The Eighties may seem to many of us like yesterday, but in many ways the
Britain of thirty years ago was a thoroughly foreign country. During the
years when Thatcherism wiped out almost a quarter of Britain's heavy
industry through savagely monetarist policies, a naval Task Force also
sailed to re-take an insular outpost in the South Atlantic. In the same
decade as the extraordinary pitched battles of the miners' strike, Boy
George sweetly crooned "Karma Chameleon". As the world faced the early
days of panic over the AIDS virus, pop stars took to the stage for Live
Aid.