The Baby Boomer Generation (18 page)

The worldwide stock market crash of 1987 instantly restrained the extravagant spending habits of the city whiz kid yuppies. The wine bars, restaurants and clubs that the high-spending yuppies had previously heaped money upon soon came creeping back to ordinary Joe Public to fill their tills. Venues that had previously been standoffish to all but the big spenders suddenly threw their doors open to welcome all-comers in the face of fierce competition to fill empty tables and floor space.

As was the case in previous decades, the 1980s is remembered for having some very distinctive styles of dress. The passage of time does tend to play tricks with our minds and, as such, we have a tendency to arrogantly mock bygone clothing fashions. We cringe at the thought that we could ever have worn such things, and the 1980s do not escape ridicule from today's critics. Whatever you might think of the fashion trends, the 1980s must surely go down in the annals of history as having been a much more tasteful and stylish period than the early to mid-1970s. The large shoulder pads, tight jeans and leg warmers of the 1980s really weren't that bad. Okay, so the mullet hair cut did reach the peak of its popularity in the 1980s and there was an early trend for men to perm their hair to look as if they had a poodle sat on their head. Oh, and yes in the late 1980s some men did take to wearing short ponytails for a while. Even back then, most of us thought that these were all awful hairstyles and the majority of us were sensible enough to trim our 1970s locks into much smarter hairstyles, and generally smarten ourselves up. Power dressing was the slogan of the day. The elegant Armani suits and high-collared lace blouses of the 1980s must make up for all of the chavvy shell suits, ripped sweatshirts, rah-rah skirts and Lycra leggings that we saw parading through our shopping centres at the weekends. There were a lot of classic styles around but we tend to overlook these and concentrate on the fashion faux pas. Many of us wore expensive and well-tailored clothes but we sometimes wore them in a strange way; like the designer jackets worn with sleeves hitched up to the elbows and a casual t-shirt underneath, in the style of the 1980s
Miami Vice
TV series. Brand names became status symbols and designer labels began to appear on everything we bought from sportswear to luggage. We willingly paid ten-times the price of a cotton t-shirt to get one that was printed with a designer name or logo emblazoned across the front. Gone were the days when companies had to pay to have their logos displayed on the high street. We consumers were now paying them for the privilege of flaunting their brands everywhere we went. It became fashionable to wear wax cotton jackets in town, especially Barbour jackets, and when it was wet a matching pair of green Hunter wellington boots. They gave the impression that you were up from the country for the day. This was also the decade in which the term Sloane Ranger first came into use to describe the wealthy, young, upper-class set that lived in the Chelsea area of London and were regularly seen shopping in and around Sloane Square. The Sloane Ranger tag was mostly applied to the women of the Chelsea set who invariably had cut-glass English accents and family estates in the country; a prime example was Diana, Princess of Wales, or Lady Diana Spencer as she was before her marriage to Charles, Prince of Wales. There was even an official Sloane Ranger Handbook and a Sloane Ranger Diary, both published by the magazine
Harpers & Queen
. Meanwhile, there was an unusual change going on in everyday footwear. While we baby boomers continued to wear our highly polished leather shoes, all around us the younger generation were binning the tradition and formality of leather shoes in favour of new-style designer trainers from the likes of Nike and Reebok. To the young, these designer trainers were now acceptable for everyday use, to be worn with anything and on any occasion. Some children were now growing up having never worn anything else on their feet but sports trainers. It was difficult for us, the plimsoll generation of the 1950s, to adjust to such a radical change in everyday footwear. How could anyone wear casual trainers with a suit or a dress and expect to be taken seriously? We baby boomers would never do that, would we? Surely, we could never become that tacky.

Having joined one of the thousands of newly opened gyms in the 1970s and taken up jogging as well, we were certainly buying gym shoes in greater numbers than ever before. Our interest in keep fit was proving to be more than just a short-lived fad. Women were especially keen to trim and tone their figures, which for those of our generation were not quite as young and trim as they used to be. Spurred on by 1980s dance-themed films like
Fame
,
Staying Alive
, and
Flashdance
, armies of women of all ages were donning headbands, leotards and leg warmers and joining aerobic classes at dance studios and church halls throughout the land. Home fitness videos topped their Christmas wish lists, especially the Jane Fonda workout videos and the
Physical
video by Olivia Newton John. We may have taken up jogging in the 1970s in an attempt to get fit, but this was now serious stuff – we were even signing up to run marathons (the London Marathon and the Great North Run half marathon were first staged in 1981).

It was as well that we were toning our bodies and increasing oxygen to our brains because we would need all of the energy and brain power we could muster to keep us going as we left the 1980s behind us and moved on into the 1990s, with the bleak prospects of further falls in house prices and increasing numbers of repossessions, high interest rates and rising inflation. The decade ended on a high note with news from Germany that East Germany's communist rulers had given permission for the gates of the Berlin Wall to be opened. On 9 November 1989, for the first time since 1961, the 28 mile wall was officially breached and hundreds of East Berliners surged through the openings while large numbers of jubilant West Berliners climbed to the top of the wall and began breaking up sections of it.

Pass the Reading Glasses

W
hen we closed the door on the 1980s we ushered out much of what remained of the good old-fashioned Britishness that symbolised our traditional way of life. In the past, evolution of gadgets had been a gradual process but towards the end of the 1980s new technology was really starting to speed things up. Once underway, the impetus could only get faster as technology continued to develop more and more new and better gadgets to improve ways of doing everything, whether in the workplace or at home. From communications to cooking, technology was fundamentally changing our traditional way of life as increasing numbers of people of every age group made use of each and every new gadget as soon as it became available. During the 1990s everything was changing and developing at breathtaking speed. It may have been an involuntary act but by buying into the technological age we were altering our whole way of life, and in a very short space of time. As we look back, we probably remember the 1980s as being the last decade that was not totally dominated by electronic gadgetry in one form or another. From mass ownership of mobile phones to nationwide CCTV surveillance cameras in our streets, shops, workplaces and buildings, the rapid advancements in technology during the 1990s was exciting and most of us were unable to resist the temptation of joining this new high-tech society, thus drawing us ever closer towards a twenty-first-century lifestyle and taking us further and further away from the world of pen and paper in which we grew up.

The first major world event we remember from the decade was Nelson Mandela's release from a South African prison on 11 February 1990 after serving twenty-seven years of a life sentence. The event is high on our list of memories from the early 1990s because it dominated all forms of media coverage and his release was broadcast live on television all over the world. In Britain there were also some vitally important things happening that were changing the structure of our nation. Our minds are easily transported back to the early days of the 1990s if we are reminded of when, in May 1990, the then minister of agriculture, John Gummer, invited newspaper and television camera crews to photograph him trying to feed a beef burger to his 4-year-old daughter in an attempt to reassure the public that British beef was safe for humans to eat, despite concerns about mad cow disease (BSE) in cattle. His daughter refused to eat any of the burger and he was left to sample it for himself. However, the biggest news story that year was the resignation of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party in November 1990. She decided to go after she only narrowly won a leadership contest against Michael Heseltine. This made her realise that she no longer had the overwhelming support of her MPs and so she stood down. Margaret Thatcher had been the leader of the Conservative Party for fifteen years and prime minister for eleven; this made her the longest-serving British prime minister of the twentieth century. Following Thatcher's resignation, the then chancellor of the exchequer, John Major, was elected leader of the Conservative Party and he became prime minister.

The Queen celebrated her Ruby Jubilee on 6 February 1992, but aside from that the early 1990s were a difficult and painful time for her and the royal family was never far away from controversy. The failing marriages of three of the Queen's children – Prince Charles, Prince Andrew and Princess Anne – and the shame of seeing tabloid, front-page scandal pictures of her daughter-in-law, the Duchess of York (Sarah Ferguson), were all a great disappointment to the Queen, but there was even more distress to come. In November 1992, Windsor Castle was badly damaged by a fire that caused more than £50 million worth of damage. At the same time, it was announced that the Queen was to start paying tax the following year. She described 1992 as being
Annus Horribilis
(a Latin phrase for ‘horrible year'). In 1994, the Duchess of Kent became the first member of the royal family for more than 300 years to convert to Catholicism. In May 1996, the Duke and Duchess of York divorced, and in August that year, after four years of separation, Prince Charles and Princess Diana divorced. It was certainly a difficult period for the royal family and the biggest upset was yet to come. Just one year after the divorce, on 31 August 1997, much of the world went into mourning when news reached us that Princess Diana had been killed in a car crash in Paris. This was the biggest and most shocking news event of the decade, an occasion that will be forever fixed in the minds of everyone who was around at the time. She was greatly admired and loved by people from all over the world.

In 1994, for the first time in history, Britain had a direct link to France via a tunnel beneath the English Channel: the Eurotunnel. In 1998, we saw a devolved government established in Scotland, an assembly in Wales, and a legislature in Northern Ireland; this was effectively a breakdown of powers and decision making that was previously controlled from London by the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This was the first tangible evidence of a divide in our nation and it prepared the ground for the possible future breaking up of the four countries of the United Kingdom. In particular, there were pressure groups in Scotland and Wales in favour of seeking greater autonomy or even independence from the rest of the UK. The situation in Northern Ireland was somewhat different with the main argument being whether Northern Ireland should become part of a united Ireland or remain in the United Kingdom. Following agreements made during the 1990s Northern Ireland peace process, any change in Northern Ireland's sovereignty would only be allowed to happen with the agreement of a majority of voters in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Meanwhile, the 50-million population of England who accounted for the majority of the UK's population watched on quietly from the side lines as nationalist battles went on all around. The reallocation of responsibilities and management of different budgets brought many issues into question, not least the possibility of a break-up of the National Health Service and an end to fair and equal national policies on our healthcare. In 1999, the peace deal for Northern Ireland, known as The Good Friday Agreement, came into force and the new Euro currency was launched in participating European countries, but not in Britain because we chose to keep the pound sterling as our main currency.

It was increasingly apparent that little mainland Britain was becoming somewhat overcrowded and the growing population was putting a great strain on all of our social welfare and utility services, especially housing, schools and the National Health Service. It was also very noticeable that our country was becoming more cosmopolitan with an even greater ethnic mix of people using a multitude of different languages. Figures from the Office of National Statistics show that in the early 1990s there was little difference between the number of people entering the UK and those leaving, but immigration began to increase significantly in 1994 and the trend continued throughout the remainder of the 1990s with immigrant numbers exceeding emigrants by about 25%. During the decade, the total UK population rose by 1.3 million to a figure of just under 59 million by the end of 1999. It did seem like our country was becoming overpopulated and there was an increasing number of people needing social welfare.