A few years ago, I read “Crisis? What crisis?”, which is about Britain in the 1970s. This is the follow-up book about the 1980s [affiliate link], though, as its author Alwyn W. Turner points out, the timelines are never quite that precise. It’s more accurate to say that this book follows Thatcher’s election as Prime Minister in 1979 to her downfall eleven years later.

Despite living through the Eighties, there’s a surprising amount of this book that I have very little recollection of. It makes me realise how little of what’s going on now that my kids are likely to remember.

One of the great things about reading this is discovering how, despite claims to the contrary, history does repeat itself. The obvious example that we’ve recently (re)lived through is the left making Labour unelectable. The parallels between the post-Thatcher loss in 1979 and Corbyn’s rise as leader are depressingly similar¹. They embraced protest and opposition, and sabotaged their own chances of winning power. As the book concludes:

Had the labour party in 1981 chosen as its leader Denis Healy rather than Michael Foot, and the SDP not therefore been formed, the probability is that she would have served only one term, replaced by a centre-left government that would have reached an accommodation with the unions and never embarked upon the privatisation of state industries. Much of the damage done to socialism might actually be seen as the work of the Labour left, suffering from the loss of a sense of priorities. 

Much of the narrative now is that Thatcher was inevitable and all-powerful, but the reality, according to this book, is that she got lucky. It’s not so much that she won than her opponents lost. There’s Labour’s longest suicide note in history² and the split resulting in multiple centre-left parties. She couldn’t have hoped for a more disorganised opposition³.

One of the great things about reading this is realising how far we’ve come. Absolutely not a solved problem, but the attitudes documented are genuinely shocking. Polls in the eighties showed a significant majority for the death penalty⁴ but against a smoking ban⁵. Disappointing, perhaps, but not entirely unexpected. But I was taken aback by what people openly said about gay rights, specifically related to AIDS. I had heard the phrase “gay plague” but I don’t remember anyone advocating for letting the whole community die (which people did). HIV was undoubtedly scary, but this was public and open hate speech against a minority group. Appalling. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that progress has been made.

So overall, a fascinating read. The writing is fine and it’s clearly structured. The decade is split into three chunks, and each section talks about a particular aspect, also roughly chronologically. Turner walks a fine line, trying not to make it a dull academic history but keeping largely factual – people have strong opinions about Thatcher and it would have been easy to pick a direction.