The World in the 1980s U2 Sunday Bloody Sunday You are listening to the U2 song, “Sunday Bloody Sunday”. The song describes an incident in Northern Ireland, in 1972 in which 26 civil rights protesters were shot by members of a British Regiment during a Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association march. Thirteen people, six of whom were minors, died immediately.
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Transcript
The World in the 1980s
U2Sunday Bloody Sunday
You are listening to the U2 song, “Sunday Bloody Sunday”.
The song describes an incident in Northern Ireland, in 1972 in which 26 civil rights protesters were shot by members of a British Regiment during a Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association march.
Thirteen people, six of whom were minors, died immediately.
• Leads to a prolonged conflict in Northern Ireland between Catholics who want to join the Republic of Ireland and Protestants who want to remain part of the United Kingdom.
• Sinn Fein – Political division of the IRA.
• Para-military groups:•Republican - Provisional IRA (Catholic).•Loyalist – Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF), Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), Ulster Defence Association (UDA) (all Protestant).
Politics“Thatcherism”• Margaret Thatcher (“The Iron Lady”) ushered in a new era of conservatism in British politics during career as prime minister from
1979 – 1990.•She reduced social welfare programs.•She returned government-run industries to private control.•She cut taxes.•She fought against labor unions.
•Thatcher appears at number 16 in the 2002 List of "100 Greatest Britons", which was the highest placing for a living person.
•She also appears at number 3 in the 2003 List of "100 Worst Britons", which was confined to those living.
The World in the 1980sDevelopments in the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe
• 1980: Economic hard times prompt electrician Lech Walesa to organize “Solidarity”, an independent labor union. (Unions are illegal in the Soviet Union.)
• The Soviet Union pressures the Polish govt. into outlawing the union and arresting Walesa.
• But, the Soviet Union eventually backs down due to political pressure created by Pope John Paul II… Walesa becomes a national hero in Poland.
The World in the 1980sDevelopments in the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe
• 1985: A new energetic leader comes to power in the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev.• Gorbachev launches a two-pronged reform effort:
•1) Glasnost – “openness”, the ending of censorship.•2) Perestroika – “restructuring”
•An attempt re-shape the dismal Soviet economy.•To produce more and higher-quality goods, Gorbachev gives factory managers, instead of govt. officials, the ability to make business decisions.•Farmers are allowed to sell food on the free market.
The World in the 1980sDevelopments in the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe
•1986: Meltdown at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine.
•The disaster released as much as 300 times more radioactive fallout than the atomic bomb of Hiroshima.
•Soviet-era cover-up makes it difficult to know how many people havebeen affected.. A 2005 report attributed 56 direct deaths and estimated that as many as 9,000 people will die from some form of cancer.
The World in the 1980sDevelopments in the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe
East Germany
• 1989: Mass protests against East German govt. force
• Erich Honecker to resign.
• November 9, 1989: New East German govt. announces that East Berliners would be allowed to cross the border with proper permission (???).
• Tens of thousands of East Berliners heard the announcement and flooded the checkpoints. The guards don’t know what to do… so they let them all pass into West Berlin.
• In the next few days, people showed up with sledgehammers to destroy the Berlin Wall.