Book - Tough times, good times... (Sheffield)

IT was the best of times; it was the worst of times...

But this was no tale of two cities. Rather just one: Sheffield in the 1980s.

For while the decade was an era of great hardship in South Yorkshire – of steel industry redundancies, miners strikes and the decay of the Hole In The Road – it was also, as a new book recalls, a period of great culture too.

Here were bands like the Human League which would become world famous; nightclubs like Rebels which would go down in pop cult history; and fashion shops, like Rebina Shoes, which would...well, if not thrive, at least survive the recession.

“There’s a truism, that great art springs from hardship,” says Neil Anderson, author of the book, Dirty Stop Out’s Guide To 1980s Sheffield. “And I think that’s right for Sheffield at this point.

“You had thousands of people out of work, mass pickets and entire communities being destroyed – and yet there was a real determination that people would enjoy themselves. There was a saying ‘Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow the redundancy runs out’ – and I think that sums up the period.”

Certainly, for all the clouds, the book – the latest in a series of tomes detailing the nightlife and youth culture of the city in the late 20th century – shows there were silver-linings too.

For every UB40 holder, there were free gigs at Sheffield Polytechnic featuring the likes of The Damned. For every family who could not afford to run a car, there were super-cheap buses which ran through the night. And for Rick Allen, the Def Leppard drummer who lost his left arm after crashing his car on the A57, there was Hysteria, an album which sold more than 15 million.

And, for everyone else, against the backdrop of daytime dole queues, there were several night venues – like Roxy, in Arundel Gate, and Rebels, in Dixon Lane – doing a roaring trade.

“What struck me while researching the book is how much fun people had – whatever their tastes or aspirations,” says Neil, who owns ACM Retro, the publishing company which is releasing the book. “Josephine’s was an ultra-decadent champagne place yards from the NUM headquarters; while The Leadmill, on the other hand, was funded by the council to provide arts and culture from a more left-field perspective.

“And I think it was the search for those good times that meant the city ended up producing bands like The Human League and Def Leppard, as well as ABC, Pulp, Heaven 17 and Cabaret Voltaire.

“Ultimately, it shows the spirit of the city would not be broken.”

Dirty Stop Out’s Guide To 1980s Sheffield is available from The Star shop, £12.95.

From: http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/tough_times_good_times_1_4036258

Event - Invitation to all our Retro lovers (Sheffield

The Star has teamed up with the Lord Mayor for a first-of-its-kind event at Sheffield Town Hall - and we want you to come too.

We are launching our new nostalgia book Retro Rewound this Thursday, with the chance for you to pop along and chat about everything to do with old Sheffield.

Our Saturday Retro supplement is extremely popular - but it wouldn’t be the same without all the photos and memories contributed by you, our readers.

Now we hope you’ll seize the chance to share more of your favourite pictures and historical information as well as meeting the Retro team.

It doesn’t matter if it’s an school photo from the 1940s or an image of the city centre in the 1970s - bring it along so we can share it in forthcoming editions of Retro.

Everyone is welcome to drop in to Thursday’s event which takes place from 11am until 2pm.

The 115th Lord Mayor of Sheffield - local history expert Sylvia Dunkley - will be there from around 12noon as well as many regular Retro contributors.

Retro Rewound is a celebration of everything old Sheffield including highlights from the past year’s Retro supplement.

The book contains many old Steel City favourites from Redgates and the Hole in the Road to Gloops, the Grand Hotel and the Dial House Club.

There’s a special section containing our readers’ recollection of the Sheffield Blitz and a photo tour of the city’s working men’s clubs.

Of course, there’s plenty on both the Owls and Blades, as well as some tricky questions to challenge your little grey cells.

We would love to see lots of Retro readers meeting up - and meeting us - for the first time.

We want to hear what you want to see on the pages of Retro in 2012 and, if there’s a historical question you’d love to know the answer to, we’re happy to see if our readers know the answer.

Please make sure all photos and information you take to the event are clearly marked with your name and contact details as well as as much detail about their history as possible.

Copies of Retro Rewound, priced £9.99, are available now from The Star shop on York Street or by calling 0114 276 7676.

From http://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/invitation_to_all_our_retro_lovers_1_3988440

News - Write your page in city’s history (Sheffield)

IT was the decade of The Limit, cheap bus fares, the council Egg Box and the miners’ strike.

A time of recession, of mass unemployment and of pivotal events that would change Sheffield forever.

Now a new Sheffield University programme is seeking to capture the essence of the 1980s as the starting point of a major oral history project.

People who lived through those turbulent times will be interviewed for an online record which will become part of a new permanent archive of the city’s recent past, to be titled Witness.

Historians Dr Andrew Heath and Dr Charles West are appealing for Sheffielders to to share their memories. The 1980s will be the starting point. Each year a team of students trained by the Oral History Society will research a different topic or period.

A sample of the interviews, with an accompanying historical report, will then be posted online for free public access.

Dr West said: “There’s a proverb that says, ‘When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground’.

“History isn’t just books in the library, it’s also people’s lives and experiences, at home and at work. That’s the starting point of the Witness project.

“Preserving the voices of Sheffield’s citizens, helping train a new generation of historians and creating a historical resource for the future – Witness aims to achieve all these things by bringing together students, staff and Sheffield’s wider community.”

David Holland, aged 47, a mature undergraduate history student, said: “I’m coming to higher education quite late and, as I’m in my 40s, I can remember Sheffield in the 1980s very well.

“Anyone who lived in Sheffield in the ’80s will remember the huge changes to the city’s industry and economy wrought by both recession and government policy and the massive impact on life they had, with the closure of much of the steel industry, the miners’ strike, mass unemployment and the shadow of the Cold War.

“There were also the other fascinating insights into people’s lives in the Sheffield of the 1980s.

“The music scene was world renowned and clubs such as the Leadmill and The Limit were booming.

“The buses were incredibly cheap and frequent too.

“Long-gone bits of civic architecture such as the Hole in the Road, the Wedding Cake and the Egg Box made up an important part of Sheffield’s skyline, as did the massive housing developments of Park Hill and Hyde Park.

“For me, it is people’s experience of such events and buildings that help give a three-dimensional picture of them. I think our role is to help add this human dimension to what has often been reduced to a dry list of ‘historic’ events, where the people who actually experienced them and felt their effects have been written out of the story.”

Dr West said: “The 1980s seemed suitable as a starting point partly because it gives us a very wide pool of memories to draw upon and partly because there may be some parallels with the Sheffield of today - job cuts, recession, tension between local government and national government.”

n To help the Witness project and share memories of Sheffield in the 1980s, get in touch by emailing witness@sheffield.ac.uk or call the Department of History on 0114 222 2555.

From: http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/write_your_page_in_city_s_history_1_3908446