Bang!: A History of Britain in the 1980s (114 page)

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Authors: Graham Stewart

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BOOK: Bang!: A History of Britain in the 1980s

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... and by the designer who inspired them, Katharine Hamnett, when meeting the Prime Minister. Thatcher pointed out that it was Cruise, not Pershing, missiles
that were being based in Britain and wondered if she had come to the right place, ‘which,’ Hamnett recounted, ‘I thought was rather rude as she had invited me’.

No slogan carried more punch than the government’s Aids awareness campaign.

Cambridge May Ball ‘survivors’. The eighties’ encouragement of ‘new money’ did little to dispel the visibility or volubility of
‘reactionary chic’. The decade’s best-selling trade book was
The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook
.

Young Sloanes got their teenage kicks at the Gatecrasher Balls, organized by up-and-coming entrepreneurs, Jeremy Taylor (
left
) and Eddie Davenport
(
right
). Taylor subsequently ran raves. Davenport subsequently went to prison.

Merchant Ivory Productions turned repressed emotions into cinematic art. In
A Room With a View
Julian Sands and Helena Bonham Carter briefly forget
themselves under the Tuscan sun.

The British film industry’s depth of talent and dearth of money was exemplified in the almost axed cult classic,
Withnail & I
.

Thatcher and her Cabinet at their 1984 party conference hours after surviving the IRA’s mass assassination attempt. Absent from the platform is the Trade
and Industry Secretary, Norman Tebbit, who had to be pulled from the wreckage of Brighton’s Grand Hotel.

Leaning over his wife Glenys, Neil Kinnock tries to extend Labour’s reach.

Liverpool city council’s Derek Hatton and the Militant Tendency led the left’s dual assault on Tory ‘rate-capping’ and Kinnock’s
leadership. At one stage, Militant employed more full-time organizers than the Labour Party.

The poll tax was met with rioting in Trafalgar Square. It ended up, in the verdict of the minister charged with its introduction, Chris Patten, as ‘the
single most unpopular policy any government has introduced since the war’.

Coates Wine Bar: Yuppies unwinding after a hard day’s trading.

Heaven nightclub: A clubber unwinding during a hard night’s raving.

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