What was life like in the UK in 1982

[Its5656]

Of the back of a 90s thread I saw earlier I was wondering What was life like in the UK in 1982, the year I was born.
I lived in council housing in London. Mum was 17 and dad a 23 year old bricklayer.
I'm not in contact with them so can't ask but I remember it being pretty bleak for the most part but also some good.. fruit and veg markets and stalls in Woolwich, pie & mash shops with my Nan. I also remember seeing punks and football violence. And the storm in 1987.
Just wondering.. What would life have been like from an adults perspective in 1982?

I was 13/14 and wore everything you've mentioned...lots of burgundy I recall and a ' Lady Di ' flick .

I had the Lady Di bob and click about 2 years later when I was 13. I’m sure my DM would’ve let me have it. Same year I had or had had for a year, burgundy cords.

I was 24 and having a great time! I’d left home the year before and was sharing a house with three guys about the same age - two had bought it and the other and me were lodgers. I was working as a secretary, temping in a market town in the Home Counties and was earning about £9K a year (from memory). Sometimes I wanted a bit more excitement and temped for an agency in London - jobs were easy to get and you could pick and choose without too much trouble. I ran a car (old MG Midget) and had a horse, which I kept at livery and rode before work most days. At weekends I worked in a local pub, which was both extra money and my social life. The music was great and I’d go to see my favourite groups regularly - we’d all pile into someone’s car and drive up to London, and in those days you could just leave your car pretty much anywhere without too many problems. I had a curly perm (inspired by Bonnie Tyler) and thought I was really cool. It was before the power dressing Dynasty style of later in the 80s, so fashion (as I remember) was either late punk/New Romantic, or inspired by the Lady Di Sloane Ranger look.

Looking back it was such a carefree time to be young. No social media, of course, which was great! God, I’m feeling nostalgic now….I’d love to go back and relive those years again.

And don't forget free university education, no loans, just grants!!

I was 19 in 1982, working 2 PT jobs (45 hours) both in the NHS, living at home with DPs.
I drove and maintained my beloved red mini and was saving up to get married to my boyfriend of the time.
I was very innocent at this time, had no self confidence and worried endlessly about how others saw me
I was also oblivious to my boyfriend's increasingly controlling behaviour and abuse.
Over the next couple of years he gradually separated me from all my friends and drove a wedge between me and my family and it was only due to a fluke occurrence that I gathered the confidence to call the wedding off and tell my dear family about the abuse.
Looking back to 1982 I can't recognise myself then.
I am so different now. I have made peace with the past, the experience wasn't wasted because I have used my past to help others.
I am so much happier in 2023.

I started my first job in 1982.

It was great. We'd just come out of the dark period of the 70s with all the strikes, 3 day week, power cuts, etc. There was a sense of optimism for the future. Music was good. Olivia Newton John topped the charts for weeks with Physical! We still had shops and a vibrant High Street. We had public transport. Car travel was simple and cheap. Foreign holidays were becoming available for all due to cheap packages. Home computers had started to become affordable and improving with a wide range of games and programs. I'd go back in a flash!

Yeah, but we had Thatch.

She destroyed my northern city.

Not quite 1982- I gave birth to my first DC in 1984, it was standard to have 5 days in hospital where we were shown how to swaddle, nappy change and bath the baby. In 1987 I had a caesarean with my second DC and that was a standard 10 days in hospital to allow for recovery. There were very few mother/ baby venues, breastfeeding rarely happened in public. Maternity clothes consisted of A line loose dresses, anything to hide the ‘bump’ and you weren’t really expected to socialise outside the family when you ‘showed’. Men were able to have two weeks off (in some jobs). They rarely took it.

Yup. Pretty much my memories too. Lots of dungarees and Dexy's Midnight Runners. Double Dutch skipping in the playground. Muddy rainy football on tv on Saturdays. Wrestling, Tiswas, sweets from a tin at your nan and grandads. Chips, Metal Mickey, Wonder Woman and Are You Being Served. Larry Grayson on the Generation Game- shut that door!

I turned 20 in 1982 and i was having a blast. I was at uni and had just met the man who would become my DH. I adored the 80's.

I got married in 82 at 23. Lived in Sheffield. We went to the pictures on Sunday nights, out to the pub early, then happy hour then clubbing, Friday, Saturday and maybe Thursday or Wednesday. They closed at 2! Work next morning. Friday we went to the pub at lunch for several pints. Saturday off to town and walked the length of it. The shops! But, there were the miners strikes, massive unemployment, food outside of London was pretty meh. But, we’d jump on the train to London for 15 quid, stay at my sisters and spend hours in Flip buying proper vintage clothes. Plus, I was thin, and trendy, so of course life was good!

Was that Woolwich with the birds in the old market place? You could buy parakeets/ gerbils/ hamsters and more in that indoor hanger market place. It had its own pie and mash restaurant. There was a National Westminister bank (Nat West for all you young things) and a Wimpey restaurant in the market square. Knickerbockerglories were sold at Wimpeys. There was a large Body Shop down one of the market roads and a large waterfall in the town centre. There was a large M&S as well as a large Clarks and maybe Saxones (sp?).

The army Baracks were in full occupation, and weren't being sold off as swanky wanky gated flats.

Go back to Woolwich today, and yeouch! How things have changed.

To me, age 21 back then, life was good.
Great fashion, a great emerging music scene, safer to go out at night.
Very rarely heard of anyone taking drugs, no stink of weed every where you went. No Nanny state, people were expected to, and did take responsibility for themselves.
Big shops closed at 6pm, and on Sundays. Alcohol licensing was far stricter, I you fell and hurt yourself when pissed, nobody called an ambulance, it was yoir own bloody fault. The culture of victimhood was yet to be born.
If you saw a bloke in women's clothing, it was a bloke in women's clothing and they needed a slash, they used the mens bogs.
Downsides were more overt racism and homophobia. Much harder to come out back then, so I guess people just didn't.
The biggest and best part of that time was, no smartphones and no social media.
What happened on a night out stayed there. No permanent record of people making a twat of themselves
Thank god 🤣🤣

I was 6. I remember the news was full of the IRA and I was confused they would admit to bombing as that was so naughty.
I spent a lot of time outside, found the adverts on tv better than the programmes, and I was happy. I was a lucky kid.

That's the one, I haven't been to Woolwich in years but remember it well.
Shouts of " A pound of apples a pound "
I'd go with my Nan every Saturday morning, C&A and Pie Mash and liquor.
When I was a teenager me and my mates used fake ID to get into Flamingos nightclub.

That's right @Ketzele the Brixton riots, the Deptford protests.

Many black middle class and educated parents were already leaving the city as much as possible and moving further out than Catford, Beckenham, Streatham, but still sending us, their daughters and sons to fee paying schools in London. Yes to pp about taking the underground to school in zones 1 and 2, even at primary. Then coaches out of the city to secondary school.

Sadly Steven Lawrence would have only had been a toddler at that time. Same as his killers.

I had a two year old boy. I used Terry nappies and soaked them in napisan before boiling in big pot on cooker. Didn't have a washing machine. Bought a microwave. Shopped at separate shops like greengrocer and butchers. Was beginning of Thatcher, NHS was working really well. Fashion was amazing, start of the new romantics and crazy hairdos. No childcare other than play school for children who were out of nappies where I lived (mornings only) £2.00 per morning. I would say 50% of women smoked. I lived in what is now Greater London. Most women didn't drive, we walked or caught the bus. We only bought clothes when our old ones had worn out. Women mainly worked in banks, typists, secretarial. Also trudged around in heels all day, although flat pointy shoes were fashionable. We sold our 3 bed Edwardian house refurbished with Mainly Sanderson wallpapers for £36,000. Bathroom had carpet! Lots of houses had that awful cladding. Didn't watch much TV as went to the library fortnightly and read a lot.

The riots (Brixton, Toxteth,) and the New Cross fire and subsequent protests were all 1981

I thought about the IRA too back then @coronafiona , because we used to take the underground in to school in South Ken back then, but I was thinking that there were the attempts later on in the 80's in letter boxes and dustbins. There was a phase when we had to wear something like a lanyard with our names and a contact telephone number (landline) on it due to the fear of attacks on the underground. Now my DH puts his business cards into the kids' bags especially for school trips in the event of emergencies. How times have changed.

I was under a very young child but I do have some memories of 1982! My dad worked and my mother was a full time housewife, which was the norm where we lived, there were no nurseries or child day care other than the playgroup that I remember. They owned the house that we lived in.

Channel 4 I think came out in that year! Playschool, Sesame Street, Rainbow, next door had a black and white TV. We had a colour one. VHS video tape recorder, I think Betamax VCRs were also a thing. Records were still played as were tapes.

Going shopping with my mother, there was a small local supermarket but there was also a local bakery, fruit and veg shop, butchers etc, all on the same row. They are all gone now. The large supermarket for the area was out of town and I think had one late night opening once a week. There were off licences as well and a few attached to pubs, where you could buy alcohol from! On a Sunday almost everything was closed apart from garden centres and DIY stores.

Being walked to school when it was time to go there. Playing out with friends after school and weekends, every day. There weren't that many restaurants and fast food outlets about, compared to now, going out for food wasn't that much of a thing.

It was a happy childhood anyway :)

I was 14 and at high school. Just starting to go to our first gigs around mid eighties - Duran, Duran, Kajagoogoo, Culture club. Ra ra skirts and high neck blouses, legwarmers and watching Fame on a friday evening. Rollerdisco on a saturday evening. They were good times !

I was 13/14 in 1982 and it was a pretty goddamn golden era to be a teenage girl. Me and my friends were obsessed with music and the charts, spent hours pouring over Smash Hits and discussing our favourites. I used to take my wee radio into school on a Tuesday and we’d all huddle round it to hear what was No 1 and absolutely loved TOTP. Under 18 disco’s, fancying boys, roller disco, Saturday up the town shopping at Chelsea Girl, lots of lurex and burgundy!
It was brilliant.
We were all a bit worried about being annihilated by a nuclear bomb mind you and I was quite scared by the Falkland’s war. The miners strike wasn’t until 1984.

I was 15 and it was one of the best years of my life.

Also going to the library once a week to return and get new books, and to the video shop every weekend to choose a new movie!

Thanks for all the responses, fascinating!