This is the fifth volume in Sandbrook’s ongoing political and social history of modern Britain. This volume covers, roughly, the period from Margaret Thatcher becoming Prime Minister in 1979 to the end of the Falklands War in 1982. From an historical perspective two main areas are covered: the first is the way that Mrs Thatcher and her Government addressed the acute economic privations that had built up during the 1970s and burst into a fierce financial catastrophe at the turn of the decade into the 1980s; the second is the Falklands War, not just how it was executed, but how it started and what it meant for Britain.

Sandbrook gives plenty of space to social history, whether it is the New Romantics, the rise of the Sloane Ranger or how snooker became so popular. Although he uses the lens of history to examine these phenomena he is never condescending and is always careful to present these events from the perspective of the people experiencing them.

Like all the other volumes in this series this is a long book (800 plus pages), but it is never boring or a chore to read. Sandbrook is a lively author and often very funny.

Absolutely recommended. ( )

At nearly 900 pages, this takes a long time to get through a 3 year period. This has pluses and minuses. On the one hand, it means you get a lot of detail about economic, political, and cultural history of the time. On the other, it means you get a lot of detail and analysis--occasionally not entirely necessary or a bit repetitive. (Do we need to relive every match of the 1981 Ashes, an innings at a time?)

Sandbrook isn't entirely shy about his opinions, and one of them is that Margaret Thatcher has been flattened into a caricature: the Iron Lady in her blue suit and handbag, yelling "No!" There's a great deal of truth in this. It's also true that she faced a great deal of sexism and classism that her left wing critics didn't always want to acknowledge. He spends a lot of time analyzing Thatcher and her policies, and how our perception with 40 years of hindsight has scrubbed out any nuance, particularly in her early years. It's a worthy reminder. However, he occasionally labors the point, and may lean a little too much into excusing her. That's not to say he's a complete Thatcher apologist: he acknowledges her flaws and errors. There's also certainly a case--and he makes it well--that many of the issues Thatcher faced were structural and that no administration could have completely prevented deindustrialization and the rise in unemployment. Regardless of whether you wind up agreeing with his economic conclusions, there's a great deal of discussion material here that will help you argue with them.

His views of the far left are pretty clearly critical. Foot is portrayed as an honest man who was incompetent to lead Labour, but Benn and Livingstone are savaged (and Sandbrook doesn't miss a chance to bring up Jeremy Corbyn when he's peripherally involved).

Overall, this is an enjoyable continuation to the series. ( )

Dominic Sandbrook continues his vast history of Great Britain from the 1960s up to the present day. This is the fifth immense volume (weighing in at almost a thousand pages) and extends from Margaret Thatcher’s general election victory in May 1979 until the victorious conclusion of the Falklands War in 1982.

I should say straight away that I am a huge fan of Dominic Sandbrook, and feel that this is his finest book yet, although I recognise that that might simply reflect my greater familiarity with, and recollection of, the events about which he writes. Where he excels is in drawing together, without any semblance of artifice, so many different strands of life. He gives a detailed account of the political issues dominating day to day life, but also sheds light on prevailing trends in entertainment, literature and music, as well as changing aspects to domestic life.

A thousand pages for just three years might seem excessive, but those three years saw almost seismic shifts in British life. Political commentators had expected Prime Minister James Callaghan to call an election during late summer or autumn 1978, but he chose instead to let his tenure run for full term. That proved to be a fatal misjudgement. Not only was he beset by what came to be known as the ‘Winter of Discontent’, with public service unions bringing many elements of daily life to a standstill through concerted industrial action, exacerbated by a particularly harsh winter, but he fell foul of Scottish and Welsh Nationalists.

Callaghan had inherited No. 10 from his predecessor, Harold Wilson, who had stepped down from the premiership in 1976 in response (as we now know, although it was never acknowledged at the time) to signs of the early onset of dementia. Callaghan was a benign and popular figure, and is the only person to have held any four great offices of state (Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary). He is, unfortunately, now generally remembered for having presided over the Winter of Discontent, and for losing the parliamentary confidence vote which led to the May election that brought Mrs Thatcher to power. Wilson had secured a very small majority in the autumn election in 1974, but that had gradually been eroded throughout the course of the parliament, leaving Callaghan dependent upon the support of the small Scottish Nationalist Party and Plaid Cymru cohorts within the House.

It is always tempting (if pointless) to speculate about the ‘What if?’ moments of history. If Callaghan had gone to the country in autumn 1978, as most of the pundits anticipated, would he have won? If so, the whole course of British political history would have been completely different. Mrs Thatcher would almost certainly have been deposed as Conservative leader, perhaps to be replaced by a rival of more moderate views.

It was not just the Winter of Discontent that led to Callaghan’s defeat. On 1 March 1979 voters in both Wales and Scotland voted in respective referenda about the issue of devolution of power, with a view to establishing their own parliaments. A majority of those voting in Scotland did indeed opt for a Scottish parliament. They did not, however, do so in sufficient numbers to meet the additional criterion insisted upon by Callaghan’s Westminster government, that, as well as a majority of votes actually cast, at least forty per cent of the total electorate in each country had to support devolution. On a snowy and painfully cold day, overall turnout in Scotland was too low for the vote to cross that hurdle, and the bid for independence failed. The SNP and Plaid Cymru immediately withdrew their support for Callaghan’s government, rendering it only a matter of time before it succumbed to a vote of confidence. ‘Like turkeys voting for Christmas’, was Callaghan’s verdict, before he bowed to the inevitable and, having lost a crucial confidence vote, fell back upon the whim of the electorate.

Mrs Thatcher is one of the most divisive figures in British political history, but one who is now generally the subject of rampant vituperation. Having just turned sixteen, I was too young to vote in the 1979 election, but contrary to the revisionist view prevalent today, I remember that there was a feeling almost of euphoria when Mrs Thatcher emerged victorious from that election. This was, it is true, more a feeling that change … any change … had to be welcome. Things had been so relentlessly grim over the preceding seven or eight months that any sort of new start was welcome. Of course, no-one would have believed in May 1979 that the Conservatives would remain in power for the next eighteen years, and, as if to prove Santayana’s adage about the cyclical nature of history, there was the same sense of euphoria or relief when Tony Blair’s New Labour finally ousted them.

The Falklands War proved to be the pivotal moment in Margaret Thatcher’s first term as Prime Minister. Indeed, if Argentina had not invaded the Falkland Islands, it is unlikely that she would have secured even a second term, far less a third. The British economy plummeted during her first years as Prime Minister, and unemployment soared, extending beyond three million. Of course, this was particularly ironic given the success of the Conservatives’ election campaign, a key element of which had been billboards showing huge queues outside a Job Centre with the slogan, ‘Labour isn’t working’. Even senior figures within her own party were starting to challenge her approach. During the opening years of her premiership, Britain saw vicious riots spreading throughout the country, in places as far apart as Brixton, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham and Cardiff.

Sandbrook captures all of this and far more, and renders it all very accessibly, and offers some very wry observations along the way. ( )