What goes around comes around : Civil disturbance

I have been looking at the recent releases on the National Archives website. One thing struck me as events in our lifetime become history what little we learn from events of the past.
I was a student at London University in the early 1980's and in my second year I lived in a student house in Park Hill Clapham Common. In April that year the Brixton Riots took place. I was at home in Southampton as it was the Easter vacation but housemates said it could be heard from where we were living.
These riots took place in the early years of prime miniter Margaret Thatcher's conservative government and here we are some 30 years later with a new conservative government and further riots.


That same year the IRA bombed Chesea Barracks and some years later the centre of Manchester was also an IRA target both were places which I had frequented many times. I recall thinking at the time that how would I have felt being caught up in either disaster, but life is full of coincidences and near misses.

Do not forget that your experience will be your descendants history and the more we record what we think then the greater chance they will have of knowing more about you and your beliefs.