Sussex digital project shares 1980s views of Thatcher’s Britain

Sussex digital project shares 1980s views of Thatcher's Britain. A University of Sussex digital project offers fascinating insights into the social history and cultural changes as experienced by those living during the 1980s in Thatcher's Britain. The Observing the 1980s project at the University of Sussex, funded by Jisc, collates first-hand accounts, written by volunteers, of their daily lives and views which were collected throughout the decade as part of the Mass Observation Archive. This material offers a unique and inspiring insight into the lives and opinions of British people from all social classes and regions during the 80s period. The project brings together 'voices' from the Mass Observation Project and the British Library's Oral history collections alongside 1980s documents and ephemera such as public information leaflets, pamphlets, posters and tickets from the University of Sussex Library's archives. As well as Margaret Thatcher, the Falklands War and the miners' strike, other topics covered include Charles and Diana's wedding, terrorism, AIDS, unemployment and immigration. Historian Dr Lucy Robinson, academic lead for the project who created the '1984: Thatcher's Britain' course at the University of Sussex and developed the new open version, says: "The 1980s is attractive to historians because the decade is both close enough and far away enough to allow us to explore the limits of historical perspective and offers a diverse range of subjects in what was the last era before the internet revolution.