Steve wrote:

And Thatcher spent much of her early years in office battling for the mindset

of

the people over Northern Ireland and the freedom fighters/terrorists

(depending on

your point of view). The hunger strikes in the early 1980s were significant because when Bobby Sands died, that put a lot of people in the camp supporting

the

IRA's cause. There has always been a majority in Britain in favour of Britain pulling out of Ireland, and that made it more difficult for her, not just in

the

UK but on the world stage.

Blimey, you weren't at my (primary) school, where I was frequently exhorted to '&%£ off back to Ireland then'... perhaps my fellow eight year olds weren't quite ready for my brilliant expose of British rule, or perhaps I really should just have been playing with my Sindy doll.

Also at the time, Thatcher was toying with the idea of privatising the BBC.

I've

always wondered how significant it was that the BBC pulled a programme that

was

hitting 10m viewers that made heroes of a bunch of freedom fighters/terrorists (depending on your point of view) fighting a strong female leader.

Do you see the BBC's gradual dropping of all science fiction programming throughout the 1980s as part of a general trend in becoming more reactionary? (Of course, as someone pointed out, 'Edge of Darkness' deals sympathetically with anti-government activity, but I always feel 'Edge' stands out as an exceptional drama in the 1980s, when everything else is, frankly, a bit rubbish.)

Una