The beginning of the AIDS crisis, mass unemployment, urban riots, the Miners’ strike, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Thatcherism, Section 28, the build-up to the controversial Poll Tax and much more…the 1980s on paper look pretty traumatic for the UK. This holds true for photographic paper too, as is borne out by the thought-provoking exhibition The 80s: Photographing Britain, currently on at London’s Tate Britain gallery. However, what this show also displays, is the enduring energy and resilience of the British population to stand up for themselves, fight back, keep calm and carry on in the face of adversity.

The exhibition, which actually covers the UK from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, begins with a fantastic series of black and white photographs which amplify minority communities, including striking workers, Anti-Nazi protests, the push-back against Thatcher’s brutal politics, the inner-city riots, the Miners’ strike, the Greenham Common CND protests, the campaign against the Poll Tax and AIDS activists. The rawness of these images contrasts with Martin Parr’s colourful images of rather gruesome-looking rich folk at leisure – a Conservative Election victory party, a tea party at Malvern Girl’s School and so on.

Highlights in the next sections include a series of iconic images by Sunil Gupta, a room reflecting black experience and a series of self-portraits which includes some of the 1979s iconic Handsworth Self Portrait series.

We move onto more colour photography with more from Martin Parr and also Paul Reas’ iconic images highlighting every-day 80s consumerism. Tom Woods’ images of New Brighton nightlife in the Chelsea Reach nightclub are fabulous. Martin Parr’s images here also feature subjects from New Brighton, clearly a fertile hunting ground for images back then.

We then move on to subcultures with a contribution from Wolfgang Tillmans, although it’s here that the exhibition misses a trick, as the iconic British subcultures of the 1980s are largely omitted – particularly the new wave, New Romantic, goth and rave scenes all of which could have provided amazing imagery.

If you lived in the UK during the 80s then this show is a delight, and will trigger dozens of memories and provide iconic imagery to do so, that you largely will not have seen before. It’s a rather sprawling exhibition with some questions regarding the inclusions of some areas and the omission of others. In particular the omission of most youth culture, football culture and no reference to the British obsession with days and nights in the pub or watching television back then. However, if you treat this show like a fabulous thrift shop to rummage through, rather than a comprehensive study of 80s UK, then the omissions cease to be an issue. This show also shows how far the UK has both progressed and regressed in different areas since that iconic decade. The 80s in the UK were intense, fun, raw and brutal all at the same time, and this show documents that. Highly recommended. 9/10