Image courtesy of Bob and Roberta Smith
One of the things that really interested us when we were setting up Observing the Eighties was to find a way to move beyond both top down narratives of Thatcher’s premiership and retro descriptions of pop culture. We felt that the Mass Observation Project writing and the British Library oral histories particularly helped shake up some of the overly simple lines that are sometimes drawn through Thatcher’s Britain. Whilst the 80s was certainly a divided time, over race, sexuality, region, class, industry, national identity, the writing and interviews that we used showed how complicated the ways in which people negotiated these stark positions were.
The ephemera that our student researchers chose helped us to think about the variety of different forms of politics that could be explored alongside the more personal reflections. We brought together publications from think tanks, NGOs and professional organisations. One cluster of documents that have proved particularly fruitful are those produced by the counter-culture of the 1980s in its various forms. Counter-cultural news outlets like the Counter Information Services or local publication Brighton Voice not only criticised the mainstream media, they built a grass roots alternative.
Other leaflets in the collection, like those produced by the Animal Liberation Front, One Man’s Account of picketing at Wapping and Charter 88 documented the campaigns and bitter arguments around alternative forms of political activism. For me, looking over these documents raises issues around to what extent these alternative media and forms of activism continue today, albeit in new forms online rather than cheaply photocopied, and certainly under different legal conditions.
The extent to which we can still talk about an Eighties style landscape of counter-cultural activism today, is a source for nostalgic regret or a political relief in some cases. This question, and others, will be at the centre of a debate ‘The Trouble with Counter-Culture’ that I will be chairing at the ICA on Wednesday 24th July at 6.45. The invited speakers include Dan Hancox and Simon Warner. Book online and come along.