The 2020 Historical Research lecture, ‘Writing histories of 2020’, asked how future historians mi... more The 2020 Historical Research lecture, ‘Writing histories of 2020’, asked how future historians might study and understand the global coronavirus pandemic. The lecture brought together historians with three distinctive perspectives: contemporary history and writing of the very recent past, histories of record keeping and current archive creation, and the history of contagious disease and its human consequences. The three speakers, Richard Vinen, Claire Langhamer and Kevin Siena, provided early responses on future histories of 2020 and how we might best prepare the ground for these studies. This article provides written versions of these commentaries. Common to each of the contributions, and subsequent discussion, is the ongoing challenge and responsibility of thinking historically at a time when history is clearly ‘in the making’.
It has sometimes been suggested that the government of Margaret Thatcher responded to the miners’... more It has sometimes been suggested that the government of Margaret Thatcher responded to the miners’ strike of 1984/5 with plans that had been conceived long in advance. This article argues that Conservatives certainly discussed the prospect of a strike from the mid-1970s. However, they did not have clearly worked-out plans or much confidence in their ability to win such a dispute, and they became even more cautious after their humiliating retreat when faced with the threat of a strike in February 1981. Stockpiling coal was, initially, designed to deter a strike rather than to defeat one. Only slowly did some Tories reconcile themselves to the prospect that there was likely to be a strike and that 1984 was the least bad time to face it. Furthermore, Margaret Thatcher herself was not always keen to confront the miners and many of those who did the most to prepare and execute government strategy were not Thatcherites; some were civil servants rather than politicians.
The 2020 Historical Research lecture, ‘Writing histories of 2020’, asked how future historians mi... more The 2020 Historical Research lecture, ‘Writing histories of 2020’, asked how future historians might study and understand the global coronavirus pandemic. The lecture brought together historians with three distinctive perspectives: contemporary history and writing of the very recent past, histories of record keeping and current archive creation, and the history of contagious disease and its human consequences. The three speakers, Richard Vinen, Claire Langhamer and Kevin Siena, provided early responses on future histories of 2020 and how we might best prepare the ground for these studies. This article provides written versions of these commentaries. Common to each of the contributions, and subsequent discussion, is the ongoing challenge and responsibility of thinking historically at a time when history is clearly ‘in the making’.
It has sometimes been suggested that the government of Margaret Thatcher responded to the miners’... more It has sometimes been suggested that the government of Margaret Thatcher responded to the miners’ strike of 1984/5 with plans that had been conceived long in advance. This article argues that Conservatives certainly discussed the prospect of a strike from the mid-1970s. However, they did not have clearly worked-out plans or much confidence in their ability to win such a dispute, and they became even more cautious after their humiliating retreat when faced with the threat of a strike in February 1981. Stockpiling coal was, initially, designed to deter a strike rather than to defeat one. Only slowly did some Tories reconcile themselves to the prospect that there was likely to be a strike and that 1984 was the least bad time to face it. Furthermore, Margaret Thatcher herself was not always keen to confront the miners and many of those who did the most to prepare and execute government strategy were not Thatcherites; some were civil servants rather than politicians.
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