Everything Must Go

Thirty years on from New Labour’s historic 1997 general election victory, Everything Must Go tells the story of the profound social, cultural and economic change which shook Labour to its core in the 80s and 90s.

As the working men’s clubs closed and the shopping malls opened in the wake of the Thatcher years, many came to believe there was no future in representing the old industrial working class. Drawing on high politics and low culture, this book examines what really happened to the Old Labour world as working class culture changed and the party had to change with it. It recounts the politics of the age via the chat shows, the tabloids, the sitcoms and the soaps which shaped the way that people understood the world that was changing around them.

Anthony Broxton looks at the places which once made up Labour Britain but fell away as industries closed. He uses local newspapers to tell these stories and shows how Labour politics was resisting, responding and changing as a result of societal change. At the same time, he examines wider cultural forces, from home ownership and privatisation to the rise of supermarkets, Sky Sports and breakfast TV, to show how new jobs, assumptions and ways of thinking emerged to create a new type of Britain, one that New Labour was responding to in the 1990s.

Goodbye Labour Britain brings the whole story back to life as a social history which still shapes the world we live in today.