Gay bars london 1980s
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Gay bars london 1980s movie#
This building today is home to several stages, movie theaters, concert halls, art galleries, and libraries. One of the city’s leading cultural locales, The Barbican Centre, followed in 1982. The Natwest Tower, now known as Tower 42, opened in 1981. The skyline of the city also began to experience a major change during the 1980s. The concert at Wembley Stadium had an attendance of 72,000 people. Realising that one song would not be enough, he led the charge to create Live Aid, a concert featuring many bands that shared his ideas and ultimately raised £150 million for relief efforts. Artists began to feel the need to make a difference, leading individuals such as Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats to first organise Band Aid in 1984, using the song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” to raise money for poorer regions in Africa. Less angry, but no less politically charged, groups such as U2 from Ireland found an audience in young people who wanted change.
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The music of groups such as the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and Generation X (as well as Billy Idol’s own solo career) came to represent the feelings held by many of London’s young people. Turning their youthful rage to music, punk really took off, with leading bands of the time expressing their anger at the government or the lack of economic opportunities created. The situation would remain as such until the creation of the Greater London Authority in 2000.Īmidst all this political change, the youth of London led a social rebellion. Management of London’s services then either fell to the local boroughs or Parliament itself. It’s largely believed that Livingstone’s resistance to Thatcher’s policies led to the government arguing for the GLC’s abolition in 1983, though this would not happen until 1986, and even then, the bill was hotly contested and passed by a thin majority. Another major act of Margaret Thatcher’s government was the dissolution of the Greater London Council, an organisation that, by the 1980s, was led by the very left-leaning Ken Livingstone. Interestingly enough, Thatch was resistant to the idea of privitising British Rail, an industry that would not change until her successor, John Major, divested the government of it in the 1990s. In the end, water, gas, and electricity were all privatized, which led to mixed results depending on who you ask, though also gave way to lower prices for consumers as competition took the place of the government-owned monopolies that came before the 1980s. This led to the beginning of protests in the streets that would continue well into her introducing the Community Charge (also known as the “Poll Tax”) beginning in 1989.Īdditionally, Thatcher’s government saw another means of relieving themselves of the burden of state-run industries by permitting their privitisation, beginning with the energy companies in 1983. In another example, the closing of the pits in the North may not have directly impacted London, but many Londoners had friends or family who worked there or felt that it was another example of the Iron Lady’s unfeeling attitude towards tradition and the working classes. As the cargo vessels moved east towards the port of Tilbury, Thatcher’s government opted to let the East End industry die off, though that didn’t mean it would let the area go with it. This included the Docklands that, as time went on, were unable to accommodate larger vessels. The election of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in 1979 and her premiership was one that didn’t see a point in hanging onto government-run industries that the Tories felt were costing more to keep open. Additionally, the music scene ranged from the anger of the Punk to the expressionism of New Wave and everything in between.Īrguably, this period of social change began even before the decade started officially. While some took to the streets in protest, others gathered in Wembley for a concert to bring help to less-fortunate populations. Unions and family-owned shops gave way to privitisation and impersonal, foreign-owned stores. From the conservativism of Margaret Thatcher to the rebellion of the Sex Pistols, 1980s London seemed to revel in extremes. Short of a world war, there was probably no other period in which the social and political atmosphere changed so drastically. The 1980s were an iconic time for the United Kingdom, and London was at the centre of it all.