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?

@heartofglass23 apart from the daily broadsheet and Dallas I think your dm is getting mixed up with the early 70s and for some examples earlier.

These things were definitely still true in 1982

My DM says there was a lot of fear of nuclear annihilation.

It was easy enough for a working class couple to buy a 3 bed semi in the suburbs. Maybe not around London but a working couple could buy a house further out. I bought a house as a single parent in the North later in the decade.

No foreign holiday though. No cafes or coffees other than Nescafé instant! Some people had foreign holidays but not me. People didn't go out 'for a coffee'.

Lots of people rented their tvs and no one had videos Rented TVs were normal videos became popular mid decade.

Everywhere was Smokey. True until the smoking ban in 2007(?)

Cars broke down a lot and didn't have seatbelts in the back unless they were Volvos.

There were a lot of burglaries and car/bike thefts. Living in London I had my car stolen and used to look out of the window every morning to see if my next car had been broken into. Car radios were detachable and often stolen.

Kids clothes & toys were gender neutral. Not entirely true but not as gendered as they are now.

Kids didn't get toys/ presents except birthdays and Xmas. Mostly true.

Other things in that post might have been true for some people depending on class, location etc. Not living on Mars though - nobody has ever believed that.

I was 15, socially awkward, with no fashion sense, still wearing what DGM passed down. I loved the music, though, and spent hours listening to radio 1 on my little radio, dreaming of being one of the popular kids. DM was a single mum, and money was tight.
School was a large comprehensive, and I disappeared in the crowd. Slipping from 'very bright, should do well' to below average. Well behaved, no-one gave a shit.
Food was still very much meat and 2 veg, takeaways fish and chips once or twice a year.
That said I loved the 70s/80s and feel nostalgic.

Toys weren't gender neutral even in the 60s. I had Sunday, tiny tears etc etc. prams for them to sleep in etc
We had a filter coffee machine late 70s. Remember Berni Inns floater coffees?

But no-one would ever go out for coffee. Maybe occasionally in a department store with you mum or gran while shopping.

We would often stay at my Grandma's house for the night then in the morning she would take us into town and we would go to BHS cafe and for breakfast I would have a slice of strawberry sponge flan and cream and my brother would always have like a huge chocolate choux bun !! Great days.

There was a big backlash by the Thatcher administration and large parts of society to not have sex education in schools

I think they were fine with sex education.

Section 28 (which limited how homosexuality could be taught) was not introduced until 1988. (And judging by the number of comments on the recent thread about SRE covering anal sex, there are still plenty of people who don't want it in schools).

Toys weren't gender neutral but there wasn't all the Disney Princess crap. I was a student teacher in Early Years and we were definitely trying to encourage boys and girls to play with everything available. It was acknowledged that e.g. girls might need to be shown how to play with a train set or Lego if they didn't have them at home. (My sister and I were born in the 50s and had both those things at home) my daughter had dolls but also trains, construction and a tool kit.

My daughter was 2 and I still don't think clothes were as gender specific.

You'd go for afternoon tea in a proper tea shop - but only rarely. It would involve sandwiches, scones or cake. The tea shop would probably also serve light lunches, and in the morning, elevensies (tea and pastries)

If you made a whole day of your shopping, chances are you'd stop for lunch in a department store cafe

Not living on Mars though - nobody has ever believed that.
Haven't they? I'm pretty sure we'd have been surprised then how manned space exploration (or exploitation) stalled. In the 70s 'Space 1999' didn't seem too unrealistic a date for a series about a moon base.

Toys weren't gender neutral but there wasn't all the Disney Princess crap

Exactly - there was stereotyping in terms of dolls and those make-up heads for girls, and cowboy sets for boys.

But DC had fewer toys in the first place. So there was no "pinkification" as the expectation was that items would be handed on through all DC in the family and quite possibly cousins too. So much of it was, by default, gender neutral.

Ditto equipment - no-one had pink prams/pushchairs. They were usually navy, sometimes a dark red

Edited to add: and clothes were all handed down soon. So yes girls would have dresses skirts and party shoes. But the backbone was tops, trousers, coats etc in bright colours that could be handed on. Clothing was relatively much more expensive than it was now. People had far less, and expected it to last longer, and were more likely to mend or adapt rather than keep buying new

This was before "vanity sizing"

Sizing was de-regulated in the mid/late 80s, and the (now acknowledged) era of vanity sizing began. This wasn't the periodic revalorisation of sizes to reflect population level change, but out-and-out marketing.

It's largely stopped now, but that period meant that sizes really have changed meaning.

But the time when a size 12 was normal/slim remained engrained in the psyche somehow. Even though it's 2 to 3 sizes off now. You need to be an 8 (occasionally 6) to fit reliably in size 12 from before deregulation.

Sizing was reset in 2006. They did a massive thing. People were still buying clothes that were based on post war statistics.

l was working in the clothing trade in the late mid 80’s to mid 90’s. Nothing changed re sizing then.

Born in '83. Grew up near to you ( Bexleyheath). Remember getting the bus to Woolwich market and going to the swimming pool at Thamesmead.

There were the most massive changes then, acknowledged industry wide. But I am thinking specifically of UK and US, so perhaps your work was elsewhere?

However, some US sites also claim that clothing there is now about 2 inches "easier" than it was a couple of decades ago, and I wonder if that's roughly the 2006 change?

If so, that's concerning, because it suggests that the enlargement of sizing continues (I thought it had died out by the end of the 90s)

No-one had ever heard the term "fat shaming" in the 1980s. It wasn't so long after the "pinch an inch" TV ad (ie if you had that much fat at your waist you needed to go on a diet) and being a "10-stone Tess" was a terrible insult.

Society was less obesogenic - yes ready meals and other UPFs definitely existed, but I don't think they were eaten in such quantities. Car ownership less, so more walking. Less traffic, so DC played out more. Clothes relatively far more expensive and stretch fabrics far less common, so if a waistband started digging in, you'd be more likely to diet for a couple of weeks than buy new replacement.

Stretch denim was becoming commoner for jeans, but people were still likely to buy the narrowest they could find and take them in themselves to make drainpipes (pretty sure the word "skinny" for jeans hadn't arrived)

I was 16 in 1982.

Underage drinking was common, landlords didn't give a shit and served anyone.

Everyone smoked: in the car, the cinema, the hairdresser, trains, planes, urgh!

Sexism was rife. Women had little say in anything. I remember asking my mum what a feminist was and she said "I'm not sure if it's someone who is ultra feminine or one of those women's libbers" - FGS!

Adverts said things like "this is the man who married a kitten, just as she turned into a cat" - can't remember what that was for but hmm

There were no mobile phones and not everyone even had a landline. If you arranged to meet someone and they weren't there, tough shit. There was no internet and only 3 tv channels (4 once Channel 4 came along). There was no breakfast tv and not much on in the day or on Sunday. Shops were SHUT on a Sunday because of god.

2 car families were uncommon, not every family even had one car. Wall to wall carpet was considered a bit of a luxury.

There weren't any tv chefs except maybe Keith Floyd. At home we had Stork SB margarine on our white toast.

People in my family didn't really drink at home except tea and coffee, which was given to even small children.

It really was another world!

I was 14. It was exciting, always out with friends. Getting off with boys. I never remember being stressed...

The smoking used to really piss me off as a child. No money for Basic things yet every adult around me could afford 20 fags a day. Everything stunk like an ashtray.
I just googled and the danger of passive smoking was acknowledged in the early 70's, Insane that no one seemed to give a crap.

The Moon maybe but not Mars.

Agreed re coffee in a department store but there was one cafe locally where you could go for tea/coffee and not have to eat (most did though).

My DPs had 2 cars but they needed them for work.

People were skinny not just because of smoking (I never did) but generally as a teenager I was more active and snacked less.

Agreed with underage drinking, a couple of years later aged 14 I went to the pub regularly and never got ID’d.

Wallpaper was very common. DM used to wallpaper bedrooms every 2-3 years with the latest paper (I had blue clouds on white and white clouds on blue plus curtains made from matching fabric).

I think you must have been at my school - dark days until TOTP came round on Thursdays 😀

'... being a "10-stone Tess" was a terrible insult.'

No, the insult was 'ten ton Tess', not ten stone.
(Based on a nickname given to a particular big bomb in WW2.)

I was 12, heavily into Duran Duran (sorry) I loved experimenting with eyeliner, and read Smash Hits with my friends. My Dad rented (!) a video recorder, the Ferguson VHS Video Star, because “video will never catch on” . Heady times!

I was a size 12 at 15 in 1983, 5 ft 6 and around 8.5 stone ( considered tall and slim).

I am a size 12 at 55 in 2023, 5ft 9 and around 10.5 stone (still considered tall and slim(ish))

Cant imagine my ra-ra skirt would go anywhere near!

Go figure 😂🤷🏻‍♀️