0:00:06 > 0:00:09In the dying moments of 1984,
0:00:09 > 0:00:13a young man quietly slipped away from his parents' Surrey home.
0:00:15 > 0:00:18He was in a hurry.
0:00:18 > 0:00:22He had an important call to make and only an hour to get to London.
0:00:27 > 0:00:32As the chimes of Big Ben rang out to welcome in the New Year,
0:00:32 > 0:00:36back at the party, the sound of popping champagne corks
0:00:36 > 0:00:40almost drowned out the ringing of his parents' phone.
0:00:40 > 0:00:42PHONE RINGS
0:00:42 > 0:00:43Hello.
0:00:43 > 0:00:46Hi, Dad. It's Mike. Happy New Year. I'm in Parliament Square
0:00:46 > 0:00:47and guess what?
0:00:47 > 0:00:49I'm ringing you on your mobile phone.
0:00:49 > 0:00:52We've just made history!
0:00:53 > 0:00:56The man making that surprise call was Mike Harrison,
0:00:56 > 0:00:59the 24-year-old son of Sir Ernest Harrison,
0:00:59 > 0:01:02and Sir Ernest had just been given the licence
0:01:02 > 0:01:05for Britain's first mobile phone network.
0:01:06 > 0:01:09This was a mobile phone call to remember.
0:01:09 > 0:01:13The phone in question was this - the VT1,
0:01:13 > 0:01:16weighing in at a whopping 11 lb,
0:01:16 > 0:01:18and the call lasted barely a minute,
0:01:18 > 0:01:24but what it represented was nothing short of a social and technological revolution.
0:01:24 > 0:01:26- Hello.- Hello.- Hello.
0:01:26 > 0:01:30I'm in the centre of London at the moment. Yes, I'm on my Vodafone.
0:01:30 > 0:01:36By the end of 1985, Vodafone had sold more than 12,000 phones,
0:01:36 > 0:01:39backed by a suitably catchy advertising campaign.
0:01:39 > 0:01:41Larry & Barry Solicitors.
0:01:41 > 0:01:44If you'd like to be in when you're out, ring Racal Vodafone.
0:01:44 > 0:01:49In a decade obsessed with image and self-improvement, having a mobile,
0:01:49 > 0:01:52along with the biggest Filofax you could lay your hands on,
0:01:52 > 0:01:56showed that you were rich, successful and upwardly mobile.
0:01:58 > 0:02:01It's easy now, and it was easy then,
0:02:01 > 0:02:03to laugh at the yuppies of the 1980s.
0:02:03 > 0:02:06But you know those '80s yuppies - they're you and me.
0:02:06 > 0:02:11Making calls on the train, answering e-mails on your phone late at night.
0:02:11 > 0:02:13Like it or not, that 24/7 work ethic
0:02:13 > 0:02:17is something that we're all very familiar with today.
0:02:17 > 0:02:21After all, what do you get if you combine this...
0:02:22 > 0:02:23..with this?
0:02:23 > 0:02:27Well, you get this.
0:02:27 > 0:02:31From the cult of the mobile and the buzz of the stock market,
0:02:31 > 0:02:35to the gospel of advertising and craze for all things continental...
0:02:36 > 0:02:40..the second half of the Thatcher decade laid the foundations
0:02:40 > 0:02:43for a hectic 21st-century lifestyle.
0:02:44 > 0:02:48Five years of dizzying change that saw Britain plunge headlong
0:02:48 > 0:02:51into a new era of digital technology,
0:02:51 > 0:02:54financial globalisation and the unashamed pursuit
0:02:54 > 0:02:56of individual self-interest.
0:02:58 > 0:03:01No revolution ever comes without a cost.
0:03:01 > 0:03:03But what Margaret Thatcher never imagined
0:03:03 > 0:03:05was that at the end of the decade,
0:03:05 > 0:03:09she too would be swept away by the shock of the new.
0:03:23 > 0:03:25At the dawn of the 1980s,
0:03:25 > 0:03:28Britain had been a very different kind of country.
0:03:28 > 0:03:32Insular, conservative and remarkably old-fashioned.
0:03:32 > 0:03:38A land of rusting, heavy industries, owned and run by the State.
0:03:42 > 0:03:47But Margaret Thatcher had come into office with a blueprint for radical change.
0:03:47 > 0:03:50She wanted to drag Britain out of the analogue age
0:03:50 > 0:03:52and poised to help her
0:03:52 > 0:03:55drive through the changes was the man who had taken
0:03:55 > 0:03:59that very first mobile phone call, Sir Ernest Harrison.
0:04:03 > 0:04:07Sir Ernest Harrison was exactly Mrs Thatcher's kind of person -
0:04:07 > 0:04:10an ambitious, thrusting self-made man.
0:04:10 > 0:04:13He'd first seen the potential of the mobile phone years earlier
0:04:13 > 0:04:16and he was naturally keen to drum up publicity
0:04:16 > 0:04:18for his new Vodafone network.
0:04:18 > 0:04:23And so, the very day after his son's New Year's Eve call,
0:04:23 > 0:04:26he organised a little publicity stunt of his own.
0:04:29 > 0:04:33To make the first public call on his new gadget,
0:04:33 > 0:04:37Sir Ernest hired the enormously popular comedian Ernie Wise.
0:04:37 > 0:04:40And this time he made sure that the cameras were on hand
0:04:40 > 0:04:42to capture the moment.
0:04:44 > 0:04:46Dressed in 19th-century livery,
0:04:46 > 0:04:51Wise alighted from an old Royal Mail coach at London's St Katharine Docks.
0:04:51 > 0:04:55The location could hardly have been more appropriate.
0:04:55 > 0:04:58Once the heart of Britain's colonial trading network,
0:04:58 > 0:05:04London's docks were now being transformed into a temple to high finance and mass consumerism.
0:05:06 > 0:05:09Sir Ernest's little stunt had been very cleverly designed
0:05:09 > 0:05:13to play up the speed and modernity of his new mobile phone network,
0:05:13 > 0:05:16in stark contrast to the backward and old-fashioned
0:05:16 > 0:05:18State-run General Post Office,
0:05:18 > 0:05:22which had controlled Britain's communications for centuries.
0:05:22 > 0:05:26But his real target was British Telecom.
0:05:26 > 0:05:29- PHONE RINGS - It's ringing again for you.
0:05:29 > 0:05:32# Hey, how you doing?
0:05:32 > 0:05:34# I'm sorry you couldn't get through
0:05:34 > 0:05:36# Cos this is a message that's been recorded
0:05:36 > 0:05:38# Especially for you... #
0:05:38 > 0:05:42Although British Telecom had been detached from the Post Office in 1981,
0:05:42 > 0:05:45it was still a State-owned monopoly.
0:05:45 > 0:05:49Sadly, its customer service was still far from ideal.
0:05:50 > 0:05:54We were cut off today because the exchange in Oxshott
0:05:54 > 0:05:56had a fault in it again.
0:05:56 > 0:05:59That's the third time in the last four months.
0:06:01 > 0:06:03Just to have a new phone installed,
0:06:03 > 0:06:07you often had to wait as long as six months.
0:06:07 > 0:06:11But as 1984 drew to a close, all that was about to change.
0:06:16 > 0:06:18Now in her second term in office,
0:06:18 > 0:06:23Mrs Thatcher had committed herself to a radical programme of privatisation.
0:06:23 > 0:06:26- PHONE RINGS - Hello.
0:06:27 > 0:06:32The first State-owned utility to go under the hammer was British Telecom,
0:06:32 > 0:06:36and the public reaction could hardly have been more enthusiastic,
0:06:36 > 0:06:39with two million people snapping up shares.
0:06:42 > 0:06:45But privatisation was more than just a political phenomenon.
0:06:45 > 0:06:49Its free market ethos even made it into family board games.
0:06:51 > 0:06:56Not long after BT had been sold off, this came on to the British market.
0:06:56 > 0:07:01Its name was Poleconomy, the game of the United Kingdom.
0:07:01 > 0:07:05Believe me, it made Monopoly look positively low rent.
0:07:05 > 0:07:09Poleconomy is a role-playing game about money and power,
0:07:09 > 0:07:12where each player is both tycoon and politician.
0:07:14 > 0:07:17I was about 12 when my parents bought me this game, and I loved it.
0:07:17 > 0:07:21I'd just seen the film Wall Street - well, I'd seen the poster -
0:07:21 > 0:07:25and I rather fancied myself as Shropshire's answer to Gordon Gekko,
0:07:25 > 0:07:30a thrusting young tycoon cutting a dash through the corridors of power.
0:07:30 > 0:07:34And as the evenings wore on and my parents started sobbing with boredom,
0:07:34 > 0:07:37so I built up my mighty empire.
0:07:37 > 0:07:43British Telecom, British Gas, British Airways, Barclaycard,
0:07:43 > 0:07:45some life insurance, PG Tips.
0:07:49 > 0:07:52Double six. Still got the old magic.
0:07:52 > 0:07:54For me at least, this was all good fun.
0:07:54 > 0:07:58But to Mrs Thatcher's critics, it seemed that nothing now was safe
0:07:58 > 0:08:00from the government's thirst for revenue.
0:08:00 > 0:08:03- Do you have an account with us? - Account. No.
0:08:03 > 0:08:05Oh, you're a shareholder, perhaps?
0:08:05 > 0:08:07I'm a citizen, if that's what you mean.
0:08:07 > 0:08:09Citizen... Oh, you mean client?
0:08:09 > 0:08:12Look, I don't want to sound stupid but I get back to England,
0:08:12 > 0:08:15- I find my car's been stolen... - Peter, you've been away?
0:08:15 > 0:08:19Did you perhaps miss the privatisation of the police force?
0:08:23 > 0:08:26Next up for sale was British Gas.
0:08:28 > 0:08:31And you didn't need to be a stock market player
0:08:31 > 0:08:33to spot the appeal of the ad campaign.
0:08:33 > 0:08:35If you see Sid, tell him.
0:08:35 > 0:08:37What the Sid adverts represented
0:08:37 > 0:08:41was privatisation as a kind of cultural mission,
0:08:41 > 0:08:45spreading the gospel of popular capitalism, and it worked.
0:08:45 > 0:08:49By the end of the 1980s, more than one in five people had bought shares.
0:08:49 > 0:08:54There were now more British shareholders than there were trade union members.
0:08:54 > 0:08:57We'd become a nation of Sids,
0:08:57 > 0:09:00much to the delight of the Prime Minister herself.
0:09:00 > 0:09:06Popular capitalism is nothing less than a crusade
0:09:06 > 0:09:10to enfranchise the many in the economic life of the nation.
0:09:10 > 0:09:14We Conservatives are returning power to the people.
0:09:18 > 0:09:21# Pounds, dollar, millionaire P-p-p-pound, dollar...#
0:09:22 > 0:09:26But when Margaret Thatcher fired up the engine of change,
0:09:26 > 0:09:29she didn't quite get what she'd bargained for.
0:09:29 > 0:09:32As the daughter of a shopkeeper,
0:09:32 > 0:09:35she dreamed of a nation of citizen investors
0:09:35 > 0:09:40holding companies to account and raising standards across the board.
0:09:40 > 0:09:44But most people were rather more interested in making a quick profit
0:09:44 > 0:09:47than investing in the long-term future
0:09:47 > 0:09:49of British Telecom or British Gas.
0:09:49 > 0:09:53Within just six months, one in four BT investors
0:09:53 > 0:09:55had already sold their shares.
0:09:55 > 0:09:57And as for the Sids, well,
0:09:57 > 0:10:02within days, thousands of them had cashed in on their shares.
0:10:03 > 0:10:07Even so, what all this represented was a massive swing of the pendulum
0:10:07 > 0:10:09from public to private,
0:10:09 > 0:10:12driven not just by Mrs Thatcher's political ideology,
0:10:12 > 0:10:17but by the material ambitions of millions of ordinary people.
0:10:23 > 0:10:25By embracing the free market,
0:10:25 > 0:10:28Mrs Thatcher hoped to turn back the clock
0:10:28 > 0:10:32to a lost golden age of thrift and responsibility.
0:10:34 > 0:10:36In reality, though,
0:10:36 > 0:10:38she'd handed a golden opportunity to a group of people
0:10:38 > 0:10:42whose priorities could hardly have been more different.
0:10:45 > 0:10:47Good evening. For the first time ever on Monday,
0:10:47 > 0:10:51the buying and selling of stocks and shares will be anyone's game,
0:10:51 > 0:10:54as a century of financial tradition in the City of London collapses
0:10:54 > 0:10:59as the Square Mile throws open its doors to greet the world's financiers.
0:10:59 > 0:11:03- 2-3.- 2-3.- Nine, the key point.
0:11:03 > 0:11:06On 27th October 1986,
0:11:06 > 0:11:10Big Bang sent shock waves through the cosy world of British finance.
0:11:14 > 0:11:19Out went old family interests run by a narrow old boys' network...
0:11:20 > 0:11:23..in came ruthless new American competitors.
0:11:23 > 0:11:25INDISTINCT
0:11:25 > 0:11:30Out went face-to-face transactions on the old Stock Exchange floor,
0:11:30 > 0:11:34in came computer trading in vast new open-plan offices.
0:11:37 > 0:11:41We often think of the City of London as a strange, closed world
0:11:41 > 0:11:43of impenetrable mathematical jargon,
0:11:43 > 0:11:48eye-watering bankers' bonuses and dodgy financial ethics
0:11:48 > 0:11:52but, actually, what happened to the City in the late 1980s
0:11:52 > 0:11:55was exactly what happened to factories and offices
0:11:55 > 0:11:57all over the country.
0:11:57 > 0:11:59The end of the closed shop and the old order,
0:11:59 > 0:12:02the end of the company car and the job for life.
0:12:04 > 0:12:06And if you want a very simple example
0:12:06 > 0:12:09of how quickly Britain was changing,
0:12:09 > 0:12:12then forget what people were doing at their desks.
0:12:12 > 0:12:15All you need to know is what they had for lunch.
0:12:16 > 0:12:19In the good old days, City bankers liked to sit down to long lunches
0:12:19 > 0:12:22in wood-panelled dining rooms -
0:12:22 > 0:12:26all silver service, Dover sole and spotted dick.
0:12:26 > 0:12:29But the new American competitors preferred something that was simpler
0:12:29 > 0:12:32and more convenient and, crucially, much faster.
0:12:32 > 0:12:36- Hello.- Morning, sir.
0:12:36 > 0:12:39- Chicken, bacon and avocado, please. - Brown bread or white, sir?
0:12:39 > 0:12:42- Brown, please.- Brown bread. To eat in or take away?
0:12:42 > 0:12:43- Take away, please.- Take away.
0:12:47 > 0:12:50- Lovely. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.- Thank you. Bye-bye.
0:12:52 > 0:12:55If you were one of the old guard, the prospect of lunch on the run
0:12:55 > 0:12:58was enough to give you acute indigestion,
0:12:58 > 0:13:00but if you were one of the young guns,
0:13:00 > 0:13:04if you could stomach the long hours and competitive cut-throat ethos,
0:13:04 > 0:13:08you were hungry for a quick promotion and whacking great bonus,
0:13:08 > 0:13:10then the City was the place to be.
0:13:14 > 0:13:18'Wheeling and dealing billions of pounds over the telephone every day.
0:13:18 > 0:13:21'Hard to imagine a more stressful environment.'
0:13:23 > 0:13:28At the heart of this new order were the Essex boys and Essex girls
0:13:28 > 0:13:32who flooded into the Square Mile in the last years of the 1980s.
0:13:32 > 0:13:37Oi, Gary! Gary! Break it down, five lots! Work in 20!
0:13:37 > 0:13:41They were young, brash and intensely ambitious,
0:13:41 > 0:13:43and their new bosses didn't care where they'd been to school,
0:13:43 > 0:13:47or whether they said "toilet" instead of "lavatory".
0:13:47 > 0:13:51All that mattered was how good they were at buying and selling,
0:13:51 > 0:13:53and how much money they were making.
0:13:54 > 0:13:56What is your aim in life?
0:13:56 > 0:13:58Erm...
0:13:58 > 0:14:01Just to earn lots of money, really.
0:14:01 > 0:14:03# Could be wrong
0:14:03 > 0:14:07# I could be right...#
0:14:07 > 0:14:10But this wasn't just a question of high finance.
0:14:10 > 0:14:13The effects of Big Bang rippled out into our popular culture...
0:14:15 > 0:14:19..into the stories we told ourselves about the aspirational chancers
0:14:19 > 0:14:23who became the new folk heroes of mid-'80s Britain.
0:14:23 > 0:14:27# I could be white I could be black...#
0:14:27 > 0:14:30If there's one place that became synonymous
0:14:30 > 0:14:33with small-scale Thatcherite ambition, then it was here,
0:14:33 > 0:14:35Peckham in south London,
0:14:35 > 0:14:38then one of the poorest areas in the country,
0:14:38 > 0:14:42because it was here that one local businessman set out
0:14:42 > 0:14:45on the long march to Millionaires' Row.
0:14:45 > 0:14:47This time next year we will be millionaires.
0:14:50 > 0:14:53By the late 1980s, Derek Trotter's efforts to better himself
0:14:53 > 0:14:56had become a national phenomenon.
0:14:58 > 0:15:00Now, that is a bit of me!
0:15:00 > 0:15:03Almost 20 million people, a third of the population,
0:15:03 > 0:15:07were now regularly tuning in to Only Fools And Horses...
0:15:08 > 0:15:12..and greatly enjoying Del Boy's hapless attempts to embrace the yuppie lifestyle.
0:15:15 > 0:15:18It's good to unwind, eh?
0:15:18 > 0:15:20Sorry?
0:15:20 > 0:15:22After a hard day in the City, it's good to unwind.
0:15:22 > 0:15:26- Can I get you anything? - Yes, please, John.
0:15:26 > 0:15:30- A bottle of Beaujolais nouveau. - Yes, sir.
0:15:31 > 0:15:33- HE CLEARS HIS THROAT - A '79.
0:15:37 > 0:15:41Now, the very same year that Del Boy came over all Gordon Gekko,
0:15:41 > 0:15:45a rather different sitcom made its first appearance on Channel 4.
0:15:45 > 0:15:48Now, once again, this was a show set in Peckham,
0:15:48 > 0:15:51although this time the action revolved around a local barbershop
0:15:51 > 0:15:56and, once again, audiences were presented with a hard-working, aspirational character
0:15:56 > 0:16:00who dreams of getting on and making money,
0:16:00 > 0:16:04only this time there was a difference.
0:16:04 > 0:16:06Let's just get this straight.
0:16:06 > 0:16:11Just because I'm black, it doesn't mean to say that I cannot appreciate the finer things in life.
0:16:11 > 0:16:13And just because I'm black, it equally doesn't mean
0:16:13 > 0:16:16that I can't have ambition or speak the Queen's English.
0:16:16 > 0:16:19It wouldn't go down too well if someone came to ask for a loan
0:16:19 > 0:16:24and I said, "Me can't give you a loan because I, man, feel he's an idiot."
0:16:29 > 0:16:32What you don't realise is that times are changing
0:16:32 > 0:16:34and you're not changing with them.
0:16:37 > 0:16:41There had been plenty of black characters on TV before Desmond's,
0:16:41 > 0:16:43Channel 4's longest-running sitcom,
0:16:43 > 0:16:46but no show had ever focused so heavily
0:16:46 > 0:16:48on Caribbean immigrants' lives at work.
0:16:48 > 0:16:51This is a barbershop, not a public library.
0:16:51 > 0:16:53And Desmond's broke new ground in introducing a character
0:16:53 > 0:16:57we weren't used to seeing on TV - Michael Ambrose -
0:16:57 > 0:17:01a black assistant bank manager who votes Conservative.
0:17:01 > 0:17:03I've been thinking, well, I've got a bit of capital
0:17:03 > 0:17:05and I think perhaps I was...
0:17:06 > 0:17:09Perhaps we can make something out of the shop after all.
0:17:14 > 0:17:18At the time, the very idea of a middle-class aspirational black man,
0:17:18 > 0:17:22what Americans rather excruciatingly called a buppie,
0:17:22 > 0:17:26struck some viewers as an outlandish novelty.
0:17:26 > 0:17:30But the really interesting thing about Michael Ambrose wasn't his skin colour,
0:17:30 > 0:17:33it was the fact that he so perfectly embodied the new mood of the
0:17:33 > 0:17:37late 1980s, the new emphasis on ambition and self-improvement,
0:17:37 > 0:17:41on getting ahead and make no apology for it.
0:17:45 > 0:17:51But not everyone shared Michael Ambrose's faith in Mrs Thatcher's economic revolution.
0:17:54 > 0:17:57On a bitterly cold night in April 1988,
0:17:57 > 0:18:01a wizened old woman made her way along London's South Bank
0:18:01 > 0:18:03towards Waterloo station,
0:18:03 > 0:18:06and what she saw there appalled her.
0:18:08 > 0:18:12She was used to seeing shantytown poverty in her own country,
0:18:12 > 0:18:15but she didn't expect to find it in Britain.
0:18:15 > 0:18:20# I don't know where else I can go, Mother
0:18:20 > 0:18:22# Oh, Mother...#
0:18:22 > 0:18:26That little old lady was the 77-year-old nun
0:18:26 > 0:18:28Mother Teresa of Calcutta,
0:18:28 > 0:18:30who had won the Nobel Peace Prize
0:18:30 > 0:18:33for her work with India's urban poor.
0:18:37 > 0:18:41Her destination that freezing April night was this place,
0:18:41 > 0:18:45then the site of Waterloo's infamous Bullring roundabout,
0:18:45 > 0:18:48a dingy, forbidding maze of concrete underpasses
0:18:48 > 0:18:51that, by the late 1980s, had become home
0:18:51 > 0:18:54to some of the capital's very poorest people.
0:18:56 > 0:18:58"How," asked Mother Teresa,
0:18:58 > 0:19:01"could somewhere in the very heart of First World London
0:19:01 > 0:19:04"look so much like Third World Calcutta?"
0:19:10 > 0:19:13The next day, Mother Teresa went to Downing Street
0:19:13 > 0:19:15to share her views with the Prime Minister.
0:19:17 > 0:19:21Did you get the impression when you saw Mrs Thatcher that she was as aware of the problem as you are?
0:19:22 > 0:19:24I think she knows.
0:19:24 > 0:19:27I think she knows, but her attitude is different.
0:19:27 > 0:19:30My attitude is different. She's a...
0:19:31 > 0:19:34..government person. She's at the top level.
0:19:34 > 0:19:36I'm at the service of our people.
0:19:36 > 0:19:39I'm one of them.
0:19:41 > 0:19:45Mrs Thatcher handled her tricky meeting with Mother Teresa
0:19:45 > 0:19:47with a politician's natural cunning.
0:19:47 > 0:19:52She had, she said, the greatest respect and affection for Mother Teresa,
0:19:52 > 0:19:56even if we might disagree with her on one or two things.
0:19:56 > 0:19:59But it was one of her junior ministers,
0:19:59 > 0:20:01Sir George Young, Baronet,
0:20:01 > 0:20:03who seemed to confirm all the very worst suspicions
0:20:03 > 0:20:07about the government's attitude towards the homeless.
0:20:07 > 0:20:09"The homeless?" he said.
0:20:09 > 0:20:12"Aren't they the sort of people that you step over
0:20:12 > 0:20:14"as you're coming out of the opera?"
0:20:18 > 0:20:21I live underneath the Royal Festival Hall...
0:20:22 > 0:20:24..in this place that they call a bash.
0:20:24 > 0:20:28So far, I've been here about four or five months.
0:20:30 > 0:20:33I'm not really sure whose fault it is that I'm here.
0:20:33 > 0:20:36But it's got to be somebody's fault.
0:20:36 > 0:20:40Some politicians might suggest that it's your fault.
0:20:40 > 0:20:44Some politicians have got a very nice job with very nice money.
0:20:45 > 0:20:48Probably very nice houses as well.
0:20:48 > 0:20:52But I think they need to look at homelessness in a more serious way.
0:20:54 > 0:20:57Today, there's a common conception
0:20:57 > 0:21:00of '80s Britain as a deeply uncaring society,
0:21:00 > 0:21:02a land ruled by selfish individualism.
0:21:02 > 0:21:06But I think that's one of those cliches that doesn't quite stand up.
0:21:06 > 0:21:08You see, whatever you think of the government,
0:21:08 > 0:21:12most ordinary people weren't selfish individualists at all.
0:21:12 > 0:21:14In fact, the mid-'80s was something
0:21:14 > 0:21:16of a golden age of popular philanthropy,
0:21:16 > 0:21:20with millions of us dressing up and doing our bit.
0:21:20 > 0:21:24Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to a night of Comic Relief.
0:21:24 > 0:21:27- Yes, my name is Griff Rhys Jones. - And my name is Mel Smith.
0:21:33 > 0:21:37Comic Relief was just one of several charity telethons that dominated
0:21:37 > 0:21:39British television in the late 1980s.
0:21:43 > 0:21:45From Live Aid to Children In Need,
0:21:45 > 0:21:49this was philanthropy as peak-time mass-market entertainment.
0:21:51 > 0:21:53And the public response was simply extraordinary.
0:21:55 > 0:21:58Our total so far is...
0:22:08 > 0:22:11Now, there were of course plenty of sceptics,
0:22:11 > 0:22:14people who argued that this was merely the privatisation
0:22:14 > 0:22:17of compassion, and an opportunity for rich celebrities
0:22:17 > 0:22:20to flaunt their principles.
0:22:20 > 0:22:24But Comic Relief's organisers insisted they were only stepping in
0:22:24 > 0:22:26because Mrs Thatcher's government
0:22:26 > 0:22:29had so conspicuously failed to deal with poverty,
0:22:29 > 0:22:33not just abroad, but right here in Britain.
0:22:34 > 0:22:36Do you know exactly where you're sleeping tonight?
0:22:36 > 0:22:38Well, over 80,000 children in Britain
0:22:38 > 0:22:41have to ask themselves that question every night.
0:22:45 > 0:22:50In 1990, the charity Crisis commissioned a cinema advert
0:22:50 > 0:22:53to highlight the continuing plight of London's homeless.
0:22:57 > 0:23:01People were used to seeing cinema adverts for cars, for cigarettes,
0:23:01 > 0:23:04even for their local curry houses,
0:23:04 > 0:23:07but never before had cinemas screened an advert for a charity,
0:23:07 > 0:23:11let alone one made with such stark visual flair.
0:23:14 > 0:23:18The fact that Crisis had chosen to spend so much money on an advert
0:23:18 > 0:23:20was of course immensely revealing.
0:23:20 > 0:23:25Britain in the '80s was a country defined by the sheer power of the adman's image,
0:23:25 > 0:23:28all the way from your favourite chocolate to - why not? -
0:23:28 > 0:23:30your favourite charity.
0:23:30 > 0:23:33Advertising agencies now claimed that what really mattered
0:23:33 > 0:23:37wasn't where you'd come from, it was what brands you bought.
0:23:37 > 0:23:43Now, in my case, that meant in Insignia deodorant, Reebok trainers
0:23:43 > 0:23:45and Mars...bars.
0:23:47 > 0:23:51# A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play.#
0:23:55 > 0:23:59But the most surprising convert to the gospel of advertising
0:23:59 > 0:24:02was this man, Neil Kinnock.
0:24:03 > 0:24:08After Labour's catastrophic defeat by Margaret Thatcher in 1983,
0:24:08 > 0:24:10the party had turned to this affable Welshman
0:24:10 > 0:24:13as the man to lead them out of the wilderness.
0:24:16 > 0:24:19At the time, Kinnock was seen as a media friendly figure,
0:24:19 > 0:24:22the perfect choice to win over a suspicious press.
0:24:22 > 0:24:24- Do you want a real scoop? - Go on, then.
0:24:24 > 0:24:26I walked on the water over there.
0:24:26 > 0:24:31Alas, his first PR stunt, only hours before his coronation,
0:24:31 > 0:24:33was something of a disaster.
0:24:33 > 0:24:35# If I should stumble
0:24:37 > 0:24:39# Catch my fall
0:24:39 > 0:24:41# Catch my fall...#
0:24:42 > 0:24:45Not quite the statesman-like image he was looking for.
0:24:48 > 0:24:52Poor old Neil. But once Neil Kinnock had dried himself off,
0:24:52 > 0:24:55he had to face the fact that his party, too,
0:24:55 > 0:24:57needed something of a makeover.
0:24:57 > 0:24:59You see, for Labour, the early 1980s
0:24:59 > 0:25:02had been nothing short of catastrophic.
0:25:02 > 0:25:06Surveys found that the party was seen as irredeemably old-fashioned,
0:25:06 > 0:25:10as stuck in the smoky, stagnant world of the 1970s,
0:25:10 > 0:25:15and as horribly out of touch with ambitious young voters.
0:25:15 > 0:25:19So in the build-up to the next general election in 1987,
0:25:19 > 0:25:23Kinnock took on two young men who knew all about the power of image.
0:25:28 > 0:25:31One was a former TV producer called Peter Mandelson.
0:25:32 > 0:25:35The other was Oscar-winning director Hugh Hudson,
0:25:35 > 0:25:38who'd made Chariots Of Fire.
0:25:38 > 0:25:41And they designed a campaign to compete with Mrs Thatcher's
0:25:41 > 0:25:46famously slick packaging at the hands of admen Saatchi & Saatchi.
0:25:48 > 0:25:52Out went the red flag, in came the red rose.
0:25:53 > 0:25:55Out went the cheap grey suits...
0:25:57 > 0:25:59..in came smart dark tailoring,
0:25:59 > 0:26:02the kind of thing you might wear to work in the City.
0:26:02 > 0:26:04# You've got the look
0:26:04 > 0:26:06# You've got the look...#
0:26:12 > 0:26:14To sell Kinnock to the nation,
0:26:14 > 0:26:17Hugh Hudson made a short film that would go down in history.
0:26:24 > 0:26:29I think that the real privilege of being strong
0:26:29 > 0:26:33is the power that it gives you to help people who are not strong.
0:26:33 > 0:26:38The result was the single most celebrated party political broadcast ever made,
0:26:38 > 0:26:41although perhaps that's not really saying very much.
0:26:41 > 0:26:44It was nicknamed Kinnock - The Movie.
0:26:44 > 0:26:47And Hugh Hudson shot the opening here
0:26:47 > 0:26:49on the Great Orme in North Wales.
0:26:58 > 0:27:00Now, Hugh Hudson was no fool.
0:27:00 > 0:27:04He knew that Neil Kinnock and the sea had an unfortunate history.
0:27:04 > 0:27:07So Kinnock was firmly installed on a rock,
0:27:07 > 0:27:10under strict instructions not to move.
0:27:10 > 0:27:14This time there could be no walking on water.
0:27:14 > 0:27:16I'm married to
0:27:16 > 0:27:20a woman of high intelligence and great independence.
0:27:20 > 0:27:23And immense warmth.
0:27:23 > 0:27:25And I wouldn't want to be married to anybody
0:27:25 > 0:27:28who didn't have those qualities.
0:27:28 > 0:27:33Under Hudson's direction, Kinnock gave an Oscar-worthy performance.
0:27:33 > 0:27:36But not everyone was bowled over.
0:27:36 > 0:27:40From Hugh Hudson, the maker of Chariots Of Fire and Revolution,
0:27:40 > 0:27:45comes Progressive Social Change But Nothing Too Radical.
0:27:45 > 0:27:47Neil Kinnock IS Kinnock.
0:27:49 > 0:27:51A man with an impossible dream.
0:27:51 > 0:27:54A man with a rather fruity wife.
0:27:54 > 0:27:56A man with a new advertising agency.
0:27:58 > 0:28:00Of course Spitting Image were bang on,
0:28:00 > 0:28:03because what Kinnock - The Movie really represented
0:28:03 > 0:28:06was the triumph of style over substance.
0:28:06 > 0:28:08The funny thing about that film, you know,
0:28:08 > 0:28:10is that for all Hugh Hudson's visual flair,
0:28:10 > 0:28:15Neil Kinnock only won 31% of the vote in the 1987 election.
0:28:15 > 0:28:19Even so, I think Kinnock - The Movie is enormously revealing, because it
0:28:19 > 0:28:22shows just how much British politics,
0:28:22 > 0:28:27even the Labour Party, once so scathing about commercialism
0:28:27 > 0:28:31and consumerism, had been seduced by the adman's aesthetic.
0:28:39 > 0:28:42But now that Labour had moved towards the centre ground,
0:28:42 > 0:28:44whatever had happened to that old '60s dream
0:28:44 > 0:28:48of standing up to authority and defying the Establishment?
0:28:51 > 0:28:53Well, even in late '80s Britain,
0:28:53 > 0:28:56the flame of youthful rebellion was still alight.
0:28:56 > 0:28:59All you had to do was head to your local record shop.
0:29:02 > 0:29:06If you had wandered into one of those record shops in August 1988,
0:29:06 > 0:29:09then you might well have picked up one of these little flyers.
0:29:09 > 0:29:12Funnily enough, even though they were freely available,
0:29:12 > 0:29:15they purported to be exclusive party invitations.
0:29:15 > 0:29:20"Apocalypse Now. Please note, no invite, no entry.
0:29:20 > 0:29:24"Private function. Absolutely no alcohol on sale."
0:29:24 > 0:29:26No booze? What kind of a party was that?
0:29:27 > 0:29:32But then, in 1988, very few people had heard of acid house parties.
0:29:32 > 0:29:34# What people really want to know
0:29:34 > 0:29:38# Is how the story all goes about acid... #
0:29:41 > 0:29:45Inspired by the music played in the gay clubs of Chicago and Detroit,
0:29:45 > 0:29:49acid house had impeccable anti-Establishment credentials.
0:29:51 > 0:29:54And like so many youth subcultures,
0:29:54 > 0:29:58it had a very pronounced sense of its own importance.
0:29:58 > 0:30:01Here, insisted its devotees,
0:30:01 > 0:30:04was a genuinely egalitarian counterculture.
0:30:04 > 0:30:07Black and white, rich and poor, gay and straight,
0:30:07 > 0:30:10just like the hippies of the 1960s.
0:30:10 > 0:30:12Well, sort of.
0:30:14 > 0:30:19But for many bored and disaffected teenagers growing up in Margaret Thatcher's Britain,
0:30:19 > 0:30:23rave offered a heady blend of idealism and escapism.
0:30:24 > 0:30:26Saturday night in south London.
0:30:26 > 0:30:29Hundreds of young people are gathering for the latest craze,
0:30:29 > 0:30:32an acid house party in a disused warehouse.
0:30:32 > 0:30:34Coaches will take them to a destination
0:30:34 > 0:30:38which is deliberately being kept secret to evade the police.
0:30:38 > 0:30:43- Where do you think you're going to? - Mystery tour.- We don't know.
0:30:43 > 0:30:46- That's why it's a mystery. - That's the mystery about it.
0:30:46 > 0:30:48This is acid, man.
0:30:52 > 0:30:57The man behind the Apocalypse Now party was a young promoter called Tony Colston-Hayter,
0:30:57 > 0:31:00and it was this enterprising young man
0:31:00 > 0:31:04who turned the underground rave scene into a tabloid phenomenon...
0:31:05 > 0:31:08..because as well as inviting 3,000 youngsters
0:31:08 > 0:31:14to his supposedly exclusive party, he also invited an ITN news crew.
0:31:14 > 0:31:16The one we went to, held in a disused warehouse,
0:31:16 > 0:31:183,000 people turned up.
0:31:19 > 0:31:24£5 to get in, 3,000 people. It's big money for the organisers.
0:31:27 > 0:31:30At first, the press treated acid house as a refreshing change
0:31:30 > 0:31:33from the traditional weekend booze-up.
0:31:33 > 0:31:35Britain's bestselling newspaper, the Sun,
0:31:35 > 0:31:39even came up with a rave-themed cash-in of its own.
0:31:39 > 0:31:42"It's groovy and cool - it's our acid house T-shirt!
0:31:42 > 0:31:45"Only £5.50, man."
0:31:46 > 0:31:50But only five days later, amid reports of rampant drug-taking,
0:31:50 > 0:31:53the Sun pulled off a spectacular U-turn.
0:31:53 > 0:31:55Groovy and cool? Not a bit of it.
0:31:57 > 0:31:59"Evil of ecstasy.
0:31:59 > 0:32:03"Danger drug that is sweeping discos and ruining lives."
0:32:07 > 0:32:10Acid house music has been described as a sinister and evil cult.
0:32:10 > 0:32:13One person has died after taking ecstasy,
0:32:13 > 0:32:15a drug associated with the music.
0:32:15 > 0:32:19- It must affect the brain in some way.- Unless it's just the music that does it.
0:32:19 > 0:32:23All them lights flashing don't do you any good either, do it?
0:32:23 > 0:32:25I wouldn't even go in a pub where them lights are.
0:32:25 > 0:32:27- No, no.- They drive you mad, don't they?
0:32:32 > 0:32:36As the moral panic mounted and the police cracked down,
0:32:36 > 0:32:39rave organisers began to evade the authorities by moving their parties
0:32:39 > 0:32:46out of the cities and onto the fields and airstrips surrounding the new London orbital, the M25.
0:32:51 > 0:32:54So, if you're on the way to a rave,
0:32:54 > 0:32:58you'd set off and then, en route, you'd pull over at a petrol station
0:32:58 > 0:33:00and you'd ring the number on your flyer.
0:33:00 > 0:33:02And then, and only then,
0:33:02 > 0:33:07would you be given the last-minute recorded instructions on how to find the party.
0:33:12 > 0:33:15And then, armed with some suitable refreshments - bottle of water,
0:33:15 > 0:33:18chewing gum - you get back in your car...
0:33:21 > 0:33:23..swallow a pill...
0:33:25 > 0:33:27Headache pill, naturally.
0:33:27 > 0:33:30All those repetitive beats gave me a bit of a headache.
0:33:30 > 0:33:33# I can feel it coming in the air tonight... #
0:33:33 > 0:33:35..and head off into the night in search of your party.
0:33:46 > 0:33:52Sometimes the only clue was a laser beam emanating from some farmer's field.
0:33:52 > 0:33:56Soon, it really wasn't that hard to find your rave.
0:33:58 > 0:34:00By the summer of 1989,
0:34:00 > 0:34:04Tony Colston-Hayter's raves, with their state-of-the-art light shows
0:34:04 > 0:34:06and enormous funfairs,
0:34:06 > 0:34:09were attracting some 20,000 paying customers.
0:34:12 > 0:34:16And now the enterprising mastermind behind these money-spinning raves
0:34:16 > 0:34:19was invited onto prime-time TV,
0:34:19 > 0:34:21where he proudly championed
0:34:21 > 0:34:24the cause of a genuine teenage rebellion.
0:34:24 > 0:34:26There's going to be a rebellion.
0:34:26 > 0:34:29There is going to be... Eventually, the press and the authorities
0:34:29 > 0:34:33and the government and general society will get the rebellion they want.
0:34:33 > 0:34:35They want to have that youth... Hold on one second.
0:34:35 > 0:34:39- Voice of rebellion, as you can tell. - They want to have...
0:34:39 > 0:34:41Sadly, neither Jonathan Ross nor his other guest,
0:34:41 > 0:34:45the music journalist Paul Morley, seemed terribly impressed.
0:34:45 > 0:34:47..Which has been used by the government...
0:34:47 > 0:34:50- I can't listen to you with that hat on.- Oh, come on!- Get off!
0:34:50 > 0:34:54It's pathetic. Get that hat off. Talk seriously.
0:34:54 > 0:34:57Listen, calm down or they'll all be at home putting their Good Life videos on.
0:34:57 > 0:34:59SHRIEKS
0:34:59 > 0:35:02Hold it. You do that again, I'm going to thump you.
0:35:02 > 0:35:05All right? And I'm not joking. So put it down and behave yourself.
0:35:05 > 0:35:08APPLAUSE
0:35:08 > 0:35:11- Listen...- Thatcher's Britain... - Thatcher's Britain indeed.
0:35:11 > 0:35:14Paul Morley had certainly got the measure of Tony Colston-Hayter,
0:35:14 > 0:35:17because in the hands of people like Colston-Hayter,
0:35:17 > 0:35:21acid had been turned into a glossy, entrepreneurial product,
0:35:21 > 0:35:27teenage hedonism repackaged as pure commercial entertainment.
0:35:27 > 0:35:30"Maggie should be proud of us," Colston-Hayter once said.
0:35:30 > 0:35:33"We're a product of her enterprise culture."
0:35:42 > 0:35:46In 1987, another warehouse on the outskirts of Warrington
0:35:46 > 0:35:50had become the venue for a much more enduring social revolution,
0:35:50 > 0:35:53fuelled not by MDMA, but by MDF.
0:35:57 > 0:36:00The revolution began one bright October morning,
0:36:00 > 0:36:02spearheaded by a group of young men and women
0:36:02 > 0:36:04wearing traditional Swedish dress
0:36:04 > 0:36:07and trembling with nervous anticipation.
0:36:12 > 0:36:15They really didn't know what was about to hit them.
0:36:15 > 0:36:17You see, this was the opening of a new superstore
0:36:17 > 0:36:21that was about to become a fixture of national life,
0:36:21 > 0:36:25perhaps the ultimate symbol of our obsession with cheapness,
0:36:25 > 0:36:28convenience and home improvement.
0:36:28 > 0:36:30At the time, nobody had even heard of...
0:36:30 > 0:36:32Well, how did you pronounce it?
0:36:32 > 0:36:34Ick-EA? Eye-KEA?
0:36:34 > 0:36:36And if you thought pronouncing the name was hard, well,
0:36:36 > 0:36:40just wait until you try to put together the flat-pack furniture.
0:36:42 > 0:36:46To Britain's traditional old-fashioned furniture stores,
0:36:46 > 0:36:49the Swedish invaders represented a mortal challenge.
0:36:51 > 0:36:54There's a new threat to the sluggish British market.
0:36:54 > 0:36:57IKEA, the huge Swedish furnishing group,
0:36:57 > 0:37:00has at last opened in Britain.
0:37:00 > 0:37:04Its megastore in Warrington dwarfs anything we have here at the moment.
0:37:06 > 0:37:10IKEA was more than just a retailer, it was a destination in itself.
0:37:10 > 0:37:14You know, I'm not ashamed to admit that, on Saturday afternoons,
0:37:14 > 0:37:17my brother and I used to persuade our parents to take us to the IKEA
0:37:17 > 0:37:20in Wednesbury so that we could waste our pocket money on cheap
0:37:20 > 0:37:24desk equipment that we didn't really need and would never use.
0:37:27 > 0:37:31'So what can IKEA teach us about stimulating the urge for furniture?
0:37:32 > 0:37:36'For one, it hands out 44 million free catalogues every year.
0:37:36 > 0:37:38'Then there's the family atmosphere.
0:37:38 > 0:37:40'Children get red-carpet treatment.'
0:37:48 > 0:37:52Since opening his first store in Sweden in 1958,
0:37:52 > 0:37:54Ingvar Kamprad's guiding principle
0:37:54 > 0:37:59had been to create better everyday lives for the many people.
0:38:00 > 0:38:04And IKEA did just that, offering families all over Britain
0:38:04 > 0:38:08contemporary design at an astonishingly low price.
0:38:11 > 0:38:16I remember finding the unpronounceable names almost impossibly glamorous.
0:38:16 > 0:38:19Sore. What a great name for a lamp.
0:38:21 > 0:38:24Nodvandig. That says bowl to me.
0:38:24 > 0:38:27What better name for a cushion than
0:38:27 > 0:38:29Tillfalle Fjadrar?
0:38:29 > 0:38:31Although personally,
0:38:31 > 0:38:35I always preferred a Gurli. Or perhaps a Mulig.
0:38:35 > 0:38:39And while British designers were still peddling chintzy nostalgia,
0:38:39 > 0:38:44IKEA's cool modernism represented something refreshingly daring.
0:38:44 > 0:38:48And of course, what IKEA was selling wasn't really just furniture.
0:38:48 > 0:38:52It was an aspirational European lifestyle,
0:38:52 > 0:38:55because by buying your Varv,
0:38:55 > 0:38:59you were identifying yourself as somebody who was ahead of the game,
0:38:59 > 0:39:02a connoisseur of cutting-edge design.
0:39:05 > 0:39:08But before you unveiled your new streamlined Swedish look,
0:39:08 > 0:39:11you had to get to grips with, well,
0:39:11 > 0:39:16minimalist instructions on how to assemble your new flat-pack chair.
0:39:18 > 0:39:21'Your typical Swedish family man has two children,
0:39:21 > 0:39:25'drives a Volvo and spends four times as much on furniture as the average Briton.'
0:39:25 > 0:39:28'Oh, no. I hate the screws.
0:39:33 > 0:39:37'Chances are he shops at IKEA and is a keen do-it-yourself-er.
0:39:38 > 0:39:43'It took Anders Moberg ten minutes to put this chair together.'
0:39:44 > 0:39:46It's sort of like that.
0:39:54 > 0:39:57Ah! All my own work.
0:40:00 > 0:40:03# What is love? #
0:40:03 > 0:40:06But IKEA wasn't to everyone's taste.
0:40:06 > 0:40:09And if there's one person that you can bet
0:40:09 > 0:40:12would never have been seen dead squatting over
0:40:12 > 0:40:16a Scandinavian flat pack, it was the Prime Minister.
0:40:16 > 0:40:19Her decorative style was less European minimalism,
0:40:19 > 0:40:21more Laura Ashley.
0:40:21 > 0:40:24'Everything is in light-pastel shades.
0:40:24 > 0:40:26'Mrs Thatcher hates dark colours.
0:40:26 > 0:40:29'Chintzy, very British, very understated.'
0:40:29 > 0:40:33# How do you say...gorgeous! #
0:40:33 > 0:40:35And in this, as in so much else,
0:40:35 > 0:40:38she remained adamant that British was best.
0:40:46 > 0:40:49But in the same year IKEA opened in Britain,
0:40:49 > 0:40:52work began on a major project that rather challenged Mrs Thatcher's
0:40:52 > 0:40:54bulldog spirit...
0:40:57 > 0:41:01..the Channel Tunnel, linking us directly to Europe for the first time.
0:41:04 > 0:41:07In public, the Prime Minister was all for it.
0:41:07 > 0:41:12It will be absolutely historic, and we hope on time.
0:41:12 > 0:41:16But she was rather less enthusiastic at the thought of Britain becoming
0:41:16 > 0:41:19just another Continental country.
0:41:19 > 0:41:23We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the State
0:41:23 > 0:41:27in Britain, only to see them reimposed at European level,
0:41:27 > 0:41:29with a European superstate
0:41:29 > 0:41:32exercising a new dominance from Brussels.
0:41:33 > 0:41:38And of course, what IKEA represented was precisely Mrs Thatcher's
0:41:38 > 0:41:42nightmare vision of a blandly uniform European Union.
0:41:42 > 0:41:45After all, what IKEA were selling here in Warrington,
0:41:45 > 0:41:49they were are also selling in every other European country.
0:41:49 > 0:41:52Walk into an IKEA living room and you could be in Malmo,
0:41:52 > 0:41:55you could be in Milan, you could be in Middlesbrough...
0:41:55 > 0:41:57if you were really lucky.
0:42:06 > 0:42:10# Young Parisians are so French
0:42:10 > 0:42:13# They love Patti Smith... #
0:42:13 > 0:42:16But despite Mrs Thatcher's reservations,
0:42:16 > 0:42:19European taste was now all the rage.
0:42:19 > 0:42:22# At the Champs-Elysees... #
0:42:22 > 0:42:24And by the late '80s,
0:42:24 > 0:42:28our high streets were awash with brasseries and bistros.
0:42:29 > 0:42:31Merci.
0:42:31 > 0:42:33Safely installed at your table,
0:42:33 > 0:42:36you might even think yourself in the heart of gay Paris itself.
0:42:36 > 0:42:41Time now to enjoy some of those seductively sophisticated luxuries
0:42:41 > 0:42:44that advertisers have been telling you about.
0:42:44 > 0:42:49Remember du pain, du vin, du Boursin?
0:42:49 > 0:42:51# She is so witty, so pretty
0:42:51 > 0:42:53# I may be a fool
0:42:53 > 0:42:56# And the world can fall. #
0:42:56 > 0:42:59Du pain, du vin, du Boursin.
0:42:59 > 0:43:01- J'aime bien.- Mm!
0:43:03 > 0:43:09And who can ever forget the ads for that very finest of French wines?
0:43:09 > 0:43:13Les Francais adore Le Piat d'Or.
0:43:13 > 0:43:18In fact, far from adoring Le Piat d'Or,
0:43:18 > 0:43:21the French have never actually heard of Le Piat d'Or.
0:43:21 > 0:43:25But the admen would never let a little detail like that get in the way
0:43:25 > 0:43:28because, to us in Britain, Frenchness meant elegance, glamour,
0:43:28 > 0:43:30a certain je ne sais quoi.
0:43:32 > 0:43:34But what if you didn't drink wine?
0:43:35 > 0:43:38Well, for teetotallers, there was this refreshing alternative.
0:43:41 > 0:43:43And now that the genie was out of the bottle,
0:43:43 > 0:43:48Mrs Thatcher's hostility to Europe was looking decidedly passe.
0:43:54 > 0:43:59And in 1989, Mrs Thatcher's dream of a proudly United Kingdom,
0:43:59 > 0:44:03with its own distinctive customs and identity, came under attack,
0:44:03 > 0:44:07not from across the Channel but from much closer to home,
0:44:07 > 0:44:10because in that year she made Scotland a testing ground
0:44:10 > 0:44:15for perhaps the most controversial policy of all.
0:44:21 > 0:44:24She called it the community charge.
0:44:24 > 0:44:27She made her ministers call it the community charge.
0:44:27 > 0:44:29Nobody else called it the community charge.
0:44:29 > 0:44:31They called it the poll tax.
0:44:31 > 0:44:34Maggie, Maggie, Maggie.
0:44:34 > 0:44:36MANY: Out! Out! Out!
0:44:36 > 0:44:39THEY CHANT
0:44:39 > 0:44:42Thousands of people have marched through the centre of Edinburgh to
0:44:42 > 0:44:44demonstrate against the community charge,
0:44:44 > 0:44:47or poll tax, which comes into effect in Scotland today.
0:44:47 > 0:44:51Protesters turned out in force to dispel any doubts about the strength of feeling
0:44:51 > 0:44:54against the community charge in Scotland.
0:44:54 > 0:44:5710,000 were expected - nearly double that number came.
0:44:59 > 0:45:03Never in modern times had any government initiative
0:45:03 > 0:45:05driven such a wedge between the Westminster political elite
0:45:05 > 0:45:08and ordinary people in Scotland.
0:45:09 > 0:45:11They should have paid it first.
0:45:11 > 0:45:15- Them in the south, where all the money is.- I think it's the most...
0:45:16 > 0:45:20..terrible tax since the days of William the Bastard.
0:45:20 > 0:45:23It's a shambles, you know. We shouldn't be paying it at all.
0:45:25 > 0:45:28The poll tax inflamed Scottish opinion
0:45:28 > 0:45:31and gave an overnight boost to the Scottish National Party,
0:45:31 > 0:45:34then a fairly marginal force.
0:45:34 > 0:45:38And the SNP seized on the protests as a way of whipping up local support.
0:45:38 > 0:45:43We can't pay, we won't pay and we must not pay.
0:45:43 > 0:45:47We can win, we will win, because we must win.
0:45:49 > 0:45:53Over the next few months, the SNP whipped up public outrage,
0:45:53 > 0:45:58encouraging thousands of people to set fire to their poll tax demands.
0:45:58 > 0:46:02Why, they asked, should Scotland be used as a laboratory by a government
0:46:02 > 0:46:04for which most Scots have never voted,
0:46:04 > 0:46:08a government that barely seemed to know that Scotland even existed?
0:46:09 > 0:46:11What is Scotland?
0:46:11 > 0:46:14Erm, it's that island off the Falklands, isn't it?
0:46:14 > 0:46:17No, no, no, Scotland! It's that place up north.
0:46:17 > 0:46:21North? North... Refresh my memory, Hurd.
0:46:22 > 0:46:24Here!
0:46:24 > 0:46:26Oh, you mean the testing ground.
0:46:26 > 0:46:30- Oh, my God, yes. - DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS
0:46:30 > 0:46:32Now, the irony is that Mrs Thatcher
0:46:32 > 0:46:36actually thought that she was doing the Scots a favour.
0:46:36 > 0:46:39She launched the poll tax a year earlier in Scotland
0:46:39 > 0:46:42to please the local Tories, who were increasingly worried
0:46:42 > 0:46:44about public hostility to the old rates.
0:46:44 > 0:46:49She genuinely thought this was going to be a fairer system,
0:46:49 > 0:46:52one based on people rather than on property.
0:46:52 > 0:46:55So, if there were ten people living in the street, she thought,
0:46:55 > 0:46:57they all used council services,
0:46:57 > 0:47:00and so they should all face the same charge.
0:47:00 > 0:47:01But up and down the country,
0:47:01 > 0:47:05millions of ordinary people saw things rather differently.
0:47:07 > 0:47:10How can they justify that the Sultan of Oman,
0:47:10 > 0:47:14who lives in a £10 million mansion,
0:47:14 > 0:47:18he is only going to pay about £800,
0:47:18 > 0:47:23my sister and I live in a mobile home and we're going to pay,
0:47:23 > 0:47:25twice, about £477?
0:47:25 > 0:47:27- THEY CHANT:- No poll tax!
0:47:27 > 0:47:29No poll tax!
0:47:29 > 0:47:31By the summer of 1990,
0:47:31 > 0:47:34the poll tax had been introduced in England and Wales,
0:47:34 > 0:47:39and now even the Tory heartland of Windsor and Maidenhead
0:47:39 > 0:47:41was in open revolt.
0:47:41 > 0:47:43Will you be paying the community charge?
0:47:43 > 0:47:45- No.- No.- There is no way.
0:47:45 > 0:47:46No way.
0:47:46 > 0:47:50That means that you may be taken to court, you may end up in jail.
0:47:50 > 0:47:53Very well, we'll go to court and we'll end up in jail.
0:47:53 > 0:47:55If they so dare.
0:47:56 > 0:47:58MUSIC: Step On by the Happy Mondays
0:48:01 > 0:48:04The protests reached a violent climax in Trafalgar Square
0:48:04 > 0:48:07on 31st March 1990.
0:48:07 > 0:48:10'There's been serious rioting in central London.
0:48:10 > 0:48:12'More than 100 people have been injured after
0:48:12 > 0:48:16'a mass demonstration against the poll tax ended in violence.'
0:48:18 > 0:48:21The '80s had seen more than their fair share of urban riots,
0:48:21 > 0:48:23but nothing like this.
0:48:25 > 0:48:28This wasn't a deprived inner-city neighbourhood,
0:48:28 > 0:48:31this was the centre of the nation's capital
0:48:31 > 0:48:35on a sunny Saturday afternoon, turned into a bloody battlefield.
0:48:40 > 0:48:43But if the poll tax riots had come as a shock,
0:48:43 > 0:48:46many people feared that even worse was to come.
0:48:49 > 0:48:52# Rule Britannia Britannia rules the waves
0:48:52 > 0:48:55# Britain never, never, never shall be slaves
0:48:55 > 0:48:57# England! #
0:48:58 > 0:49:00MUSIC: U Can't Touch This by MC Hammer
0:49:01 > 0:49:03Because only two months later,
0:49:03 > 0:49:06thousands of young Englishmen were on their way to Italy
0:49:06 > 0:49:10to cheer on their heroes in the 1990 World Cup.
0:49:10 > 0:49:13'England's notorious band of followers on the road again,
0:49:13 > 0:49:16'carrying their own brand of nationalism to a city
0:49:16 > 0:49:18'that has every reason to
0:49:18 > 0:49:20'be wary of those who follow English football.'
0:49:24 > 0:49:27Throughout the 1980s, England's fans had disgraced themselves
0:49:27 > 0:49:30at one international tournament after another,
0:49:30 > 0:49:33causing Mrs Thatcher great embarrassment, and turning
0:49:33 > 0:49:37English football into our most shameful national export.
0:49:37 > 0:49:41'England's walking wounded were back on the training ground today.'
0:49:41 > 0:49:44And as the players prepared for their opening games,
0:49:44 > 0:49:46the pressure could hardly have been greater,
0:49:46 > 0:49:48not least from the British press,
0:49:48 > 0:49:52who treated the early performances with withering scorn.
0:49:54 > 0:49:57But in the youngest member of the squad,
0:49:57 > 0:50:01England's manager Bobby Robson had found a rare jewel -
0:50:01 > 0:50:06Paul Gascoigne, a rough diamond from the industrial north-east.
0:50:06 > 0:50:07A bit of a clown...
0:50:07 > 0:50:10LAUGHTER
0:50:10 > 0:50:13..but a breath of fresh air in a game that, for more than a decade,
0:50:13 > 0:50:15had been blighted by violence.
0:50:23 > 0:50:27And all of a sudden, armed with a remarkably good official song,
0:50:27 > 0:50:29England began to look like world beaters.
0:50:32 > 0:50:33# Express yourself
0:50:33 > 0:50:35# It's one on one
0:50:35 > 0:50:37# Express yourself
0:50:37 > 0:50:39# It's one on one... #
0:50:39 > 0:50:40England, Egypt - 1-0.
0:50:40 > 0:50:43England, Belgium - 1,0,
0:50:43 > 0:50:46with a goal in the last minute of extra time.
0:50:46 > 0:50:50England, Cameroon, 2-1 down, with seven minutes to go,
0:50:50 > 0:50:52final score 3-2 to England.
0:50:52 > 0:50:57And now, almost out of nowhere, England were in the semifinals.
0:50:57 > 0:51:0290 minutes from destiny, 90 minutes from a place in the World Cup final,
0:51:02 > 0:51:08and the only thing standing in our way, the old enemy, the Germans.
0:51:10 > 0:51:12'Those are the England players
0:51:12 > 0:51:15'who walk out for the most important match
0:51:15 > 0:51:19'our international team have played since 1966.'
0:51:20 > 0:51:2426 million people were watching that night,
0:51:24 > 0:51:28with thousands congregating in pubs to cheer on the boys in white.
0:51:28 > 0:51:32MUSIC: Nessun Dorma by Luciano Pavarotti
0:51:32 > 0:51:34'Deflected...'
0:51:36 > 0:51:39The Germans went flukily ahead.
0:51:39 > 0:51:41England came fighting back.
0:51:41 > 0:51:43- 'And it's gone in!'- Yes!
0:51:43 > 0:51:45THEY CHEER
0:51:47 > 0:51:49'Oh, dear.'
0:51:49 > 0:51:52But then, famously, poor old Gazza
0:51:52 > 0:51:56picked up a yellow card that ruled him out of the final,
0:51:56 > 0:51:58and promptly burst into tears.
0:51:58 > 0:52:02And all over England, eyes welled up.
0:52:02 > 0:52:05At last, with the score still 1-1,
0:52:05 > 0:52:07it was down to a penalty shootout.
0:52:10 > 0:52:12And we all know what happened next.
0:52:22 > 0:52:25Oddly enough, though, the result of that game hardly mattered,
0:52:25 > 0:52:28although it certainly didn't feel that way at the time,
0:52:28 > 0:52:32because I think that night, 4th July 1990,
0:52:32 > 0:52:36was a transformative moment in our modern cultural history.
0:52:36 > 0:52:39In one evening, English football threw off its reputation
0:52:39 > 0:52:42as the game of thugs and hooligans
0:52:42 > 0:52:44and was reborn as pure spectacle,
0:52:44 > 0:52:49appealing to young and old, rich and poor, men and women alike.
0:52:49 > 0:52:52And today, England's Premier League is not just
0:52:52 > 0:52:55the most watched sporting league anywhere in the world,
0:52:55 > 0:52:58it's one our most successful exports of any kind,
0:52:58 > 0:53:02a gigantic carousel of money and melodrama.
0:53:08 > 0:53:12By the time the team returned home, disappointed but undaunted,
0:53:12 > 0:53:14Gazza-mania was in full swing.
0:53:16 > 0:53:19But while England's footballers were now national heroes,
0:53:19 > 0:53:22reborn in the eyes of an adoring public,
0:53:22 > 0:53:25the Prime Minister's popularity was in freefall.
0:53:27 > 0:53:29Britain is in serious recession,
0:53:29 > 0:53:32and business confidence is at its lowest level for ten years
0:53:32 > 0:53:35according to the Confederation of British Industry.
0:53:38 > 0:53:42The mid-'80s boom had long since burst,
0:53:42 > 0:53:44the economy was sliding into recession,
0:53:44 > 0:53:47and the poll tax had eaten away at Mrs Thatcher's support.
0:53:48 > 0:53:52And to make matters worse, the lady herself seemed to be
0:53:52 > 0:53:55turning into her Spitting Image puppet.
0:53:55 > 0:53:57We have become a grandmother
0:53:57 > 0:54:00of a grandson
0:54:00 > 0:54:02called Michael.
0:54:02 > 0:54:04Nothing lasts for ever.
0:54:06 > 0:54:10And now her fall from grace became the premise of one
0:54:10 > 0:54:13of the most gripping TV dramas of the decade.
0:54:14 > 0:54:15Even the longest,
0:54:15 > 0:54:17the most glittering reign
0:54:17 > 0:54:19must come to an end some day.
0:54:24 > 0:54:27House Of Cards was written by Michael Dobbs,
0:54:27 > 0:54:30who had previously been a special adviser for Mrs Thatcher,
0:54:30 > 0:54:32and the audience loved it.
0:54:32 > 0:54:36No TV drama had ever exposed with such relish
0:54:36 > 0:54:40the medieval intrigue and Byzantine backstabbing at the heart
0:54:40 > 0:54:41of the Palace of Westminster,
0:54:41 > 0:54:43or what the real Prime Minister
0:54:43 > 0:54:46called "the treachery and hypocrisy" of her assassins,
0:54:46 > 0:54:50and certainly no drama has ever been better timed,
0:54:50 > 0:54:54because at exactly the moment that the first episode went out,
0:54:54 > 0:54:59Mrs Thatcher's own ministers were sharpening their knives to strike.
0:55:01 > 0:55:04The crucial faultline was Europe...
0:55:05 > 0:55:10..for, by now, Mrs Thatcher was making no secret of her hostility
0:55:10 > 0:55:11to European integration.
0:55:11 > 0:55:14The President of the Commission, Mr Delors,
0:55:14 > 0:55:18said at a press conference the other day that he wanted
0:55:18 > 0:55:21the European Parliament to be the democratic body of the Community,
0:55:21 > 0:55:23he wanted the Commission to be the Executive,
0:55:23 > 0:55:27and he wanted the Council of Ministers to be the Senate.
0:55:27 > 0:55:29No. No. No.
0:55:31 > 0:55:36Two days later, Sir Geoffrey Howe, previously her most loyal associate,
0:55:36 > 0:55:38walked out in protest,
0:55:38 > 0:55:40and in his resignation speech,
0:55:40 > 0:55:43Sir Geoffrey delivered a devastating blow.
0:55:43 > 0:55:47The tragedy is - and it is for me personally,
0:55:47 > 0:55:51for my party, for our whole people,
0:55:51 > 0:55:55and for my Right Honourable Friend herself, a very real tragedy -
0:55:55 > 0:55:59that the Prime Minister's perceived attitude towards Europe is running
0:55:59 > 0:56:02increasingly serious risks for the future of our nation.
0:56:04 > 0:56:08Margaret Thatcher had always defined herself through conflict,
0:56:08 > 0:56:12but the end came not on the political battlefield,
0:56:12 > 0:56:14but in the dead of night,
0:56:14 > 0:56:16behind the walls of the bunker
0:56:16 > 0:56:19as, one by one, her assassins trooped in to see her.
0:56:19 > 0:56:22Many of them had agreed their line beforehand -
0:56:22 > 0:56:25she been a great Prime Minister, they said,
0:56:25 > 0:56:27of course they'd support her,
0:56:27 > 0:56:28but she couldn't win.
0:56:28 > 0:56:31Better to go now, to fall on her sword.
0:56:31 > 0:56:36"It was treachery", she said later, "with a smile on its face."
0:56:36 > 0:56:39Mrs Thatcher's years of power are over.
0:56:39 > 0:56:41She resigns to make way for...
0:56:41 > 0:56:43Ladies and gentlemen,
0:56:43 > 0:56:47we are leaving Downing Street for the last time
0:56:47 > 0:56:50after 11-and-a-half wonderful years,
0:56:50 > 0:56:54and we're very happy that we leave the United Kingdom
0:56:54 > 0:56:56in a very, very much better state
0:56:56 > 0:57:00than when we came here 11-and-a-half years ago.
0:57:00 > 0:57:03MUSIC: There She Goes by The La's
0:57:05 > 0:57:08There were tears in Mrs Thatcher's eyes when she left Number 10.
0:57:10 > 0:57:15Gazza, the Iron Lady - it had been quite a year for public sobbing.
0:57:16 > 0:57:20But the truth is that Britain at the end of the 1980s really wasn't
0:57:20 > 0:57:23the country that Mrs Thatcher had set out to build
0:57:23 > 0:57:24more than a decade earlier.
0:57:26 > 0:57:29She sought to unleash our entrepreneurial spirit...
0:57:30 > 0:57:33..but she saw us plunge into a dizzying whirl
0:57:33 > 0:57:35of financial speculation.
0:57:35 > 0:57:38She talked of restoring Victorian values,
0:57:38 > 0:57:42but she saw a generation seduced by hedonistic individualism,
0:57:42 > 0:57:45and she tried to hold back the tide of European integration,
0:57:45 > 0:57:51only to see us embrace all things Continental like never before.
0:57:57 > 0:58:01The reason, of course, is that things rarely turn out quite
0:58:01 > 0:58:04as the politicians think they will.
0:58:04 > 0:58:08Now, it's true that no other prime minister has ever left an imprint
0:58:08 > 0:58:10quite like Margaret Thatcher,
0:58:10 > 0:58:12and certainly none has ever been so controversial,
0:58:12 > 0:58:15and perhaps I should put my cards on the table.
0:58:15 > 0:58:19I think she carried out some much-needed and long-overdue reforms,
0:58:19 > 0:58:22although at often far too high a human cost.
0:58:22 > 0:58:26But you know where the real story of the '80s was decided?
0:58:26 > 0:58:30Not in Number 10 Downing Street, but in number 10 right here,
0:58:30 > 0:58:32and number 9 and number 11,
0:58:32 > 0:58:35and in millions of other number 9s and number 10s
0:58:35 > 0:58:37all over the country.
0:58:37 > 0:58:40You see, the politicians don't make our history, we do.
0:58:40 > 0:58:44And if the world we live in today is the world the '80s made,
0:58:44 > 0:58:47then we've only got ourselves to blame.
0:58:47 > 0:58:50Or to thank. I quite liked the '80s.
0:58:50 > 0:58:54# I got love for you if you were born in the eighties
0:58:54 > 0:58:56# The eighties
0:58:56 > 0:59:01# I've got hugs for you if you were born in the eighties
0:59:01 > 0:59:03# The eighties
0:59:03 > 0:59:09# I'll do things for you if you were born in the eighties
0:59:09 > 0:59:10# The eighties. #