The Blockbusters

Abstract

The new Conservative government elected in 1979 brought a change of climate. The ‘winter of discontent’, the days of the nanny state, government intervention, trade union power, welfare handouts and so on, were over. Business should be economically run so that debts were met and dividends were paid. Those that could not manage this would be allowed to go to the wall. At the individual level, people should abandon the belief that the world owed them a living and assume responsibility for themselves. Restrictions on enterprise should go. The basic code was survival of the fittest and the leanest, and making ends meet. The state was to be rolled back. Individualism should flourish. Let capitalism thrive. Leave money-making to those who could do it. They would provide jobs for everybody, wealth for the nation and energy for the economy. The benefits would trickle down to the rest of us. Signs of the change were rapid and obvious. Some people did very well, and unemployment increased. Beggars appeared on our streets. People lived in cardboard boxes in city shopdoorways. Every high street sprouted charity shops. Broadcasting was not going to survive without severe change. The BBC soon felt itself under threat. It was a Corporation, part of the very state apparatus that Thatcherism found so uncongenial. Also it had a public service ethos which some of those in high places perceived as tending to liberalism or even anti-conservative. But for the main, the central issue