The end of the world? Disarmament
Nuclear war was a real threat in the 1980s but fear and protest turned things around…
MADE IN THE 80S: THE DECADE THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD Monday, 9pm, C4 Factual
When we think of the 1980s, it’s easy to imagine a time of cheesy pop tunes, big hair and neon leg warmers.
But in reality it was also a decade of radical politics, ferocious culture wars and futuristic technology that shaped the way we live today.
In the first episode of this three-part documentary series, we see how during that time the world came within a hair’s breadth of nuclear war.
‘There was paranoia,’ says Frankie Goes to Hollywood singer Holly Johnson. ‘The capability of Soviet Russia to launch a nuclear bomb was a definite possibility.’
In 1979, Soviet Russia invaded Afghanistan and had nuclear missiles aimed at the UK. So British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher allowed the US to place cruise missiles on Greenham
Common airbase in Berkshire, leading to a mass protest by around 35,000 women.
‘We had to draw a line and say, “No, we’re not going to die because of nuclear war,”’ says protester Rebecca Johnson.
Fear of nuclear war dominated the 1980s and gave rise to songs such as Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Two Tribes and films including Threads and When the Wind Blows.
With such fear and protest, politicians were forced to tone down their pro-war rhetoric and eventually the US and Russia signed a treaty that led to disarmament on both sides. ‘I wanted to make a movie that actively imagines for people the unimaginable,’ says Mick Jackson, who made the British film Threads.
‘It was about what war does to people.’