Margaret Thatcher’s Britain was a dark place, replete with high unemployment, poor living conditions, and criminal neglect of the poor. But a new generation coming of age refused to go quietly into the night, making their way through the world while fighting back.
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When Richard Davis dropped out of school at 16 in 1982, he was adrift until he ventured into the Birmingham Trades Council ‘Centre For the Unemployed’ and learned photography. “All of a sudden I felt I had a purpose,” Davis says. “I had a voice, and via my camera I felt I could contribute towards society – but on my terms.”
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Davis became politically engaged with the miners’ striker of 1984, when Thatcher branded workers and their supporters as “the enemy within.” “I was proud at the time to be considered an enemy within,” Davis says. “And so began a life long hatred of the Tories and how they treated the working classes.”
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