80s society

Question 1

What well adjusted, reasonable things did Edwina Currie, MP and Junior Health Minister, say.

Answer 1

“good Christian people don’t get AIDS”, she was not christian

Northeners die of “ignorance and chips”

“I won’t claim the workhouses didn’t have their problems, but they were set up by people who cared.”

“Back to Basics was absolute humbug, wasn’t it?”

“The Labour Party is being led by a woman but she has not been elected to anything. She is the lady who makes the breakfast in the Kinnock household.”

“My message to businessmen of this country when they go abroad on business is that there is one thing above all they can take with them to stop them catching AIDS, and that is the wife.”

Question 2

Who did Edwina Currie appoint to lead a taskforce managing a psychiatric hospital with many young and heavily medicated patients?

Answer 2

Jimmy Saville.

Question 3

What did the 1980 Housing Act do ?

Answer 3

Gave council tenants the Right to Buy their council houses, with discounts provided based on duration of residency.

Question 4

Why did Thatcher introduce the right to buy

Answer 4

-To expand the homeowning class as homeowners will more likely vote Conservative

• To raise funds for debt repayment for councils

-If you’re paying a mortgage you can’t afford to go on strike for a prolonged period of time. (Also the increased security of home ownership discourages disputes over pay)

Question 5

What went wrong with Right to Buy

Answer 5

-Far more success was seen in areas that were already better off
-Profits all went to paying off high levels of debt and none was left for building new council houses, so councils could not provide social housing and when they could it was not adequate.

Question 6

What Successes did Right to Buy see

Answer 6

By 1988, 2 million new homeowners had taken advantage of this scheme

It was very popular with the voter, mustering support for Thatcher and encouraged a demographic shift towards a growing middle class more likely to vote Conservative

Question 7

According to David Crosby, what should happen to Rupert Murdoch

Answer 7

“Rupert Murdoch should be taken out and shot”

Question 8

Who is Rupert Murdoch

Answer 8

Owner of
The Sun, The Times, News of the World, The Wall Street Journal and ,until 2018, Sky.

Question 9

Why did Rupert Murdoch support Thatcher so intensely

Answer 9

Thatcher allowed him to buy up Newspaper’s without review by the Monopolies and Mergers commission, as long as Murdoch bashed Unions.

Question 10

When was secondary picketing outlawed

Answer 10

1980

Question 11

When were Unions put under pressure to hold ballots before taking strike action

Answer 11

1984

Question 12

Which Unions did Murdoch have a 13 month long dispute with

Answer 12

the print Unions, he won as the strike failed to actually stop any publications being distributed.

Question 13

How many pits did the National Coal Board claim to need to close in 1981

Answer 13

23, but the govenment was not yet ready for a confrontation so continued subsidies preventing closure

Question 14

How did Thatcher prepare to confront the Miners Unions

Answer 14

prior to 1984 built up coal stockpiles and got lucky with the utilisation of North Sea Oil

Question 15

Which communist claimed he found a secret plan to close 70 pits

Answer 15

Arthur Scargill (he was sort of correct released documents contained a plan to close 75 pits within 3 years)

Question 16

Why did Thatcher want to crush the Unions

Answer 16

They caused too much industrial interferance, thatcher could not stand for another winter of discontent

They had played a significant role in the downfall of Edward Heath’s government

They propped up uncompetitive traditional industries

Question 17

Why could Scargill not secure enough support for his strike in 1984

Answer 17

Scargill refused to hold a ballot before striking

the UDM split and accused Scargill of pushing hardline left politics rather than protecting miner’s interests

Question 18

Why did the 1984-85 Miner’s Strike fail.

Answer 18

-Divisions within Unions, specifically Arthur Scargill’s extremism
-Thatcher stockpiled coal and had access to north sea oil to prevent another energy crisis
-Thatcher also prepared the police to crack down on striking miners with new equipment and riot control training, which met criticism for the politicisation of the Police

Question 19

What was the battle of Orgreave

Answer 19

in 1984 8000 police officers were prepared to confront 5000 striking miners with their new riot control equipment and training, allowing deliveries to continue to Orgreave. 50 picketers and 70 officers were injured, including Scargill and south Yorkshire Police was ordered to pay compensation in 1991 for police brutality.

Question 20

Why was Scargill more of a liability to the Unions?

Answer 20

the press easily demonised him as a radical despite general support for the miners, he was too left wing.

the labour party never threw their support behind him, with Kinnock commenting that the miners “deserved much much better”.

Question 21

By how much did the mining community decline

Answer 21

in 1979 200,000 people were employed by the coal industry, by 1990 only 60,000 were and falling. and union membership fell to only 2 thirds of what it was in the same timeframe.

Question 22

What was wrong with the Poll tax

Answer 22

the Poll tax taxed everyone so was essentially a tax increase on everyone in an entirely unrepresentative and disproportionate way.

Question 23

What was the idea behind introducing Poll tax

Answer 23

it would encourage fairer taxation and councils to be more sensible in their spending habits as they had a greater accountability. It would also in theory take a tax from those who typically expoloited loopholes.

Question 24

Where was the Poll Tax first introduced

Answer 24

Scotland, in 1989, where the Conservatives were already unpopular.

Question 25

What did Anti Poll Tax Unions do

Answer 25

encouraged people not to pay the poll tax, with certain areas having 30% of people not pay, and the courts could not force them to pay.

Question 26

How many people attended the 1990 anti poll tax demonstration

Answer 26

200,000 in trafalgar square.

Question 27

What Happened at the Poll tax Demonstration in Trafalgar Square

Answer 27

it became a riot due as mounted police escalated the situation as protestors were arrested for “obstructing whitehall” and violence broke out with 5,000 injured, providing evidence of the further politicisation of the police. people with nothing to do with the protests were also assaulted and arrested as looting broke out.

Question 28

Why did Oxford refuse Thatcher an honorary degree

Answer 28

Thatcher made cuts to public spending on higher education.

Question 29

What report from the Church outlined the disastrous impact of Thatcherism on society and community

Answer 29

Faith and the City in 1985

Question 30

When were U.S. Cruise Missiles stationed at Greenham Common

Answer 30

1979

Question 31

How long was the CND Pacifist and Feminist Camp at Greenham Common

Answer 31

The Greenham Women were there for 19 years from 1981

Question 32

How many people protested when cruise missiles were delivered to greenham common in 1983

Answer 32

70,000

Question 33

What was the 1987 Montreal Protocal

Answer 33

an international agreement to phase out CFCs creating a hole in the Ozone layer, possibly the most effective international agreement on the environment ever.

Question 34

What Disasters encouraged greater international concern for environmentalism

Answer 34

Bhopal disaster 1984- the worst industrial accident ever at the time. Union carbide spilled a lot of toxic gas from a pesticide factory, exposing half a million people to toxic gas, killing 8,000 in two weeks and a furhter 8,000 since, with thousands injured and permanently disabled, with the local government putting the total number affected at 574,000 victims of some kind

Chernobyl- 1986. poor management and quality at the chernobyl nuclear power plant in ukraine lead to a reactor meltdown where reactor number 4 exploded releasing a cloud of irradiated dust that covered most of europe and made the immediate vicinity including the city of Pripyat uninhabitable, causing thousands to develop cancer over time as a result of the irradiated cloud all over europe.

Question 35

What did the chernobyl disaster cause in the UK

Answer 35

an unexplained rise in infant mortality rates for 3 years, irradiated dust to become trapped in peat bogs causing restrictions on several farms, Thatcher was visiting japan (of all places) at the time of the meltdown and supposedly the goverments handling of the situation was shambolic in her absence.