarly, we have selected 26 interviews from the British Library Oral History Collections to provide complementary audio texts and to ensure a broad coverage of key themes.

The material has been digitised and is offered as an open educational resource embedded here, into the University of Sussex VLE (using open Moodle software) and offered on an open ‘guest access’ basis.  It will also be available from the Talis Aspire reading list system at Sussex, and through HumBox and JORUM as well as via other educational resource sites such as the British Library.

The digitised resources are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial licence.  This means that you may download and re-use the resources for non-commercial purposes but you must credit the author and make available any re-purposed versions under the same Creative Commons licence terms.

The project supports institutional goals relating to inspirational teaching and enriching the student experience.  It also increases the accessibility of the Mass Observation and British Library Oral History Collections, and enhances opportunities for innovative collaborative research and project partnerships among the academic community.

How to use this resource

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If you find broken links please let me know, or even better provide me with an alternative. If a link to the Mass Observation correspondence is broken, you can also access the collection through the Special Collections catalogue.
 
Please be aware that some links to University of Sussex Library materials may not work for guest users to the site, due to copyright restrictions. 

Reading is broken down into Set Reading, Seminar Reading, Further Reading, and Extended Research for Essays and Presentations.  Set Reading and Seminar Reading is compulsory. 

For 1984:Thatcher's Britain reading marked with as asterisk (*) is available through study direct. When using the Set reading from Observing the 1980s material sometimes specific documents will be suggested. At other times feel free to explore for yourself - you might choose to combine documents from MOP, oral histories from the British Library, and the ephemera or you might choose to focus on one type of evidence. When you are using the MOP documents for example, you might choose to follow one of our respondents across a number of topics, or you might choose to contrast different respondents. 

Further Reading may include contextual links or related sources that I thought you might find of interest or which help take your understanding of a particular topic a bit further. This might be useful if the topic is new to you, or if you are particularly interested in an area. There will be links to Observing the 1980s material in Further Reading too. You can use the spreadsheet in the Appendix to see all of the material that might relate to a particular theme.

Extended Research is grouped with Seminar resources and includes longer bibliographies on specific topics related to the seminar theme. These are also viewable through the Sussex University Reading List for the course. There are also lots of different types of evidence included in the list. These are designed to help you for your seminar research and for your essays. Post on the study direct forum if you are having trouble finding reading on a particular topic.