1982 - The year of the CD and Margaret Thatcher 2/9
Audio 48:30
Margaret Thatcher and François Mitterrand.
© Charles Platiau / REUTERS
By: Cécile Poss
52 mins
1982, in France, the first “test tube baby” is born, Italy wins the World Cup, Romy Schneider dies of a heart attack, and Princess Grace of Monaco is killed in a car accident.
But 1982 also marks the appearance of a technological evolution which will revolutionize the world of music: the CD.
Publicity
Artists are flocking to this new way of making albums that allow them to make 90 minutes of music, with much longer tracks that can last 7-8-9 minutes.
The multiplication of hits leads to the arrival of a new program on the French airwaves: the top 50. It ranks, independently of the record companies, the songs having the most success in terms of sales.
We also see the emergence of musical TV channels, which broadcast clips, and the proliferation of independent labels.
New groups may appear, such as Simple Minds, Police, The Cure or U2.
And if this context is difficult, with high unemployment and heavy economic rigor, it is because we are in the middle of the Margaret Thatcher years. François Mitterrand saying of her that she had the smile of Marilyn Monroe and the eyes of Calligula. Margaret Thatcher has been Prime Minister of Great Britain since 1979. Deeply conservative, she is a staunch anti-Soviet, and an enemy of Irish independence. In 1982, she was demonized across Ireland for letting Bobby Sands starve to death, an imprisoned IRA member who demanded political prisoner status through a hunger strike.
His image of an inflexible and heartless person is definitely engraved.
But it's not just in Ireland that Thatcher is hated.
The powerful unions oppose his economic policy.
It must be said that she no longer believes in the industrial development of Great Britain, she wants to develop services and finance, like what is done in America.
Margaret Thatcher in 1982 was also the war in the Falklands, a small archipelago south of the Atlantic Ocean, off Argentina.
Member of the European Union since 1972, Great Britain does not find its account there. She has to pay for third countries poorer than herself, like Greece, and doesn't think she will benefit from it. Thatcher will have this sentence entered in the story “
I want my money back
”. Thatcher obtains great independence from his partners in exchange for progress in European construction, and from now on Great Britain will always remain one foot in, one foot out. Thatcher is probably the first Eurosceptic British leader, foreshadowing the Brexit that will come 40 years later.
With:
Yves Bigot
, Managing Director of TV5 Monde -
Phillipe Chassaigne
, historian specializing in Great Britain -
Bernard Dobbeleer
, journalist specializing in 20th and 21st century music -
Pierre Marlet
, journalist responsible for news on La Première (RTBF) -
Laurent Rieppi
, journalist and rock historian.
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