Ardoyne, north Belfast, Northern Ireland

This Was Then is the first career-spanning book by one of the UK’s most significant documentary photographers. Mike Abrahams’ photographs demonstrate his unerring ability to capture ‘ordinary people living extraordinary lives’. Shot across Britain over three decades, in the years before and after Margaret Thatcher’s time in government, This Was Then brilliantly captures small moments of everyday life that tell a far bigger story of Britain during this time. This Was Then is published by Bluecoat and available to purchase here

Granby Street, Toxteth, Liverpool, 1981

Mike Abrahams: ‘I grew up in Liverpool and started taking pictures when I was a teenager; it was a good way to explore the city and its different neighbourhoods. In 1971, as a 19-year-old, I worked on the ambulances, taking the elderly and disabled to day centres. Entering some of the last occupied houses in condemned streets awaiting demolition was shocking and it was to some of these streets that I returned later with my camera’

British army, Belfast, 1987

‘I realised early on that there was no such thing as a neutral observer. How I saw the world was coloured by the things that had moulded me. What I was interested in exploring always moved me. I was not interested in the fact that people threw stones, only in why they threw them. I want viewers to ask the same questions’

Liverpool, 1982

Unwanted wedding dress and vacuum cleaner for sale.‘Even though I have been privileged to travel widely with my camera, it is the lives that I have been able to document in Britain that hold the greatest significance for me’

Blackburn, 1985

Children playing on the street. ‘In 1973, when I started taking these photographs, we were living by candlelight. The country was gripped by rising inflation and capped public sector pay brought the miners and railway workers on strike to protect their living standards. The government responded with the Three-Day Week to conserve coal stocks for the production of electricity, which would now be limited to use on only three consecutive days a week’

Children with abandoned/stolen car, Everton, Liverpool 1981

‘In 1979 Margaret Thatcher’s government started a radical overhaul of both industrial and economic strategy, smashing the trade union movement and making the transition from manufacturing to a free market economy that elevated shareholder profit over social responsibility. State-run industries were privatised and her Right-to-Buy policy decimated social housing’

Tenaments, Glasgow, 1986

‘One in three council tenants took advantage of the Right-to-Buy scheme and Michael Heseltine, the environment secretary, noted that “no single piece of legislation has enabled the transfer of so much capital wealth from the state to the people”’

Possilpark, north Glasgow, 1986

A child scaling a wall. ‘Possilpark was one of the poorest areas in the city. Its decline began when, in 1967, the Saracen Foundry, which was the main employer in the area, closed down. During the 1980s Possilpark had become the hub of the city’s heroin trade. High levels of anti social behaviour and burglary made life stressful. People I met refused to leave their flats unoccupied even to go to the shops for fear that in their absence their flats would be emptied’

Pentonville prison, London, 1983

‘In 1983 I spent 24 hours in Pentonville prison. Two prisoners lived in a cell 4×2 metres for up to 23 hours a day, with no toilet, only a bucket. The conditions were far worse than they were when the prison was opened in 1842. Back then it was designed to accommodate 520 men, each in their own cell. Latest figures show it is now home to 1,300 inmates and is structurally largely unchanged. From 1902 to 1961 a total of 120 men were executed in Pentonville, their remains buried in unmarked graves against an external wall’

The Battle for Lewisham, London, 1977

‘In 1977 the National Front marched through the ethnically diverse neighbourhood of Lewisham. Thousands of anti-racists congregated to prevent the march taking place. The police chose to direct the National Front right into the anti-racists’ midst, and with horses and baton charges they cleared a route for the racists. The crack of flying bricks hitting heads and the fear induced by police horseback charges provoked violent revolt. It was the first time the police were forced to bring out riot shields. The National Front abandoned its march’

British army checkpoint, Strabane, Northern Ireland, 1990

A Traveller child in a caravan with the British Army border checkpoint behind. ‘Over the years, I photographed across Britain documenting day-to-day lives that I recognised from those early years in Liverpool. Whether I was in Glasgow or Blackburn, Bradford or London, the Kent coalfields or Belfast, people shared many common experiences. Although people from Northern Ireland shared much with those across the Irish Sea in Liverpool, they had to endure violent state oppression and sectarian conflict with the resulting loss of 3,720 lives’

Birkenhead, Merseyside, 1981

Youths hanging out on the Ford Estate. ‘The images in the book are not sequenced in either chronological or narrative order, but on the universal condition faced by people who so generously gave me their time and acceptance’