#thatcherism

#thatcherism

Thatcher rose to power on the back of a campaign to Make Britain Great Again-a promise to reverse the previous two decades of austerity, imperial contraction, and stagnating modernization. By 1979, the country was undeniably in decline-not just materially but on a more ineffable level, too. Divested of the unifying effect of global superpower status, the increasingly dis-United Kingdom's common identity was now an open, and anxious, question.

The Birmingham reggae band UB40 began as a quintessential product of the troubled era when Margaret Thatcher was the UK's prime minister, archly taking their name from the attendance card needed to claim unemployment benefit, and singing songs about life at the sharp end of her rule. Their peak period lasted until the early- to mid-1990s. In 2008, there came a rupture due to management and business disputes rather than anything musical which opened the way to the choice that now confronts

My Beautiful Laundrette, which revolves around a run-down dive transformed into a jewel in the jacksie of south London by an Anglo-Pakistani entrepreneur and his lover, did many things: it distilled and critiqued an entire political movement (Thatcherism), portrayed gay desire in unfashionably relaxed terms, and audaciously blended social realism with fable-like magic and cinematic grandeur.