Moor Larkin

The first time I came to London was in 1976. I can recall walking extensively around the London Docklands and was flabbergasted to find it all closed and empty. I had come fresh from the North, my head full of pictures of bustling docks and men unloading ships from all over the Empire. I found nothing but a silent wasteland, even emptier than the Liverpool I had come from. I wandered into a 'place' called Silvertown. There was a huge church there, entirely derelict, blackened and charred; I fancied at the time the damage looked weathered enough to have been like that since a bomb hit it during the war, thirty or forty years before, but maybe it had just been set on fire by the Isle of Dogs Liberation Front.

Whilst loathing places like 'Canary Wharf' as sterile, planned 'communities', I can't help but wonder in retrospect what the cosy conservative and labour governments had been doing for all those years filling my shoolboy head full of dreams of empire, whilst the trading heart of it lay like a broken doll in a patch of weeds, unbeknownst to most. People since have explained it all to me with the clarion cry of 'Tilbury!'

dadsarmy

Meantime (1984)

Meantime (1984) (TV) - Plot summary

A great film showing the effects on a family liveing on a council estate,it took me a few years to get this on dvd.

Steve Crook

Very much so. The main scam is to do with the rebuilding of Docklands and opening it up for the Yuppies. Although that was in the early years of Thatcherism, when people thought it might all work without too much blood on the streets

The film was released in November 1980 when Thatcher had been in office for about 18 months.

Steve

oxfam1uk

Don't you think it's curious that all the films mentioned have been negative, leftie ones ?

And yet Margaret Thatcher led her party to three election victories, becoming the most powerful and influential (and popular ?) Prime Minister of our times.

What's the explanation ? That all film-makers, then and now, are lefties who can think of nothing good to say about those years ?

Harold Shand, surely a thoughtful essay on Thatcherism should include positive as well as negative views. I would suggest "Local Hero" and (at a pinch) "Chariots of Fire".

p.s. There is an American film "Oxford Blues" and a British one "True Blue", which are rather similar, and give a flavour of those heady days (both are about Oxford University rowing team !)

oxfam1uk

Or indeed its serious counterpart "The Angry Silence"

Fellwanderer

"Chariots of Fire" - original screenplay by that well-known thatcherite Colin Welland.

The reason they are "negative" is because for many people it was an appalling period in which industry and communities were sacrificed upon the altar of pure greed and malevolence.

All the best
FELL

A signature is no substitute for a life

oxfam1uk

Heh heh.
Can you imagine "Chariots of Fire" actually being made during the 1970s ? The fact that the film-makers managed to raise the money to film it at all (partly from America, I know) was one indication that times had changed.

Britain was going down the toilet in the 1970s. Margaret Thatcher's three election victories (rather giving the lie to the idea that everyone hated her) changed that.

batman

I may be completely wrong but I believe that in at least one (possibly two) of Maggie's election victories the votes cast for non-Tory candidates swamped those for the Tories, indicating that a large portion of the voters weren't too keen on her. It was only the 'first past the post' electoral system that kept her in power. If proportional representation had been in use, she would have lost.

Bats.

I wish I had claws.

Fellwanderer

Remember that when you claim at some future date that everyone hated Blair - though being a socialist, I probably do!

All the best
FELL

A signature is no substitute for a life

Windthrop

Mona Lisa - that to me is an '80s movie. A film removed from the 'legitimate' world but infused with certain '80s values.

Still time to enter 'There Is Nothing Like A Dame' Quiz

NappieB

A good 80s era movie - financed by George Harrison himself!

"The future is yet to come" - George W. Bush

dremble wedge

In 1981-82 polls indicated that she was the most unpopular PM ever and it was only a matter of time before she was voted out. The only constituency that disliked her even more than the left were the traditionalist Tories. What changed the political map was the Falklands war which was the making of Thatcher.

Thatcher was fortunate: her share of the vote fell throughout the 80s (it was never won more than 44%) and the opposition was split by the emergence of the SDP and the in-fighting that was endemic in the Labour party at the time.

Windthrop

Welland certainly didn't prosper much afterwards - The Twice In A Lifetime debacle for example.

Still time to enter 'There Is Nothing Like A Dame' Quiz

oxfam1uk

Goodness, what a hornet's nest I seem to have stirred up !

Back to films: I thought that "Local Hero" was a marvellous little film of the 1980s. Gentle and kindhearted.
If people want to talk about "Thatcherite" values, perhaps the commercial success of "Local Hero" (and before it "Gregory's Girl") were due to the fact that it featured absolutley no characters droning on about unemployment, the NHS, or Cruise missiles.

VladTheImpala

But for a proper in-depth analysis of the malais at the heart of British industry before Thatcher you should watch "Carry On At Your Convenience".