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?

School was very chill. Lots of art, lots of DT, LOADS of preparation for school plays. I swear the prep for the xmas play started in October, but the play was actually good because of all the practices. Kids knew their lines properly and were then taught how to act (unlike shit school plays today)

I forgot this. You’re so right! Endless rehearsals for weeks on end, missing lessons etc. Was great!

There weren’t many single mothers - me and my sister were the only children without a father bar a couple of kids whose fathers died, in our school. So no support groups. Money was scarce.
We owned one pair of shoes at a time usually school shoes.
4 channels on the TV.
Video recorders of you were lucky or rich.
No mobiles although a few were around.
No central heating
Winter was cold - too cold to wash your hair at night as the only hair dryer wasn’t very good.
Corporal punishment was banned.
Entertainment was the pictures, pubs were mainly male bars old pub type.
We had each other!

I was 13. I went to school a tube journey from my home. We all used to get in the smoking carriages as they were emptier. Pizza was new and exciting. We used to argue when we went out for a pizza as a family because I liked Pizza Express and my brother liked Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut had a salad bar which was pretty amazing, though, and you could fill a bowl with as much as you could get into it including croutons which were pretty damn exotic. My grandad pronounced it pizzer, to rhyme with whizzer. I think I had eaten pasta a handful of times in my entire life.

We used to go to Shepherds Bush Market once a month to get fruit and veg that wasn't available in supermarkets, like okra and pineapple and mango and aubergines and fresh coriander.

The Falklands war was the most interesting news event that had ever happened and I remember rushing home from school to find out the news.

My mum had an argument in Tesco because there was only South African something or other (grapes?) and she wouldn't buy it because of apartheid.

We had a BBC Micro Computer and if you wanted to play a game, you had to sit there for what felt like about an hour while it loaded from a tape machine which screeched and howled while it did so. My brother and I subscribed to a magazine which had whole games in it which you had to type in by hand to the computer. You inevitably made some kind of mistake, or there was a typo, and had to go through and debug the thing before you could actually play it. Sometimes it took days before you could get it working. There was no save game option quite often so you had to play the entire thing all in one go. If you made a mistake, you had to go back and start again. Playing a game on a computer was a communal activity where one person played and about six sat round and watched/offered helpful advice.

I seem to remember lots of power cuts, though they might have been a few years earlier.

No parents knew where their children were when the children were out of the house. Reversing the charges in a phone box was a big thing if you were out and needed to let your parents know you would be late. Nearly everyone had one phone, in the kitchen or the hall or the sitting room. If you had two or more phones in the same house, that was pretty sophisticated. My aunt had an extra long phone cord so she could walk round the kitchen and do things while talking on the phone and this was quite something.

Every week when the charts were on the radio, I used to tape the songs I liked - but they inevitably had someone talking over the end or beginning. If you heard a song you liked on the radio and didn't hear them say what it was, it was really difficult to find out later. A Sony Walkman was the absolute height of tech sophistication.

Definitely a simpler time!

^^ all of the above, wearing leg warmers, eating findus crispy pancakes and watching Brideshead Revisited.

I spent my childhood feeling that devide. I went to school in Greenwich which apart from the few council estates is a pretty well off area. I remember going to birthday parties and being gobsmacked at some of my school friends houses.
Before working tax credits I get the feeling it was much harder back then to get out of the benefits trap,
Judging by a lot of the responses a lot of people were having a great time though.

Ha, there were ready meals in my house, born in 79 I was brought up on beef in the bag, beans on toast and happy meals, although they might not have been called that then! Had burger and chips from McDonald’s anyway, the first drive thru opened near us in the mid 80s. Also remember fish and chips from wimpy.

I was 9, my mum was 32, Dad 33.

Holidays were in my grandmas static caravan in north wales.

Parents drove an old mini which broke down if it rained.

Dad was a truck mechanic, Mum was a SAHP

Lived in an estate in a city

I remember it fondly, don't recall any major issues or troubles. Looking back we were skint though, one toy and a few books etc for Xmas and 1 toy for birthdays. I remember being thrilled with a new pair of wellies as I always had my brothers hand me downs.

I'm the same age as you but was my mum's third. She'd had her first child similar age to your Mom. Council estate in the Midlands.
I can remember ice on the inside of our windows, drawing patterns in it. A really heavy snowfall probably 85 or 86 when it was deep I crawled across it. No seatbelts in the car. Smoking inside. No money. Living on chips and eggs. White dog poo. Racism being acceptable. House ownership being rare. A holiday to Spain being the height of decadence

I seem to remember lots of power cuts, though they might have been a few years earlier

That might 'the winter of discontent', 1978-79, or during the period of 'the three day week' 1973-1974.

Loving all these memories!
I was 22, just completed professional qualifications and started work on £8k per year which felt like a fortune!
Looking back I think they were simpler times in many ways. We didn't have the luxuries of today but I suspect, on average, people were happier

1982 was a big year for me. I did my O levels, turned 16, moved house, changed school for 6th form and met my first boyfriend. We used to spend a lot of time walking by the canal listening to music on his Sony Walkman as it could take 2 sets of headphones...ahh, the romance!
My children can't believe that that was about as hi tech as tech got in those days. No computers, no mobile phones and in fact my Dad would only let me use the phone after 6pm as it was too expensive earlier.
Music and fashion were great though and I was too busy being a teenager in love to really worry about the political situation etc - even though I knew things were bad in many ways I didn't think they affected me. I was pretty happy in the 80s really.

I was 14 and my parents were insanely wealthy...but they had been since I was young, so it was all I knew and I didn't realise just how fortunate we were in the material sense (otherwise our family was a dumpster fire).

My mother didn't work and my father worked abroad...he'd come home for a month once a year, usually around Christmas. So myself and my two brothers didn't really have much of a relationship with him. At that time I didn't really care though, my mother was a lot happier when he wasn't around...she was a 'lady who lunches' long before the term was invented.

I could go on forever because I loved the 80s and I miss them still. People made more of an effort to see each other, no one staring at their phone, the music was better and friendships were more 'real'.

I was 18 in 1982 and left home for uni.
The music was brilliant, my DS19 has most of my favourites on his playlists, not because I have played them to him but teenagers today “love retro music”🤣
Fashion was very diverse, off the back of punk you could really express yourself with clothes and the charity shops were just starting to appear with amazing 50s & 60s clothing that we customised.
Hair was big, permed and mainly blonde. Men were allowed to be androgynous and wore makeup.
I was at uni in Birmingham, famous for Duran Duran and the Rum Runner the epicentre of New Romantics in the Midlands. We had Ska from Coventry ( the late great Terry Hall)

The country was on the up and everyone had spare cash. The package holiday was invented and Spain was THE destination.
Students went proper backpacking to India and other third world countries. Island hopping in Greece was the summer destination. No hotels just locals farm houses that were converted into dormitories for the summer.
No mobile phones, computers, internet or digital world. If you took photos you had to wait a week or so before they were processed.

Parties were great because you could make a tit of yourself without it going global within minutes.

The only fast food was fish and chips and possibly a Chinese.

You had to buy booze from an off-licence. When supermarkets first started selling alcohol they had to stick to licensing hours and closed the aisles when you couldn’t buy it.

Maybe I see it through rose tinted spectacles.

It was also the year the Falklands war broke out and not long after the protracted miners strike started which saw the end of widespread coal mining in this country.
Unemployment hit 3million in the uk.
Globally there was a major recession in the US and Canada.

Of course the most monumental event in 1982 was Dexys’s Midnight Runners releasing “Come on Eileen” , which is probably the most popular wedding disco track of all time.

I was 22, I had started a job at an American Bank in the City and loved it. My father had helped me to buy a little flat and my flatmate was a chum (male) from my home County. My flat was in SW London which was very suburban and regarded as being on the wrong side of the river.

People queued in a very orderly fashion for "the drain" a fast train from Waterloo to the City. Tube fares had gone down and up again due to Red Ken and a revolt over rate increases for people in places like Bromley who didn't have the underground but were funding it.

A washing machine or fridge cost about a months' money and chintz was big, for curtains and frocks. As were Laura Ashley and Benneton. I could fill up my little car for about £6.

Friday nights were spent at Chelsea pubs, Saturdays at parties. There were also lots of Balls, City, political and Army and lots of dinner parties where we were pretentious and tried to out cook each other.

My experiences were very hedonistic and I remember it as a very happy time. Velvet headbands, highlights, suntans, lots of smoking.

Betamax videos were still about, Sony Walkman's were popular and fitted kitchens were coming in.

We were, however, conscious that 1981 had high unemployment and was one if the worst years for graduates to find jobs. The miners strike was looming and the IRA were feared.

Enjoying reading all the stories on this thread!
I was 5 yo so I can't contribute any memories but as an adult I bought my first flat (tenement building) and according to the deed pack, the bathroom wasn't put in until 1982. Before that the occupiers used the communal w/c on the stairs and presumably strip washed / tin bath washed in the house.

This thread sent me off to Spotify to find ABC's The Lexicon of Love released in 1982. I'm listening to it now and it's transported me right back to lunch time in the 6th form common room. I haven't listened to it for decades but can remember every lyric!

I’m much older then most PP, I was in my early thirties. The main difference between then and now is how much less crowded Britain , especially the cities, were. We could drive from the Cotswolds to Kensington in about an hour and a half on a Sunday or Friday early evening, without breaking the speed limit, because there were fewer car and lorries on the roads. You could drive from Kensington to Covent Garden in 2o minutes at 18.30, and park on a meter for nothing. Shops were less full, there were more people working in them, so shopping was less of a hassle, more of a pleasure. If you went out to eat, you had a table for the whole lunch or dinner time, you didn’t get thrown off for the second sitting. You could even get a seat on the train!

New builds had reasonable gardens, and larger rooms than modern ones. Older housing stock was generally more spacious too, at least in the South, so people had more space to breathe. Children played in the street as there were fewer cars, especially parked .

Doctors and hospitals were not so stretched , you could get to know them , there was a personal element (although medicine was less advanced , so people died younger and conditions which are treatable now were disabling or fatal).

When I lived in France , between 2005 and 2019, we were struck by how much more room there was there, just as it used to be in England.

I was 14 in 1982 so have strong memories of lots of things but mostly people, music, tv, fashion etc.

I watched some of the first episodes of Eastenders not long ago and it gave a fair representation of what an ordinary working class city street looked like and ordinary house interiors.

Some of the differences might be down to the fact that house style tv shows came in in the 90s. 1982 was before the peer pressure to care so much about your house decor. The high street looked very different and there were no coffee chains and less McDonald's and Burger King and other restaurants.

Also lots of younger women has much shorter hair and perms. This was before the advent of straighteners being prevalent.

And the older people around had lived through 2 world wars and we had much more of deference to older people instilled. We usually called friends parents Me or Mrs whatever.

We all watched tv shows when they were on the 4 channels live or videoed them.

@Allthegoodnamesarechosen, oh yes, driving into Central London because it was possible to park at weekends and in the evenings. London was smaller and less busy and there were hardly any shops in the City.

Spitting Image!

Many shops and restaurants were shut on Sundays. Sundays were very quiet and pubs had short hours.

Slam door trains and nationalised industries - service from BR, BT, British Gas, etc, was very slow and very poor. Smoking upstairs on the bus and in designated tube carriages, even on aeroplanes.

There were no coffee chains, tea or coffee out in London, except in the West End, was tricky, a bit sticky and often was a room at the back of a baker's. Except for Juliana's in Notting Hill.

Nouvelle Cuisine came in and you needed cheese on toast when you got home. Not many people were vegetarian.

The suicide rate was 15 per 100 000 compared with 10 per 100 000 now so maybe talking does make a difference.

Autistic people like me (who was at primary school in 1982) were undiganosed and treated like freaks by both the other kids and teachers.

I was 23 and working in a blue collar job, yet with a colleague was able to get a 100% mortgage to buy a 2 bed flat in London for £22,000.

My son was born in 1974 in Canada and we returned to England in 1976 so in 1982 I was working full time as a single parent with no additional government support for my 8 year old!

He went to a local childminder (2 doors away) and I paid it all.

I had just bought my first terraced house on a mortgage for the grand total of £7500 BUT my income before tax was £4000 pa and interest rates were high. Yes - single women could get a mortgage!
All second hand furniture and no access to a car.

That said, there was no pressure to get the latest furnishings, decor or technology so money went into the important things.

I was 19/20 and worked for a massive insurance company. There were free lunches in the staff restaurant, and drinking at lunchtime was normal.
Everything was fun and funny.
Brilliant, free staff social club where I played netball, hockey and squash. The social events there were fabulous too and it was the centre of my social life.
It was a thriving university city (still is) and every famous indie band you could think of played there at the uni. Had some really great times there.
I had left school at 16 but had stirrings of there being something more out there so did A Levels at evening classes and then went to a London uni in 1986 where, as a 'mature' student I was lucky to have a full grant of about £3,000 a year. No student loans. I had a part time job while at uni too and no money worries at all.
Life was fun, and full of freedom and opportunity.

In 1982 my now-ex and I had two DSs aged 1 & 3.

Earning average salaries, we sold our 2-bed flat for around £28,000 and bought a huge Victorian semi in West Ealing for £40,000; just checked online and a house a few doors up is on the market for £970,000.

The big difference is the now non-affordability of housing for ordinary people.

One massive thing I forgot to say was that my dad, a lorry driver, was made redundant in 1983 after many years at the same company. With his payout he was able to buy our council house and was very, very proud to do so.