Wish you could have been at Live Aid? Want to examine the Thatcher government’s strategic nuclear defence documents? Ever wondered what Atari gaming concept sketches look like? Interested in reading logbooks documenting Tasmania’s Franklin River dam blockade? Don’t know the difference between Goth and New Romantic subcultures? Well then, slap on your Swatch watch, upsize your shoulder pads and hit rewind on your Walkman…because the ’80s are back with the AM 1980s Culture and Society database.
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Today we’re looking at the AM database 1980s Culture and Society.
What makes this database so great?
The 1980s were a time of political upheaval and dramatic social change. Activists protested the threat of nuclear war and the rise of the Conservative Thatcher and Reagan administrations. Consumerism thrived in the West, with an increase in fast fashion and the boom of new leisure technology products.
The AM 1980s Culture and Society database brings these ’80s themes to life through materials such as news footage, photographs, zines and oral histories. Contributing sources include grassroots organisations, national archives and government offices across Australia, the United Kingdom, United States and Canada.
Many periodicals, zines and other materials are authored by and produced for marginalised communities or particular subcultures. The database collection ensures that otherwise difficult to locate archival material is accessible to anyone researching the social history of this defining decade, as well as those wanting to revisit the 1980s to make nostalgic connections with their past.
Highlights
Indigenous rights
Throughout the 1980s, Indigenous Australians fought hard to raise awareness for issues affecting them. In 1983, the Aboriginal Land Rights Act recognised dispossession and displacement of Indigenous Australians. Uluru was handed back to its traditional owners in 1985. The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody was set up by Prime Minister Bob Hawke in 1987, and masses of people protested Bicentenary celebrations on Australia Day 1988.1
1988 Bicentenary protest sticker, Political ephemera relating to Australian Bicentenary, State Library Victoria.
This database contains resources produced by and for Indigenous communities, including newsletters addressing the key concerns of land rights battles, racism, social health issues and deaths in custody.
Publications include the Kimberley Land Council Newsletter and the Aboriginal Land Rights Support Group Newsletter, the first issue of which outlines the group’s objectives, including wanting to ‘help educate non-Aboriginal Australians in this area by circulating this information as widely as possible’.2
Aboriginal Land Rights Support Group Newsletter, no 7, July 1980, © State Library of New South Wales.
The Indigenous oral history, An Interview with Burrie Burriganjerram, is a particularly insightful and moving resource sharing first-hand perspectives of Indigenous life and cultural practices.
Environmentalism
Environmental activism grew rapidly in the 1980s, with an increase in organised public group action from grassroots associations.
The Rainbow Archives from the State Library of NSW include Friends of the Earth newsletters, meeting minutes, photographs and ephemera. You will also find records from the Wilderness Society and Alice Hungerford’s donated papers regarding the blockade of the Franklin River in Tasmania.
Left: Wake up Australia, the environment needs you! ca. 1980, Rainbow Archives, © State Library of New South Wales.
Right: Don’t flood the Franklin!, Collection of posters related to environmental and political issues in New South Wales, 1979-1988, Rainbow Archives, © State Library of New South Wales.
Politics and the rise of Conservatism
The 1980s were overshadowed by the Conservative governments of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the UK and President Ronald Reagan in the US. The Thatcher and Reagan governments are documented through National Archive files containing press briefings, meeting minutes and correspondence from both Thatcher’s Prime Minister’s Office and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum.
Left: President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on The South Lawn During Her Arrival Ceremony, 26 Feb 1981, © Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Museum, National Archives & Records Administration.
Right: Workers’ Control,1980-1982, © Modern Records Centre, The University of Warwick.
Social response to Conservative governments is also captured in resources covering popular support for Reaganomics, the far-right British National Party and National Front anti-immigration movement, as well as left-wing protest materials such as the Les Prince Political Ephemera Collection, zines and Socialist Workers’ public meeting documents.
The threat of nuclear war
Cold War hostilities, Thatcher’s support for nuclear weapon defence and Reagan’s condemnation of nuclear warfare made the threat of nuclear war a hot topic of 1980s news discussion. Digitised government records allow you to read documents such as the UK Ministry of Defence’s Defence (UK Strategic Nuclear Deterrent) and Reagan’s Address to The Nation on Arms Reduction and Nuclear Deterrence from The Oval Office.
Also available are materials from the Movement Against Uranium Mining campaign, including records, correspondence, newsletters, photographs and ephemera, such as protest posters.
Left: Protect and Survive, Great Britain Home Office, 1980, © Modern Records Centre, The University of Warwick.
Right: Protest and Survive, E P Thompson, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), 1980, © Modern Records Centre, The University of Warwick.
New media and technology
Rapid technological advances through the 1980s significantly changed the way we lived and worked, with the introduction of electronic devices such as the IBM Personal Computer, answering machines and mobile phones.
Radio Shack Catalog, no 419, 1988, © Bowling Green State University.
This collection gives us great insight into these innovations as well as tracking the boom of ’80s leisure technology with the Sony Walkman, CDs and arcade games. Anyone interested in video game design will enjoy examining original Atari concept sketches and arcade games catalogues.
Gauntlet design drawings, Ken Hata, 1985, Atari Design Concept Sketches, © Strong National Museum of Play.
The development of electronic music with the synthesiser is also documented in video files and periodicals such as the CLEM: Contact List of Electronic Music.
Health and social issues
Prominent health issues of the 1980s are documented, including misconceptions and stereotypes of AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome), as well as awareness campaigns promoted through the AIDS Leaflet Collection.
AIDS buttons, 1983-1991, © Interference Archive.
Resources in the collection also cover privatisation of the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK, unemployment and cuts to social welfare, demonstrating how these social hardships led to an increase in drug use, including heroin and crack cocaine epidemics.
Sexuality and identity
The LGBTQI+ community continued to be confronted with discrimination throughout the 1980s, with legislation being influenced by religious and right-wing political agendas. Database resources document these issues, including images of mass protests against Thatcher’s Clause 28 legal prohibition of the ‘promotion of homosexuality’3 by local governments in 1988.
Clause 28 March Manchester [4], 20 February 1988, © Mirrorpix.
The National Archives provide Home Affairs publications such as Homosexual Rights in Great Britain and Europe. Collections also include publications dispersed within LGBTQI+ communities, such as the Leaping Lesbian and Dragazine from the Bowling Green State University zines collection.
Feminism
Throughout the 1980s, the women’s rights movement continued the fight for issues such as the gender pay gap and abortion rights, particularly against the growth of Conservativism in the UK and the ‘New Religious Right’ in the US.
Feminist zines and protest pamphlets in the collection document these struggles, including reproductive health choice campaign materials. Opposing perspectives are also covered, with material from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum providing information about national pro-life groups. British collection documents and photo archives cover movements such as Take Back the Night, which spread awareness about the dangers women faced from male aggression.
Popular culture
Music in the 1980s was shaped by new synthesiser technology, as detailed in this database’s 1983 documentary, Perspectives: Electronic Music from the British Film Institute. Electronic music artists such as New Order and Depeche Mode created innovative synth-pop compositions throughout the decade. New Order’s 1983 masterpiece Blue Monday is often referred to as the sound of the ’80s and is still the best-selling 12-inch single of all time.
New Order on stage at Glastonbury Festival, 1987, Bristol Post, © Mirrorpix.
Meanwhile, sci-fi movies such as The Empire Strikes Back and Back to the Future used pioneering special effects to expand their iconic film franchises.
This collection also allows you to browse digitised toy catalogues depicting all the ’80s toy crazes, including Transformers, Cabbage Patch Kids, My Little Pony and the Rubik’s Cube.
Rubik’s Cube advertisement in the Ideal 1980 — Wow! toy catalogue, © Strong Museum of Play.
Subcultures and Fandom
Here you will discover images from the ’80s punk scene, video interviews with key figures and anarchist publications such as Angry! and the Anarchist Times. The New Romantic and Gothic subcultures are captured in photographs from London’s Blitz Club and zines providing commentary on the scene. Fandom materials include fanzines about popular ’80s TV series, music, science fiction and fantasy novels.
Left: Blitz Club [2], Daily Mirror, © Mirrorpix. Right: New Romantics in Birmingham, 1981, © Mirrorpix.
Consumer culture and materialism
An increase in capitalism in the West during the 1980s saw a boom of convenience products and fast fashion. The term ‘yuppie’ was devised in the ’80s to describe ‘young upwardly-mobile professionals’, who proudly displayed affluence through their preppy, high-end fashion and flashy possessions.
Yuppie poses by his car with his mobile phone and wallet stuffed with credit cards, 1988, Daily Mirror, © Mirrorpix.
Geometric patterns and vivid colours were in vogue, along with matching accessories such as Swatch watches. The British Film Institute collection showcases these styles in a number of resources, including London Fashion Week: Autumn 1984.
Women’s Fashions 1986 [17], © Mirrorpix.
The AM 1980s Culture and Society database offers a comprehensive collection of exciting resources that paint a vivid portrait of life in the 1980s.
We hope you have enjoyed stepping back in time through this dynamic decade.
Live Aid Concert Crowd, 13 July 1985, © Mirrorpix.
More to Explore
Check out our latest databases on trial, and see a full list of all new and trial databases, by visiting our A-Z Databases page.
You might also be interested in:
Popular Culture in Britain and America (1950-1975)
Power to the People: Counterculture, Social Movements, and the Alternative Press
References
- SBS Timeline: Indigenous rights movement <https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/timeline-indigenous-rights-movement/fb5nvvsdu> viewed 22 January 2025.
- Aboriginal Land Rights Support Group Newsletter, no 1, June 1979, p 1, State Library of New South Wales. From 1980s Culture and Society database, AM Digital, viewed 22 Jan 2025.
- Sexuality and Identity, 1980s Culture and Society database, AM Digital, viewed 31 January 2025.
Alison, this blog is sensationally well-written!
Great work Alison. I am so sold on this database!